89. EL, Karlsruhe, 10-14-'11
Last time we said that
everything in the outer world is maya and that practically everything
must be thought of in reverse. We emphasized that an esoteric must learn
to always look at everything around him in the way mentioned. If he sees
a flower, he should think of it upside down; if he hears a sound coming
from the right, he should consider that the sound is really coming from
the left. He can go even further and consider the same thing in other
cases. Where it's dark, he should tell himself that it's
really bright, and where it's light, it's really dark. If
we anchor this feeling of the inversion of outer maya in us, if all
of our thinking is guided by this, then we'll experience great
transformations in us that lead us to the truth. But if we want to
make all of this clear to ourselves through mere reflection,
we're led into great dangers. An esoteric knows that all
symbols and esoteric teachings can be a little dangerous if
they're wrongly understood and applied, but we esoterics
aren't little children. One who has tried to apply what was
said here the last time will have gotten the feeling as if the ground
were being pulled out from under his feet. And when one tries to
understand these things intellectually, it's as if two mirrors
were set up facing each other, so that a reflection repeating itself
endlessly arises. Then the danger is that the intellect would dance
along with this endless repetition as if in a whirling dance. The
healthy human intellect then says to itself: My understanding stands
still on me here. Only an unhealthy soul lie lets itself be pulled
into the whirling dance.
But we can also go further
with the inversion and include human beings. Let's imagine a human
face that has lighter or darker colors, with lighter or darker hair,
and now let's imagine a bright face as dark, dark hair as
light, and so on. Also we should imagine hollows where the face
protrudes and bulges where it recedes. The skin's color also
changes; think dark green where it's rosy and light green where
it's dark red. If we could feel this, we'd be able to
know the inner nature of this man. For instance, a light green color
would show us that we have to do with someone who stands strongly in
the life that works in the three lower kingdoms of nature. When the
color appears to be dark green, he would be more inclined toward
spiritual things. And where one sees blue, the highest spiritual
qualities would become manifest in this human being. But if we would
first imagine the color and then transfer it in thought to the face
that's before us, we'd go far astray.
Another thing that we must
imagine is that something that looks ugly is really beautiful. That's
why in old paintings Christ on the cross wasn't made beautiful
but often ugly and distorted.
An esoteric who's always
talking about his difficulties and physical pains, who makes a daily
account of all the great and small pains that he must endure is a
weak esoteric. One who wants to get ahead must develop the strength
in himself to not want to be constantly cured of all his ailments
through medicines and baths; he must realize that all of this belongs
to esoteric training, in which man's whole being undergoes a
change. If someone goes over a meadow and sees an autumn crocus it
would be an example of a rather sick soul life if he thinks that it
wants to devour him. But in an esoteric who isn't sick, it can
happen that he has the feeling that he's being grabbed from
behind by higher beings and being sucked up, as it were. One
sometimes finds a man who's afraid of an upper story window
because he gets a desire to jump out of it. Or there's the fear
of open places, where a man doesn't dare to go through one.
This feeling stops if there's someone with him. Official
medicine gives causes for these phenomena, but the real reason is
that such a person lacks justified solitude. All men need to be alone
to a certain extent, and this is not just egoism. Someone who always
wants to help others will at some point feel that he can't help
anymore if he doesn't get the forces for this out of solitude.
One who always wants to talk will someday sense that his words are
empty if he doesn't let spiritual forces come to him in
solitude. We must be alone for prayer and meditation; communal prayer
can only bring men to a certain groupsouledness. One who thinks that
it's egotistical to go into solitude simply feels the need to
be with other people, not to help them. A supposedly selfless wish to
help can really come from egoism, where one simply seeks sociability.
For instance, the magnetic healing that's used to lessen
others' pain could just come from the need to have a pleasant
feeling from stoking someone's body. Although love and egoism
are opposite poles, it's nevertheless true that in certain
boundary cases they come very close to each other and it's
difficult to tell them apart.
We're given strength
through out ego-consciousness so that we're not sucked up by higher
beings entirely, so that we don't become puppets, but higher
development gets us to make ourselves independent in our feelings,
otherwise we would lose our self-consciousness completely. We're
supposed to consciously develop ourselves up to the higher
hierarchies.
One who through his study
of theosophy has grasped the great truths about world and man in such a
way that they ensoul him and go warmly through him will learn to feel
himself in the midst of spiritual beings in such a way that
he's in no danger of losing his independent existence. In
everything that may happen to us we learn to say from within: That
comes from God. In suffering, we learn to say: God is sending us this
suffering as a loving reminder of our past mistakes. And we'll
happily say: That's a blessing that God is sending us — and
it makes us thankful and not conceited. We then learn to see the
working of divine powers in all events, and we'll gradually
feel that we have the right relation to the cosmos.
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