98. EL, Muenchen, 1-10-'12
What we
want to attain through esoteric exercises is to concentrate
completely on one thought and afterwards to let an empty space arise
in us and to wait for what flows to us as a result of our meditation
What we attain thereby depends on the intensity of the perseverance
that we have applied to this. One might think that one gets ahead
faster by changing exercises, but the most profound esoterics have
always said that they got the furthest by doing the same exercise
with patience and perseverance for years.
One
might get a spiritual exercise from someone and then not see him
again on this earth. But if this exercise is done correctly and the
pupil's karma is favorable, it can last him a whole lifetime
and bear fruits for him until he finally finds his teacher in the
spiritual world.
When an
esoteric applies forces to his inner development, he'll notice
that certain bad qualities had become more manifest. One of these is
criticism, but an esoteric should realize how this desire to knock
other people down arises. We heighten and intensify our egoity
through the exercises, and criticizing is a desire to assert oneself,
a wanting to be something special, a need to separate oneself. An
esoteric loses interest in many outer things that he paid a lot of
attention to previously. This goes so far that some esoterics have
the feeling they can't see as well as before.
Most of
them also complain that their memory isn't as good. But as we
pointed out in previous classes this not paying attention to
one's environment is a mistake. It can happen that someone
doesn't do his exercises intensively enough to fill the inner
emptiness with spiritual content, which he now no longer wants to
fill with his previous interests. This gives him an urgent feeling, a
driving restlessness, a need to fill his inner emptiness from
outside. Then he's easily tempted to criticize outer things. In
a way, this criticizing is understandable and justified, for after a
man first closed himself off from the outer world and now steps out
of himself again, he would like to assert himself against the world.
But there's an egotism in this that should be suppressed
together with the criticizing. When we attain this the forces that we
would have wasted otherwise will turn inwards and fructify our soul
life. The need to separate himself is something that's quite
justified for an esoteric, for he can only make progress in solitude.
The feeling of loneliness is unbearable for most ordinary mortals,
but an esoteric should learn to tolerate solitude. This promotes his
esoteric life a great deal. A man who longs for company dissipates
his forces through this longing. It's as if this longing
sprayed out from him in all directions He should gather thee forces
and turn them inwards instead. That way he'll gain a great
deal.
An
esoteric must bring two qualities into equilibrium like pendulum
swings, first the tolerance of solitude, that is, the strengthening
of egoity, and secondly complete devotion to the duty that approaches
us from outside, to the point of self-sacrifice or the forgetting of
oneself. When we've gotten to the point where our heart longs
for solitude in the midst of our surroundings, where the latter makes
us suffer and we nevertheless give it our full, devoted
love — then we've attained the unification of apparently
contradictory qualities.
A third
thing we should practice is to be silent about our esoteric
experiences. An undeveloped man almost explodes if he has to keep a
secret, and he feels very relieved if he can get things off his
chest. But an esoteric should consider that this force that threatens
to blow one up must be a very strong one if one prefers to store it
up inwardly. That's why it says, “Learn to be silent and
you'll get the power” — that is, the power to rule
things within one. For instance, an occult investigator can perceive
how much stronger a man gets when he has to suppress the telling of a
secret for some reason. Say that a man has something on his soul that
he would like to tell a friend. Intending to rush over to him, he
meets another acquaintance at the door, but he doesn't want to
tell this one about it. Later it's too late to go to his
friend, so he has to suppress his urge to communicate. An occultist
will see that the soul in such a person has developed a force that
wouldn't have arisen if the man had fulfilled his wish to make
his communication. The saying: “The mouth speaks out of the
heart's abundance” shouldn't apply to an
esoteric.
It
might sometimes be good and appropriate for a nonesoteric to tell
all, but not for an esoteric. By communicating his innermost feelings
and thoughts, he sprays out forces that would have been very
necessary for his soul. Every time we're able to keep thoughts
and feelings to ourselves, especially ones that are connected with our
esoteric experiences and difficulties, we acquire a soul force that
we can't lose. One should speak about universally human things
and about things that can be useful to people, but not about
one's own affairs that are nobody else's business. Where
does this need to communicate come from anyway? We seldom feel the
need to go to other men because we love them selflessly, but usually
because they have qualities that give us something. We should also
drop the wish to be coddled. We should be grateful to people if they
treat us badly, because then we can exercise our tolerating forces.
We should try to love these people anyway, and we'll then
notice that this is the right thing to do. An esoteric should also
stop complaining. What does he complain about? Mostly about the
thoughts that storm in on him from all sides when he begins his
meditation. But he should be thankful for this and look upon it as
progress that he notices how real the thought world is and that it
can assert itself like this. He should just oppose it because
he'll get stronger thereby We should figure out how these
thoughts do it, look upon them as models of how we can concentrate
ourselves and tell ourselves: We should immerse ourselves in
meditation with the same intensity — then we'll attract
spiritual forces that support us. It would be a very comfortable
meditation if angels or other spiritual beings would come beforehand
to sweep away the undesired thoughts.
Once an
esoteric has overcome all of these qualities and has learned to speak
the right amount, he'll arrive at what mystics called the
portal of death, because he finds himself in the same condition as a
man who has turned all of his interests away from the outer world as
he gets ready to die. He has turned inwards or toward divine
spiritual things. That's what's meant in the second part
of our Rosicrucian verse: In Christo morimur; we die in Christ
when we transform ourselves completely and turn toward the spiritual
world again. Ex Deo nascimur: We're born from God and
must incarnate in the physical. Then it's our task to develop
so that we can say; In Christo morimur. We turn away from all
physical things and raise ourselves to the spiritual that was always
called the Holy Spirit, and in this we are reborn: Per Spiritum
Sanctum reviviscimus. The verse that masters of wisdom and of the
harmony of feeling gave us:
In
the spirit lay the germ of my body.
And the spirit has imprinted in my body
The eyes of sense,
That through them I may see
The lights of bodies.
And the spirit has imprinted in my body
Reason and sensation
And feeling and will,
That through them I may perceive bodies
And act upon them.
In the spirit lay the germ of my body.
In my body lies the germ of the spirit.
And I will incorporate into my spirit
The super-sensible eyes
That through them I may behold the light of spirits.
And I will imprint in my spirit
Wisdom and power and love,
So that through me the spirits may act
And I become a self-conscious organ
Of their deeds.
In my body lies the germ of the spirit.
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