From the Contents of Esoteric Classes

(After 1918 esoteric classes were usually opened and closed with the following verse:

O man know yourself
Thus sounds the world-word
You hear it soul-strongly
You feel it spirit-powerfully
Who speaks so world-mightily?
Who speaks so heart-intimately?
Does it work through space-width's radiation
Into your senses' experience of existence?
Does it sound through the ages' wave-weaving
Into your life's developmental stream?
Is it you who creates
The word for yourself
In feeling of space, in experience of time
Feeling strange in a space that's devoid of soul
Because you lose thinking's power
In the stream of time-destruction.

Notes from memory of esoteric lessons given by Rudolf Steiner mostly in 1904–1914 and meditation texts and exercises he wrote down in Aus den Inhalten der esoterischen Stunden, CW 266, vols. 1–3.