The First Goetheanum
by
Rudolf Steiner
Translated from the German by Frank Thomas Smith
Lesson Six
Dornach, March 21, 1924
My
dear friends,
During these meetings, we are considering the truths which can
be learned from the Guardian of the Threshold. And the
Guardian's continuous admonition is that man be aware that he
advances spiritually when he becomes conscious of his true
relation to the world.
To
become conscious of his true relation to the world, he first
gets to know the world by observing the kingdoms of nature
which are external to his own being - the animal kingdom, the
vegetable kingdom and the mineral kingdom. These relations
offer him the opportunity to admire them and to use them to
carry out his own will impulses, etc. Man considers them to be
his external world, and with normal consciousness he is
hardly aware of how he has evolved out of this world, how a
deep relationship to that world exists within him.
However, one cannot feel this relationship by merely letting
one's gaze wander over this exterior world. One must advance to
a self-knowledge of belonging to this world. And when one
wishes to gain this self-knowledge, my dear friends, then one
may not simply continue to see things as first glances provide;
rather must one return to what is revealed between them.
Since the modern phase of human evolution began, we seldom see
what is revealed between the things. We see the three kingdoms
of nature in the outside world. But as you know, my dear
friends, behind the kingdoms of nature we have what is called
the world of the elements.
We
can say: our feet stand on the ground of the solid
earth.
[written on the blackboard]
Earth
And
what the solid earth consists of is also present in the
animals, plants and minerals and also in our physical human
bodies. And when we lift our gaze from the ground beneath our
feet to what is to a certain extent at our own height, what is
present is not only air, for the air is always penetrated by
the watery element. Although it is true that man's life on
earth has developed in such a way that he only senses this
watery element in fine solution in the air which surrounds him,
and in order to use it in his own organism it must be
condensed, it is nevertheless true that he also lives in this
watery element.
[over
“earth” is written]
Water
And
man also lives in the air element through which he
breathes.
[over
“Water” is written]
Air
At
the moment when we observe these elements we cannot speak of
them as we speak of the other beings of the nature-kingdoms,
which we see before us in sharply defined contours. But in the
solid as such, in the earthly, we can only say that we live in
it. We are too closely related to the earthly to specifically
differentiate it. We do not specifically differentiate what is
a part of ourselves. We do differentiate a table or a chair
which exist outside of ourselves. We do not consider what is
inside us as having clear boundaries. We do not see our lungs
or heart within us as having clear boundaries. Only when they
are made into objects, in anatomy, do we see them so. But just
as we are related to our own bodies, we are also, to a larger
extent, related to the elements. We live in earth, we live in
water, we live in air, we live in warmth. They belong to us.
They are too close to us to be understood as very sharply
contoured in the world.
Let
us now lay out this elemental world before us, a world which is
around us and at the same time within us, so that we must
consider it as the content of the world and of ourselves. So we
have what we designate as Earth, what we designate as Water,
what we designate as Air and what we designate as Warmth.
[over “Air” is written:]
Warmth
When
we go further up out of the thicker substances into the etheric
from warmth, which is already etheric, we come to the
light.
[over “Warmth” is written:]
Light
and
up to what we have always described with a dry, abstract
expression: chemical ether and its effects. Because the
ordering, the formation of the world is effected by it, we
shall call that great chemicality of the cosmos
“cosmic-formation”.
[over “Light” is written]
Cosmic-formation
And
then we will call what is highest in the etheric: Life-Ether,
Cosmic Life.
[over “cosmic formation” is written]
Cosmic Life
Well, my dear friends, you have already seen from the previous
lesson that the human being, according to the manner in which
he lives on the earth, is not equally related to all of these
elements in the same measure. In fact, the human being only
lives in a completely intimate relationship with the element of
warmth. [A red cross is drawn on the blackboard next to the
word “Warmth”.] For spiritual progress, it is
necessary to be fully conscious of such things.
Just think how much you directly feel warmth and cold to be
part of you. The difference between warm and cold affects you
strongly. Even air circulation affects you less. Whether the
air is good or bad you notice indirectly according to its
effect on your organism. The effect of light is the same.
Nevertheless, man is very closely related to air and light.
[Yellow crosses are drawn next to the words “air”
and “light”.] He is extraordinarily close to
them.
But
man is relatively distant from the watery elements - among the
denser ones - even though he is related to them. Nevertheless,
the watery element is very closely connected to human life. [A
blue cross is drawn next to the word “water”.]
Imagine, my dear friends, a very vivid nightmare and consider
how your perspiration, that is, the secretion of the watery
element, is affected by it. Notice how the watery element plays
a significant role in sleep. The human being lives in the
watery element. The liquid elements dissolved in his
environment are of great importance for him, but none more
directly than warmth. Whether it is warm or cold, man feels it
as being part of himself. When it is warm, he is warm; when it
is cold, he is cold. When we walk into fog, for example, the
fog's moisture has an important but an indirect influence on
us, something which normal consciousness isn't very aware
of.
I'll put it this way: We walk into fog - and our own watery
element merges in a certain sense with the outer world's watery
element. And with this easy transition from our own watery
element to the outer world's watery element we feel our
connection to the whole cosmos - contrary to the transition
from our watery element to dry outer air. Dry air lets us feel
more human. Watery air lets us feel our dependence on the
cosmos. But nowadays we have no training in such things. In a
lecture cycle in The Hague, which has been printed, I went into
detail concerning man's dependence on the elements. The
elements exist, and it pertains to esoteric life to be aware of
this dependence in practice.
Man's relation to the earthly elements lies even deeper in the
subconscious. [A blue cross is drawn next to the word
“Earth”.]
What does man know about his relation to the earthly element?
He knows that salt is salty, that sugar is sweet. They belong
to the earthly element. But about the processes of
metamorphosis that salt and sugar undergo in his organism, how
he acts together with the cosmos in dissolving the sugar or the
salt within his organism, how certain cosmic forces work into
the organism when the sugar's sweetness courses through his
body, or the saltiness of salt courses through his body, he is
mostly unaware, save for the slight reflex of the saltiness or
the sweetness on his taste-buds. These are profoundly
meaningful processes. The universe has opened its doors, so to
speak, to certain forces when the human being dissolves sugar
on his tongue and transfers it to his organism.
It
is also the case that whereas these denser elements have an
indirect influence on the human being, the etheric finer
elements, Cosmic Formation and Cosmic Life also have an
indirect influence on the human being, a hidden influence.
[Blue crosses are drawn next to “Cosmic Formation”
and “Cosmic Life”.]
The
most evident influence on man comes from the middle element,
Warmth. The influence of Light and Air are also strong -
evident also to ordinary consciousness. But the influence of
Water and Earth on one hand, and on the other hand of Cosmic
Life and Cosmic Chemical Formation lie in the unconscious.
Therefore, man should be aware during his earthly life that he
lives closely with these middle elements [Air, Warmth, Light],
whereas his consciousness has been withdrawn from his relation
to Water and Earth and to Cosmic Formation and Cosmic Life.
In
the days when the old instinctive consciousness prevailed,
there was also a nuance of clairvoyance, and when the students
in the Mysteries reached a certain stage in their development
they were cautioned: Trust the Fire, trust the Air, also trust
the Light; but beware of the underworld - Water, Earth; beware
of the overworld - Cosmic Formation and Cosmic Life. For due to
the fact that they lie so deeply in the unconscious, Lucifer's
temptations appear in Cosmic Life and Cosmic Formation, and
Ahriman's temptations appear in Earth and Water.
|
Cosmic life |
X |
} |
Lucifer |
Cosmic formation |
X |
Light |
X |
|
Warmth |
X |
|
Air |
X |
|
Water |
X |
} |
Ahriman |
Earth |
X |
|
In
the Mysteries, esoteric instruction always indicated that man
should find the right relation to these elements, feel his
relationship with the elements in the correct way. When one
advances to Imaginative life, he feels exactly this
relationship to the elements. With normal consciousness: We
look around, recognize the animals, plants and minerals as
existing outside of us. When, however, we recognize the
elements in their relationship with us, then we may not look
around at the world, but we must feel, experience what is in us
and the world at the same time.
Then, when we have advanced to Imaginative life, we are able to
feel our relationship with the world.
If
we develop this feeling in the right way, we will make a
profound admission. This admission to ourselves is progressive,
true self-knowledge. We realize that one is only human when he
is released from the world to which he is inwardly connected,
from the earthly world where he stands alone, as it were, where
the plants, animals and minerals exist outside of us, are
foreign to us. But if, through Imaginative knowledge, one
becomes aware of his relationship with the earth, then he will
no longer feel himself in his humanity, he will feel himself in
his animality; he feels the inner relationship of man to the
extended animal domain.
And
when he feels himself as one with the water element on earth he
becomes aware enough to say: In reality you are related to the
vegetable kingdom. There is something in you that is as sleepy
and as dreamy as the plants.
And
if one becomes aware of his relationship with the air, he feels
the mineral element within him. He feels something filling him
through the whole skin.
As
soon as we enter the elemental world with Imagination, we feel
related to the animals, plants, stones. And we feel differently
toward the kingdoms of nature when we feel that we belong to
them as well. We feel the inner relationship to these kingdoms
in the following way.
We
look out at the animal kingdom. We observe the indolent animals
which slowly take one step after the other. We observe the
rapid ones, and the flying birds. We observe the inherent
movement in the animals which fill the world with movement from
out of their own being. And then we say to ourselves: All that
which comes from the innermost being of the animals is revealed
to be the same as our own will. And we feel the relationship of
our own will with the animal world.
But
there is something else. One feels fear of one's self. This is
what is considered positive - that whoever enters into esoteric
life feels this fear of himself. Not so that he gets stuck in
it, but so that he may transform it into a higher psychic
force.
It
is like this: when we become aware that our human form exists
because we stand alone and the kingdoms of nature are beyond
us, where we can look at them, then we feel that the earth, in
its true elemental nature, does not make us human, it makes us
animal. We are animals. As far as the earth is concerned, we
are animals. And because the earth-element is always present,
the danger exists that we sink into animal nature. And when we
don't merely understand this theoretically, as is mostly the
case nowadays, but also feel it, we become fearful that at any
moment we may fall into animality. But it is just this fear
which encourages us to always wish to raise ourselves over this
animality, to step out of the elemental life into the life
which surrounds us with an external, perhaps strange world, but
which also introduces us to true humanity. To feelingly
recognize our relation to the world is what leads us to true
esoteric knowledge.
And
when we feel our relationship with the world's water, with the
water elements, then we realize: as far as water is concerned,
we should not be human, but vegetables. And our feelings, which
have a dream-like nature, as I have often explained, our
feelings have a continuous tendency to be vegetable-like. Just
try to think seriously about your innermost feelings and you
will feel the vegetative nature of the life of feeling. And
then you will have the feeling that you are not only in danger
of descending to animality, but also of living on with a lamed
consciousness, like a vegetable - sleeping, dreaming. But this
feeling of lameness, which lies deep in the [sub]conscious,
must be transformed into the feeling of awakening to humanity.
Fear of animality must be transformed into the courage to raise
yourself to humanity. The feeling of vegetable lameness must be
transformed into an awakening call to inner strength, to
develop into a fully awake person in the world.
And
when we become aware of how we live in the air-element, then we
can see how in reality all thinking - this is unknown to people
- is nothing other than a refined breathing. Thinking is
refined breathing. The thoughts in which we live are absolutely
a refined breathing process. On one side, the breathing-in
stream, holding the breath, and breathing out act, in a more
coarse way, into our blood circulation; on the other side, but
more refined, into the vibration of the brain organs. And the
breath circulating there is known as thinking in the physical
world; sublimated breathing is thinking.
The
individual who has advanced to Imagination no longer believes
in this abstract thinking existing as a kind of tenuous
substance in the brain. He feels the inhalation, the expanding
of the breath in the brain; he feels how the breath spreads
out. When the breath expands in this way, then ceases, the
closed concepts arise, closed ideas. If it encloses something
else, in waves, the ideas of self-movement arise. It is merely
a refined breathing process which weaves and waves within us
which we designate as thinking.
When one feels: I inhale, I draw the breath up to the brain, I
let it strike my ear, and one feels: what I hear as tone, as
sound, as clang, lives in me as thought. I let the breath
strike my eye: it lives in me as what I see as color. It is the
inner language of breathing which acts as representations in
thinking. When breathing, completely refined, strikes the sense
organs it creates my mental pictures [representations]. But
when one becomes aware of this, becoming a thinker and a
breather, so to speak, then one feels that this
refined-to-thinking breathing process is like an organized
mineral, like an organized stone, which fills him.
You
know that oxygen is transformed into carbon dioxide in man.
This reception of carbon dioxide in the finer branches of
breathing in the human head is tantamount to the capture of the
carbon dioxide. It is a mineralization process. And the more we
are able to internalize this capture of carbon dioxide by
oxygen, the more we are conscious of the mineralization
process. We take the carbon into ourselves. And carbon is the
Philosopher's Stone; thus, within man carbon is the
Philosopher's Stone.
Read how the old instinctive clairvoyants described the
Philosopher's Stone. You will find them saying: The
Philosopher's Stone can be found everywhere, only people don't
recognize it. It can be produced everywhere. It can found at
its own place - in the earth. They describe in detail how
carbon is produced, by burning wood. The Philosopher's Stone
can be produced anywhere, it is carbon. It is in the coal
mines ... [gaps here in the shorthand, possibly the result of
rapid speaking ...] a mineralization process. One
feels mineralized within ... by the combustion process
[?] ... just as we feel ourselves to be plant-like by the watery
processes and identify with the animals by living on earth.
[This passage is unclear.]
This is the exhortation the Guardian gives to man: He must be
aware of his relationship to the kingdoms of nature. Therefore,
we have these exhortations in the form of spoken meditations.
And if man lets them work with deep feeling on his sensibility
he will be aware of his relationship with the earth-element,
which is related to his will; with the water-element which is
related to his feeling; with the air-element which, in the way
I have described it, is related to his thinking.
[Written on the blackboard:]
You
climb down to the earth element
With forces of your will unfolding
This is an unconscious process. Every time we will something,
we climb down into the earth-element. But normal consciousness
knows nothing of this. At the moment when the downward climb
becomes conscious, man transforms himself from a human to an
animal nature, he seems like some kind of animal - at least in
the etheric form which he then observes. I don't mean that he
will exactly become an elephant or a bull, but something like
that for the element of will, yes, he gives the impression of
being bull-like, elephant-like, eagle-like, and so on.
[Written on the blackboard:]
As
thinker you bestride the earthly realm,
Your animality will be shown
To you by your own force of thought
But
such exhortations by the Guardian of the Threshold, my dear
friends, are not to be taken as concepts or theories. They are
meant to be experienced by the whole human being. If we look at
where the will is heading, we become aware of our animality and
we fear our own self which, however, must be transformed into
psychic courage. Then one advances further. Then one can enter
the spiritual world.
[The
writing continues:]
The
fear you feel of self
Transform in courage of soul you must.
Here we have the first descent, climbing downward to the
kingdom where the Ahrimanic forces work so strongly. Our
correct comportment is indicated by the exhortation just given
by the Guardian of the Threshold:
You
climb down to the earth-element
With forces of your will unfolding;
As thinker you bestride the earthly realm,
Your animality will be shown
To you by your own forceful thought;
The fear you feel of self
Transform in courage of soul you must.
As
a rule, what helps us most toward spiritual advancement is the
overcoming of something that drags us down. When we overcome
something which drags us down, like this fear of our own
animality, and transform it by our own inner act into psychic
courage, then it becomes an impulse toward a higher humanity.
It's something we need to advance spiritually.
We
learn about the next descent, into the water-element, through
the words of the following exhortation by the Guardian of the
Threshold:
You
live with the water-element
Through feeling's dream alone;
Pervading wakening water-being
Results in the soul becoming
Essentially plant-like dull
Your selfhood's lameness must
Lead you to self-awakening.
The
transformation to the opposite of this sleep-filled dreaminess,
if we really descend consciously, becomes a wakening in
ourselves.
[The
second verse is written:]
You
live with the water-element
Through feeling's dream alone;
Pervading wakening water-being
Results in the soul becoming
Essentially plant-like dull
Your selfhood's lameness must
Lead you to self-awakening.
And
when the human being feels his relationship with the
air-element, then even with normal consciousness he feels the
relationship more strongly. He descends less deeply into the
subconscious. Nevertheless, a trace of Ahrimanic temptation
remains in this descent. When we live in our remembrances, in
our memories, we are mostly in an inner breathing activity. If
we refine normal breathing to thinking of what is in our
environment, then very little danger is present. If memories
arise, however, with breathing coming from within, danger is
still present, although it is the easiest to observe. And
it is in this descent from thinking to perception where we
mostly are concerned with our memory's mental pictures. It is
about this that the Guardian of the Threshold admonishes:
[Written on the blackboard:]
You
perceive in the waves of air
Only memory's mental pictures;
Take in willingly the essence of air
We
can do this, my dear friends, using the same inner force we use
when combining one thought with another in the performance of
normal activities. We are used to moving a chair from one place
to another, when we make the effort. But we are not used to
moving a thought from one place to another. We prefer to think
according to the guidebook as events present themselves. We
would like the book to show us the sequence of thoughts; that
the newspaper indicate the sequence of thoughts to us, and we
are satisfied when they do. It is as if we expected that
everything we do through the exertion of our will be set in
motion by an objective power from without: as if your arm is to
be raised so you can grasp a chair - as if a spirit stood there
and placed your legs one after the other so you can walk. As
far as thinking is concerned, it is as though we expected our
legs to be moved for us so we can walk.
[Writing continues:]
Your own soul will threaten you
As coldly hardened stone
(this
mineralizing process)
Whoever does not know “Imagination” does not
realize how hard ordinary thinking is. Ordinary thinking is
stone hard. One really feels thinking with angles and edges
when one finally gains admittance to the spiritual world. Such
thinking actually hurts when it appears in its particular
abstract forms. Whoever knows spiritual life is able to feel
empathy for what is thought as a result of human feelings and
impulses. He can feel it himself when fits of hate and anger
are expressed in thoughts; but he feels inwardly wounded as if
by sharp angles and edges when the abstract thoughts of
contemporary civilization enter his being. He will not be aware
of the suffering which is caused by today's thinking if he does
not know this sentence: “Your own soul will threaten you
as coldly hardened stone.” But when one consciously
descends to the kingdom of memories, the kingdom of airy
breezes, where breath is grasped by thinking, then what I
described happens. But this inner death of thinking, this death
by freezing, must inspire us to the contrary - to create
spiritual vitality in thought from inner strength.
[Writing continues:]
But
your selfhood's death by cold
Must give way to spirit-fire.
Those are the three exhortations concerning the nether world,
the world of the lower elements, which the Guardian of the
Threshold directs to those who come to the threshold by showing
them how man must be aware of his kinship with the three
kingdoms of nature if he wishes to be knowledgeable. How he
must be aware of his animality and the animals in his
environment by virtue of his kinship with the earth-element.
How he must be aware of his own plant nature and therewith the
plant life of his environment by virtue of his kinship with the
water-element. How he must be aware of his own mineral kingdom,
his own mineral nature, his own stone nature, by virtue of his
kinship with the air-element, and therewith the nature of the
mineral kingdom of his environment.
Fear, lameness and death must develop as negative
characteristics, but must metamorphose into the positive
characteristics of courage, wakefulness and vitalizing
fire.
That is also what the Guardian of the Threshold calls out to
the person striding by: first the inner feeling of fear of
falling into animality; then the inner feeling of helplessness
in plant-like lameness; then the desire to oppose the coldness
of stone by engendering vitalizing fire in the soul.
Thus, the Guardian of the Threshold's threefold exhortation
is:
You
climb down to the earth-element
With forces of your will unfolding;
As thinker you bestride the earthly realm,
Your animality will be shown
To you by your own forceful thought
The fear you feel of self
Transform in courage of soul you must.
You live with the water-element
Through feeling's weaving dream alone;
Pervading wakening water-being,
Results in the soul becoming
Essentially plant-like dull
Your selfhood's lameness must
Lead you to self-awakening.
You perceive in the waves of air
Only memory's mental pictures;
Take in willingly the essence of air,
Your own soul will threaten you
As coldly hardened stone
But your selfhood's death by cold
Must give way to spirit-fire.
Here [in the lower part of the above list marked with blue
crosses] we enter Ahriman's kingdom and are warned by the
Guardian of the Threshold as to how we can save ourselves from
Ahriman's temptations; and here [the upper part of the list]
where we are in earthly life and wish to enter in the esoteric,
in Light, World Formation and World Life. We absorb the light.
Normally we do not know that the light unites with breathing
when it penetrates the eye - warmth is between them - the
breathing of air combines with the light [middle part of the
list]: the representation [mental picture] of the perception
arises. We live in light in that we form thoughts, just as
toward the lower kingdoms we live in the air, in breathing. We
hold thoughts back from the light. We don't realize that
thoughts can only live in us if they are illumined by the
light, if breathing is illumined by the light.
For
those who have advanced to Imagination, thinking is a hushed
breath illumined by ingested light, made vibrant by it.
Here are the gentle waves of breath. [Waving lines are drawn on
the blackboard.] They are illumined by light. [Yellow marks.]
For in spiritual science everything which works through the
senses is designated as light. Not only what works through the
eyes, also what works through sound, is light, also what is
sensed as touch, is light. All perception through the senses is
light. But when we become aware that thinking, this having
thoughts, is refined breathing waving, weaving upon the light -
it is as when one sees the surface of the sea upon whose waves
the sun's light shines. Also, as though one were inside and
could feel the surging of the waves and the light shining on
them. It is all perception when one experiences it from
within.
Now
Lucifer's temptation appears, for this is all wonderfully
beautiful, something which causes enormous delight and
complacency. A terrible wantonness overcomes man. He becomes
easy prey for Lucifer's temptations and enticements to pull him
away from the earth into the beauty of the cosmos, where
Lucifer reigns. He wants to tear man away from the
earth-element and raise him up to the kingdom of angels so that
after each sleep he no longer wants to return down to the
physical body. Here is where the Luciferic temptation appears,
whereas in the realm of the denser elements the Ahrimanic
temptation appears.
What is important here is that we heed the Guardian of the
Threshold's warning and not enter this realm without having
determined not to forget the earth's needs. Then the bond with
the earth, upon which we have still to stride, will remain
unbroken. Therefore, the Guardian of the Threshold says:
From
Force of Shining Light
Your thoughts only you sustain within;
When Shining Light in you does think
Will then an untrue spirit-being
As selfhood mania arise in you.
Reflecting on the earth's needs
Sustains you as a human being.
[The
first part of the mantra is written:]
From Force of Shining Light
Your thoughts only you sustain within;
When shining light in you does think
Thus, man is totally related to the shining light through
Imagination, and his thoughts are no longer abstractions, but
as light playing upon the waves of breath.
Will then an untrue spirit-being
As selfhood mania be born in you.
Reflecting on the earth's needs
Sustains you as a human being.
If
we advance further to the etheric element, the Luciferic
temptation becomes more intense. There not only our thoughts,
which are relatively easy to control, come into consideration,
but also the element of feeling. For it is in his feelings that
man holds on to the substantial - the Cosmic Formation, which
works and weaves in the chemical ether. If he now advances to
Imagination, really integrates with this cosmic chemistry, it
is quite different from the comfortable, bourgeois earthly
chemical laboratory, where the chemist stands at a bench and
everything is outside and beyond him. Man must be within
matter, be himself within the mixing and the separating. Then
he will become a cosmic chemist and be integrated in his
chemical processes.
With this integration in Cosmic Formation he feels the
Luciferic temptation in the form of helplessness. First
man is transported in a certain sense to inner voluptuousness
so he can be spirit [an angel]. He is unwilling to return if he
does not bear in mind the earth's needs. Now he is made
helpless, not strong enough in his humanity to re-enter it. He
must beware of this helplessness of soul in that he only enters
this [spiritual] world once he has achieved a love for all that
is worthy on earth, for the earthly values.
The
Guardian of the Threshold speaks:
Of
Cosmic Forming you only sustain
Your feelings held fast within;
When Cosmic Forming itself in you is felt
Experience of spirit helplessness ensues,
And stifles in you the essence of selfhood.
But love of earthly values
Will rescue your human soul.
[The
second verse is written:]
Of
Cosmic Forming you only sustain
Your feelings held fast within;
When Cosmic Forming itself in you is felt
Experience of spirit helplessness ensues,
(which
comes from Lucifer)
And
stifles in you the essence of selfhood;
But love of earthly values
Will rescue your human soul.
Man
can only reach his cosmic goal if he becomes an angel at the
right time. During the Jupiter evolution today's humanity will
rise to angel rank. Lucifer's temptation consists of wanting to
raise man to a stunted immature angel too early, during the
Earth period. In that way the human soul would be lost and a
stunted angel soul would take its place. We should listen to
the Guardian of the Threshold's exhortation:
But
love of earthly values
Will rescue your human soul.
The
most intense temptation comes when we ascend to the last
element, to general Cosmic Life. What is still present there is
will which, however, is present as in sleep, as I have often
explained. If it is awakened through Imaginative knowledge, we
become aware - unlike in our limited earthly life which is
enclosed in our skin - we become aware of sharing in Cosmic
Life: and in that instant we are dead. Because to consciously
live in Cosmic Life means to experience death as an individual
being. Universal life kills us if it holds us. Like the insect
that flies into the flame greedy for the fire, for the light.
In the instant that it flies into the flame it dies, thus does
man as an individual die in General Cosmic Life if he
consciously enters it with his spirit.
We
shouldn't even dare to think of entering into this element
without having first developed a god-given, spirit-given will
for the earth, that is, without being fully conscious that on
earth we are carrying out the intentions of the spiritual
beings. If we completely fill ourselves with inner dedicated
glowing love toward this god-given will, then we shall not
succumb to the temptation of becoming a degenerate angel
instead of remaining a human being. Thus, therefore is the
Guardian of the Threshold's exhortation:
Of
Cosmic Life you only sustain
Your will within held fast;
If Cosmic Life takes hold in full
Destructive greed for spirit then
Will kill awareness of self in you;
But spirit-given will for earth
Allows the God in man to reign.
[The
third verse is written on the blackboard.]
Of
Cosmic Life you only sustain
Your will within held fast;
If Cosmic Life takes hold in full
Destructive greed for spirit then
Will kill awareness of self in you;
But spirit-given will for earth
Allows the God in man to reign.
And
here we have the Guardian of the Threshold's threefold
exhortation referring to the upper, ether region in the above
list.
From
Force of Shining Light
Your thoughts only you sustain within;
When Shining Light in you does think
Will then an untrue spirit-being
As selfhood mania arise in you.
Reflecting on the earth's needs
Sustains you as a human being.
Of Cosmic Forming you only sustain
Your feelings held fast within;
When Cosmic Forming itself in you is felt
Experience of spirit helplessness ensues,
And stifles in you the essence of selfhood.
But love of earthly values
Will rescue your human soul.
Of Cosmic Life you only sustain
Your will held fast within;
If Cosmic Life takes hold in full
Destructive greed for spirit then
Will kill awareness of self in you;
But spirit-given will for earth
Allows the God in man to reign.
You
are being introduced to the practice of knowledge in these
lessons, my dear friends. You should not understand the things
being given to you in this way as theoretical matters. Rather
will you experience the heart of the matter if you understand
the fundamental condition: that what you are being told here
are the instructions from the Guardian of the Threshold
himself, directly arising from what can be learned through
contact with the Guardian of the Threshold. For it is not my
intention to give theories during these Class Lessons, my dear
friends. The intention is to let the spiritual word itself
speak. Therefore, in the first lessons I mentioned how the
School should be seen as having been founded by the spiritual
world itself.
That has been the nature of all Mystery Schools, that in them
men spoke as representatives of the spiritual powers of the
world. It must also remain the nature of the Mystery Schools.
Therefore, I have so strongly insisted on the earnestness
required of all members of this class, without which no one can
be a real member of this School of spiritual life. That is the
earnest exhortation I wish to direct to you once again, my dear
friends. Consider this School as being constituted directly
through the will of the spiritual world, and which we are
trying to correctly interpret according to the conditions of
our times in which we have entered after the darkness was over
and a light has come again, a light which, however, has only
manifested itself on earth poorly because human beings have
retained the old darkness. Yet the light is there. And only
those who realize that the light is there will understand the
nature and intentions of this spiritual school.
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