Esoteric
Lessons for the First Class
of
the School for Spiritual Science at the Goetheanum
by
Rudolf Steiner
Lesson
Ten
Dornach, April 25,
1924
My dear friends,
For esoteric
development – the true path to knowledge – the individual
must find the way to understanding what it means to live in a world
in which the senses, the whole physical organization, in not a
facilitator; that is, to live with the psychic-spiritual, which is
man's true identity, in a spiritual world. In order to do so there
are many different more or less meditative exercises, mental
exertions meant to affect the soul.
And to give a
picture of what a human soul can pass through on the way from
experiencing the physical sensory world to experiencing the spiritual
world is what will be provided in these class lessons by means of the
various considerations and the summarizing of such considerations in
individual verses, which may then be meditated upon according to each
member's possibilities and needs.
Once a certain time
has passed the communications given in these class lessons, which, as
I have often stressed, are real communications from the spiritual
world, will coalesce in such a way that those who have participated –
it is also karma for those who could be here – will have a
complete picture of the first stage of esoteric development.
As a result of the
various indications which are given here we can gradually rise above
our earthly existence to an experience of the cosmos, we can develop
the feelings which carry us out into those distant reaches of the
universe from which the spiritual comes to meet us. But as long as we
confine ourselves to using our senses and reason only in connection
with the sense-perceptible world which surrounds us, it will be
impossible for us to grasp what the spiritual world reveals as the
truth accessible to man.
You see my dear
friends, as I have often stressed, human common sense can understand
everything offered by anthroposophy, if it exerts itself sufficiently
and is free of prejudice. But it is just in reference to this common
sense where a touchstone exists concerning whether or not someone is
really destined by their karma nowadays to participate in
anthroposophy.
There are two
possibilities. One is that the person hears about anthroposophical
truths, lets them work on him and considers them to be self-evident.
It is obvious that everyone sitting here today belongs to that group.
For if someone who does not belong to that group wishes to
participate in a lesson as a member, it would not be honest of them.
And honesty is the most important aspect of esoteric life –
complete truthfulness penetrating the human soul and spirit.
There is another
group of people who find what is presented by anthroposophy to be
fantastic, somehow belonging only to visionaries. These people show
by their behavior that they are not able, according to their karma,
to sufficiently separate common sense from physicality and the senses
to be able to grasp sense-free truth, sense-free knowledge.
It is therefore the
extent to which common sense is bound to corporeality or not which
determines such a great divergence between people. For if you
honestly consider that you possess a common sense which understands
anthroposophy, then at the moment it grasps anthroposophy honestly,
it does so independently of corporeality. And this healthy common
sense which grasps anthroposophy honestly is the beginning of
esoteric striving. And we should treasure the fact that healthy
common sense which understands anthroposophy is the beginning of
esoteric striving. It should not be overlooked. For when one starts
with this understanding through healthy common sense and then follows
the indications given in the appropriate schools, one proceeds
farther and farther along the esoteric path. You can use whichever of
the verses provided here which you consider appropriate for you. But
you should apply them together with the indications as to how they
relate to the inner life of man.
_______
Today I would like
to again provide an indication of how you can leave the body –
if only by means of so slight a jolt
that you don't even realize it.
We should develop
the ability to observe and study the minerals and plants in our
environment to the extent that we feel them within – if only by
means of thinking – and become truly aware of how this earthly
environment is related to us, that due to our wearing a physical body
we are directly related to the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms
around us. And then we ask the question in all honesty: Why? Why did
I absorb the physical substances of the earth just by being born? Why
do I drag myself through life from birth till death in order to end
physical life once my organism is no longer able to process its
physical elements? We must deeply feel our relationship to our
physical environment starting from such a personal enigma. Then,
however, we will also feel more and more what the starting point for
esoteric life can be. Then we feel that in physical earthly life we
are blindly groping in the dark.
And finally, my dear
sisters and brothers, consider the people of today who have been
placed in earthly life after birth and educated according to the
usual methods and called to this or that work due to purely external
circumstances. They do not understand the relationship of this work
to the totality of human existence. Perhaps they do not know much
more than that they work in order to eat. They do not realize that in
the plants they eat cosmic forces from the distant boundaries of the
universe are present which pass through the human organism and
therefore in a certain sense undergo a cosmic evolution. Many people
today cannot even begin to glimpse this process due to the
materialism of the times. But to admit that by the mere consideration
of earthly relationships one stands spiritually blind in life and
lives in the dark – that is the starting point for true
esoteric development.
And then change the
direction of your gaze from what surrounds you on the earth to the
star-studded heaven – either in thought, or if you really want
to be affected by it, in reality. Behold the planets, behold the
stars, fill yourselves with the infinite transcendence of what shines
back to you from the universe, and say to yourself: as human beings
we are related just as much to what radiates down from the universe
as we are to what surrounds us in the physical environment.
Then by gazing up to
the star-studded heaven, we really have the feeling that we do not
live in darkness, but that we are freed from life in the darkness by
rising with our soul-spiritual being to the stars, rise to what the
stars represent as pictures in their constellations. And, you see, if
we can really enter meditating into this vision of the star-filled
sky it becomes a plenitude of imaginations. You know the old pictures
in which not only the constellations have been painted, but in which
they have been recapitulated symbolically as animals. Not only the
star group that is in Aries, or in Taurus has been represented, but
also the symbolic images of the ram and the bull are included.
Today people think:
Well, it was arbitrary on the part of those ancient inhabitants of
the earth that just because the constellations were so named that the
corresponding pictures were added. But that was not the case at all.
In reality in ancient times the shepherds in the fields did not
merely gaze up at the star-studded sky with physical eyes, but also
in dream-consciousness or sleep-consciousness out there with their
flocks they turned their souls with closed eyes towards outer space.
They did not see the constellations which physical eyes see. But they
actually perceived those pictures, those imaginations which fill
universal space – albeit somewhat differently from what was
later painted.
We can no longer go
back to what the simple shepherds experienced by instinctive
clairvoyance. But we can do something else. With far greater
thoughtfulness we can imagine ourselves into the star-filled sky. We
can feel the depth and at the same time the awesome majesty of what
radiates back to us. And gradually we can come to a sense of
veneration for what is expanding out there in cosmic space. And the
more ardent the veneration is the more clearly can the experience be
that the outer sense-images of the stars disappear and the
star-filled sky becomes an Imagination for us. But only then, when
the star-filled sky becomes an Imagination for us, do we feel
ourselves carried away by our soul's vision.
You see, still in
Plato's time one felt something special about the physical eye when
it is observing. Plato himself described seeing as follows: When I
look at a person something leaves my eye and encompasses him. People
in ancient times sensed that something streams out of the eye and
encompasses the object. The etheric streams out. Just as when I
stretch out my hand and grasp something I know that I am connected to
my hand until reaching the grasped object, so in the times of
instinctive clairvoyance people knew that something etheric goes out
from the eye and encompasses the thing looked at. Today people think,
well,the eye is here, the object seen is there. So the object sends
out ether-waves which drum against the eye and the drumming is
perceived by some kind of soul – about which even the
materialist talks about here, but without having any idea of what it
is. But that is not true. It is not a mere impact on the person
emanating from the object, but really also an emanation of the
person's inner etheric substance.
And we perceive our
ether body as belonging to the universe when the star-filled sky
becomes for us the grand open page of the universe on which the
imaginative secrets of cosmic being are written – if we are
able to read it.
And then the feeling
comes to us: When you are here on earth you are in the robust
sense-perceptible reality. But you are blind, you live in darkness.
When you rise up with your sensibility then you live in what
otherwise only shines down to you from the distant universe, and you
live in the illusion of the distant universe. But at the same time
you take your own etheric being out into the distant flooding stream
of this illusionary world.
And the illusion
ceases to be illusion. It cannot be a nothing if we immerse ourselves
in it. When we have this feeling – I will draw it –.
We live as blind
people in the darkness of earthly existence, [white arc]; then we
journey out into the distant universe [yellow rays], at the end of
which we can feel the cosmic Imaginations by means of reverence for
the brilliance of the stars [red waves].
So now that we have
journeyed out we are together with our etheric being within the
imaginative cosmic web. If we can accomplish this, then we are no
longer in the physical body. We have traveled through the etheric
emptiness to experiencing the cosmic Imaginations.
You see, it's like
when in the physical world someone writes something down and, because
we have learned to read, we read it. By being out in the cosmos –
the gods have written the cosmic imaginations for us in the cosmos –
when we arrive we see the imaginations from the other side [arrows].
At first we live here on the earth [inner circle]. Then we draw
ourselves up to the cosmic imaginations [outer wave-circle].
_______
Yes, my dear
friends, my sisters and brothers, the zodiac speaks a meaningful
language when we do not observe it from the earth – Arias,
Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo – but rather when we encircle it
from without. And it is a task of our consciousness to encircle it
from without. Then we begin to read the cosmic secrets, which are the
deeds of the spiritual beings. In a novel we read of the deeds of
men. When we look at the zodiac from the other side and read what
from the earth we see virtually from behind, as Moses was told that
he always had to look at God from behind, that is, from the earth.
Initiation consists of seeing from the other side – not a
matter of gawking, but of reading. And what we read are the spiritual
deeds of the spiritual beings who brought it all about.
And when we have
silently read long enough, when our souls have concentrated deeply on
this reading, then we begin to hear in a spiritual way. Then the gods
speak with us. When the gods speak with us we are within the
spiritual world.
Now you see, my dear
sisters and brothers, the initiate can tell you: the soul can rise up
to the cosmic heights, receive the cosmic imaginations, read them
from the other side, the spiritual deeds, become capable of hearing
in a spiritual way the language of the gods.
But if you really
immerse yourself in what the initiate relates with your whole heart,
your whole feeling, if you don't just listen to it greedily and say:
Well, if I also could do that I'd like it, it would be interesting –
but I'm not going to bother. But you receive it as something which
you can revere, which you can love, which you can repeatedly meditate
on, then it is the path to enter esoteric life yourself.
And you will find
this path by meditating profoundly on the words:
[The first part of
the verse is written on the blackboard.]
1.
I live in the dark domain of the earth,
2.
I wander in the brilliance of the stars,
3.
I read in the deeds of the spirits.
4.
I hear in the speech of the gods.
When experienced
with the necessary deeply meditative feeling this works wonders in
the human soul, transforms the human soul. It must rhythmically flow
through the soul again and again, for it leads the human being
through his own interior cosmic being.
But it is necessary
that such a thing be deeply interiorized. And even though it still
speaks more to the head, the heart should also participate in the
whole process of going out into the etheric universe, then into the
spiritual universe, that is, on the other side of the universe. It is
necessary in such a process that we take our hearts with us in the
experience and that it stimulate in you the feelings which can come
quite naturally by this excursion into the outer universe. But these
feelings must be really stimulated. It is therefore good the look
deeply into what the words say:
I live in the dark
domain of the earth,
I wander in the
brilliance of the stars,
I read in the deeds
of the spirits.
I hear in the
speech of the gods.
Then you try to
imagine that someone is speaking to you from a spiritual depth, as
though you were not thinking it, but as though you were hearing it,
as if another being were speaking. You really imagine that another
being is speaking to you from an unknown depth. Then you try to
develop the right feelings for what you have heard.
These feelings live
in the second part of the verse:
[The second part is
written on the blackboard.]
5
The darkness of the earth creates longing in me,
6
The brilliance of the stars is comfort to me.
When I am aware that
I live blindly in the darkness of the earth, I long to get out. Then
the brilliance of the stars becomes the comforter which expands my
being:
The brilliance of
the stars is comfort to me.
Now from the other
side:
7
The deeds of the spirits are teaching to me,
–
when
I read them –
8
The speech of the gods is creating to me.
Only you must use it
correctly. Imagine yourself vividly in this meditating which you are
doing. As though someone were speaking to you from spiritual depths
is how you hear the lines of the first verse. You bring the
corresponding feeling to each verse, so that you experience in the
meditation: first listen, then bring feeling; listen, then bring
feeling; and so on.
[An arc is drawn
connecting lines 1 and 5; another connecting 2 and 6, another
connecting 3 and 7, and another connecting lines 4 and 8:]
[1] I live in the
dark domain of the earth,
(
The earth's darkness extinguishes me.
[5] The darkness of
the earth creates longing in me,
[2]
I wander in the brilliance of the stars,
( The
brilliance of the stars awakens me.
[6] The brilliance of the
stars is comfort to me.
[3] I read in the deeds of the
spirits,
( The
deeds of the spirits call to me.
[7] The deeds of
the spirits are teaching to me.
[4]
I hear in the speech of the gods,
( The
speech of the gods engenders me.
[8] The speech of
the gods is creating for me.
It is a meditation
in dialog in which you always objectify the first line, but the
second you feel as though streaming out of your heart. Now you try again
to visualize how one acts and weaves into the other, and then try to
feel with your will what you can experience through the dialog.
[The third part of
the verse is arranged in connection with the first and the second
parts while lines 9, 10, 11 and 12 are written on the blackboard.]
From depth of
spirit resounds:
I live in the dark
domain of the earth,
The heart replies:
The darkness of the
earth creates longing in me.
The will senses the
impulse in the dialog between lines 1 and 5:
9
The earth's darkness extinguishes me.
After this dialog
has taken place we recall the connection of lines 2 and 6:
I wander in the
brilliance of the stars,
The brilliance of
the stars is comfort to me.
10
The brilliance of the stars awakens me.
Afterward we recall
what resounds from spiritual depths and the heart's reply:
I read in the deeds
of the spirits,
The deeds of the
spirits are teaching to me.
The will now
senses:
11
The deeds of the spirits call to me.
into the spiritual
world.
And now the most
sublime, where we feel ourselves in dialog with the gods themselves,
where the gods not only let us read, but speak:
I hear in the
speech of the gods,
The speech of the
gods is creating for me.
12
The speech of the gods engenders me.
brings me forth,
engenders me.
_______
Now imagine the
whole meditation. It runs as follows: dialog – line for line
with a spiritual being present in the dim spiritual depths that
always speaks the top line of the verse. And the heart always
replies:
I live in the dark
domain of the earth,
The darkness of
the earth creates longing in me,
I wander in the
brilliance of the stars,
The brilliance of
the stars is comfort to me,
I read in the
deeds of the spirits,
The deeds of the
spirits are teaching to me,
I hear in the
speech of the gods,
The speech of the
gods is creating for me,
Now I recall each
one and add the outpouring of will as a remembrance of what had just
gone before:
I live in the dark
domain of the earth,
The darkness of
the earth creates longing in me,
The earth's
darkness extinguishes me.
I wander in the
brilliance of the stars,
The brilliance of
the stars is comfort to me,
The brilliance of
the stars awakens me.
I read in the
deeds of the spirits,
The deeds of the spirits are teaching to me,
The deeds of the
spirits call to me.
I hear in the
speech of the gods,
The speech of the
gods is creating for me,
The speech of the
gods engenders me.
Conviction results
from the dialog in meditation, from recalling the dialog and in
strengthening the recollection by means of the will.
If, firstly, with
inner devotional feeling, secondly with complete soul and interest
we have done what I have just described, if we do it not as
mechanical meditating but as a true experience of the soul, then
this means of creating a relation to the spiritual world really does
have an awakening effect on the soul.
Also in the case of
the last verse, which in the way I have described should really be
experienced as remembrance of speech and answering speech –
speech of the spirit and answering speech of the heart, we must
correctly feel how, firstly, consciousness, which we wish to
achieve, is extinguished by the earth's darkness. We must sense how
a moment of extinguishing sleep overcomes consciousness, and how
upon awakening, at the second line, we hear the spirits calling us
to them, how afterward we feel: the spirits have called us so that
they can bring us forth, engender us in the spiritual world by their
own cosmic word.
If these nuances of
inner experience flow through the soul – and the
representations of the spiritual being who speaks to us are included
– and the heart reciprocates with its dedication to the
spiritual being, then yes, then the stimulation exists in the soul
which will gradually lead this soul onto the esoteric path. And we
must be clear that as we experience these three verses in our souls
in the way in which I have described as best we can, something
powerful takes place in the subconscious mind. If we sincerely live
in these three verses as I have described, then when the first line
resounds, our soul unconsciously passes through the starting-point
of earthly life when the etheric body was first formed.
If we can vividly
imagine what from the spirit resounds:
I live in the dark
domain of the earth,
then we approach –
in the unconscious – with this hearing in spirit, the moment
in which our etheric body was formed; and from pre-earthly
existence, from life between death and a new birth, acts the force
with which we sincerely reply from the heart:
The darkness of
the earth creates longing in me;
because we have the
longing for the spiritual as a heritage from pre-earthly existence.
And again we are
transported to the beginning of earthly existence. And what acts
from our hearts is inspired by the previous earthly existence.
I wander in the
brilliance of the stars:
transported to the
beginning of our earthly life.
The real comfort
the brilliance of the stars can give when we are transported back is
in our heart's reply:
The brilliance of
the stars is comfort to me.
I read in the
deeds of the spirits:
transported back to
the earth's beginning.
Remember how we are
taught by spiritual beings in pre-earthly existence.
The deeds of the
spirits are teaching to me,
among whom I lived
and wandered before I descended to the earth.
I hear in the
speech of the gods:
We heard them
during the period between death and a new birth. We sense that what
the gods say is not mere information as is what men say; we realize
that the speech of the Gods is creative:
The speech of the
gods is creating for me.
But then, if we can
see it so, lines 9, 10, 11, 12 also acquire the correct meaning:
I live in the dark
domain of the earth,
The darkness of
the earth creates longing in me,
[Line 9 is written
again, this time on the arc connecting lines 1 and 5.]
The
earth's darkness extinguishes me,
deletes me from my
present earth life for I am led back, through the region between
death and a new birth, to my earlier incarnation. I divine this;
therefor my consciousness is extinguished, for my consciousness was,
until now, that of my current incarnation. In this moment of sleep I
am transported back so I can divine: I am wandering in my previous
incarnation.
I wander in the
brilliance of the stars,
The brilliance of
the stars is comfort to me,
[Line 10 is written
again, this time at the arc connecting lines 2 and 6.]
The
brilliance of the stars awakens me.
I am brought back
to what I was in the previous incarnation as though awakened in it.
My karma arises before me, the connection of destiny arises before
me, it arises before me from the other side.
I read in the
deeds of the spirits,
The deeds of the
spirits are teaching to me,
[Line 11 is written
again, at the arc connecting lines 3 and 7.]
The
deeds of the spirits call to me
to fulfill my karma
with the forces which derive from my previous earth-life.
I hear in the
speech of the gods,
The speech of the
gods is creating for me,
[Line 12 is written
again, at the arc connecting lines 4 and 8.]
The
speech of the gods engenders me.
Everything I am
becomes clear to me when my earlier earthly existence penetrates the
present one and shines through it and wanders through it and pulses
through it. For here I am. My present I is in a process, it is a
seed which will have meaning once I have passed through the gates of
death. What shines and works in me from the previous earthly
existence into the present one makes me into a human being,
engenders me as an existing human being.
If we have the
conviction that it is so, that – although we believe only to
be in the ordinary world of physical existence – our soul
really makes the journey back to the previous earth-life, then we
will be aware of the gravity of what we are experiencing. And
through this awareness a warmer, luminous current streams through
our thinking, feeling and willing. And with that inner magical
feeling, which is necessary for the meditation to work in the right
way, our meditation will prevail. We may call it a magical feeling
for it cannot be compared with any feeling we have on earth, because
it is completely independent of all corporeality. If we cannot yet
leave the physical body behind with our thinking, this magical
thinking which we experience through the gravity of our soul's
activity is present in the purely spiritual world.
According to the
way we experience these things, our esoteric striving is fulfilled.
And that is what I was obliged to lay before your souls today, my
dear sisters and brothers.
_______
In conclusion I
would like to say one more thing. It should not happen that someone
passes on the verses and the information given here without first
asking permission. Only with permission may these things be passed
on from one to another or to a group. It is especially frowned upon,
my dear friends, that these verses or their interpretation be sent
by post. They may not be sent by post, and I ask that this be
strictly observed.
Continued in the next issue of SCR.
Volume 1 (Lessons 1 - 9) is available as an Amazon Kindle e-book.
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