Supplements to Member Lectures

GA 246 — 7 April 1908, Copenhagen

11. The Esoteric Life

Wherever we, members of the Theosophical Society, come together, we are never strangers to each other, we always find our way around, as if in a common home. Through the esoteric life a spiritual home is to be opened up, that is what we long for ... Man strives to get to know the realms of the spiritual worlds and to explore their sources. Modern science makes use of an infinite number of fine instruments, which are becoming more and more refined ...

Only one instrument is needed in the spiritual field, and that is the soul of man, his spirit. The refinement of this instrument can come about through the inner life. ... What happens to the ordinary man when he turns from the outer life to the inner? There is nothing enchanted, nothing dreamlike, it is a regular continuation from the everyday into the spiritual realm. ...

The human being with his limbs and sense organs in the physical body is only a part of himself. We find the same substances in the minerals, in the plants and in the animals. In man there are the most complicated connections of chemical substances, which are destroyed at death. These connections are only possible because these physical substances are animated by another member, the etheric body. This prevents the physical body from perishing - and this etheric body, like the human being himself, is a fighter against destruction. We have the etheric body in common with plants and animals. On the other hand, we have a third body, the astral body, which is not shared with the mineral and the plants, but only with the animals, and this is the bearer of passions and instincts. ...

We call the fourth member the ego of our own soul. This is the god of the human soul. Not God himself. But a drop from the divine sea! We find this ego, the soul, in the average person, in the idealist, in the saint. ...

But there are great differences. ... The savage follows his instincts and passions, which can degenerate to the point of consuming his fellow human beings. The average person suppresses his urges. ...

In an intellectually developed human being we therefore already find two parts of the astral body, namely the old one and the one that has already been enlightened, that is already under the rule of the ego. We ascend higher to the ideal human being who has learned to control one part of the astral body, Manas, and has also learned to work on his astral body. (An example is then shown.)

Traits of the eight-year-old child, such as fierceness and anger, ... can be found again at a mature age. Only then can these characteristics be changed, when the impulse comes from the eternal, when the impulse to change the temperament is there. Beautiful impressions of art and music and, above all, religion can help us here. Another example:

The plant is a being that possesses a physical and an etheric body; we see its structure from leaf to leaf in constant repetition. ... But from the outside, the plant is surrounded by astral matter and this causes the growth to turn into fruit formation. The etheric causes repetition and the astral the final. In humans, we see repetitions of vertebrae in the spine, which find their conclusion in the brain, in the brain capsule. In growth we find the principle of constant repetition.

If the etheric body is to grow and develop, it must be helped to do so by constantly continuing to deal with religious problems and [through] meditation. The prayer “Our Father” only acquires its value through repetition and leads us to a satisfying understanding. And thereby the original etheric body is transformed into the spirit of life or buddhi, which can work into the physical human being. In occult anatomy, man learns to look at himself. He becomes internally aware of his nerves, his blood movement and his breathing process.

An introduction to this study is necessary. We can begin by consciously discarding or changing certain small external habits, which is of great value for the esoteric life, more important than the actual study. This is the guide to acquiring the spiritual organs of knowledge. While man lies in dreamless sleep at night, he consists only of the physical body and the etheric body. The astral body is separate from this; it only has organs of feeling as long as it is connected to the physical body. But we can give it organs of feeling and sensation through strong experiences in the symbolic world.

Let us think of a plant. It is a sleeping being, composed of root, leaves and the pure sap of the plant. ... Man later emerged from the dormant being, i.e. the plant, but he has permeated the pure, chaste sap with his desires and passions, so that it is no longer the pure sap but the red blood permeated by desires and passions that now flows through our veins. ... It is now our new task to purify this blood again. Our desires are to die and we are to rise to a higher consciousness, like the red rose that winds its way up around the black cross (the Rosicrucian symbol).

Because we know that we have ascended from lower realms, we should bow before them in humility, which we find hinted at in the Gospel of John, chapter 13, where Christ Jesus says that he owes his existence to the twelve, without whom he could not be - and not be what he is now. ...

These mental images act on the astral body, and in the repetition of these humble feelings an imprint is sought on the physical and etheric bodies, harmonizing them. For what is tiredness, about which so much is now written and spoken? It is a disharmony between the physical and the spiritual. - The astral body works at night to get rid of tiredness. Gradually we should try to live a life without disharmony, to find a little grain of gold in everything we encounter, as in the legend of Christ and the dead dog; where Christ admired the beautiful teeth of the animal in the already decaying animal, from which the disciples turned away in disgust.

As in our example of Jesus Christ, we should understand how to find the good and the beautiful in everything, even in the unattractive.

Man's ascent into new worlds. Four stages of knowledge:

External cognition, objective thinking

imaginative cognition

inspirations

intuitions

What is imagination? The things around us show colors, sounds, warmth, cold, taste, smell ... We should now learn to experience these things and qualities without the things themselves. When we look at a plant, the green leaf, the red rose, we not only see the green and red color, but we also feel something that makes an impression on our senses. The green evokes a different impression than the red. It is not easy to hold on to an emotional impression, but it is necessary. And we still have to distinguish between what the red and the green evoke in us. We have to visualize these feelings ... without objects.

After patiently repeating the process, stand in front of the green leaf and the red rose and you will see the leaf and the rose transparently. The green and red shades stand before you like imaginations. You look inside the objects. You see it floating freely in space. We should also get to know the spiritual beings that are always floating around us and that have not yet become visible to us in this way, just as we should learn to see the aura. This is spiritual knowledge. Carry out the experiment further. Apply it to the seed in which the whole plant is already hidden. Let the seed have an effect on you. It should then grow spiritually for you. All the entities around us are more than we realize, namely what is latently contained within them. Let's look at the heart with its striated muscle fibers: In anatomical terms, it is a cross and its movements are involuntary. The hand, on the other hand, is voluntary, i.e. conscious in its movements and [also striated]. What the hand is now, the heart wants to become in the future.

Look at things, look at what they are, then you will find inspiration. We can apply the same experiment we made with plants to sounds and colors. Observe the feeling you have when you listen to a sound. ... By patiently and repeatedly recalling this sensation, you will find soundlessness, absolute silence. ...

But after the silence comes the spiritual sound, the spiritual music. After the observation of colors there should be absolute darkness, after the darkness come the answers from the other side. Care should be taken when distinguishing between the physical and spiritual sounds so that they are not mixed together, which can lead to serious errors, even madness. Through every attempt, something of the lower loses its value!

The sound is lost first. We reach silence first, the color impressions last longer, the sense of smell lasts the longest. All this is the basis of inspiration. Intuition then comes of its own accord, one is then within all things. In general, man is outside all objects, after the exercises man learns to understand the soul of all things. We learn to know the soul in an animal, a plant and a mineral, and when we have first learned to walk, spiritually speaking, on the astral plane - I ask you not to take offense at this expression - we will find this soul there as a group soul. The most prominent quality of the group soul is wisdom, and we find this much greater than in human beings. Consider the birds when they migrate in the fall. The beaver in its complicated dwelling, (no engineer, however ingenious, can imitate a bridge construction, of which the beaver gives us an example). Let us see the bees preparing their honey, what wisdom is probably contained in it!

What we do not find in the group soul of animals, however, is love. The group soul of the animal is a wise but cold entity. Love is only found in individual animals and in humans.

Like the animals, the plants also have common souls. The plants themselves are the center of the earth. We see the roots of plants pointing downwards, the flowers pointing upwards. Now we must compare the root with the human head. Man is the inverted plant. This has its fertilizing organs directed towards the light, towards the sun, but its head towards the earth. Man, however, has his head turned towards the sun and his fertilizing organs towards the earth.

If we compare these three kingdoms with a cross, we find the plant at the bottom, the animal in the middle (the animal with its horizontal backbone), the human being at the top, attracted by the light. The mineral is the ground from which the plant sprouts as a group.

When we pluck leaves and flowers, it does not happen without the plant soul feeling this. It feels a sense of well-being, because it is [the milk] of the earth and gives itself as the cow gives milk to the calf. If, on the other hand, a plant is pulled up by the root, the plant soul experiences pain (development is associated with pain, like birth). (Different terms for the graying of the hair.) When the farmer in the fall ... “seeing” and recognizing, then he would experience pure pleasure, because the earth gives its gifts to the world with pleasure and pleasure. Knowledge of this gives intuition.

The soul of the stone should also be recognized by man. We find this soul of the stone in the upper devachan. Workers in quarries could observe feelings of pleasure and joy when blasting stones. If, on the other hand, they tried to reassemble what had been broken up, to compact it, this would cause pain to the soul of the stone. (Example with salt in water. The dissolution is pleasure, the crystallization is pain.)

It is the same with religious documents: The meaning only becomes clear to us when we understand them (example with the Flood). Before the Flood, everything was shrouded in misty vapors, there was no rain, no sunshine, it was the misty homeland (Nebelheim, Niflheim, Nibelungenheim). After the Flood, the air was purified and the rainbow appeared. In the distant past, the temperature of the earth was much higher than it is now. The metals were flowing, molten ...

In order for man to dwell on earth, the fluidity was crystallized through suffering and pain. The earth will later be spiritualized through its further development. The solid substances will dissolve, it will become a process of bliss, a rushing towards redemption. When man has learned to understand all beings, then he is freed from illusions, from maya and all barriers. - “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall save you!” John 8:32.