The History of the Esoteric School 1904–1914, Volume One

GA 264 — Düsseldorf

The Nature and Work of the Masters X

Notes by Mathilde Scholl

We want to remind ourselves today, as in every esoteric hour, that what we are told in these hours comes from the Masters of Wisdom and of the harmony of feelings.

We want to develop, not out of an egoistic longing for development, but to become helpers in the development of humanity, to whose karma ours is linked. We should come out of these hours different from what we were when we entered them, by drawing benefit from the teachings for our esoteric daily work. To always carry out these most intimate soul activities in the right spirit is the main thing that cannot be impressed upon us often enough.

Our meditations primarily take into account the division of the present human being into two parts: the consciousness during sleep and during wakefulness. These two parts have been given to us from ancient, pre-Atlantean times and are tailored to this division of the human being. Why is it necessary for the human being to withdraw his ego and astral body from the physical and etheric bodies at night? The divine beings who built the physical and etheric bodies into such a magnificent, perfect temple move back into them during the night, while the human being's ego and astral body also enter divine realms. If they did not do so, they would completely destroy the physical and etheric bodies, because, in addition to the spiritual-divine beings who were their creators, the luciferic beings also have influence over the astral body. For it was they who made the astral body free and independent. Thus, when man returns to his physical body, he falls into error and guilt during the day. It is not the physical and etheric bodies that are subject to aberrations, but the astral body, which is seduced by the ego, which yields to the whisperings of the satanic entities. The normal person is protected from deeper, more dangerous influences of these Luciferic beings by the spiritual-divine creators, in that they have endowed him with a strong power, but the esotericist should use this power to ascend to higher levels of development.

The esotericist should now say to himself when falling asleep: “I return to my creators,” and when awakening: “I come from where I stayed before my body was created.” And he should consciously dwell in these realms for a few moments in meditation. If he does this with the right attitude, he will ignite the sacred fire, the inner warmth, that is necessary for him. And before he falls asleep at night, he should develop the same feelings during his evening esoteric work, even if it is only the daily review. By letting his day pass before him in pictures, backwards and forwards, he creates spiritual images, the essence of which he takes with him into the spiritual worlds. This must be done backwards and forwards because that is how everything happens in the spiritual worlds, and it creates a transition into them so that they can flow into us more easily and we can enter into them more easily. Through the usual forward thinking, which we transfer to the spiritual worlds, we brace ourselves against them, push them away from us and thereby hinder ourselves and our development.

Just as in the night the luciferic entities influence man from within, so in the day the ahrimanic-mephistophelian influence him from without. What have these entities now brought about in man through their influence? The luciferic ones brought with freedom and self-consciousness the most extreme expression of this, the haf. Man would never have been able to hate if he had not more and more isolated himself in his self. And the Ahrimanic entities shrouded the divine spiritual entities in the smoke of Maya for the human eye, so that man no longer sees what is behind things. This is how fear arose. Man would never have known fear if he could see the divine creators instead of bumping into things in space. A little child learns fear at the moment when it comes into contact with matter and is hurt by it.

These two, hatred and fear, must now be discarded by the esotericist, even in their finest shades, in order to successfully move forward. Zarathustra, one of our mightiest teachers, has therefore left us words that, if we take them up in the right spirit, will help us to successfully achieve fearlessness. He said: “I will speak, now come and listen to me, you who, far and near, desire it. I will speak of him who can become manifest to the spirit, and no longer shall the deceptive mind confuse men, which has caused so much evil in human development. I will speak of that which is the first and greatest in the world, of that which he has revealed to me, the great spirit, which is Ahura Mazdao. But he who does not hear my words, as I understand and grasp them, will experience evil when the earth's course has come to an end in his age.“ 13Free rendering of a Gatha passage, Yasna 45.

With this he wanted to point out to people that the outer sun is only the cover for the great regent of the fire spirits, just as everything physical is the cover for a spiritual, and if we concentrate on this great Auramazda, which stands behind the life-giving sun, fearlessness will be our part.

And much later, to help us achieve freedom from hatred, the great Zarathustra gave us another symbol. He had two disciples. He prepared the astral body of one of them so that he became clairvoyant, and therefore, in a later incarnation, this disciple was able to connect with his prepared astral body that of Zarathustra, who sacrificed his for this purpose. This disciple became the great Hermes, who directed the Egyptian mysteries. Zarathustra sacrificed his etheric body to the second disciple, whose etheric body he had also carefully prepared for this union. This disciple reincarnated in Moses, and that he had received a special etheric body can be seen from

narrative of the Bible, in which he, as a small child, had to dwell for a while, completely closed off from the world, in the water, so that his ego and astral body would not have a confusing effect on these subtle processes through impressions from the outside.

Zarathustra's ego was powerful and strong enough to create a new etheric and astral body for himself during a new incarnation. After being Nazarathos, the teacher of Pythagoras, he finally became Jesus of Nazareth, who could now sacrifice his three bodies, including the physical one, for the Auramazdao, which he had always proclaimed. He descended and dwelt in him, and that is why Jesus could say in this sense: “I am the light of the world.” (In the Gospel of John).

And the symbol of the absence of hatred that Zarathustra left us on this path is the blood that flowed at Golgotha. Hatred is the most extreme expression of the “I”. And where does our “I” reside? In the blood. Even our physical blood changes when this hardening, this withering of the “I”, the hatred, is transformed into a lack of hatred and this into love. If chemists had the appropriate fine instruments, they would be able to detect the difference in the blood of, for example, an old Indian and a Saint Francis of Assisi. This spiritualization is also expressed in the physical. With the blood that flowed for humanity at Calvary, we have the symbol of lack of hatred, through which we can transform every feeling of hatred into love, in order to bring it before the altar of the creative beings. The magic breath that emanates from Golgotha has a transforming effect on hatred and fear, which are brothers, just as Lucifer and the ahrimanic-mephistophelian entities are brothers.