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

## GA 264 — Berlin

### To Amalie Wagner in Hamburg

Berlin, August 2, 1904

Dear, dear Miss Wagner!

Today I am able to send you the first information regarding the E.S. It is necessary to start by talking about the meaning of the school. The Esoteric School is an occult institution, that is, it is under the direction of highly developed individuals. These are people who have already gone through the path that the majority of people still have to take. Such highly developed individuals possess a high degree of wisdom, are endowed with an unlimited source of love for humanity and with the gift of helping those who want to walk the path of perfection.

Those who enter the order of the Shrâvakas undertake nothing more than to consciously work towards their own perfection, so that they may increasingly become servants in the perfection of the whole human race. Of course, everyone can only do as much as is within their power. The school demands nothing. It only wants to provide the means by which everyone can perfect themselves as is necessary for themselves and for humanity. And to achieve this, the aforementioned perfect individuals provide occult assistance. Those who sign the “promise” begin to be influenced by these perfect individuals in a way that they may initially be completely unaware of. In this way, he works for the benefit of all humanity simply by belonging to the school. All the obligations that the [shrâvaka] takes on are only for his own benefit. For without keeping these obligations, it is impossible to achieve the set goal; and membership of the school would be pointless.

Dear Miss Wagner! I will now explain to you very briefly what needs to be done. You can only start with everything on August 18. And at that time, I would ask you to begin. For reasons known only to the occultist, the beginning must be made at very specific times. All this will become clear to you later.

Then the following would be to be done. 1. In the evening, before you go to rest - preferably before you fall asleep - I ask you to repeat the following sentence in your mind every evening:

> Brighter than the sun  
> Purer than the snow  
> Finer than the ether  
> Is the Self,  
> The Spirit in my heart.  
> That Self is me,  
> I am that Self.[^1]

Once you have thought this through, but thought it through in such a way that no extraneous thought intrudes into your consciousness while you hold this sentence in front of you, then spend four to five minutes looking back over the experiences of the day. I ask you to let these experiences of the day pass before your mind's eye and to realize how you feel about these events. You observe yourself and ask yourself whether and to what extent you are in agreement with yourself, what you could have experienced better, what you could have done better. In this way you become your own observer. The idea is to observe yourself from a higher point of view, and gradually the “higher self” becomes the ruler over the everyday person. In doing so, however, everything that is equivalent to worry or grief about what has been experienced should be avoided. We should merely learn from our own lives, make it a lesson. We should not think of the past with regret – there is time enough for that during the rest of the day – but bravely use this past for the future. Then we learn for our present personal existence, and we learn above all for the time that lies beyond death.

When you have completed this kind of review of the day, you fall asleep with thoughts of the people you love and want to help. This may be followed by the presentation of an ideal of life with which you are particularly involved.

Now in the morning. As soon as possible after awakening, a little meditation is to be done. It consists of the following:

1. Recalling the above thought: “Radiant...”

2. The actual meditation (6-8 minutes)

I ask you to take a sentence each day from the “Nachfolge Christi” (The Imitation of Christ) by Thomas a Kempis. This is done as follows.

For the first eight days, take a sentence from the third chapter, “Happy the man whom truth...” Memorize this sentence so that it is completely in your mind. Then, for the indicated six to eight minutes, fill your entire consciousness with this sentence. All other thoughts should be excluded. In this way we absorb such a spiritually living sentence into our entire being. We permeate ourselves with it. And its power radiates through everything we do and are. You keep the same sentence every day for 8 days. Then comes the next sentence and so on.

The third part of the morning meditation is devotion to that which is divine and sacred to us, for example to Christ. This should take at least 4 to 6 minutes and consist of devotional worship of our Holy Being.

These are all the exercises for the time being. Through these exercises, it becomes possible for the perfect beings (masters) to approach us and to take us up into the stream that leads to perfection. Regarding 6. of the rules[^2] I only note that the only exception in which a sip of wine may be taken is at the Holy Supper; there is no harmful effect because it is a ceremony. This abstinence should, however, be strictly observed. It is not a matter of fulfilling a duty towards the school, but of promoting perfection. Especially for the Shrâvaka it will suffice if alcohol consumption is avoided in the main. But here too, better is better.

I shall write the third book shortly.[^3] Engel is [Julius] Engel in Berlin. He translated the “letters that helped me”.[^4] However, I ask you not to practice the things that are indicated there for the time being, but... [end of letter missing].

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[^1]: See page 447.

[^2]: The letter was accompanied by rules and a promise text, see page 139.

[^3]: This presumably refers to “Occult Science: An Outline” as the third Theosophical book (the first book is “Christianity as Mystical Fact” (1902), the second “Theosophy” (May 1904). Secret Science was originally planned as the second part of Theosophy and announced as being in preparation from 1905, but due to overwork it could not appear until the end of 1909.

[^4]: “Letters that helped me”. Collected by Jasper Niemand [pseudonym for Julia Campbell Ver Plank, who has been Archibald Keightley's wife since 1891]. Translation from English by Julius Engel. Self-published, Charlottenburg, no year. The original English edition was published in 1891. New edition “Letters That Have Helped Me” by William Q. Judge (compiled by Jasper Niemand), Theosophical University Press, Pasadena, California. 1981).