Lessons for the Participants of Cognitive-Cultic Work 1906–1924
GA 265a — 4 December 1914, Dornach
Mantram: I Entered this World of the Senses
Excerpts from notes taken by Nanna Thorne from a lecture by Rudolf Steiner in Kristiania (Oslo) on December 4, 1921, translated by Agnes Steineger and Karl Engqvist in a letter dated November 27, 1966 from Karl Engqvist (Järna) to Edwin Froböse (Dornach)
Dear Mr. Froböse. Unfortunately, I am writing this to you from my bed. I suddenly became quite ill yesterday. Thank you very much for your kind words. I would now like to add a few things that were not included in the translation by me, because they come from Miss Nanna Thorne, at least for the most part. The title reads: “I entered this sense world”, Oslo, May 21, 1923. Then it continues like this: “When Dr. Steiner was in Oslo for the first time in 1921, he spoke about the mantram: ‘I entered this sense world’, and likewise the last time he was up here, in May 1923. Today a report is to be given of this last lecture. It was therefore the last thing he entrusted to the esotericists here in Norway.” Here, Miss Steineger has translated the first sentence incorrectly. It should probably read: “[...] he spoke for the first time about the mantram [...]”. - The heading was certainly added by Nanna Thorne. - It is also written at the top, in brackets: “(Is the mantram read?)” Before the two lectures, there are three mantras on a left-hand page in the book: “I entered this world of the senses”, “First know the earnest guardian”, “O man, know thyself”. The lecture from 1921 begins like this:
Everyone should realize that they are a spirit, come from the spiritual worlds and are only down here for a short time.
Why does the human spirit have to come here to Earth, where it has to go through so much?..
An infinite desire for earthly life, to bring new life germs, fills the human spirit. That is why it descends again and again...
A person creates their karma through their thoughts...
There is also another inheritance that man must take with him into earthly life: original sin... Lucifer... Ahriman, the lord of death...
Another consequence of man's dried-up, killing thinking is the point of view of science regarding the laws of nature... Thoughts and ideas essentially revolve around machines, mechanics and the like. The life of thought has become earthbound, poor and dried up; Ahriman, the god of death, now has the power, and to such an extent that not only the human soul perishes, but the physical human organism is also damaged, it becomes paralyzed and is killed, the material dies. ...
And not only man will stiffen and go towards death, but all of nature. ...
And just as nature here on earth is heading towards death, so too is the universe... It is not enough to know about the new life-force of Xri; if it is not worked into people through the will, one will nevertheless face spiritual death.... this new life-force that is given to man by grace...
... Ex Deo Nascimur
If the esotericist is to see into the spiritual worlds, he must first meet the “guardian of the threshold”... Before he lets the esotericist in, he takes away the use of the physical senses; therefore, the esotericist must have developed occult organs in advance to replace them.
Likewise, the Dweller takes from him everything he has absorbed through the mind. ... This, that one takes the sense world for reality, also makes it impossible to get clarity about oneself, to get to know one's own nature.
Everything seen in space is dead. Once the gods created it. Now they have abandoned it, they have moved away. It is the work of the gods, but they themselves are gone; matter is dead, it is permeated by Ahriman, and here in this dead man does not find his true being. Nor can one find one's true nature as long as one allows oneself to be deceived by the spirits of the age. ... It is important to see the errors of one's own time (that is, epoch, Karl Engqvist), to rise above them and then to try to live in time, with time and for time.
In Christo morimur.
In this struggle to arrive at one's true self, these words will resound:
O man, know thyself.
It is Xri (short for Karl Enggvist), the world word, that makes these words resound through everything that life on earth has to give.
You do not find your own being just by looking into yourself, but by seeing everything that is in the cosmos, everything that is around us in space. There the image of one's own self is spread out.
It is not only in space that you get to know your higher self. Space belongs to the physical world. But behind space, time is at work through everything that lives in time. There one must also find one's self (which was awakened to conscious life in man through Xri[s] (abbreviation by Karl Enggvist) death), learn to understand how this higher self has fought its way out... through what happens in time. One must direct one's attention to the fact that time is a creative being that incessantly sends its impulses among people so that they may develop their ego here on earth, may find their ego. ...
When man recognizes his ego as that which stands behind things in space and behind what he has experienced in time, and when he sees the meaning of it all, then the ego is consciously born in him, and then he himself will one day become a creative word of the world... But the living, fully conscious spirit lives among the divine beings.
Per Spiritum Sanctum Reviviscimus
The lecture is 19 pages long in Fräulein Steineger's handwriting. The one from May 21, 1923 is 21 pages long. Since the class existed before the Christmas Conference, it follows, I think, that the institutions and agreements that existed before the Christmas Conference were not destroyed by the Christmas Conference, and thus neither was Rudolf Steiner's will to Mrs. Marie Steiner. I feel tremendously uplifted and inspired to have been able to contribute to this fact. Very warm greetings, also from my wife, Karl Engqvist The Vidar group tried to get Fräulein Steineger's inheritance after her death, but my friends explained to them that she had given me testamentary power of attorney to dispose of it. What luck!