Lessons for the Participants of Cognitive-Cultic Work 1906–1924

GA 265a — 3 January 1924, Dornach

Esoteric Hour for the “Wachsmuth-Lerchenfeld Group” III

"Brothers of the past: your work becomes our
wisdom; we take the circumference and the
plumb line of the height from your hands; your
achievement be strength for our souls, be
strength for our hands. Brothers of the present: if you are wiser than
us, let your wisdom shine in our
souls, so that we may become revealers
of your thoughts of God. Brothers of the future: As you carry the plan of the world's construction
in your will, let your strength flow
into our limbs, so that we may
become the body of the Great Souls. Indian mantram

Indication to the new society that the reasoning was given without mentioning the esoteric reason. (He had said before that the reasoning had esoteric reasons.) Esotericism cannot tolerate any gimmickry; everything so far has been playful. Now, esotericism must be brought openly and seriously into life, from Dornach, as the center. But now one really must not play with esotericism anymore. For this, modesty is necessary, above all modesty before the ego.

Therefore, wake up! Realize that we are asleep! With every waking we enter into a new sphere of the world, for we live surrounded by spheres of the world, but we sleep and know it not. So far, everything happens only in dreams for humans. The importance of the Falter meditation (of which he had said the previous time that everything he said about the effect of this meditation and its connection with the two times three and a half years only applies to people over 28).

Read to them - I A O U E

Something should be added to enhance the effect of this Falter meditation: Four stages of sleeping: in thinking, feeling, willing, in the I. Four stages of waking up: in thinking, feeling, willing, in the I.

Thinking: The head is like a fruit, the heart like a glowing chalice. We should experience our head as self-illuminating all the way to our heart. We should experience our thinking as an etheric organ that feels its way towards everything it is meant to grasp. The difference between the occultist and the non-occultist is that the occultist is aware that this organ radiates out into the etheric. We should experience ourselves as a snail that extends its feelers. Thinking must become a feeling process! Help with this:

Awaken in thinking: you are in the spiritual light of the world.
Experience yourself as luminous, feeling the luminous.

Through such thinking, all of nature becomes luminous. Stones and plants shine forth in the earthly, as animals and humans in the moral. Through experiencing thinking as touching, we develop something like a sense of touch: we see a dandelion blossom and experience it as sand; we see chicory and experience it as silk, a sunflower as a spiky animal...

Feeling: this is still a deep dream. We should experience our heart as glowing, but in such a way that it absorbs light from our entire environment and reflects it back outwards in a moon-like way. Through our awakening feeling, we must experience the world quite differently; the earth as a sentient being that laughs and cries. In the weather of autumn there is a crying of nature, but joy of the ahrimanic beings, in spring joy of the luciferic beings. Natural processes as acts of spiritual beings! Trees - in winter they are only their physical body, the etheric is outside. One can come to see how the trees solve tasks in the etheric. When one awakens in thinking, one expands into infinity. When one awakens in feeling, one sets oneself in motion, leaves oneself.

Awaken in feeling: you are in the spiritual deeds of the world.
Experience yourself, feeling the spiritual deeds.

Wanting: In this respect, the people of the present are still in a deep sleep. But in wanting, man is completely on his own. He has his thinking only in this embodiment, takes none of it with him into the after-death life. The gods need our thinking, but they do not need our feelings and our will. A person may be ingenious, but only because the gods need it that way. Geniuses are the lamps that the gods need. Our thinking abilities return to the gods after death. (My idea on this: The legend of Albertus Magnus, that he was untalented as a boy, but was inspired by the Madonna one day to become highly talented. When he was already teaching as an old man in the large circle of students, he experienced her coming to take back her gift. He broke off in the middle of the lecture, retired and spent the rest of his life in childish senility - as people call it.

Our will, on the other hand, goes with us through our embodiments; it is a result of our embodiments, and we work on it through our earthly lives. In our cooperation in shaping the world, our will is the essential characteristic. Our will is our own property, while our thinking belongs to the gods.

— Envy of the gods! In our volition, we have a life of our own. But people are still asleep in their volition. They love their volition because they always believe that what they want is already the right thing. But with our volition, we are helping to shape the world. We wake up in our volition by becoming aware that we are not alone, but are responsible for the actions of others. For example, Kully: What he does, especially what upsets us the most, is our fault, we are actually involved; Goesch affair [!] = Maya / [well...]. When we no longer feel separate as individual beings, but so connected in the general activity, then we awaken in the will, only then do we come to the living will, then we think the spiritual beings.

In the will awakens: thou art in the spirit-beings of the world.
The spirit-beings experience thee thinking.

Awakening in the I: We sleep in the I. We use the word “I” only because the gods once spoke it for us - our angeloi - and imitatingly now humans speak it. But we must awaken in the I! Imagination for this: altar, above it the sun. We approach the altar and experience ourselves completely as shadows, completely as insubstantial. So far we have said: I am. Now we consciously say: I am not. - Then a deity rises out of the sun above the altar and animates the shadow. We are like a bowl that receives the light of the deity that rises from the sun. - By grace we receive this deity, it gives itself to us. - Fichte experienced this, but only in a shadowy way. Therefore, what he says about it is completely abstract.

In the I awakens: you are in your own spiritual being.
Experience yourself as being received by the gods and giving yourself to yourself.

Then it was said:

The stones are mute...
Brothers of the...
Indian saying.