# Esoteric Lessons 1904–1909

## GA 266I — 21 February 1904, Berlin

### Third Lecture

At the end of the last lecture, I mentioned that humans have the ability to influence their so-called astral body through such an intimate means as memory control. I will add a few more things today.

This astral body, which envelops us like a cloud and in which our desires, instincts and passions express themselves, is also the carrier of something that lives and works continuously in our mind: it is the carrier of our memory. Everything we call memory or recollection adheres to the astral body. The thought you had yesterday is still in you today. But it has no possibility of remaining in you if it is not embedded in the astral body, if it does not stimulate vibrations that remain and recall what you experienced yesterday to your existence today. Now it is impossible for a person to take even one step forward in the development of the astral body if he does not work on his memory, on his recall of experiences.

I have said how man should work on the strict control of thinking, on the control of the whole thought life; how he must be clear that his thoughts are real processes, that it is the greatest untruth when it is said that thoughts are “duty free” and that we have no spectators for thoughts. If you want to develop real insight within yourself, you must work on your memory. We can only do this by not allowing our memories to arise in a confused way above the horizon of our consciousness and then disappear again.

So how do our memories pass through our consciousness? They come and go. Man abandons himself to them. Man is haunted by memories that ebb and flow. As long as he is, he is also at the mercy of all the influences and coincidences that are constantly exerted on the astral body from the outside. This can only be remedied by devoting a short time each day, even if only a very short time, to taking care of our memory. However, this should not prevent us from faithfully attending to all our other life obligations. The first principle of Theosophy is that no one should be deterred from the occupation they have in life.

So just a few minutes a day spent cultivating our memory can truly work wonders in our astral body.

What we are supposed to achieve can be said in a few words: we must make our lives a school of learning. For very few people, life is a school of learning. Most people indulge in pleasure and pain. And as life passes them by, pain, joy and pleasure pass by; they learn nothing from their lives. The theosophist, on the other hand, says to himself: Every day must advance me; every day must be a step in my development.

Therefore, the theosophist lets no day pass without letting the important events of the day pass before his mind, before his spiritual gaze. The best moment is the last moment we spend in a waking state: that is, the moment immediately before falling asleep. If we are able to still fill two, three, four, five minutes with the experiences of the day, to let them pass by in an objective way, then we achieve a lot for the astral body.

During the day we feel pleasure and pain, joy and discomfort. The theosophist should not dull his senses, but should feel vivid compassion and vivid disgust throughout the whole of his ordinary daily life. No one should be able to distinguish him from other people. He should only differ from others during the selected four, five to twenty minutes. Then he does not let the sensations - pleasure and pain, joy and discomfort - pass by in the usual way, but he reflects on them: What has caused me pleasure and pain? What has caused me comfort and discomfort? Was this pleasure, was this pain justified? Could it not be different if I had approached the thought somewhat differently? Could I not arouse the pleasure and discomfort in a different way? Could I not influence the course of events? Have I acted as I would always like to act? Have I acted in such a way that I can bring it into harmony with the whole harmony of the world order? – In short, it is the elevation of everyday life to a higher point of view.

If we observe our feelings in these four or five to twenty minutes, reliving them, but not in such a way that we have the same impression, but rather confronting them objectively, so that we see our seeing, hear our hearing and become clear about our pain and our desire , and whether we have perhaps caused our pleasure or pain through our triviality. In short, we become clear about our entire position in the world. Then we have learned something from our experiences, then we are working on the development of our astral organs.

The one who can see on the astral plane, who can see, can see how a person's astral body changes when that person is alert and does these exercises for years. Then his astral body begins to be organized. Where it used to be chaotic, a real mess – you can see snaking lines in grotesque coils in people's astral bodies – certain forms now appear in it, regular forms, it begins to structure itself.

Today, people cannot yet see this, but cultivating the memory is precisely the way by which we are enabled to see this transformation in ourselves and in our fellow human beings. What we have experienced today becomes our experience tomorrow, and experience is the touchstone for our future experiences. This enhances our development and organizes our astral body. However insignificant this may appear, it works surely. It contributes to the opening of the spiritual eye, to looking into the feelings of others, to becoming truly enlightened in the spiritual world. And then you must help it by casting off everything from yourself that clings to your self, to your peculiarity, to your special nature. If you are able to suppress anything that belongs to your special nature, then you develop your astral body.

Those who have experience know that it has an enormous effect when you succeed in achieving the following. A person has hundreds and hundreds of opinions. But it is very unimportant whether A or B thinks something about a matter. The wise man has an opinion and so does the fool. Everyone considers his opinion to be of the utmost importance, and he wants to assert this opinion first. That is why you so often hear people say, “I believe this, I believe that.” Try to realize how unimportant it is to put forward your own opinion at every opportunity; it may be the most unimportant, the most incorrect, because what we believe usually depends on pleasure and pain. If we manage not to express our opinion, then we practice something important and store up a tremendous power.

Every such suppressed revelation of the special being, every silence is a new accumulation of power for our knowledge. The more we are able to listen and not express our opinion, the more quickly we ascend to direct knowledge and direct vision. To one who has no insight into the organization of the human soul, this is incredible. But just as surely as the forces accumulate in the accumulator, so can the soul forces accumulate if we suppress our opinions. This gives us power and strength. He who has opinions to express at every turn will advance slowly; he who can remain silent much, who can let things speak to him, will advance rapidly. This is a golden rule in relation to direct knowledge: if we do not thrust our opinions upon things, then things will speak to us.

A very significant saying in The Secret Doctrine is: “I have learned much from those above me; I have learned much from those around me; and I have learned most from those below me!” It is learning from those below us, learning by listening and by withholding our opinions, that lifts us up. And we learn most when we let nature speak to us and listen to it. Then we achieve what needs to be achieved, namely the strength to really expose our opinions. If we have allowed ourselves the four to five minutes to develop the astral body, then something else comes.

What do people do when they are faced with a question? It may mean something big or something small. What do people do then? They think about it, rack their brains and believe that they have to be the ones to extract the solution to the question from the depths of their thoughts. Those who follow the path of knowledge do not do it that way. Goethe characterized it, as he also hinted at many other things as an initiate. He once said: We are not called upon to solve the question, but first to pose it and then to wait for the question to solve itself.

Do not underestimate this way of solving questions! It is quite powerful. We try to ask ourselves the question very clearly, but we do not think about the answer, but about the means that are suitable for solving the question. Let us say, for example, that I am faced with the question of whether a person is guilty or innocent, whether he has acted out of evil will or out of an innocent heart. If I think about it, I will not come to a correct judgment. But I will come to an answer if I look at his life as far as it is accessible to me; if I ask myself: What has happened to me with him? How did he face me? What did he say to me? What did he say to other people? — These are not answers, but questions that I have created for myself. They need to be considered. If I do this actively and suppress the answer, the image that I create for myself provides the answer. I switch myself off, as it were.

If you do this with all your willpower, switching off so that your self is not present, that your thinking is suppressed, if you overcome yourself not to give yourself an answer, but to fall asleep with the prepared question, then you will experience that you will wake up in the morning with an answer that is much more correct and certain than the one that could have come to you in the evening. While your physical body was resting, your spirit was disembodied and obtained the means to answer the question from the higher worlds. It is advisable to have a pencil ready, because you have to write down the answer as soon as you wake up in the morning. If you fail to do so, you will forget it again because you will be under completely different influences.

The deafening noise of everyday life does not allow people to develop their higher mental abilities. Therefore, we must learn to let our daily lives disappear for a short time through these exercises, which are familiar to anyone who becomes acquainted with the more intimate life of the mind and soul. If we are able to do this, we can develop in these isolated moments what theosophists call “spirituality” or “spiritual vision”. A whole new world then unfolds around us.