Transcending Personal Ego: The True Self Beyond Time

GA 266I — 15 June 1908, Munich

Esoteric Lesson

The purpose of this E.S. is to provide an ever deeper introduction to esotericism, until exercises, including mantric exercises, can be practiced. In order to penetrate the great mystery of ..., it is necessary to abandon illusions. At certain stages of development, illusions are necessary for human beings. The esoteric student discards them over time. The great illusion of the personal ego must be discarded. The true self of the human being is not contained in this, but comes from the indefinite and flows into the indefinite in time. Through the senses, we become aware of the ego in the physical world. This seems to contradict the fact that in the Atlantean, a certain point in the etheric head coincided with a corresponding point in the physical head, thereby allowing the ego to enter the human being. But this ego was, in a sense, only like a thin skin, a little bag that sank in, and into which the true ego, which is spread out in the planets from Saturn to Vulcan, shone in. The best symbol is: this little bag is like a mirror into which the true ego from this chain of planets flows in.

I said it goes into the indefinite, because it did not begin in Saturn and continues on after the volcanic state. We therefore imagine it as a line along which individual personal lives form like loops.

If we understand how to extinguish the personal self that we become aware of through the senses, then the line leading from the indefinite to the indefinite lies before us. “Sensory illusion covers the appearance of time.” But it lies before us as a line only because of the appearance of time. If we imagine this line as slightly curved, it must end in a circle.

Hence the further statement: “The appearance of time separates αω. I am αω, or Ιαω.” The true meaning of the snake biting its tail. The Ιαω = IAO, which was the basis of the Atlantean Tau.