Transforming Faults Through Meditative Practice and Objectivity

GA 266I — 8 November 1908, Munich

Esoteric Lesson

Esoteric reflections need not differ greatly from exoteric lectures in terms of form and content. What is important is to remember that in an esoteric hour, the masters of wisdom and harmony of feeling are speaking to us. What matters is the “how” and that we allow the effects of the esoteric lesson to live in our souls. They are given to us so that we may think back on them with pleasure in our lives and allow them to form a central core in our souls. They are the complement to the exercises that the esotericist must do.

We know that through these exercises our astral body undergoes colossal changes, that we ourselves transform the astral body, which until then was unstructured and disordered, but nevertheless a harmonious whole, creating islands and divisions within it, through which we begin to form organs. These astral organs are the channels through which the Masters can allow communications from the higher worlds to flow into evolution and promote it. Through this independent formation of astral organs, we intervene in the divine world order, challenging it, so to speak, by using forces that it has hitherto used for other purposes, namely to protect against the effects of negative qualities on the astral body.

The esotericist must above all strive to be objective toward the qualities of his fellow human beings, to be able to notice their negative qualities and tolerate them without condemning them. He should say, for example: I see that this person is vain and ambitious, but at the present stage of development these qualities are just as necessary as other, positive ones. - We can draw a comparison with a tree. In a tree, the outer bark, even though it is the dying part of the organism, is necessary to protect the interior, where the life juices and life forces circulate. Part of the forces must be used to form the bark. If all the forces were used for this, the tree would become completely woody, wither and die. But nature has arranged it so that the inner life forces of the tree work against this and regulate the process. This is how it is with ordinary human beings with regard to their negative qualities, let us say ambition and vanity, and their effect on the astral body. Through the divine world order, the astral body has forces within itself that constantly work against the effects of ambition and vanity. Under the influence of these qualities, it looks as if it were studded with rays of light in the form of needles, whose brightness loses its intensity as it reaches the outside.

The divine world order ensures that these needles do not penetrate deeper into the astral body of ordinary human beings and completely permeate and tear it apart by sending forces from the interior of the astral body to its edges, like the bark of a tree, thus transforming these needles into a protective wall around the outside.

As objective and lenient as the esotericist must be toward these characteristics in others, he must be just as strict with himself, not allowing them to gain a foothold. For he uses the protective forces for other purposes. His astral body is therefore defenseless against the intrusion of the needles, and through the penetration of the astral body with these needles, the physical body can fall into a state of infirmity. Another negative characteristic often found in lazy people is envy. It arises in the soul when one compares oneself and one's achievements with others and feels painfully aware of their superiority. This trait manifests itself in the astral body by clouding it. Its substance becomes opaque and murky.

However, in ordinary people, the divine forces restore order from within.

A third negative characteristic is anger. It manifests itself in the astral body by creating densifications with sharp spikes, something like this:

Since esotericists no longer have the protective forces available to them like other people, they must consciously apply them themselves. There are indeed aids available to them, but they are quite different from those often recommended by well-meaning people. For example, one is often told that one should overcome vanity, ambition, envy, etc. by fighting them, by confronting them. This would be absolutely wrong for the esotericist. The right aids lie in a completely different field and have no similarity or points of contact with the faults to be eliminated.

In order to counteract the harmful effects of ambition and vanity, for example, the esotericist must not fight them within himself, because in doing so he would become too preoccupied with himself, and that is precisely what promotes these faults. The remedy is now to concern oneself not with oneself, but with human beings in general, that is, to think intensively about human beings and their sevenfold nature, their various bodies. If one does this on every occasion when one feels these qualities particularly strongly, one will notice that they gradually disappear.

The remedy for envy is to meditate on beauty, either in nature in general or as it is expressed in individual works of art or in particularly perfect human beings. We should immerse ourselves completely in enthusiasm for beauty in any form. It would be completely wrong to think of the person we envy in this way or to try to fight our envy directly. If we occupy our thoughts with something beautiful at every opportunity, we will feel envy gradually fade away.

Anger and annoyance felt on various occasions, for example, about the ever-increasing noise in the city, must be combated by the esotericist in a different way than is attempted today. Books are now being written about the possible elimination of noise in cities, and associations are being founded for this purpose. However, it is not a matter of dampening city noise, but of developing the strength within oneself to shut it out from within through meditation and peace of mind. It is not the noise that is harmful, but the demons that pervade our cities, and these are kept in check, so to speak, by the noise. One must be able to live in the midst of noise without allowing it to provoke anger. The esotericist achieves this by meditating on great words that have been given to us, immersing himself intensively in them, for example in the first four sentences of “Light on the Way.” Then one will feel how, little by little, the noise becomes quieter and more distant and finally disappears completely, and with it the anger. Anger also has a highly detrimental influence on the physical body of the esotericist.

It would be completely pointless to recommend the aids described here to ordinary people. They have no meaning for them.¹

When we transform our mistakes in this meditative way, we build a temple within ourselves to which we can always retreat from the noise of life, where we can gather strength and draw power, calm, and enthusiasm. We will thus feel more and more intensely that we are one big family gathered around its shining center, the masters of wisdom and harmony of feelings, from whom life and light flow down to us. Our goal will then always shine before us like a bright star that nothing can darken.