Overcoming Hatred and Fear: Zarathustra's Path to Spiritual Development

GA 266I — 15 April 1909, Düsseldorf

Esoteric Lesson

Record A

Today, as in every esoteric lesson, we want to remind ourselves that what is communicated to us in these lessons comes from the masters of wisdom and the harmony of feelings.

We want to develop, not out of a selfish desire for development, but in order to become helpers in the development of humanity, to whose karma ours is linked. We should emerge from these hours as different people than when we entered them, by making use of the teachings for our esoteric daily work. To always perform these most intimate activities of the soul in the right attitude is the main thing that cannot be impressed upon us often enough.

Our meditations take into account first and foremost the duality of the present human being in sleep and waking consciousness. They were given to us in ancient, pre-Atlantean times and are tailored to this duality of the human being. Why is it necessary for human beings to withdraw their ego and astral body from the physical and etheric bodies at night? The divine beings who built the physical and etheric bodies into such a magnificent, perfect temple return to them during the night, while the ego and astral body of human beings also enter into divine realms. If they did not do this, they would completely destroy the physical and etheric bodies, because, apart from the spiritual-divine beings who were their creators, the Luciferic beings also have an influence on the astral body. For it was these beings who made the astral body free and independent. As a result, when the human being returns to his physical body during the day, he falls into error and guilt. It is not the physical and etheric bodies that are subject to aberrations, but the astral body, which is seduced by the ego that has yielded to the whisperings of the Luciferic beings. Normal human beings are protected from the deeper, more dangerous influences of these Luciferic beings by the spiritual-divine creators, who have endowed them with a strong power, which the esotericist should use to ascend to higher stages of development.

The esotericist should now say to himself as he falls asleep: “I return to my creators,” and upon awakening: “I come from where I was before my body was created.” And in meditation, he should consciously linger in these realms for a few moments. If he does so with this attitude, he will thereby kindle within himself the sacred fire, the inner warmth that is necessary for him. And before falling asleep in the evening, they should develop the same feelings during their evening esoteric work, even if it is only a daily review. By letting their day pass before them in pictures from back to front, they create spiritual images which they take with them as an extract into the spiritual worlds. This must be done backwards because everything happens this way in the spiritual worlds, and in this way we create a transition into them so that they can flow into us more easily and we can enter into them more easily. Through the ordinary forward thinking that we transfer into the spiritual worlds, we brace ourselves against them, push them away from us, and thereby hinder ourselves and our development.

Just as the Luciferic beings influence human beings from within, so to speak, during the night, the Ahrimanic-Mephistophelean beings influence them from without during the day. What effect have these beings had on human beings through their influence? The Luciferic beings brought with them freedom and ego-consciousness, and with these they brought the most extreme expression of this, hatred. Human beings would never have been able to hate if they had not become more and more isolated in their egos. And the Ahrimanic beings shrouded the divine-spiritual beings in the smoke of Maya, so that human beings could no longer see what lies behind things. This gave rise to fear. Human beings would never have known fear if they could see the divine creators instead of bumping into things in space. A small child learns fear the moment it comes into contact with matter and bumps into it.

The esotericist must now seek to rid himself of these two, hatred and fear, in their finest shades, in order to progress successfully. Zarathustra, one of our most powerful teachers, has therefore left us words that will help us to achieve fearlessness if we take them up in the right sense. He said: "I will speak, now come and listen to me, you who desire it from afar and from near. I will speak of him who can become manifest to the spirit, and no longer shall the deceptive mind confuse mankind, which has instigated so much evil in human development. I will speak of what is first and greatest in the world, of what he has revealed to me, the great spirit who is Ahura Mazdao. But whoever does not hear my words as I mean them and understand them will experience evil when the earth's course has come to an end in his age."

With this he wanted to point out to people that the outer sun is only the shell for the great ruler of the fire spirits, just as everything physical is the shell for something spiritual, and if we concentrate on this great Aura Mazdao, which stands behind the life-giving sun, then fearlessness will be ours.

And to achieve freedom from hatred, the great Zarathustra gave us another symbol much later. He had two disciples. He prepared the astral body of one of them so that he became clairvoyant, and therefore this disciple was able to connect his prepared astral body in a later incarnation with that of Zarathustra, who sacrificed his own for this purpose. This disciple became the great Hermes, who led the Egyptian mysteries. Zarathustra sacrificed his etheric body to the second disciple, whose etheric body he had prepared just as carefully for this connection. This disciple was reincarnated as Moses, and that he had received a special etheric body can be deduced from the Bible story about the basket of reeds in which he had to remain as a small child, completely isolated from the world, so that his ego and astral body would not be confused by external impressions during these subtle processes.

The ego of Zarathustra was powerful and strong enough to create a new etheric and astral body for itself in a new incarnation. After being Nazarathos, the teacher of Pythagoras, he finally became Jesus of Nazareth, who was now able to sacrifice his three bodies, including the physical one, for Ahura Mazdao, whom he had always proclaimed. He now descended and dwelt in him, and therefore Jesus could say in this sense: I am the light of the world (in the Gospel of John).

And the symbol of the absence of hatred that Zarathustra has left us on this path is the blood that flowed on Golgotha. Hatred is the most extreme expression of the ego. And where does our ego dwell? In the blood. Even our physical blood changes when this hardening, this lignification of the ego, hatred, is transformed into hatredlessness and this into love. If chemists had the appropriate fine instruments, they would be able to discover the difference between the blood of, for example, an old Indian and that of Francis of Assisi. This spiritualization is also expressed in the physical realm. With the blood that flowed for humanity on Golgotha, we have the symbol of loveliness, through which we can transform every feeling of hatred into love and bring it before the altar of the creative beings. The magical breath that emanates from Golgotha has a transforming effect on hatred and fear, which are brothers, just as Lucifer and the Ahrimanic-Mephistophelean beings are brothers.

Record B

Hatred is the extreme expression of the Luciferic beings toward the divine-spiritual beings of love. In hatred, the ego is too strong; it hardens within itself. Fear comes from Ahriman, or from Mephistopheles. Zarathustra wanted to educate humanity to be fearless and without hatred, which is why he first addressed his words to Ahura Mazdao (“I will speak of what is highest for me,” etc.). And the second means for this education is the great mystery of Golgotha! The symbol for this ideal of fearlessness and hatredlessness is the blood flowing from the wounds of the Redeemer; the blood that represents the expression of the ego in the physical world. Meditation is the transition from the spiritual world to the physical world, and vice versa, from the physical world to the spiritual world.

The review should be done in the evening before going to sleep. Those who do not do this from back to front, and those who, as esotericists, do not do this review at all, push back the spiritual world and inhibit themselves in the spiritual worlds.

Esotericists may ask themselves: “Where do I come from?” And the answer may be: “From the womb of the divine-spiritual beings, my creators!” - “And where am I going?” - “Back there, to their womb.” We should consciously experience falling asleep and waking up as sacred moments.

Our physical body and our etheric body are given to us from divine-spiritual worlds by divine-spiritual beings, therefore we should not look upon them with arrogance or contempt, but with holy reverence.

Because the astral body is receptive to the whisperings of Lucifer and Ahriman, we must always be vigilant. Lucifer gives us independence, but we also owe him the possibility of error and evil.

Ahriman envelops us in fear. That is why we repeatedly contaminate these bodies between waking and sleeping.