Walking, Speaking, Understanding: The Esoteric Path of Christ

GA 266II — 4 November 1910, Berlin

Esoteric Lesson

Record A

Learning to walk, speak, and understand

All who have already heard esoteric lectures know that what is said here is not only said by me; we want to ask for the help of the spirit of the day. - Follow the saying for Friday.

When we look at our life as it passes between birth and death, we must view it from an esoteric standpoint, namely that it is there so that we may learn during this period of time, learn for our esoteric path. When we look at this physical life, we see that we bring with us the prerequisites, the organs, for everything we are capable of doing in life, with the exception of three things that we must first learn here in physical life. When a color impression strikes our eye, we are able to see very soon after birth; we do not need to learn this first; the ability is simply there; the same is true of hearing and so on. There are only three things we have to learn: walking, speaking, and understanding or forming concepts. In order to walk, we first have to learn to stand. Before we can do that, we simply fall over; we have no sense of balance yet. We first have to learn to feel our way into the three dimensions of space. In the same way, we must learn to speak and understand.

Once we have learned to walk in that first year of life, we can make our way. Once we have learned to understand, we can bring truth to life and create living things through words. In our first three years of life, we learn to walk, speak, and understand. We find these three years symbolically reflected in the three years of Christ's life on earth. We must therefore find everything that has been handed down to us by Christ as a foundation in the first three years of our life.

Everything that the esoteric student needs for his esoteric life is given to him in the esoteric lessons. He receives answers to all his questions through what is given to him in the meditation exercises; he only has to listen carefully and apply everything correctly. What is given to us as meditation must be kept alive within us. Thus the saying:

In pure rays of light ...

We should not just let these lines pass by us in our minds, but they should be kept alive within us. We should give ourselves completely to the content of the meditation, forgetting everything around us in physical life, our personal interests, and so on. As a reward for having, as it were, given up physical life, sacrificed it for the time of meditation, according to the first two lines:

In pure rays of light
Gleams the Godhead of the world

a sound will resound within us that will be preserved for as long as our karma dictates. This sound does not resound within us, but comes to us from outside. Nothing more shall be said here; each must experience and comprehend it for himself. And while this sound, the sacred word, the unutterable name, resounds, the disciple shall make a vow, which he may have made before, but at this moment he must do so. The vow is that the disciple says to himself: I will consider every other sound that reaches my ear, if it is not based in the physical, every other sound except this sacred word, to be the work of Ahriman.

This is a withdrawal, a turning away from what is around him, which creates a feeling of coldness in the student; a feeling of indifference and numbness seizes the person; he feels lonely in an immense frost. The student must respond to this feeling of frost, which is produced by pure thought, with love.

And when he has heard this sound, he receives the direction toward the east; the sound comes from the east. The student can orient himself in the spiritual realm; he no longer falls over like a child who has not yet learned to stand and walk. He can now stand and walk in the spiritual realm.

And if the student lets the third and fourth lines live within him:

In pure love for all beings
Radiates the godliness of my soul

he will feel warmth, radiant living warmth. Only the experiences that come to him during this feeling of warmth have real truth value; everything else is Lucifer's work. And if he has the last three lines:

I rest in the Godhead of the world
I will find myself
In the Godhead of the world

brought to a right life within himself, he will grasp the truth.

Thus, in the first two lines, the student has found the way, in the last three lines he has attained the truth, and from the two middle lines flows life, spiritual life.

Tomorrow we will talk more about this.

The student must develop something within himself that is talked about so much in outer life but is never realized, whose depth is not even recognized or even suspected. Much is said about love for humanity, but there is nothing in outer life that corresponds to this feeling. The esoteric student should begin by saying to himself in all humility: I know nothing about love for humanity. We love people for various reasons, but none of that is right. We should love people because they are human beings. Christ gave us the right example of this.

The seed of my body lay in the spirit ...

Record B

Let us summarize in a few words the life of a human being from birth to death and consider everything that a human being must develop during his life and what he brings with him into the world already developed. There are three things that humans do not bring with them when they enter the world, which they must first acquire in the course of their lives, while newborn humans are born with their organs already fully formed, for example, their eyes, through which they perceive their surroundings, their ears, and so on. The three things that they must develop themselves are walking, understanding, and speaking.

Why can't humans walk when they are born? Because they cannot yet find their balance; they must first seek it and establish a relationship with the nature that surrounds them. They then sway back and forth for a long time, searching for a point of support that they cannot find quickly. Once they have found it, humans can stand and find their way on their own.

The second thing they must acquire is comprehension; this leads to thinking, and through thinking they arrive at truth. The third is language, through which they can express their thoughts and feelings, their own inner life, to the world.

If we apply this image as a symbol to the wonderfully beautiful words of Christ, which he spoke to his disciples from esoteric wisdom and which are: “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” we will find that these words refer to the esoteric development of man.

In the beginning, our meditation is like that of a child who must first learn to walk; we sway back and forth, straying now to the right, now to the left with our thoughts, until we finally find the necessary calm and concentration, our point of support, which gives us balance on the path that Christ tells us to follow and which is Himself. Every esotericist should follow this path, which is Christ Himself. He Himself wants to be our guide; in Him we should seek our support, through Him find our balance, so that we can walk in His ways.

In ancient, pre-Christian times, the disciple needed a guru who would help him in his meditation. Since Christ walked on earth, he has left his power in the earth's atmosphere so that we can fill ourselves with it when we open ourselves to it.

Our meditation should continue to become pure thinking so that the truth may come to life through our words, which we should pour out upon our fellow human beings.

Once the student has found his way after a long period of practice, without wavering to the right or left, he will come to an inner experience when he immerses himself in the first verse of his morning meditation:

In pure rays of light
Gleams the Godhead of the world

He will experience this as something that cannot be expressed in words. A stream of warmth, a light from the east will flow through him; a sound will resound within him, making him feel that he is connected with the light of the deity.

As we continue to ascend in our development, a new experience comes to us when we meditate on the second verse:

In pure love for all beings
Radiates the godliness of my soul

Now, from the light and the sound that comes to us from the east, we will hear a name that we cannot pronounce, a name that makes the soul tremble and from which we feel: This is the name of God! At the same time, a stream of indescribable coldness will sweep through us, accompanied by a feeling of abandonment and loneliness. This name will flood our innermost being, and we will know that it is this name. This experience leads us to the knowledge of truth, and we have arrived at the point where the spiritual world opens up to us, where we can know whether what we see is truth or illusion. Everything that man believed he had heard before this experience in the form of sounds, knocking, or other phenomena from the physical world was not the truth—he now knows this. It was Ahriman or Lucifer who beguiled him with their illusions. We should therefore strictly reject such experiences of sounds, etc., that come to us from the physical world, for we now know that we cannot experience true spiritual phenomena until we feel the warm stream pouring into our soul from the East, and until we have lived through the numbing cold and the feeling of abandonment—until we have heard the sound that makes the name of God resound within us.

Let us consider once again the words:

In pure love for all beings
Radiates the godliness of my soul

This “practice of pure love” has been chosen by the Christian Church as its favorite saying. However, although Christians often repeat this saying, they generally do little to act upon it. It is not easy to do so when we consider all its consequences. Let us consider what it means to love all beings, to give love without expecting anything in return, without recognition, without demanding reward—for our ideal should be to love people because they are human beings! How advanced must a person be in their development to be capable of such love for their neighbor! Can we educate ourselves to this selflessness, to love all people as ourselves, through the commandments and dogmas of the Church or through the compulsion of a moral law? Is it not much more fruitful for the soul if it brings this high virtue to blossom within itself without any compulsion?

By practicing this teaching of Christ, a Hindu, a Muslim, a Parsi, a Catholic, a Protestant, a Jew, even a heretic can be a true Christian, even without belonging to the Christian Church. And we too learn in our meditations that hidden within them lies the path that Christ has shown us and that he himself is: I am the way, the truth, and the life.

Record C

The esoteric student must learn to view his life in the physical world in such a way that, in the span of time between birth and death, he learns, learns to find his esoteric path so that he does not lose touch with the world of his origin, the spiritual world. And when we look at this physical life, we see that we are capable of many things for which we already have the prerequisites, the organs, with the exception of three things that we must first learn here in physical life. We are able to see soon after birth; we do not need to learn this, and the same is true of tasting, smelling, and hearing. The abilities are there, even if we can only consciously use them later. However, there are three things we must learn after birth. These are walking, speaking, and understanding.

In an esoteric sense, learning to walk means first being able to stand upright by virtue of the ego living within us and growing stronger and stronger, being able to maintain ourselves in space in relation to the spiritual forces that permeate it, and learning to find our way through them. Where to? To the [spiritual] East — which the student gets to know at a certain stage of his development.

Once the student has found this path, he will have to listen in absolute silence and solitude to the sounds coming from the East. This is an experience that every student has, depending on when his karma allows him to do so. He hears the “ineffable word” sounding from the East, the name of God, who pronounces “Himself.” This sounds into the silence and solitude of the student. And the “word” becomes soul power in the disciple's soul, igniting the power to awaken something within himself, in the depths of his soul, that has been slumbering there. The creative forces of existence awaken to life within him.

The second stage is: he learns to speak. In an esoteric sense, speaking is the sounding out of what was previously inside as the life of the soul and now sounds outwards. In the midst of these two experiences – hearing the name of God from outside, from the spiritual East, and speaking within oneself – exactly in the middle, the student alone can receive the revelations of the spiritual world in meditation.

This inner sound — a spiritual sound inaudible to physical ears, which remains with the student for a longer or shorter period of time depending on their karma — this sacred word, this inexpressible name of God, cannot be spoken by the teacher; each student must grasp it and experience it for themselves. And while this sound is sounding, the student should take the vow that they can also take earlier, but he must do so at this moment; he must say to himself: I will regard every other sound that reaches my ear—if it is spiritual, that is, not based in the physical—as the work of Ahriman. When the student has had this experience, he can descend into his own being and feel the new life—then he can know the truth of the spiritual world through his own experience. This alone is the real, true path of the esoteric student. Everything else is a delusion of Ahriman, who wants to rush in before the student has heard the spiritual sound, and a delusion of Lucifer, who wants to prevent the student from receiving the life rising up in his soul.

But this spiritual tone, which the disciple perceives from the spiritual east of his soul and which kindles a new light, the spiritual sunlight, within him, does not work in the same way as the outer sunlight works when it kindles light in the outer world and fills it with warmth. The spiritual sun tone works in such a way that it feels like an icy coldness in the disciple's soul; he feels lonely, as if completely detached, floating all alone in a sober space filled only with thoughts. This must be so and must be gone through by the student; once he has struggled through it, he will feel rising from the depths of his soul a completely new, inner warmth: the warmth of Christ's love. And in the midst of this coldness flowing in from outside and the warmth rising from within, the revelations of the spiritual world take place.

There the student finds the truth. Only there. And he finds it by saying to himself: Everything I receive, I receive by going through the phases of development spiritually, just as I went through them physically in the first three years of my childhood. Thus the student must first learn to raise himself spiritually and inwardly through his strengthened ego. Then I must learn to go to the east of my soul, then I must learn to speak, that is, to form concepts, in order to finally find the truth. Only after Christ was on earth and accomplished the mystery of Golgotha can the spiritual student learn to walk such paths; only after Christ has exemplified for him these secrets of soul development, which are laid down in the words: “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”

The student must relive the stages of Christ's life through his own efforts.

The following saying is life-giving:

In the pure rays of light
Gleams the Godhead of the world

We must learn to surrender ourselves completely to such meditative content in our souls. Then we will see how the content of this esoteric lesson is contained within it. But if it is to have a truly life-giving effect, we must forget everything that is our personal interest in physical life for the time we devote to our meditation. When we are completely empty within, completely clear, completely filled with devotion, then the spiritual light shining from outside will illuminate us:

In the pure rays of light
Gleams the Godhead of the world

And now the student allows the third and fourth lines to take effect within himself:

In pure love for all beings
Radiates the godliness of my soul

He will feel warmth—pure, radiant warmth. Only the experiences that come to him during this feeling of warmth have real truth value. Everything else—perhaps exuberant floating in feelings of bliss—is the work of Lucifer.

But if the disciple has brought the last three lines

I rest in the Godhead of the world
I will find myself
In the Godhead of the world—

to fully conscious life within himself, then—yes, then he will grasp the truth.

Thus, in the first two lines, the student has found the path, and in the last three, he has attained the truth. From the two middle lines, life opens up to him. And that, my dear sisters and brothers, is the most difficult thing to attain. How much is spoken in outward life about love for humanity. How little is done, for this is the most difficult of Christ's words to fulfill: Love your neighbor as yourself. To develop pure love for humanity—to love people because they are human beings—whoever does this is truly a Christian, whatever his denomination or religion.

Thus, in a Rosicrucian training program that rightly exists, we learn to walk the path to the spiritual world under the guidance of Christ—by looking to Him. We learn to independently relive His earthly path in our esoteric training. Everything that is necessary for the student's esoteric life is given to him in the esoteric lessons. All his questions, whether spoken or unspoken, are answered through what is given to him in these lessons. He only has to listen carefully and apply everything correctly so that it can live and sustain his soul. And he follows the path of discipleship in such a way that his inner independence is not compromised in any way.

Such a Rosicrucian path is only possible after Christ's stay on earth. In the past, the disciple had to take every step in such a way that the guru guided and directed him. By looking at Christ and truly esoterically understanding His words as they have been given to you today, we learn, without our independence being touched, to maintain our self completely and to look at the guiding words we have received today: “I am the way, the truth, and the life—the way to find the great universal guru—the Christ.”

Wisdom lives in the light (thought)
Wisdom shines in the light (feeling)
The wisdom of the world shines in the light (will)

Record D

There are three essential powers that we must acquire after our birth. These are: walking, speaking, and understanding. On the surface, they are just the natural result of our growth; but for the esotericist, they have a very deep, inner meaning. By learning to walk, we learn to find balance within the three dimensions of the physical world; through thinking, we are led to the truth, and speaking gives life to the truth. Esoterically speaking, one could say: Learning to walk is learning the way. Thinking is learning the truth. Speaking is learning life. In this respect, the first three years of life become the most important, because they correspond to what Christ said when he spoke: “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”

If we want to understand the words of Christ or his parables, we must go back to the first three years of childhood. These reflect the last three years of the life of Jesus of Nazareth, when Christ walked on earth. We must go back to our childhood to understand what Christ said.

In the meditation given to the disciple:

In the pure rays of light
Gleams the Godhead of the world

• which can be continued day after day for years before any results can be seen, depending on what our karma allows - there will come a moment when we are completely filled with peace, as if floating in the light, without initially distinguishing anything specific. Then a sound will reveal itself to us in that space in which we feel surrounded on all sides, a sound unlike anything we can hear in the outside world, but a sound that fills the space and announces to us the inexpressible name of God. At that moment, we will know that we are hearing the unutterable name, and something highly significant will have happened to us. When we hear this sound, we will know that we have come into contact with something that we perceive spiritually as the East.

When the student has heard this sound, he makes a vow to himself that he will consider all other sounds and noises he may ever experience to be impure in comparison to this sound.

We must reject every other sound or noise we hear in meditation and regard them as deceptions that Ahriman wants to impose on us as truth. Even the mysterious knocking that can sometimes be heard is produced by Ahriman and shows the effect he is trying to exert on us. Anyone who pays even the slightest attention to such sounds or knocking, anyone who does not adhere exclusively to the sound described above, endangers their entire esoteric training. Something like this can hinder progress for years to come.

While that sound resounds within us, we feel surrounded by light that fills the room. And in this light, a second sensation arises within us, namely that of an icy cold. In this cold light, one feels completely alone, as if one were the only person in the room.

When the esotericist then immerses himself in the next line of his meditation:

In pure love for all beings
Radiates the godliness of my soul

then the icy coldness will be transformed into a warmth flowing in from all sides, a warmth that is pure love from the spiritual spheres, that love which is true life.

I rest in the Godhead of the world
I will find myself again
In the Godhead of the world

Therein lies the whole secret of our unity with Christ.

Over the years, we have looked more and more closely at the Christ event as a historical event in the course of human development. Here, in this meditation, we find Christ as our highest guide, our highest guru, who will lead us directly when we turn to him. In pre-Christian times, people needed a

guru on the physical plane; in order to progress, they had to adhere strictly to the guru and obey him. Since Christ has been on earth, he has become the guru of all people. In the esoteric sense, anyone can be a Christian, whether Hindu, Parsi, Muslim, Catholic, heretic, Protestant, or even Jew, for it is the “Christ within us” that can be found by all.

In this influx of warmth, we become aware for the first time of what love is. “Universal love” has become a trivial expression in recent times; people cannot even begin to imagine it, much less understand it. If the esotericist wants to catch a glimpse of this love, he must feel enveloped by that warmth and at the same time say to himself in deep humility: I know nothing yet of universal love for humanity; I must first begin to learn it.

Record E

For a student, nothing more is necessary than to understand what the exercises are about. Three things are especially necessary when a person enters the physical realm. They must learn to walk, to speak, and to understand (think). We will only be able to correctly grasp and fulfill our task here if we think about what Christ taught during the last three years of his life. He taught what was most important to him when he said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”

The way is connected with walking, truth with learning to understand, and life with speaking. So in the spiritual life, on a higher level, we must do what the child learns to do in its first three years: walking, speaking, and understanding.

When we learn to walk, there are three directions in space to consider. The same is true of learning to walk spiritually, where certain directions must also be observed. We start from a state of complete rest, which is essential. Meditation must also end in such a state of rest, whereby we vow that we will recognize as truth only that which sounds back to us as a tone at the end of meditation. Everything else that sounds back to us in knocking tones and other noises must be considered deception until it has become harmonious. Only the sound from the spiritual world that echoes back to us in the silence after meditation is what is referred to as the “ineffable name of God.” When we hear this “word” after meditation, it will become clear to us what is meant by the two lines of the meditation:

In the pure rays of light
Gleams the Godhead of the world

is meant to refer to the spiritual East, which is meant here. With this knowledge of God, something else arises in us to which we must pay close attention. Namely, in the following words:

In pure love for all beings
Radiates the godliness of my soul

a feeling of inner coldness and loneliness will arise within us. The room will become empty for us, and even our thoughts will disappear, until later a feeling of inner warmth rises. As a result, we become free from egoism. Between these two moments, however, lie the revelations from the spiritual world that reveal themselves through meditation. Christ can be seen for a few moments as a reward for our efforts.

Record F

I am the way, the truth, and the life.

I am the way; this is connected with man's learning to walk, the truth, learning to think, and life. Man's learning to speak is connected with this. Walking enables us to orient ourselves in space; thinking enables us to comprehend the truth; and speaking gives us the inner warmth that belongs to the coldness of thought.

The spiritual tone comes from the East and brings vision. The inexpressible name of God is the revelation from the whole world. The first three years of human life on the physical plane teach humans to walk, speak, and think. The first three years of a child's life and the three years of Christ's teaching on earth have spiritual connections, but they can only be understood in this comparative way.

Do I know universal love? No, I know nothing about it. Universal love is loving a person because they are human. It is Christ in the human being that we love; Christ. He is always there!

Only the sound that works within meditation, during the influence of pure thought that floods the room, only that sound may come to the student from the spiritual world; he must not listen to anything else.

Record G

There are three important things that every human being must learn: walking, speaking, and understanding, that is, forming concepts.

Through walking, he learns the way,
through understanding, he learns the truth,
through speaking, truth comes to life,
so that we can translate this into the words of Christ Jesus: “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”

Every human being must turn back and “become like children,” that is, learn these three things that a child accomplishes in its first three years of life.

In meditation, when we fill ourselves with the meditation material after first allowing ourselves to become completely still, we will hear a voice coming from the silence, and we will know that it comes from the east, where all spiritual things originate. It will be as if we were detached from the meditation material and floating in space. We learn, in a sense, to walk, to orient ourselves in space. All other voices that we think we hear from the spiritual worlds are misleading: they are the whisperings of Ahriman.

Then, in meditation, there are moments when everything seems cold and sober, we feel completely alone, left to ourselves. These moments must be, for now, with the words:

In pure love for all beings...

we feel the warmth of the soul pouring through our bodies.

Between these two—the spiritual light from the East at the beginning and the feeling of warmth in the soul, of life, at the end—is the only time when a revelation from the spiritual worlds, the truth, can flow into us.

Only meditation that is permeated by Christ has value. There is a word that has become trivial in the world, the word “love for humanity.” One could say that only those who admit that they know nothing about it are beginning to understand it in its earliest stages.

Only one has taught it in the truest sense: Christ Jesus himself.