Elemental Worlds and Spiritual Hierarchies: Rosicrucian Meditation Practice

GA 266II — 15 March 1911, Berlin

Esoteric Lesson

Record A

As explained last time [January 17, 1911], our meditations should be guided by the motto: “Constant dripping wears away the stone.” The study of theosophical works is an effective preparation for the exercises. It is better to have read one work twenty-five times than five books five times each; and anyone who has read a book two or three times should not imagine that they have read it at all. If we have experienced this or that in our meditation on a particular day of the year, then, if we have really studied in the meantime, we will be able to experience much more on the same day a year later. It is good to keep the same exercise for long periods of time; that is much better than constantly changing.

Through study, we should not only enrich our thoughts, but also develop certain feelings. In simple sensations, one can find the starting points for something much deeper. For example, we should become attentive to the sensation of touching something, such as an object, or of being touched, such as being held by the hand. We can feel a clear difference when we imagine the sensation that is aroused in us when we touch a snail or when a snail crawls over our hand without us knowing. If we develop these different feelings well, we can form a concept of the difference between the subliminal and the supersensible world.

The entire physical world with all our sensations related to it is a maya or illusion. We can imagine it as a field or a plain; above it is the supersensible world, below it the sub-sensible world. The supersensible world is such that it can be connected with the feeling of being touched, the sub-sensible world, on the other hand, with the feeling of touching.

In Rosicrucian teaching, the sub-sensible world was always called the elemental world, the world of the elements of fire, air, water, and earth.

One penetrates to the element of earth by meditating on triangles, quadrangles, pentagons, and geometric figures in general. This should be done by writing these figures with the finger of one hand on the palm of the other hand, then letting go of all thoughts of the hand and the writing, and focusing only on the sensation of writing on the palm of the hand as if floating freely in space, and immersing oneself in this sensation. In this way, one gradually grasps the element of earth.

The element of water is grasped by thinking of a fixed, material point and another, moving point that moves in a circle around the first. Then you should write this in your hand again and proceed as with the first figure. The second point should be imagined as continuing to rotate.

For the element air, imagine two fixed points that want to flee away from each other, but first describe a kind of semicircle around each other and then strive apart into infinity.

If we proceed with this figure in exactly the same way as with the previous one, then we grasp the element air, not merely feeling the air passing by us, but really grasping it.

For the element fire, imagine a closed figure like a loop or a figure eight. You should particularly feel that there is an intersection in the middle where the curve touches itself.

These exercises should be continued uninterrupted for a long period of time. They are not easy; one must first acquire a certain amount of practice, firstly in feeling the sensations in space without using one's hands, and secondly in holding the figure. But then this exercise leads to an understanding of the elementary world; one learns to grasp it.

However, it is a rule without exception that these exercises also make you selfish. Therefore, you should never perform them without at the same time developing universal compassion in your soul for everything that gives people joy and pain.

When ascending into the supersensible world, we are actually seized by higher beings who use us as their instruments, just as we use our eyes, ears, etc. The danger in this experience is that, in the negative sense of the word, one becomes increasingly lost in oneself. It is therefore necessary to develop courage and fearlessness at the same time. Then we can calmly allow ourselves to be seized by spiritual beings in the spiritual world, so that we feel: now an angelic being is inspiring us, now an archangelic being, and so on. Imagination leads to the sub-sensory world, inspiration to the supersensible world.

One can see how these two directions, upward and downward, are united in the Rosicrucian path. As a clairvoyant, it is necessary to learn to distinguish strictly between the elemental world and supersensible beings; between what appears here in the physical world as unity. Anyone who were to see both together, in one image, the being and that which is its elemental expression, would make the grossest mistakes and confuse everything. In the beginning, it is not easy to separate the two realms, because both astral and devachanic vision exist, but one gradually learns, when looking at a being and rising upward, to descend immediately in order to find the elemental aspect of this being below the physical world, just as when looking at an object, one can immediately look down to see its reflection in the water.

The Saturn state could not be described if one could not, on the one hand, rise to beings such as the spirits of will or spirits of personality, and on the other hand, penetrate into the element of fire. Similarly, for the Sun state, one must recognize the spirits of wisdom and the archangels, as well as the element of air. In the description (in the “Secret Science”), both are given together: how the thrones let Saturn's warmth flow out, and so on. However, it is necessary to perceive this as a duality when observing it.

One must prepare oneself to see and hear things in the spiritual world that one has never seen or heard here below. Those who only expect to find what they already know over there will never be able to enter the spiritual world. This is also what is expressed in the second sentence of our Rosicrucian motto: In - - - morimur. Only when we die in Christ can we be resurrected through the Holy Spirit. This is expressed more clearly in what is, in a sense, a commentary on our two-part motto given to us by the Masters:

In the spirit lay the seed of my body ...

Record B

We have already seen last time that we should not long for new exercises, but that it is precisely when we do the same exercises every day with unwavering faithfulness (example: “Constant dripping wears away the stone”) that they will have a fruitful effect on us. Feelings will arise that will lead us up into the spiritual world.

The same applies to reading theosophical books. A theosophist should not believe that he really knows a book after reading it three times. That is as good as not having read it at all. And instead of reading five books five times, he should rather read one book twenty-five times. We will then notice the results in ourselves; they will flow unconsciously into our meditations and form milestones on our path to the spiritual heights.

We must imagine all things around us, the entire world of physical sensory perception, as a large, wide field (a surface). Above it spreads the supersensible world, below it the sub-sensible world. (Imagine the sensory world and the ordinary world of thoughts bound to the brain [maya] as a surface, a field, above it the supersensible world [hierarchies, etc.], below it the sub-sensible world, of which the highest sphere is the elemental world.) How do the two differ?

We face the sub-sensible world as if we were grasping it, and the supersensible world as if we were being grasped. If we imagine, for example, that we are touching a snail or that it is crawling over our hand, we can see the difference. If we imagine these two different sensations often enough, we will find the difference between the supersensible and the sub-sensible world.

If we now want to learn to understand the sub-sensible world or elemental world, we would do well to imagine geometric figures such as triangles and squares and meditate on them. Then we will become attuned to the earthy realm. We should do this as follows.

First, we draw the triangle with one hand in the other, then we transfer the movement into free space, as if it no longer concerned us, but still evoking the same sensations in us as before, when we drew the figure in our hand.

If you want to understand the watery element in the elemental world, imagine a point around which another point rotates continuously in a circle. Again, draw it first in your hand, then transfer it into the free air, but in such a way that you imagine both the movement and the sensation it triggers.

If you want to immerse yourself in the airy nature of the elemental world, you must imagine two points that first move around each other in a semicircle, but then flee and lose themselves in space.

To finally become attuned to fire, one must imagine a point that is repeatedly touched.

These last two symbols must also first be drawn in the hand and then transferred to the free space.

If we meditate on these symbols in the manner indicated, we will already notice how we settle into the elements, how we recognize the beings that live in them. At the same time, however, we will feel that we are becoming more and more selfish. These exercises can only be beneficial if we simultaneously develop a counterbalancing sense of general compassion, universal sympathy, which makes us perceive every cry or sound of lamentation, every sound of pain in our surroundings as if it sprang from our own tormented breast.

And just as the danger of egoism is great when we settle into the sub-sensible world, so the danger of being lost in the world is no less great when we live our way up into the supersensible world. It is indeed the case that we become possessed by higher beings; they move into us, take possession of us in order to work through us. It is now important to preserve our “I,” our own self, and not to let it be lost. Courage, fortitude, and fearlessness help us to do this. It is completely useless to fear in advance any misfortune that may befall us. On the contrary, one should bear one's karma with courage and fearlessness; it does not help to be afraid of it. From the outset, one must imagine that one will find something different in the spiritual world than in the physical world. It is spiritual beings that we encounter there. If we now live our lives in such a way that we want to find the spiritual beings in their element, we will easily be led astray. It is true that through such exercises we can understand the former planetary states and learn to put ourselves in them. But only experiences in which intuition awakens the imagination are beneficial. If, for example, we imagine the thrones and spirits of the personality at work on ancient Saturn and at the same time the element of fire, we will be misled by our mental image of Saturn. We will only understand it if we are able to imagine both—the spiritual beings and the element—separately. Fire as something separate, as a mirror image. The same is true of the sun and the moon. The spiritual beings, whether they be the Angeloi or Archangeloi, work from above. They want to enter into human beings, take possession of them, in order to work through them on earth. We should open ourselves to them, but without giving up our ego.

(Working our way into the supersensible world [is] connected with the feeling of being moved by the hierarchies that want to work through us, which in the sub-sensible world [is] connected with the feeling of being moved; keep the two separate. For example, when meditating into the Saturn state, if the thrones and spirits of the personality appear in association with the element of fire, this is incorrect and misleading. One must clearly perceive the two as separate. Up to the hierarchy, a descent into the elemental realm and back up again.)