Humility and Truth: Foundations of Occult Development

GA 266II — 29 March 1911, Prague

Esoteric Lesson

Record A

If we want to follow the path of occult development, we are given certain formulas from esoteric training that have the power to develop our higher spiritual organs when we use the formulas or sayings in the right way. They have been given to us by the masters of wisdom and harmony of feelings (mantra: daily verse for Wednesday).

If we want to immerse ourselves in the first lines of our morning exercise:

In the pure rays of light
The divinity of the world shines forth

if we allow these words to affect us in their literal sense, we will achieve nothing for our elevation into the spiritual world. For we must understand that we cannot see the divinity in the physical rays of the sun, but that it is to be sought in its high spirituality behind the rays of the sun. The rays of the sun are only the outer garment of the divinity. We should not take an image of the outer world for our meditation, but such an image should be created from the spirit.

First of all, we must begin by freeing our thoughts from everything that reminds us of our outer environment; we must be able to forget everything that moves us in our daily life, both large and small; all external impressions must be silent within us.

Once we have prepared ourselves in this way, we immerse ourselves in the verses with our thoughts and feelings in the right way. After practicing this meditation for a longer or shorter period of time, we must try to empty our soul of these thoughts as well. This brings the soul into a state of rest, and when the mind is silenced, the higher members of the human being rise out of its physical body and it enters the supersensible world.

However, the student has not yet achieved everything. For if he is not in the right state of mind and has not prepared himself for a long time by working on his faults, that is, if he enters the spiritual world without the right humility of mind and without proper knowledge of his bad qualities, this spiritual world will appear to him in a false light, just as if a person were accustomed to wearing red-tinted glasses in a room and had forgotten to take them off when leaving—he would see everything outside in a red light, completely different from how it really is. The occultist would judge things in the supersensible world just as wrongly if he saw them through the colored glasses of his personality. For example, he would not see the beings around him, let us say the angels, who are one step higher than human beings, as radiant beings, as they must be seen in reality, but they would appear to him in terrible animal forms or other grotesque apparitions. If he were to encounter beings on the astral plane who stand between angels and humans—that is, Luciferic or Ahrimanic beings—they could appear to him as shining angels in hypocritical, seductive forms. indeed, these beings could appear before him in the form of the Masters of Wisdom in order to lead him astray, because he is still too much dominated by his pride and his own personality. The occultist should be especially careful about this and make sure to let go of his pride. Because only with the greatest humility in our hearts and through unlimited reverence for the divine can we prepare ourselves if we want to walk the occult path.

There are also other formulas that can lead to the development of the higher organs, to imagination, inspiration, and intuition. However, the exercises can also be performed incorrectly and misunderstood, leading us down the wrong path. For example, if one were to meditate with a certain sense of self-importance: Yes, a part of the divinity itself rests within me! In this way, one cultivates arrogance within oneself and ends up merely strengthening one's personality, and one quickly forgets that a part of the divinity can also be found in every animal, in every plant, indeed in every creature of God. But in order to enter the higher worlds, we must leave behind everything that is personality in the physical world. Above all, we must also acquire a subtle sense of truth. For if the occultist lacks this, he will soon realize that he must bear the consequences. The occultist must not content himself with the excuse that he believed he was telling the truth. The occultist cannot get away with this, for he is responsible for every word he utters, and the consequences of untruthfulness fall back upon him, even if he believed he was speaking the truth. In our ordinary life it is often difficult to stick to the truth; things often have a tinge of untruthfulness about them. How often do we hear people say, “I believed it was the truth.” It is not easy to enter the path that leads to the higher worlds.

A good means that everyone can use to gain greater clarity about their own personality is to set aside certain periods of time in their lives, at least once a year, perhaps on their birthday. Then we should ask ourselves: What good and bad deeds have I done during this period? If we examine ourselves seriously, we will find in most cases that our good deeds do not originate from our personality, but that we allowed them to happen out of an inner impulse. This inner impulse is our guardian angel, who drives us to do good deeds. On the other hand, we should not rely entirely on this and think at every opportunity: The guardian angel will give me the impulse – because that would be completely wrong; the guardian angel would soon leave us, that is, in a certain sense.

If we continue these exercises for a number of years, we will find that nothing contributes so much to discovering and improving the faults of our personality as this listing of our account. In this way we will gradually prepare ourselves to walk the occult path in a fruitful manner, by freeing ourselves more and more from our personality, emptying ourselves in a certain sense, so that the Christ principle can enter into us in the way Paul says: “Not I, but Christ in me.” — This filling with the Christ principle frees our personality from egoism and leads to the contemplation of the highest. The name “Christ” is not actually the name of the principle it is meant to express, for the divine power that this name designates is beyond words. Therefore, the masters of wisdom and harmony of feelings did not pronounce this name when they spoke these words in their hours of consecration:

Ex Deo nascimur
In - - - morimur
Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus

Record B

Prayer to the spirit of the day. [Wednesday for Thursday]

When we gather for an event such as the one to be held here today, we begin with a formula to inspire us in the right way; we speak to the spirit of the day. These formulas are mantras and are very powerful.

We stand today on the eve of a particularly auspicious day for an esoteric hour, on the eve of Thursday, the day of Jupiter, when, in addition to the great spirit of the sun standing behind us, we also call upon the spirit that is best able to inspire us in the appropriate manner.

You all have certain exercises to help you meditate in the right way, and this is actually the technical part of esoteric life. These exercises must be repeated day after day with energy and perseverance. The aim is to fill the soul with content that can gradually lead it up into the spiritual worlds.

This content, which at first must fill the soul completely in thought form, excluding all other thoughts and mental images of the physical world, all worries and cares, etc., should live in the soul as long as possible, as vividly and pictorially as possible.

For many, because of their karma, filling the soul with this meditative content will have to remain the only and correct form of meditation for a long time.

On the path that a person takes when they devote themselves to esotericism, they will see how weak they are when they step out into the great macrocosm, and how selfish they are when they try to penetrate their own inner being. It would be wrong for man to say: God is within me, the divine seed is within me, so I need not look outward. No, the Logos is everywhere, in the stone and in the plant, in the animal and in man. It reveals itself out there in everything! The sun is its garment.

And when we look at man: are these shells that surround him like a coat? No, they are our tools, with which we are to work, not our coat, which is of no concern to us. And when the hammer is broken, it can only be used for work again if something else has been done with it.

All egoism, all vanity must be eliminated in the occultist.

Two things are required of us: First, to fill ourselves with the content of meditation, to permeate our whole soul with it. Second, to empty our soul completely of the content of meditation. It does not remain empty, but the spiritual world flows into it, and the student knows this from the moment when all subjectivity has been overcome in him. But only then is it the true spiritual world, for otherwise he can become a deceived deceiver. It may seem to him as if the master appears to him, but in reality it may be that evil beings have taken on his mask.

In occultism, truthfulness is an absolutely necessary condition. One must not only believe that something is true, but one must first investigate it, and only then can one say anything about it.

One day a year, one should take time to look back on the year, for example on one's birthday, and go through all the events of the year in detail. It will then become apparent that we have done more good in this year than we thought, but upon examination we will also see that it was not we who did the good, but our good angel, while we did everything that was botched.

Record C

In the pure rays of light

For example, spend a long time thinking about a spiritual sun from which the deity shines into the world; forget yourself completely—then let the words fall away—; then, over time, the spiritual world will reveal itself.

Do not meditate on: “There is a divine self within me.” This does not lead to humility. Without humility, it is easy to caricature angels as animals or similar creatures and Luciferic spirits as beings of light. Even if an occultist has reached the stage where he has consciously been in the presence of the masters and does not remain humble, but perhaps boasts about it to others, it is easily possible that evil spirits or even evil occultists will use the mask of the masters to lie to him and lead him astray.

Without humility, even when researching, for example, the Atlantean conditions, errors are easily made, so that the spiritual, the etheric parts outside of human beings, are not seen there.

An unconditional striving for truth is also urgently needed; even communicating an incorrect assertion in good faith has serious karmic consequences.

When you give up your personality in meditation, everything easily flutters away in the higher spheres. Instead, hold fast to the words of the Apostle Paul: “Not I, but Christ in me.” The Christ principle then holds everything together.

It is good to look back from time to time, for example on one's birthday; one will gradually come to the realization that one has not done the good oneself, but that something within oneself, the guardian angel, has done it; on the other hand, that one has botched many things oneself. Therefore, look up to this guardian angel.