Inner Beings, Karma, and the Path to Spiritual Ascent

GA 266II — 30 October 1911, Berlin

Esoteric Lesson

Record A

When we dive down into our own inner being, we will find many beings there. This may seem strange to us at first, but the further we go, the more we learn to look into the spiritual worlds, the more we will see that a sum of spiritual beings is working on us, often to compensate for the destruction we humans cause in our folly.

Let us ask ourselves: where does illness come from? We know that every illness has a spiritual cause in addition to its physical cause, which is to be found in immorality, passions, or other transgressions in this life, usually in a previous existence. Overcoming every illness releases forces, but this does not mean that one should prolong an illness as long as possible in order to make rapid progress. Rather, everyone must do their part to get well soon. But if they have been ill for three months or three weeks, they should regard this as karma and bear it with patience and serenity.

But there is a second reason why illness is something beneficial. Since the Lemurian epoch, through Atlantis and up to the Mystery of Golgotha, humanity has sunk deeper and deeper into matter. And because we follow our instincts and passions, we would sink ever deeper, being led further and further away from the goals set for us by the Deity.

It is illness that, in a sense, deflects this downward impulse and points us back upward. Today's academic science condemns theosophical teachings as fantasy; but one need only pick up a book such as the Gospel of John or any theosophical book to see how invigorating and refreshing it is, whereas a materialistic or monistic book withers and dries up the soul. And because this purely materialistic thinking only consumes energy, the consequence in the next existence will be that such people will be afflicted with a kind of mental deficiency. Their brains will be a completely spongy, watery mass; they will want to think, but will be unable to do so. This mental deficiency is a blessing that prevents these people from sinking irretrievably, because when mental deficiency occurs in one existence, the brain is protected from materialistic thinking, and the eternal self can work on the core of the being twice in succession in the Devachan and influence it in such a way that it strives upward again.

You have all experienced, or will experience, that in meditation one feels completely detached, the etheric body expands, one feels carried away to distant world boundaries – but suddenly one feels bound again to this world, one cannot escape it, one sits as if in a vice. This is good. It is our karma from previous incarnations that holds us so firmly. If, as a result of the exercises, we were to ascend immediately into the spiritual world without having paid off our karma, the result would be a deep fall. The leader of these hordes that bind us firmly to the earth is Mehazael. We get to know him when we go within ourselves, just like Samael, Azazel, and Azael. We will then truly recognize that our inner being is the field of activity of demons: “And their number is legion!” as it says in the Bible. On our esoteric path, we should get to know these beings so that we become wise and gradually outgrow them. Azael works by balancing out what arises from dullness toward the spiritual world. When we acquire serenity, we take over Azael's work. But this is what serenity is: not rejoicing in joy, nor lamenting in pain, but recognizing in everything the reality of karmic working. We should not only believe in the idea of karma theoretically, but feel that karma is effective in everything that happens to us. Among the stages of Christian initiation, this is the scourging, i.e., facing all the suffering and pain of life that strike us like lashes with serenity and calm, knowing that they are karmically conditioned. That is true serenity.

We know that the physical world is only a mirror image of the astral world, but in such a way that everything appears reversed. An infinitely important meditation to make the words “The world is only maya” effective is the following:

Everything around us is actually reversed. What we see from top to bottom is actually from bottom to top. In plants, the roots are actually at the top and the flowers at the bottom. The starry sky we see before us is the result of spiritual beings that are actually at work behind us. The sound that reaches the left ear comes from the right. We must live ourselves into these facts, even with complementary colors: imagine that the red spots on a person are green, or that the parts of the limbs that protrude are actually tucked in. In a plant, imagine the green as reddish-purple and the brown roots as dark blue. All these exercises should be done with reverence and devotion. This is the feeling we need to have if we hope to get closer to the divinity of the world. Just thinking about it keeps God as an abstraction. If we fill our thoughts with awe, devotion, and humility, then we can hope to enter the spiritual world.

Record B

It can, of course, happen to anyone that they fall ill at some point. Even if the appropriate remedies must be sought, the esotericist should ask himself where the causes of his illness lie, and in doing so he will always come to a spiritual-soul reason for the illness, either a moral or some other perversity, sometimes from this life, but mostly from a previous one. But why do humans have illnesses at all? Because there are impulses in every human being that pull them down and are transformed into upward impulses through illness.

If we use this curve to illustrate human development, then at a certain moment (x), a certain perversity causes the impulse to move downward. Human beings would follow this impulse and thereby be completely lost to the worlds that are the goal of their existence, if the Creator of human beings did not allow illness (K) to occur at a certain moment, which transforms this impulse into an upward one. There are many such downward impulses in humans. This is inevitable when one considers that the entire development from the Lemurian era to the event at Golgotha was actually nothing but a downward movement and that only since that time has the possibility arisen to lead humans upward again. And the time that has elapsed since then is, of course, very short compared to the long periods that preceded it. Thus, there are still downward impulses in humanity that will only reveal themselves in the future. A striking example of this is the whole materialistic school learning. This makes people dull to the spiritual worlds, and the materialists who are now regarded as authorities will be reborn in a next life with brains that will be like mush, so that they cannot serve as instruments of thought. But this only happens so that the downward direction may be transformed into an upward one. For such a person then experiences two successive periods in the spiritual world—Devachan—without going through an earthly life in between that could transform the upward impulses gained in the first Devachan period into downward ones.

For the esotericist, it becomes clear that our feelings, thoughts, everything we find when we descend into our own inner being, are not ourselves, but other beings that exist within our being. (The Gospel says of these: Their name is Legion.) The moment we descend into our inner being, we find these beings striving out in all directions, beings like those we spoke of last time, such as Samael, Azazel, Azael.

But it can also happen that the esotericist says to himself: No matter how hard I try, I am too weak to even perform my exercises correctly; other thoughts always get in the way. But this only stems from those downward impulses that make up our karma. These are the ones that, even if they do not lead to illness, erect a wall around us, weigh on us like a mountain, and prevent us from quickly entering the spiritual world.

For example, a person could enter the spiritual worlds in a few days, given the zeal he displays in his exercises, but his karma prevents this for many years, and rightly so. Otherwise, he would take all his mistakes and shortcomings with him into the spiritual world. But those who meditate constantly with zeal and devotion—preferably on one and the same object, frequent changes in exercises are only a sign of weakness—will certainly have had a certain experience at some point—and those who have not yet had it will certainly experience it later—namely, a certain feeling of bliss, of detachment from the body, as if being carried through space on wings. And when one returns, one feels as if one were in a dungeon, as if one were chained to a place, that one must be enclosed again within the limits of one's body. This feeling also comes from a crowd of spirits, whose leader is called Mehazael in the same nomenclature as before.

These four classes of beings are what we find within ourselves. Their outer form, as they appear to the clairvoyant eye, is not so important; what is more important is how we perceive them. These beings are what the saints and ascetics refer to when they speak of their temptations in their visions. And when they describe the feeling of being attacked with red-hot tongs, they are talking about Mehazael. In esotericism, one works against these beings in a certain sense. For example, those who truly understand the concept of karma, rather than merely grasping it theoretically, attain a certain serenity toward joy and suffering and everything that may happen to them. In this way, one also counteracts Azael, who is supposed to remove the consequences of dullness toward the spiritual world. Those who have acquired such serenity are very attentive to their surroundings. A dullness like that of the teacher we described cannot occur in such a serene person. That dullness is extremely widespread in today's world. Students, for example, who write dictations so diligently, usually do so only because they can do it mechanically, do not need to think about it, and therefore do not know what they have written down immediately afterwards. And those who undergo Christian initiation and attain that phenomenon called flagellation also work against Azael.

The world is Maya, and this should gain meaning and significance for us. Even science has discovered this here and there. In the coming years, it will discover many more occult principles, but no one is paying attention. Johannes Müller, who lived at the beginning of the nineteenth century, already discovered that the world actually shows itself to us in its mirror image. What is in front of us is actually behind us. When we see the sun in front of us, we know that behind us is the spiritual sun, which conjures up the image of the physical sun in front of us. When we see the stars above us, beneath us are the beings who project the image of the starry sky through us. The red color of the face is actually light green; where there is light, there is darkness, and so on and so forth. When we see a flower, we must think of it in reverse: the dark root is colored blue (?) at the top, and the green leaves are reddish-violet.

The retina is not in the eye, as materialists think, but even Johannes Müller, the distinguished physiologist highly revered by materialists but far surpassing them, taught that the retina is out there; the whole world around us is the retina, and the one in the human eye is only a reflection of it. The whole human being is spread out in space.

These are effective imaginations if we perform them in the right way and do not try to capture them with the intellect.

Record C

When a person enters into his inner being, he finds not only himself, but whole hosts of beings enclosed within him, which he must defeat and liberate. If they have to endure a serious illness or some other difficult fate in life, they should realize that this is usually a karmic consequence of a previous incarnation, arising from immorality or other human weaknesses, which then serve in this incarnation to give the person new impulses to move forward by overcoming them. Through the various mistakes that man has made in previous incarnations, he has a tendency to fall into the abyss. Through illness, he receives a new impulse that protects him from sliding down, giving him an impetus to rise up to the spiritual powers. Nevertheless, in the case of illness, one should do everything that a reasonable person can do to get rid of it.

People who are materialistic in this life will be feeble-minded in the next life, with a brain that is too soft, because they have not provided their soul with enough nourishment in this life. If feeble-mindedness did not occur, these people would be hopelessly lost, because a healthy brain would continue to lead them in the same direction as before.

Esotericists often experience moments of great bliss because their etheric body has spread out completely into the spiritual world, and when they return, they feel enslaved, bound. They feel as if they are forged to their physical body with iron chains. Countless hosts of beings cause this, hosts that are named after their leader, Mehazael. The esotericist will always know when they feel this oppressive feeling of being bound, that they are being worked against by the hosts of Mehazael, who want to pull them down. He often feels as if he is being pinched and tormented by red-hot tongs. In Christian initiation, this is referred to as the “flagellation.”

We must not imagine human beings as if they were merely a bundle of drives, passions, and emotions, but rather as if they were enclosed within themselves by whole hosts of beings. The Gospels speak of this fact. For the person who encounters these four hosts, the hosts of Samael, Azazel, Azael, and Mehazael, it is completely irrelevant whether he sees them clairvoyantly or not. The only thing that matters is how he feels toward them. We can learn from this that our entire personality is maya, illusion, and that we find our only support in what belongs to the spiritual world, in our individuality, our higher self.

Record D

Last time we heard that when we descend into ourselves we encounter beings that are not qualities within us, but are real, bundles of beings enclosed by our shells. There was Samael, Azazel, Azael, and Mehazael. We encounter these beings when, after blissful moments in meditation, where we are carried away to other worlds, we return to our own being, in which vast amounts of mistakes, lies, and immorality have accumulated through incarnations; these must be karmically balanced. Through them, we bring the downward impulse into the new incarnation; and through illness and strokes of fate, this impulse is dulled and led upward again. Mehazael works on this karmic balance, and when we return from meditation, we feel as if we were being pressed in a vice. On the Christian path, this corresponds to flagellation.

Whether we progress more quickly or more slowly on the esoteric path depends on our karma; we feel the resistance within us that prevents us from meditating in the right way. It is good to be lenient with ourselves. We must not be selfish and incredibly arrogant in thinking that we are such high individualities that we can enter the spiritual world in three weeks or three months. We should not just have abstract thoughts about the outside world, but develop living forces. The world is maya, a mirror image of spiritual influences that work through us from behind.