The Gate of Death: Esoteric Development Through Silence and Devotion

GA 266II — 10 January 1912, Munich

Esoteric Lesson

Record A

Through our esoteric exercises, we want to achieve complete concentration on a single thought, then allow a void to enter us and wait to see what flows to us as a result of our meditation. 'What we achieve depends on the strength of our perseverance. One might think that varying the exercises would lead to faster progress than doing the same exercise for a long time, but the most profound esotericists have always claimed that they have achieved the most by doing the same exercises for years with great patience and perseverance.

It may happen that a person only has one opportunity in their life to meet someone who can give them a spiritual exercise, but then never sees them again on this earth. However, if this exercise is done correctly and the karma of this person is favorable, it can be sufficient for their life and bear fruit until they finally find their teacher in the spiritual realm.

The esotericist will notice that by using his powers for his inner development, certain faulty characteristics that he already had will become more pronounced. These characteristics include, for example, an increased tendency to criticize other people. All people criticize. However, the esotericist should realize where this desire to rebuke others comes from. Through the exercises, we increase and strengthen our sense of self, our ego, and this criticism is a desire to assert ourselves over others, to be something special, a need for separation. Esotericists lose interest in many external things that they used to pay a lot of attention to. This goes so far that some esotericists feel that they no longer see as well as they used to. Most also complain about losing their good memory. From the last esoteric lessons, we know that this lack of attention to the environment is wrong. It can happen that someone does not do their exercises intensively enough to fill the inner emptiness with spiritual content, which they no longer wish to fill with their former interests. This gives them an urgent feeling, a driving restlessness, the need to fill their inner emptiness from outside. Then they fall all too easily into the temptation to criticize the outside world. This criticism is understandable and justified in a way, because after the person has closed himself off from the external world and is now stepping out of himself again, he wants to assert himself to the world. However, there is an egoism in this which should be suppressed, just like criticism. When we achieve this, the energies that we would otherwise have wasted will turn inward and enrich our soul life. The need for separation is entirely justified for the esotericist, because only in solitude can he make progress. For most ordinary people, the feeling of loneliness is unbearable. The esotericist, however, should accustom himself to the fruitfulness of solitude. In this way, he greatly promotes his esoteric life. A person who longs for the outside world, for company, fragments their energies in this longing. It is as if this longing were scattering away from them in all directions into space. They should now take care to gather these energies within themselves, to turn them inward, so to speak. They will gain greatly from this.

The esotericist must also develop another, seemingly opposite quality. It is opposite to the first only in the same way that the right swing of a pendulum is opposite to the left: one results from the other, and yet they are directly opposite. Thus, it is necessary for the esotericist to bring two qualities into balance with each other, like the swings of a pendulum: first, the fruitfulness of solitude, that is, the strengthening of egoity; and second, complete devotion to the point of self-sacrifice, of forgetting oneself, to that which comes to us as duty from outside.

When we have reached the point where our heart longs for solitude in the midst of our surroundings, where this actually hurts us, where we suffer from it and yet we still give it our full, devoted love, then we have achieved the union of these seemingly contradictory qualities.

A third quality we should practice is silence about our esoteric experiences. In undeveloped people, the feeling of having to keep a secret is almost overwhelming, and being able to speak freely is a tremendous relief. However, the esotericist should bear in mind that this force that threatens to burst them apart must be very strong if they prefer to keep it bottled up inside. That is why it is said: “Learn to be silent and you will have power” — that is, the power to rule within yourself. The occult researcher can, for example, clearly perceive the change, the influx of energy that occurs within a person who, for whatever reason, must suppress the expression of a secret. For example, a person has something on his mind that he would like to tell his friend. As he is about to rush over to him, he meets another acquaintance at the door who has come to visit him. He cannot and does not want to tell him what is on his mind. Afterwards, it is too late to go to his friend, so he must suppress his desire to communicate. The occultist will see that a force has developed in the soul of this person that was not there before and that would not have arisen if the person had fulfilled his desire to communicate. For the esotericist, the saying “What the heart is full of, the mouth speaks” should not apply.

For a non-esotericist, it can sometimes be good and appropriate to speak out, but not for the esotericist. By communicating his innermost thoughts and feelings, he squanders energies that would have been so necessary for his soul. Every time we are able to keep our thoughts and feelings to ourselves, especially those relating to our esoteric experiences and difficulties, we gain a spiritual strength that cannot be lost. But we should talk about general human matters, about things that can be of use to people, but not about our own affairs, which are none of anyone else's business. Where does this need to communicate actually come from?

We rarely feel the need to approach other people because we love them selflessly, but mostly because they have qualities that are important to us, that give us something. We should also abandon the desire to be carried on the hands of other people, so to speak. On the contrary, we should be grateful to them when they treat us badly, because we can use it to practice our powers of productivity. And then we should strive to feel love for people anyway. We will then realize that it is the right kind of love.

Something else that esotericists should refrain from is complaining. What do they complain about? Mostly about the fact that when they begin their meditation, thoughts rush in from all sides. But they should be grateful for this and regard it as progress that they are aware of the reality of the world of thoughts and that it can assert itself in this way. They should simply counteract them with their own strength, for this will increase their power. We should eavesdrop on these thoughts, as they do, regard them as models of how we can concentrate, use them as patterns, and say to ourselves: With the same intensity, we should immerse ourselves in our meditation, then we will attract spiritual forces that will support us. —- It would be a very comfortable meditation if angels or other spiritual beings came before us and swept away the unwanted thoughts.

Once the esotericist has overcome all these qualities and also learned to practice silence in the right measure, he will arrive at what mystics have always called the gate of death, because through his silence and control of his qualities, he has reached a state similar to that of a person who is about to die, in which all his interests are turned away from the outer world. He is turned inward or toward the divine-spiritual. This is also what is meant in the second part of our Rosicrucian motto: In Christo morimur. In Christ we die by completely transforming ourselves and turning back to the spiritual. Ex Deo nascimur: We are born of God and must incarnate ourselves in the physical. It is now our task to develop ourselves in such a way that we can say: In Christo morimur. We turn away from everything physical and rise to the spiritual, which has always been called the Holy Spirit, and are reborn in it: Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus. And as an interpretation of this is the saying given to us by the Master of Wisdom and Harmony of Feelings:

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

Record B

The esotericist must accustom himself to enduring certain feelings and doing and not doing things that the exotericist does not do, including

1. the feeling of loneliness. The esoteric must learn to endure this and be self-sufficient, able to live in what arises in his own soul without feeling unhappy in this loneliness.

The first thing that will happen is that you will see everything in a completely different light. Your interests will change completely.

1. The second is devotion, which the esotericist must develop.

2. The third is silence in the face of frivolous communicativeness.

Through this threefold process, the esotericist experiences the truth: I have come to the gates of death!

Students often complain about their souls being flooded with thoughts during meditation. We should be grateful that we can become aware that thoughts are realities that are stronger than we are. One should not complain, but rejoice when thoughts reveal themselves in this way; they reveal themselves as soul forces. Through silence, certain forces are developed in the soul.

Criticizing and expressing criticism requires a very specific quality in the soul, namely the desire to assert oneself in one's ego, to have something over others.

If one is able to accumulate many such soul experiences without expressing them, one will reach a very specific point in one's development, which every esotericist knows and which is described in all mystical writings as “having come to the gates of death.”

Devotion, how is it practiced? One can crave solitude and yet be ready at any moment to give oneself to another in love, for the sake of the other person and his or her lovable qualities.

Usually, one person seeks out another out of selfishness. He wants something from him. The other person they seek out has qualities that they like. They do not seek their company for the sake of the other person, but for their own sake.

Devotion to inner experiences must be so strong that one completely forgets oneself, surrenders to what rises from the soul, so that one can objectively see the power.

First, the ego becomes stronger in the esotericist. The person strives for separation and alienation from other people. When the person feels a longing for other people rising within them, they must say to themselves: this longing causes energy to be wasted outwardly, energy that the person could put to good use inwardly.

The same is true of communicativeness; forces are wasted uselessly. We should remain silent about the things that interest us most deeply, that interest us subjectively; the energy that would otherwise be wasted is turned inward, giving the esotericist a strong force.

On the one hand, we must strengthen our ego, on the other hand, we must forget ourselves.

Meditation should bring the esotericist to the center of consciousness solely through his will, not through memory, etc.