Burning the Golden Calf: Overcoming Luciferic Obstacles to Progress

GA 266II — 22 March 1912, Berlin

Esoteric Lesson

Record A

Our occult exercises are intended to lead us to imaginative knowledge. There are imaginations that, in times not so long ago, could be understood by every student without further explanation; today, such imaginations must be interpreted for us in understandable words, because very few esotericists would be able to grasp their meaning on their own. Here we will now give an imagination that will be useful to every esotericist who feels that, despite their efforts, they are not making sufficient progress.

The student should imagine that his teacher or master is standing before him in the form of Moses – even if he has only a vague mental image of this individuality – and that he asks him: So you want to know why you are not making progress on your esoteric path? – Yes. – I will tell you: it is because you worship the golden calf. After these words, the student sees the golden calf beside Moses. Moses now causes fire to come up from the earth, which consumes the golden calf until it is reduced to powder. He throws this powder into some clear water that is there and gives the student some of this water mixed with the powder to drink.

Just a few centuries ago, every esotericist would have understood this image. Now it must be explained in the following way.

When we go back in our memory, we come to the point where our memories end and the ego-consciousness began. What lies before that is what we made of ourselves in previous incarnations and brought with us into this one. That is the golden calf that we worship without knowing it, our shell nature.

The student should now imagine himself in the picture in place of the golden calf as a child who has no ego-consciousness yet. He permeates himself with the awareness that what he feels as his ego is nothing other than a Luciferic influence; for ordinary ego-consciousness is based on memory, and memory is a Luciferic force, since it is precisely Lucifer's task to carry the past into the present. If we subtract from ourselves what we have through ego-consciousness, what remains is what we have brought with us from other earth lives.

It may seem hard to some to have to imagine this, but without such strict concepts we will not be fit to meet the guardian of the threshold.

Then the student should really imagine how the fire burns the child's form, the child form that he himself is; he has only grown a little larger in the meantime, but basically he is still this shell nature that the child also was, only the illusion of the ego has been added. He sees how the form turns to powder, and this should become a strong awareness that everything in these shells of the physical, etheric, and astral bodies should be indifferent to him, like a pile of ashes, as indifferent as clay is to the sculptor before he has made something out of it. His physical body, the form, the outer shape, his etheric body with its memory, his astral body with its sympathies and antipathies, all this must be thought away or thought of as a heap of dust.

Perhaps this cannot be put into practice immediately in life. This does not mean that one should suddenly throw one's arms around someone one has felt antipathy toward; but when we carry out this imagination as an exercise, we must be able to reject all antipathy.

And the dust is thrown into the pure water of the divine substance, just as it was before the Luciferic force had worked in it. Thus, the shell nature is to be sacrificed and returned to the divine substance. But the esotericist also comes to the realization that all that is now only a pile of dust for him has nevertheless been formed out of the spirit. The form of his body was sculpted by the spirit; the spirit made him what he now is in form. And what the spirit has made of him, we are to take back to ourselves. We are to drink again the water in which the dust was dissolved. Then we will have it pure, after the golden calf has been burned, turned to powder, and dissolved. When we do this, we will feel that at first a whole place within us becomes empty; it is the place where the ego usually resides, and we feel it becoming empty. Then one can either become a Buddhist and enter a realm for which human beings should feel worthy: nirvana, an extraterrestrial sphere. Or one can come to a new awareness of the Christ impulse and feel it flowing into the empty place of our ego.

Christ could never have come to earth among the Hebrew people if Moses had not destroyed the golden calf, thrown it into the water, and given it to the children of Israel to drink.

This is not meant to be done every day, but rather at regular intervals—for example, every three, four, or six weeks. It is basically just another illustration of our Rosicrucian motto.

Record B

From the Golden Calf

Many esotericists believe that they are not making any progress on the esoteric path. They would like to be knowledgeable¹ in their exercises and do not know why they are hindered in their progress. — Now, since it is difficult to express what needs to be said in today's words and concepts, an image will be presented to your soul that all mystery students had to go through in the past. Imagine Moses as your teacher and master — the whole thing as a vision — Moses, who, in response to your question as to why you are not progressing more quickly, since you have such a great longing to penetrate the spiritual worlds, answers in a stern tone (you should wait silently for the answer, which very often is not given in the sense of the questioner): “First you must burn the golden calf.” At the same moment, imagine a golden calf standing next to Moses, then fire that Moses calls up from the ground and which burns the golden calf so that nothing remains but powdered dust; and further, imagine Moses stirring this into water and giving it to the meditator to drink.

It has often been mentioned that human beings can only remember back to a certain point in their childhood. What lies before this time has been told to us by our parents and siblings, but we ourselves know nothing about it, for our ego was not yet within us, but worked from outside, and in essence the ego is the union of all our memories. So I am talking about the time of your childhood that lies before your recollection. Imagine yourself as a child, and now put the child in the place of the golden calf. Then let Moses bring fire out of the earth again, which burns and consumes the child. Although in the not too distant past an esoteric student would have accepted such an imagination only with feeling, today we must add some explanations in order to understand it. Some of what is about to be said may sound harsh or hurtful, but strong, gruesome images are necessary to bring about a powerful shock to the soul if we want to make progress in our esoteric life.

There are four thought-feelings that this imagination must trigger in our soul.

The first thought-feeling must be that we admit to ourselves: we have truly worshipped the golden calf until now. We have worshipped our own self, as we have developed physically. Our memories are under the influence of Luciferic forces. What we call memory we owe to Lucifer. Lucifer is at work in everything we have become, whether through incarnations or through heredity. If the purely spiritual is to regain dominion in us, our shells must be burned, pulverized to dust and ashes.

The second thought-feeling is that everything we see and feel outside ourselves means no more than a little dust, not the kind of dust from which new things are formed and created, but like a pile of dust lying on the street, that is how we should feel our own personality. All sympathies and antipathies must cease. Of course, I do not need to show this outwardly. I do not have to embrace someone whom I do not particularly love! That would be false. Internally, however, we should treat everyone equally.

Thirdly, we should awaken within ourselves the feeling that everything around us is only maya. Maya or appearance are also our bodies, including the astral and etheric bodies; the purely spiritual behind them is the I. Only our I is spiritual. Our nose, which has grown with us, is maya, our hand is maya. Only then do we gain the right point of view when we imagine them as something that does not concern us at all, as a tool like any other, a hammer or the like. Everything around us is Maya, is a lie. And doubly false is the mental image we have of ourselves as children, before our memories kick in; because, first of all, everything is Maya, and secondly, we cannot yet remember it. From this realization that everything is Maya, however, the certainty should then grow that behind everything there is the spiritual, that everything we mean is built into us by high spiritual personalities (beings).

And finally, the fourth thought-feeling should be that everything we have worked on in our previous incarnations must also be destroyed. We must drink our own personality, our own ego, which has been completely pulverized into dust and dissolved into water. Then, of course, a desolation, an emptiness will arise in the soul, which longs to leave the earthly realm for rest, for nirvana. The Buddhist stops here, but we know that the emptiness must and can be filled by the Christ impulse, the higher self, which will lead us back up into the spiritual worlds. This emptiness will always be characterized by a feeling of the most devoted, deepest piety toward the spiritual worlds. One should want nothing for oneself, but feel only as a servant of God on earth, as a messenger from the spiritual worlds.

Bring this story of the golden calf, without which it would not have happened – Christ Jesus could not have emerged from the Hebrew people – frequently before your soul. Not every day, but every three weeks for a quarter of an hour, and not just two or three times and then think it is enough, but again and again bring this image before you. Then you will realize why you have not progressed. - Ex Deo nascimur. An esoteric who wants to turn back on his path proves his own unworthiness and weakness. He contradicts the feelings that moved him when he entered the esoteric path. But it is better that he turns back than to carry this untruth through his whole life.

Record C

Many will find that they are not making much progress in their exercises. Here is an imagination that will help you advance if you use it frequently. Imagine your guide on the esoteric path in the form of Moses. He says to you: You long to know why you are not making progress. He makes the golden calf appear before us and says: That is why you are not making progress, because you worship the golden calf. Then he causes flames of fire to burst forth around the golden calf and burn it; then he grinds the ashes to dust, scatters them in the water, and gives us the water to drink. He says: Now you will make progress. - Following this imagination, certain thoughts must arise. We must remember our childhood, the time before our memory, our ego-consciousness, which we owe to Lucifer, existed. Everything that was there before us was built up by spiritual forces as the result of previous incarnations. Instead of the golden calf, the child that we ourselves were appears before our inner eye.

And the same thing happens: flames of fire burst forth, burn it up, it is ground to dust, the dust is scattered in water and given to us to drink. Moses tells us with unyielding severity: It is you yourself who are the golden calf that you worship. Now recognize that the form of the child—which you cannot really imagine, because you do not know it at all, have never seen it—is Maya, double Maya, just like all materiality that confronts you in the sensory world; for you do not know that which holds the substances together, the spiritual. This is true of your etheric body and astral body, for what you know of yourself is memory, and that is Lucifer, is Maya. Likewise, everything that is sympathy and antipathy, everything that you feel far from your ego, is Maya. All this must burn in the fire and become nothing if you want to recognize it. And it must become as indifferent to you as the dust on the street you walk past. When nothing remains of you but a shell, and inside a great emptiness, then you must fill it with the Christ Being. That is drinking the water. As the dust is dissolved by the Christ essence, you will regain your shells, but every limb must appear to you as something outside yourself, merely a tool, like the hammer in your hand; you must be nothing but a tool for the effects and deeds of the spiritual world.