Divine Thought, Karma, and Spiritual Weaving in Esoteric Development

GA 266II — 19 November 1912, Hanover

Esoteric Lesson

Those who enter esoteric training naturally strive to reach the higher worlds, but most imagine the events that then occur to be different from how they often manifest. It is the visionary life that seems most desirable to many and that must indeed come about; but it is not primarily important to experience this; what matters is a certain state of mind. As soon as esoteric training has begun, the soul changes under the influence of the exercises given to the esotericist according to his individuality. And now it is to be regarded as the main thing that attention is paid to such a state of soul in the finest and most subtle way.

It has often been said in esoteric contemplations how the meditator must allow complete calm to enter his soul after meditation. At first, the meditation still plays in the soul like a sound that slowly fades away. Then this too must disappear from the soul. The soul must become empty, completely empty, in order to receive the spiritual worlds. This must be practiced with patience and perseverance. One must remain calm, even if one experiences nothing for a long time. One must rejoice that one has achieved this calm at all.

Without knowing it at first, one can experience something in such moments, which are most fruitful for development. One may have the feeling: now I have experienced something. It may seem like a dream. But experiences can also come to the esotericist in other ways. When we get up in the morning and go about our daily activities, it sometimes happens that we suddenly have the feeling: now I have experienced something. We should pay the greatest attention to these moments, because after a while another feeling will come: we feel that we did not think this thought ourselves. It was like a fleeting thought, immediately forgotten, but it was there, we experienced it. And such an experience is very important. We should focus our entire attention on it more and more. For in that moment, we did not think ourselves, it was not our ordinary ego that thought, but that which passes through all time and eternity as divine thought.

It thinks me — the great world thought thinks me. Esoterically, this is expressed in The Guardian of the Threshold: “World thoughts live in your thinking.” Esoterically, one says: It thinks me. Therefore, if you let this mantric saying pass through your soul often—it can be done immediately after meditation or during the course of the day, in every leisure hour, wherever you go and stand—it will have an infinitely strengthening, energizing effect on the soul. But you should not let these words pass through your soul as a simple sentence; you must fill your soul with them and feel a sense of deepest piety. Esotericists should make it their duty never to say this as a mere “sentence.”

Now there is a second sentence that we can apply in the same way. First of all, we must look back on ourselves. Most people, when faced with the blows of fate that strike them in life, wonder how it is that this has happened to them. The esotericist should always keep the thought of karma in mind. We are indeed to blame for everything that happens to us. If we allow this thought to live within us, we will gradually come to understand karma, to become aware of the connections that exist between the divine-spiritual world and ourselves, and how our destiny, our karma, is worked out from these underlying forces.

For this purpose, the second mantric sentence should live in our soul in the same way as the first: It affects me; expressed exoterically: “World beings work in your will.”

When we let the words of this second sentence sink into our soul, we should feel the most sacred awe and reverence, the deepest devotion.

There is a third sentence. If we allow this to work on us as well, we can gradually come to feel the weaving of the divine hierarchies of the higher worlds in our soul body. (“Test of the Soul,” 1st picture; Capesius.) It weaves me. This is the content of the third mantric sentence, which we should let work on our soul in the same way as the first two. With this sentence, we should feel the greatest gratitude toward the high, great spiritual powers. Exoterically, this sentence is expressed as: “World forces weave in your feelings.”

In the exercise, for example: I rest in the divinity of the world ... we should not feel the personal I, but the divine I. Of course, we cannot eliminate the word “I,” but it should be felt as the higher, expanded I. The personal I with which we live in the physical body must cease at death and pass into the higher I. It dies into the world ego — 1.C.M.

We must feel yet another feeling, the feeling of powerlessness, of powerlessness toward the divine-spiritual worlds. We ourselves cannot maintain our physical body overnight, during sleep, nor can we prevent it from decaying. Divine-spiritual beings do this for us. We come from the spiritual worlds from which we originated and re-enter the physical body upon awakening; the spiritual forces sustain and form us: E.D.N. (Father principle).

In order to experience E.D.N. in the right way, we must fill ourselves with the thought that everything we are, in our thinking, feeling, and willing, is given to us by the Godhead: it thinks us, it weaves us, it works us — we are born from it: E.D.N.

Then, throughout our lives and incarnations, we have obscured and darkened this divine soul being within us. We have surrounded ourselves with a world of visions that originate from our own being, not from divine primordial beings. Through esotericism, we must penetrate to the point where, when we pass over, when we enter the spiritual world through the gate of death, we have freed ourselves from this darkening that has enveloped our entire being like a visionary cloud.

When we have succeeded in doing this, we will find union after death with the spirituality that permeates our cosmos, the Christ. We die into the Christ: 1.C.M. - and this gives us the opportunity to absorb the pure cosmic forces to build a purer physical body for the next incarnation.

Our body is given to us by the forces of nature; we absorb these father forces into our being; through Christ we have come to the Father: “I and the Father are one.” “No one comes to the Father except through me.”

The connection with the spiritual worlds, which we can already find in our physical life through esotericism, helps us to go through this path and thus absorb into our intellect and morality the spiritual stream that flows to us from the spiritual worlds—and that is the Holy Spirit. P.S.S.R.

I think: the descent of the spiritual archetype from the Father forces that lie behind the zodiac.

It affects me: to die into the etheric body of Christ, which encompasses the zodiac, and in it

I am woven to receive the new that is given to us through Christ from the Father's forces.

The same as in the exercise: I am—it thinks—she feels—he wants.

Explanation of the various meditation exercises.