Mantric Words for Spiritual Progress and Divine Consciousness

GA 266II — 28 November 1912, Munich

Esoteric Lesson

It is my task today to speak about the progress we are making through our exercises, based on occult experiences. Some will perform their meditations correctly and be able to achieve the calmness that is essential for thoughts and feelings or even visions to enter our soul as a result of meditation. Some will do this for years and perhaps feel as if they are exactly where they started. And yet this is not the case. It must be said that it is very important for the esotericist to pay attention to his soul life, for this is so intimate that the attention must be very sharp if one wants to perceive everything.

When, after meditating conscientiously and well, we devote ourselves to our ordinary daily activities, such as washing and dressing, our consciousness is focused on these activities. It may happen that we have the feeling that we have performed our activities mechanically, without our thoughts being involved. And when we reflect on what our thoughts were doing, we may have the feeling of a faint dream, as if we had not thought, but as if what passed through our soul had thought within us. When we observe something like this, we increasingly get the feeling that something is happening within us to which we can apply the mantric words: “It thinks me.” If we say or think these words in everyday life at every opportunity that brings us a quiet moment, we will become aware that they help and promote our soul life. There is only one thing we must strictly observe: when we say these words to ourselves, even if we only think them, a feeling of piety will arise, and we must connect this feeling with the words every time we say or think them. It would be wrong not to say the words at all in order to avoid saying them in the wrong frame of mind; rather, we must practice always associating this feeling of piety with them. We will then get the feeling that what is thinking within us is related to our I, that the high beings who gave it to us are thinking within us. This should be made clear to exotericists in the words of the Mystery Play: “World thoughts live in your thinking.” (For esotericists, this is expressed in the mantra: It thinks me.)

A second word that is mantric and can help us when used correctly is: It affects me. We know that all hierarchies work in us and through us, that without them we would be nothing, and therefore it is good to become more and more aware that we are entirely their work. And this is contained in the mantric words: It works me. We should think and speak these words with a feeling of holy devotion and reverent awe. In the Bhagavad Gita, this holy book, we have a vivid description in the conversation between Krishna and Arjuna that we should fulfill our prescribed duties and yet keep alive in our souls the feeling for the working of the deity within us. In no other holy book, not even a Christian one, is this pointed out in the same way as in this Song of Songs. Krishna says there: “You should be a warrior or a priest or a merchant, and so on, depending on which caste you belong to, and perform your work conscientiously, for your destiny has placed you in your occupation. But you should stand above your work with your ego and feel connected to the divine.” —

A third word arises from the feeling we must acquire when we realize that forces are flowing into us from the entire universe, that our head comes from here, our limbs from there, all our organs from different sides, and that they are also directed from there. We express this in the mantric word: It weaves me. And we should say and think this only with a feeling of deep gratitude.

So:
It thinks me with piety,
It affects me with devotion and reverence,
It weaves me with gratitude.

We can further increase and support this feeling of gratitude when we return to our physical body in the morning and say to ourselves: I am returning to something that I did not weave myself; I could not emerge from unconsciousness into consciousness if you, Father Spirit, had not created this body for me, and I thank you for this with humble reverence.

We can already carry out our meditation in such a way that we get the feeling: it is not I who think it, but It thinks me. Just as we immerse ourselves in our bodies in the morning between birth and death in order to attain consciousness, so too must we immerse ourselves in something at death in order to attain consciousness, and that is Christ.

This is what the saying tells us: Ex Deo nascimur — in the morning we dive through the Father Spirit into our physical body; In Christo morimur — at the gate of death we must dive into the Christ Spirit. Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus — to live again in the Holy Spirit.