The Sacred Cycles: Death, Christ, and Self-Knowledge

GA 266III — 2 January 1913, Cologne

Esoteric Lesson

Record A

Before we begin our actual esoteric consideration, it must be said, especially for our foreign friends, that we must completely separate ourselves in our esoteric movement from that other movement which is sweeping through the world and which is represented by Mrs. Besant. For reasons of truthfulness, we can separate ourselves from the deeds of a personality, but we must nevertheless retain our love for the personality itself, perhaps even turning our sympathy toward her to a greater degree precisely because we must reject her deeds.

The words of Mrs. Besant from 1906 are read aloud, in which she asks all those who truly love her, when the day of her downfall should come, not to speak of her in black and white, precisely out of love for her. Occultism is a dangerous path, and everyone should be aware that forces can lie dormant in the depths of the human soul that may not come to the surface in ordinary life, but when one enters the dangerous path, they can come to light. It is therefore important to keep a constant watch over one's own soul and to remember the words: “Watch and pray!”

Those who wish to enter the spiritual worlds must first and foremost practice strict self-knowledge. The Essene order, whose exalted teachers in Nazareth also taught the boy Jesus, whom we call the Jesus of Luke's Gospel, the essence of all wisdom that this particular being needed, had two particularly important rules that show us how far removed our present age is from the spiritual. One rule was: Before sunrise and after sunset, no Essene should speak of worldly things. And for those who had risen to higher degrees, this important Essene rule was reinforced by the fact that even thoughts of a worldly nature should not occupy the disciple during the specified time. A second important instruction was: Before the sun rises, every Essene should pray that this may happen and that the power of the sun may shine upon humanity every day. These rules tell us how significantly we are connected with the events of the spiritual world, from which we emerge in the morning and into which we submerge when we fall asleep in the evening.

How little our time lives according to these laws of outer and inner cycles is shown by the behavior of people today during such an outer cycle as the transition from New Year's Eve to the new year. Everything that people do and undertake before falling asleep seems designed to connect them particularly deeply with the material world, instead of using this moment as a time to look back.

This external cycle corresponds to an internal cycle in human beings: that of waking and sleeping. In the evening, humans withdraw their astral body and their ego from their physical and etheric bodies and live with their astral body and ego in a purely spiritual world. Let us imagine the moment of falling asleep until unconsciousness gradually sets in.

So the average person has no consciousness in the spiritual world at night. It may be that clairvoyant moments occur and that they then see in an image what they have left behind down below. Depending on the spiritual and emotional state of the person concerned, they will then see this physical and etheric body; the image will vary according to their temperament and character. Thus, a person who feels that living in the physical and etheric bodies is more like living in a house, whose focus is therefore more on external life, will also see the physical and etheric bodies as a house with a door through which they must pass. A person who experiences the transience of earthly existence more as a mood than as a character trait will see the image of a coffin in which a dead person lies.

If a person has already absorbed some of the spiritual life, it may be that — indicating as a symbol that this physical and etheric body has already been prepared for us by divine-spiritual powers through the Saturn and Sun epochs — the image of an angel, a figure of light, who hands us a chalice, representing the ancient primal word of humanity: We are born of God: E.D.N.

In place of what the Essenes once did in the morning before the sun rose, and which can no longer be done today, the modern esotericist should, in the morning when he immerses himself in his physical and etheric bodies, permeate himself with the sacred feeling: Sublime gods have prepared and built up this physical and etheric body for us through the long periods of Saturn and Sun evolution, so that we may develop consciousness in it. With this awareness, the esotericist will ask God—the spiritual sun that represents the physical sun—to let him have and keep this physical and etheric body every morning when humans step out of the spiritual world to develop consciousness in the physical world. For what would we be if someone took this physical and etheric body away from us overnight? We would be overwhelmed by a feeling of unconsciousness. If we truly penetrate the fact that the gods have built this physical and etheric body for us, then we will experience that our brain (and we can experience this with every limb of our body) is not something bound solely to our physical body, but that it expands into a hollow sphere in which the stars are embedded, moving in their orbits; and our thoughts are these stars that follow their paths. The microcosm thus becomes the macrocosm! The tremendous forces of the entire cosmos are compressed in our brain, and we feel their connection with us. Everything that has led us through Saturn, the Sun, and further through the line of inheritance to our present birth can be described with the saying: E.D.N.

Just as we would have to remain unconscious if we could not immerse ourselves in our physical and etheric bodies in the morning, so too does passing through the gate of death extinguish all conscious life. Before the mystery of Golgotha, through the reserve power given to humanity on its journey, man received, after death, a consciousness that brought him consciousness in the spiritual world. But now this gift of the gods was gradually being used up, and the Greeks knew that after death it was their lot to live in the realm of shadows. This was according to the will of the gods. Consciousness was shadowy and subdued, and that is why the Greeks put these words into the mouth of one of their greatest men: Better to be a beggar in the upper world than a king in the realm of shadows! Through the Mystery of Golgotha, a new substance was created that could give consciousness to humanity when it was in the spiritual world after death. This substance flowed out of the Mystery of Golgotha. By immersing themselves in this Christ substance, human beings are now able to develop consciousness in the spiritual world after death. That is why, every evening when we fall asleep and enter the spiritual world, we should remember this and fill ourselves with the feeling: In Christ we die! For only the Christ impulse can keep us consciously in the spiritual world after death through its life force that overcomes death. But because nothing in the physical world is great and holy enough to understand this mystery that has been given to humanity through Christ Jesus, nothing belonging to the world, not even the sound of language, should be used to hint at this mystery, this great, unfathomable secret contained in what flows out of the mystery of Golgotha. Therefore, the esotericist remains silent in word and thought at the point where the holy name, the unutterable name, should be mentioned. He only feels deeply the holiness of this moment: I. --- M.

But even if human beings have consciousness after death, they do not yet have self-consciousness, that through which they recognize themselves as individual beings in the spiritual world and find themselves again with the brothers and sisters with whom they lived in the physical world. Only the experience of our higher self, which is given to us by the Holy Spirit, can help us to rediscover our being and awaken to self-consciousness in the spiritual world after we have been immersed in the substance of Christ. Through the Holy Spirit, we are given hope: in the Holy Spirit we will rise again! - P.S.S.R. — and awaken to a self-aware life. And so you can sit at home and devote yourselves with fervor and deep seriousness to your meditation, whose fundamental nerve is this primal prayer of humanity: E.D.N. — I. --- M. — P.S.S.R.

And while doing so, you should think of all those who are not here—perhaps for reasons of suffering and pain—and you will send them powerful thoughts if you practice in the right way what our esotericism prescribes. For in the spiritual world, one must first make oneself worthy in order to be able to use what is given to us in esotericism for the blessing of oneself and others.

You should not understand such hours with your mind and brain, but you should awaken a feeling in your soul that tells you that words such as these E.D.N. - 1.C.M. P.S.S.R., given to us by the masters of wisdom and the harmony of feelings, cannot be exhausted by multiple contemplations, but must be taken deeper and deeper. And so today, when you have understood the original human prayer a little more deeply, you should also expect that in later times there can and will be even deeper revelations about it.

The seed of my body lay in the spirit....

Record B

On the esoteric path, a person can fall through untruthfulness,¹ Ambition, etc. In this way, larger communities or an entire esoteric movement can stray from the right path and become entangled in error. Since we know how easily such a fall can befall an individual, we must also understand the straying of larger groups of people. It would be evidence of selfish love to want to remain loyal to someone whom one knows to be on the wrong path. It would also be evidence of selfish love toward Mrs. Besant to close one's eyes to the fact that the direction she represents must be described as wrong and that its further spread can only bring disaster. And Mrs. Besant herself once asked, when she wrote about the Leadbeater case, that she be made aware and warned if she were “in danger of falling.” We are therefore only doing our duty in pointing this out to Mrs. Besant; but it must be clearly understood that this is the state of affairs with her movement, and that from the moment we have recognized this, the doors of our temple must remain closed to the followers of this esoteric movement.

In the Essene community that existed in Palestine before and during the Mystery of Golgotha, there were two specific rules that were given to the disciples of this community at different stages. The one rule that applied to everyone was the obligation not to engage in any worldly activities between sunset and sunrise, and even to refrain from all worldly thoughts. This is a rule that cannot be maintained in our time because we are living in a different cycle of human evolution. For the Essenes, this rule was an expression of the connection between each soul and the cosmos. People have lost the right feeling for the great moments of transition; one need only look at how the transition to the new year is celebrated in cities. People in our time have a tendency to occupy themselves in the hours before going to sleep with the most trivial things that entangle them most in matter. What does it mean for us when a person is in the spiritual world between falling asleep and waking up?

The average person of our time is not aware of this. For the esotericist, the best transition to the spiritual home is possible when, as they fall asleep, they remember the saying: Ex Deo nascimur, etc. This is what replaces the first commandment for us. If this happens because we experience moments of consciousness during sleep, then we will be able to see different images depending on our temperament. For example, someone who, due to their temperament, has a tendency to view their body as the house in which they live will see the image of a house with a door through which they must enter. In this way, they see the moment of their awakening in advance. And those who are prone to melancholy moods, who feel more the decay of earthly forces in earthly existence, will see, for example, a coffin with a corpse in it. And those who, because of their temperament, have a strong feeling that the gods have built the house of their body for them, will be able to see an angel handing them a chalice. All these are only preparatory visions of the imaginative life. Expressed in words, it is: Ex Deo nascimur. The divine beings whom we summarize under the name “Deus” built our bodies during the Saturn and Sun evolutions. If we did not have this physical body to immerse ourselves in in the morning, we would not be able to become conscious on the physical plane. Let us imagine for a moment that the gods would rob us of our physical bodies during the night: what would become of us, since we would then be unable to become conscious! This must make us grateful to the gods.

For an Essene of the higher degrees, there was the additional obligation to pray before every sunrise that the great heavenly body might rise and shine its blessings upon the earth. This too has been replaced in our time by a different feeling. Just as we would be unable to regain consciousness if our physical body were taken from us at night, so it is equally true that we could have no consciousness in the spiritual world after death if we did not also find a body there into which we could immerse ourselves. In pre-Christian times, all souls were clothed after death in a spiritual substance in which they underwent their experiences between death and their new birth. However, this substance was gradually exhausted, and human souls felt this tragically as the time of the mystery of Golgotha approached; so that among the most outstanding people of that time, the Greeks, the prevailing sentiment was: Better to be a beggar in the upper world than a king in the realm of shadows. For in the life after death, one became a shadow. But from the cross on Golgotha, a new substance flowed forth, and with this the souls can clothe themselves so that they can develop consciousness after death. We can feel this in the second part of our saying: /n --- morimur. If we take this saying with us after death, it causes everything earthly to soon fall away from us and we can develop consciousness from this Christ substance.

But since consciousness is not yet self-consciousness, we may also cherish the hope that, in addition to the consciousness we can develop in this body, we will be given complete knowledge, self-consciousness, through the Holy Spirit: Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus. Through self-knowledge, which the Holy Spirit gives us, we prepare ourselves for this life after death.

Love, humility, and self-knowledge can be the consequences for us of our correctly understood saying. Those who meditate correctly on this saying will also receive the strength to help the sick and to send loving thoughts to those who, for example, cannot be here today due to illness or other causes. This should also permeate our exoteric life like a sacramental feeling. In this way, we gain a new perspective on our saying, and this may awaken in us the confidence that in the future we will be able to penetrate it ever more deeply.

Record C

We have gathered here at a significant moment, not only in the exoteric sense, but also in the esoteric sense; for when an occult movement arises in one place, something also happens in another. Wisdom is found only in truth, and that is what we seek. Those esoteric movements that do not go with us must separate themselves from us.

Mrs. Besant's letter from 1906 is read aloud, which she wrote after Leadbeater's fall, in which she asks everyone with these words:

Judge has fallen, Leadbeater has fallen. Should it be in my karma that I too should ultimately fall, I ask all who love me not to confirm me in this. Let us not call black white, but confidently black black. What does one opinion matter in a lifetime? The Masters will set us right again in another. Let this be the rock on which we build. —

Within the Essene school, whose teachers also taught Jesus of Nazareth, there was a rule that said: After the sun has set and before it rises, the student should not speak of profane material things and should not think about them. - That was a requirement at that time. We will see later why it can no longer exist for us, why it has been transformed into something else. No Essene was allowed to fail to do this. Let us consider people today, how little they realize the fact that when a person falls asleep, he enters spiritual regions. This moment, which should be something sacred to us, is all too often desecrated. In the end, people usually connect themselves with all kinds of profane, material things. We new esotericists, however, should always remain conscious of the sacredness of the hour before falling asleep. And when we return to our physical body, we should do so with the same feelings. How would it be, we should ask ourselves, if we no longer found our physical and etheric bodies upon awakening? Gratitude should fill our souls when we re-enter this work of the gods, our physical body, in the morning. If we have a moment of consciousness between falling asleep and waking up, we can experience this in various symbolic ways, see it reflected back to us.

Three examples:

1. One person sees a house with an open door. This is our physical body, through whose gate we are to re-enter.

2. Another person—especially those who are prone to melancholy, though they need not have a melancholic temperament—sees a coffin with a corpse in it. This is ourselves, it is our physical body.

3. Yet another sees an angel holding out a chalice to him. This is how we should feel the deep meaning of our central core saying: Ex. Deo nascimur, which should be viewed from different angles and deepened for our understanding. With these words, we should give thanks to the gods who built our physical body, whom we summarize with the word “Deo.”

Instead of turning away from the profane, as the Essenes do, we fall into complete silence. We do not utter the name of the Most High: In --- morimur.

That we find ourselves again, that we come from consciousness to self-consciousness, we express our gratitude for this with the words: Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus.

Record D

Watch and pray!

If we want to enter the luminous halls of the supersensible worlds, we must learn self-knowledge. Two sayings of the Essene Order, which also influenced the development of the boy Jesus (Lukan, from Nazareth), can give us guidance in this. - The first was: Before the sun has risen and after it has set, you shall not concern yourself with worldly thoughts and affairs. The second: Before the sun rises, you shall pray and ask that this may happen and that its power may unfold over you and humanity throughout the day. - Through these sayings, we should become aware of how significantly our being is connected with the spiritual world from which we emerge in the morning when we awaken and into which we submerge when we fall asleep at night. How little humanity today is aware of such outer cycles and inner cycles is shown by its behavior at the turn of the year on New Year's Eve and by the fact that everything people do before going to sleep seems to be designed to keep them fixed in their bodies and in their physical world.

The budding esotericist should be aware, with a sense of reverence, that at night he leaves his physical and etheric bodies with his astral body and ego and lives in the supersensible worlds until he awakens. Of course, at first they have no conscious memory of this experience, but gradually certain images arise that can fill them with the right feelings toward the physical and etheric bodies they find in the morning. These images will vary according to temperament and character.

Thus, a person whose ego is more actively directed toward the external world may have the image of a house with a gate through which he must enter upon awakening, the house being symbolic of the physical body. A more melancholic person (not in the sense of a character trait, but as a momentary mood) may see before him the image of a coffin in which he himself lies as a corpse. This stems from a person who is frequently influenced by thoughts of the transience of all physical things. Or a light figure appears before the spiritual eye, holding out a chalice, symbolizing that the higher powers are now offering us conscious life in the physical body as a gift of grace. This thought can be deepened immensely by the first sentence of the ancient saying of wisdom, the Rosicrucian saying E.D.N.

When the esotericist awakens in the morning and sees his physical and etheric bodies before him, he should fill himself with the sacred feeling: Sublime gods have built up the physical and etheric bodies in Saturn and Sun evolution, in immeasurable worlds and infinite cycles of time, so that they might become a dwelling place for the spiritual being of man. In this feeling, the esotericist will ask God to let him have and keep this physical body, without which he cannot lead a conscious life. And the esotericist can further imagine that his brain is not something isolated, bound solely to his physical body, but that, because its powers originate in the cosmos, it extends into the cosmos like a hemisphere, on which thoughts are recorded as cosmic forces like stars with their orbits, illuminating the physical body.

Now imagine that the physical body no longer existed. We would be overwhelmed by a feeling similar to stepping through the gates of death, with all conscious life extinguished. For if a certain world substance had not already existed before the mystery of Golgotha, life after death would have been a shadowy, dull unconsciousness. This is what the Greek tragedian meant when he had his hero exclaim: “Better to be a beggar in the upper world than a king in the realm of shadows.”

But now, through the sacrifice of Christ on Golgotha, a new substance has been created into which human beings can immerse themselves in order to shape their lives into conscious ones even after death. Therefore, before sinking into sleep, the esotericist should permeate himself with this thought and feeling: 1.C.M., that is, only through the Christ impulse can I receive a life force that overcomes death, which calls me again and again to conscious life and strengthens me. But because nothing in the physical world is great enough to be compared with what has been given to humanity through Christ Jesus, not even the sounds of language belonging to the physical world should become conscious in order to express the great unfathomable mystery contained in what flows out of the great mystery of Golgotha. Therefore, we esotericists keep silent about the sacred word that pronounces the name of the Unspeakable.

Even if human beings have consciousness after death, they do not yet have self-consciousness through which they recognize themselves in the supersensible world and find their sisters and brothers with whom they were connected in the physical world. Only the higher self, to which the Holy Spirit helps him, can help him in this, carrying him through the gate of death to self-conscious life with the power of life.