Maya, Lucifer, and the Esoteric Path to Spiritual Consciousness

GA 266III — 12 March 1913, Munich

Esoteric Lesson

Record A

It is our task in our esoteric lessons to become clear about our meditation. We must make ourselves expectant and be prepared for things to turn out differently than we had imagined. The esotericist must relearn. Even in daily life, he must change his concepts and evaluate things differently, giving them a different meaning than he has done before. We will see how this can be the case with our exercises, for example. There are often complaints about falling asleep during the evening exercise. The esotericist is inclined to regard this as a deficiency. In truth, this is not the case. Falling asleep can even mean progress. Of course, one must make an effort to stay awake during the exercise. But if one is nevertheless overcome by sleep, this is not a mistake. It may even be that the exercise continues after falling asleep. When you wake up again during the night or in the morning, you should try to remember where the exercise was interrupted by sleep. Then you will have the feeling that the exercise continued after all, that something continued to work within you. This can gradually lead to progress and, little by little, to entry into the spiritual world. We are always told that the trained person must be fully conscious in the spiritual world. However, it can also happen that the person is only half conscious in the spiritual world at first. It is not a mistake if the student tries to remember what happened during his sleep when he is fully conscious afterwards.

The reason why the student so easily loses consciousness and falls asleep is because everything we experience in the physical world is maya, and what we would experience in the spiritual world without being prepared would shock us. That is why the higher beings dampen our consciousness until we have gained enough strength to face the shocking experiences and endure them. We fall asleep because we are not yet allowed to experience them. When we have gradually matured through our dreams and other experiences to the point where we can endure the shocking, it no longer seems so terrible to us. We are so surrounded by Maya that we are entangled in it in everything we are and do. If we consider, for example, the four little sentences that people always believe to be true, we can immediately see how words that we use every day deceive us. These are the four sentences: “I am” — “I think” — “I feel” — “I want.”Of all these, only the first is really true: “I am.” Thus, it becomes clear to us that our thoughts are usually not thought by ourselves, but are imposed on us from outside: through social conditions, through other circumstances, through the environment of human beings. Human beings are stimulated from outside to think, feel, or do this or that. It is precisely the great illusion when man says: I think, I feel, I want.

If man had become what the progressive hierarchies wanted him to be, then everything would have been different; then man would have experienced an imaginative world in his sleep, albeit different from what it was on the old moon. The images they would have seen in this state would have been remembered during the day and would have guided and enriched them in their lives. But now Lucifer has taken possession of our thoughts and thereby clouded the imaginative world. He thinks in everything within us. When we enter the spiritual worlds and attain vision, we experience that Lucifer thinks in this way within us, and this is a very shocking experience. That is why the good divine beings veil Lucifer from us in order to protect us. So it is not Lucifer who darkens our night consciousness.

We see, then, how wrong it is to say, “I think.” The esotericist can also see this clearly when he meditates. Thoughts rush upon him, and despite all his efforts, he cannot get rid of them. He is very sad that things are going so badly, but he experiences that it is not he who produces these thoughts, which are so much stronger than himself. He sees that even the dreams, which are so often incomprehensible, come from outside him. In reality, most thoughts, about two-thirds, come from Lucifer. He thinks in human beings. People have completely wrong mental images about thinking. The value of thinking does not lie in how much one learns, understands, and how much knowledge one has, but in how one progresses through thinking, what powers one develops through it. This can be seen, for example, in scholars who have a great deal of knowledge but are no further along from a spiritual point of view than they were in their student days. Such people are said to have dried up, and the clairvoyant can actually see how their astral body has shrunk. One should say: It is not I who think, but Lucifer who thinks in me. If Lucifer had not intervened, then when people desired something while awake, they would have had images from their memory, and these would have guided them, not external circumstances. When people become aware that other beings are thinking within them, they can say: It thinks me. This can have a good effect on them if they connect it with the right feeling, namely piety.

With the second word, “I feel,” it is easier to see that it is completely wrong. The instincts and desires that live within us are not produced by us, but for the most part they control us. Two-thirds of these feelings, or at best half, come from Luciferic and Ahrimanic beings through the Maya of the outer sense world. Human feeling would have been completely different if only the progressive beings had been at work. Then, at night, human beings would have been in a world of archetypes. There they would have seen, for example, the archetype of a flower. When they saw the flower during the day, they would have seen the archetype at the same time as etheric forces surrounding the plant. In this way, forces also interweave human beings, and when they make this a feeling and a perception, it can have a beneficial effect on them. They can recognize the plant as something akin to themselves and bring the togetherness of all beings back to consciousness in the mantric words: “It weaves me.” But this must happen with the right feeling, with feelings of gratitude.

In the last words, “I will,” it is most clearly seen that this is an illusion. One need only possess a little exoteric self-knowledge to see that it is actually nonsense to say, “I will.” If only the progressive hierarchies had worked on human beings, this illusion would not have arisen. But through the Ahrimanic influences, he has fallen into the great illusion. The whole outer world is Maya. When we have a cut flower before us, it is not truth. The flower is only truth when it is stuck in the earth and connected to its roots. It is the same with human beings. In truth, they cannot be thought of as separate from the rest of the world. Just as the plant is connected to the earth, so is the human being connected to the cosmos and its forces. It is only through the Ahrimanic forces that the human being has come into Maya, feeling himself to be an individual, separate being. If he had become what the advancing hierarchies wanted, he would have always remained conscious that world forces flow through him. The esotericist can bring this to consciousness, feel connected with these cosmic forces, imagine himself effective in the weaving forces of the world and the undulating, surging activity of these forces. These words are not chosen out of affectation, but they contain emotionally what is to be awakened in us through them. And our impulses of will should also be influenced by the active, ruling world beings, by saying to ourselves: It affects me. But this mantra must always be connected with a feeling of reverence.

These three formulas: It thinks me with piety, It weaves me with gratitude, It influences me with reverent awe, can be used by the esotericist in various ways as meditation, either together or individually, at different times of the day, even between other activities. They can have a great effect on him. There have been people who have worked with these formulas throughout an entire incarnation and have come a long way.

However, the central meditation for the esotericist should always be what is summarized in the ten words that always conclude these reflections: the Rosicrucian motto. We must feel how wisely these words have been chosen, so that their deep meaning can already be grasped emotionally in their sound. It is not without reason that the saying begins with two (e)'s: Ex Deo. For these words say that when man awakens, he descends from a divine-spiritual world or is born into his physical body. And this body is not, as is so often believed, something lowly. What remains in bed when modern man withdraws from it in sleep is lowly only because he has corrupted it in the course of incarnations through heredity. As the body was originally given to man, it is a sacred temple, a great work of art. And how humans feel this when they return to the physical body, when they wake up, is expressed by the two (e)'s in Ex Deo. The vowel (e) always means joyful amazement. The (o) in Deo then means the soul embracing the physical and etheric bodies, as the sound (o) always means embracing. But this is followed by another sensation, a kind of shy recoiling before this sanctuary. This lies in the (a) of nascimur. The (i) of this word expresses the ego or self-consciousness that awakens through immersion in the physical body and etheric body. The (u) of the last syllable signifies the completion of the union.

In the following three words, the middle one always remains unspoken, because we are then to fill ourselves with what cannot even be hinted at by sensual sounds. In these words, we are to experience, not only intellectually but also emotionally, even through the sound of the words, how the human being flows into Christ, into the spiritual world, when leaving the body. In the (i) of In, we feel the emerging essence of the human being, in the (o) of morimur, the spiritual world that receives him, ready to embrace him. Then the (i) and (u) follow again, in which one can experience the completed fact of the I embraced by Christ.

In the last four words, the consonants play the main role. The (p) (r) in Per means something that is placed in a certain relationship, in this case the soul, which has entered into a relationship with the spiritual world. The two (s)'s at the beginning of the following words are the vibration, the oscillation of the soul, the undulating weaving of the spirit within it, which is expressed in the physical and manifests itself in the formation of the spinal cord. The two (t)'s express the individual nature of the human being living in the spirit. In the r of the last word, the purely spiritual, the absolute, the calmly willing, from which the weaving, undulating spirit world springs forth, speaks to us, which speaks again through the two (s)'s of the last word.

Thus, in the sounds of these ten words, we already have something that should be effective in our feelings if we grasp it correctly. Much of what has been said in this consideration has already been discussed earlier; it is simply that these things must be viewed from different perspectives.

Record B

It thinks me
It weaves me
It affects me

We should have a feeling as if we were being warmed by a luminous spirit body that has been created within us by the power of the mantra. Lucifer approaches us as we fall asleep. Ahriman approaches us when the body is separated from the astral body and the ego.