Spiritual Preparation and the Auric Eggshell

GA 266III — 10 November 1913, Nuremberg

Esoteric Lesson

We want to discuss something that may be of value for our entire esoteric life. This esoteric life aims to give us something that we, as ordinary human beings, do not yet have. We behave toward the spiritual worlds like children. If you are a sensible educator or teacher, you do not let children do only what they want to do on their own. That is to say, parents and teachers do not educate children by allowing them to do whatever they want. One must look not at what is, but at what is becoming in the child, and organize everything in education accordingly. This is also true in play, for example; one gives a child a toy gun, because with a real one it would cause harm.

The same applies to people when they seek the supersensible worlds. If they were given the means to enter them too early, they would only use them to their detriment, causing harm before they are truly ready to enter them.

Children must be treated as beings in the process of becoming. This is also expressed in their games. A boy plays war, a girl plays mother and child with dolls.

As beings in the process of becoming, esotericists must also be treated by spiritual teachers and guides, and they must be given what they need for later. Our earthly development is progressing. When we enter new incarnations, it will become clear how important and necessary it was to have studied Theosophy in this life. People will want to remember their spiritual experiences—they do not yet do so—but they will. Those who have not taken up Theosophy will find nothing; they will brood, they will yearn and pine for something that they cannot find in their memory.

It is important, immensely important, to devote oneself to the esoteric life, even if one does not yet consciously enter the spiritual worlds in this life. As a necessary preparation, however, we should engage in spiritual work. It is important, immensely important, to devote oneself to the esoteric life, even if one does not consciously enter the spiritual worlds in this life. However, we should regard spiritual work as a necessary preparation. We should banish everything else from our thoughts and feelings. When meditating, when concentrating, it is the basic mood of the soul that is so important.

Let us imagine a little cake breaking out of its eggshell and slipping out. What is the difference between before and after? Before, it was completely enclosed in the eggshell, which was its world. Everything the cake experienced, it experienced as images within the eggshell. Where is it now when it breaks through the shell? It is now on the other side of the shell. Its experience, its perception, expands as far as its senses reach, i.e., into a much larger space than before. In comparison, life in the eggshell seems tiny.

In exactly the same case, the human being who lives in the ordinary sensory life is like the little cake in the shell. Everything around him is projected as an image and appears so large to him only because he is enclosed inside and has no other standard of measurement.

We look up at the blue sky and see the stars. Astronomers calculate their orbits and what they call their laws. And in truth, they see nothing more than the eggshell. In our astral body, we all carry such an eggshell with us—an auric eggshell, a shell. Only that in the case of the cake, it is condensed into physical form, and in our case, it is not. That is why we do not notice it. Materialistic science, for example, sees the sun as nothing more than a hollow sphere or imagines it to be filled with substances similar to those on our earth, only in different states. In reality, however, it is the center of our I. Or when we look at the evening or morning star, we know as theosophists that the forces corresponding to our etheric body are at work there.