Transforming Thought: Perceiving Spiritual Reality Beyond Matter
GA 266III — 5 March 1914, Stuttgart
Esoteric Lesson
Record A
We know that everyone who strives for esoteric development must gradually transform their entire way of thinking, must do things differently than in ordinary sensory life, so that we can find the way into the spiritual world. We must learn to think differently, so to speak, and our entire life of perception and feeling must also be transformed and become different from what it has been up to now. What is our thinking in ordinary life? We are accustomed to thinking that thinking takes place in the physical body, but this is not the case; it is the etheric body that is the real cause of our thoughts. Our physical body has something to do with it only insofar as it is the mirror for our thoughts, reflecting the image back so that it can reach our consciousness. We can illustrate this with an example.
When a person looks in the mirror, they see their reflection; the mirror gives them the external impression of their physical form, that is, a shadow of their external personality. In the same way, the thoughts that have their living seat in the etheric body when we think them are the reflected shadow images of our physical brain. What is the purpose of the concentration exercises we are given? They serve to gradually detach us from the shadows of our thoughts by concentrating, by contracting ourselves in our etheric body, so that we can penetrate to the real source of our thoughts, which have their life in the etheric body.
It should become increasingly clear to us that not only are our thoughts shadows, but that all our perceptions are actually nothing, and that only the spiritual world exists as reality. The “naive” person, in the philosophical sense, says that what he perceives possesses “being.” What is “being” actually? Philosophers have tried in all sorts of ways to get behind being. The spiritual researcher knows that the word “being” is derived from ‘seeing’; it means what one has seen; it is actually a participle of “seeing.” However, no human being can see being in the physical world because it resides in the spiritual world; but the spirit can only be seen when matter is not visible. Matter is actually “nothing”; it is surrounded by the spirit, which is reality. This can be illustrated by the following example.
If you have a bottle of seltzer water in front of you, you can see through the clear water, but you don't actually see the water; instead, you see the shiny globules of carbon dioxide rising like glowing pearls. And what are these sparkling, glowing pearls other than empty air bubbles, filled only with a substance that is much thinner than water, which is “nothing” compared to water! So what you see here is nothing; on the other hand, you do not see the real water in which they rest.
Thus we must come to the realization that the entire space around us is filled with spiritual realities and beings and facts, and that where we perceive the things of the physical world, there is nothing, only a hole. When we stretch out our arm, we push it through the spiritual world; we do not feel it; only when our hand strikes against nothingness, against matter, do we feel resistance. In reality, we do not see the objects in space, but the contours of the spiritual world that delimit these objects.
When we have reached the point where we have let go of everything shadowy, both in our thoughts and in our external environment, we grow into the spiritual world. However, in order to be able to enter the new world in the right way, we must already transform our entire thinking in the physical world through esoteric development, so that we can correctly see through and judge the things and facts of the spiritual world; for it is a completely new world for us, but a world of greater reality than the one we have known until now.
We enter a world of real things and beings, and we connect with it, we grow into this world. It permeates us, we lose our earthly thoughts to this world; one could say: we lose our head to that world, as the beings and things of that world draw us in, as if we had stuck our head into an anthill. Then our awareness of the elemental world dawns upon us. As our soul life grows stronger and stronger through the concentration of our thoughts, so that our inner self can separate itself more and more from the physical body, the things of that world appear before the eye of the soul in ever clearer imaginations and visions; we will realize that everything we have thought on earth that is good, benevolent, and noble has been transformed into imperishable imaginations that continue to give value to the universe in its afterlife, and that everything bad, evil, and indeed all base, selfish thoughts remain behind as waste products. This becomes that which is in itself barren, but which becomes nourishment for that which is to develop from the seed of good. Just as here on the physical plane the mineral soil provides the nutrients for the plant world, so everything that is badly thought becomes the sediment for the thoughts of good, true, and beautiful that germinate in the elemental world. That is why the occultist can so quickly conceive of evil and falsehood and imagine it in his mind. But he does not allow it to go any further; he knows that he must only go as far as the point where it remains a thought; he does not allow it to pass into action, into reality. He only allows it to prepare the ground from which the seed of good can grow.
And this is actually how it happened in the world order; this is also how the mineral kingdom of the earth came into being. On the old moon, the Elohim conceived error—that was appropriate there—and out of this arose matter, the mineral kingdom on earth, and out of this earthly substance—earth dust—Yahweh-Elohim was able to create man and give him his physical shell.
But Lucifer, who now stands on a similar level as the Elohim on the old moon, still wants to carry this out. He can only use humans to do this; he can only conceive of error within humans.
We want to develop into an organ of the spiritual world, just as we have developed our physical organs into organs for sunlight. The seed for this lay within us, and likewise the seed for that spiritual development is present within us, but we can only unfold it through strict self-education. In the book “How to Know Higher Worlds,” various means are indicated which, through concentration and so on, enable us to free ourselves from the physical body, so that through this division of our being we can cross the threshold of the spiritual world and see the real spiritual reality.
The following lines express how one should relate to the physical world and to this new spiritual world.
They can be meditated on in any way by those who have already received a saying or verse for their meditation; those who do not have one can meditate on the first verse in the morning and the second in the evening. The third verse should only be meditated on from time to time, as a kind of test to see how far one has progressed in achieving what was sought in the first two verses.
1st Stanza:
I turn to things
I turn to them with my senses;—
Senses, you deceive me!—
What flees existence as nothing:
To you it is being and essence;
What must seem futile to you,
Reveal to my tantra.—
“I must achieve this”: it is a statement about the new outside world.
II. Stanza:
Spiritual light warms me
Let me feel willing within you.
Good thoughts, true insights
As I experience you shining
Webs of error, evil thoughts
Reveal yourself to the luminous soul
That I may weave within myself.
This is a question, the experience of a new being, within oneself.
III. Stanza:
Luminous I and luminous soul—oneself—
Floats above true becoming
The imagined, the recognized
Now becomes dense spirit being.
And like light pearls of existence
Lives in the sea of the divine-true
What deceives the senses of existence.
In anticipation of the truth. It is a guessing, a feeling of the new self. - That is the experience of truth, the experience in the spiritual world.
Each of these verses contains, elaborated, the same thing that is condensed in our Rosicrucian motto into the ten words:
Ex Deo nascimur In Christo morimur Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus.
Record B
I would like to add the following verses as meditations for those who have not yet been able to obtain a saying for meditation. Meditate on the first verse in the evening after reviewing the day, the second verse in the morning, and the third verse from time to time.
- (E.D.N.)
I turn to things
I turn to them with my senses;—
Senses, you deceive me!—
What flees existence as nothing:
To you it is being and essence;
What must seem futile to you,
Reveal to my tantra.—
II. (I.C.M.)
Light of the spirit, warm me
Let me feel willing within you.
Good thoughts, true insights
How I experience you shining
Webs of error, evil thoughts
Reveal yourself to the luminous soul
That I may weave within myself.
III. (P.S.S.R.)
Luminous I and luminous soul—one's own self—
Floats above true becoming
What is imagined, what is recognized
Now becomes dense spirit-being.
And like light pearls of existence
Live in the sea of the divine and true
That deceives the senses of existence.
The last verse should only be considered from time to time as a test of what has been experienced in the other two meditations, which will then become clear and obvious to us.
These meditations elaborate on what is condensed in the ten words of the Rosicrucian prayer: E.D.N. - I.C.M. - P.S.S.R.
The etheric body is the originator of our thoughts; our physical body has something to do with it only insofar as it is the mirror of our thoughts, reflecting their image back to us, thereby making our thoughts recognizable to us. — Through our concentrations, we should attain the ability to detach ourselves from shadow thoughts. By drawing our soul, our self, into the etheric body, we should attain pure thinking, which has its seat in the etheric body. We must realize that all our perceptions are nothing and that only the spiritual world exists as reality, that it is true being. If we understand the word “being” correctly, we come to the realization that the whole space around us is filled with spiritual things and beings that are realities, and that where we see physical things and beings, there is a hole, a nothingness. When we stretch out our arm, we pass through the entire spiritual world—only when our hand encounters nothingness, matter, do we feel resistance. In reality, we do not see physical objects in space, but only the outlines of the spiritual world.
No one can see being because it rests in the spiritual, and the spirit can only be seen when matter is not seen. If we have trained ourselves to let go of the shadowy aspects of our thoughts and our surroundings, then we grow into the spiritual world. However, in order to find our way into the spiritual world, we must first transform our entire way of thinking here in the physical world. Esoteric development helps us to see the things of the spiritual world correctly.
Record C
I turn to things
I turn to them with my senses;—
Senses, you deceive me!—
What flees existence as nothing:
To you it is being and essence;
What must seem futile to you,
Reveal to my tantra.—Spiritual light, warm me
Let me feel willing within you.
Good thoughts, true knowledge
How I experience you shining
Webs of error, evil thoughts
Reveal yourself to the luminous soul
That I may weave within myself.Luminous I and luminous soul—oneself—
Floats above true becoming
That which is imagined, that which is known
Now becomes dense spirit.
And like light pearls of existence
Live in the sea of the divine and true
What deceives the senses of existence.
[Regarding the first stanza:]
Sensuality, you deceive me - a feeling of being bound to the physical body; to be harmonized
Reveal yourself to my inner being — E.D.N. Attaining this belief
[Regarding the second stanza:]
Line 1: Plea to the spiritual light
Line 2: A power of the soul: willing feeling and feeling will in the spiritual world
4th line: Pleading question, questioning request!
6th line: Another request!
7th line: Only a request to experience the distant good and evil in a distant future. Between death and birth, our deeds are distant. - I.C.M.
(Regarding the third stanza:]
Feel more and more at home in the clairvoyantly perceptible world. Self-examination! To what extent can you really experience what is given there?
What deceives the senses as existence is experienced by the adept as world life. - The last three lines are a calm statement of spiritual events.
If we meditate on these three formulas with the sensations, the higher hierarchies promise us their help, and we can then say, “We are coming closer to you!” and they will reach out their hands to help us, and they will keep their promise. - P.S.S.R. as truth. “Being” comes from seeing.