Etheric Body Independence and Spiritual Meditation Formulas

GA 266III — 27 March 1914, Berlin

Esoteric Lesson

Record A

First, it was said how difficult it was that he [Rudolf Steiner] could no longer be with us this winter, but that we only had to feel more intensely at 8 o'clock that we were always united in spirit. Then it was pointed out that if one only did one's exercises seriously and intensively enough, one would also make progress on the esoteric path, even if one did not notice it. One only had to become more attentive to oneself and increasingly get the feeling: It is not I who think, but something thinks me, so that it is not the physical body that thinks, but the etheric body. The physical body is only a mirror or an echo. Just as when you stand in front of a mirror, you only pay attention to your reflection and forget your real form, so too with an echo, you do not pay attention to what you call out, but only to the echo. Thus, you do not notice that thinking takes place in the etheric body and is only reflected in the physical body. The more we make our etheric body independent, the more we experience two things: first, that our I expands into the vastness, and second, that we experience our inner being in isolation, and in the depths we find our other self. The human being in his skin is only like in a shell in which spiritual forces surge up and down stormily; It is as if our thoughts step out of us like figures and surround us. We then experience our good and our evil: our good in such a way that it points to the future and leads a sprouting, plant-like life there; our evil, which must not be allowed to become action, but remains purely thought, so that it may serve as nourishment for the good in the future. The nourishment for our three realms came into being only because the beings who went through their human stage on the old moon consciously experienced their evil in meditation without allowing it to become action. Evil arose on Earth because backward lunar beings, Luciferic beings, meditate on their evil not on the moon but now on Earth and inoculate it into human beings. On the other hand, we must feel our ego spreading more and more in space, not within our physical shell. Experience the environment of the sensory world in relation to the spiritual as air bubbles in water, as spherical nothingness. Experience this often and repeatedly in your thoughts. To this end, we are to be given the following aids: three formulas to meditate on in the morning, evening, and on Sundays. They will help us in the coming period to make the etheric body independent.

The first formula [stanza] expresses what is said in Ex Deo nascimur; the second formula in Christo morimur; the third formula Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus:

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 in you.
Good thoughts, true knowledge
How I experience you shining
Webs of error, evil thoughts
Show yourself to the luminous soul
That I may weave within myself. Luminous I and luminous soul -
Floating above true becoming
The imagined, the recognized
Now becomes dense spirit.
And like light pearls of existence
Lives in the sea of the divine and true
What deceives the senses of existence.

Record B

Even if we cannot be together physically very much, we can always be aware that we are together spiritually. We are not separated, because in the etheric world, where our thoughts touch each other, the separation that exists in the material world does not exist. And we will become more and more aware that our ego expands, as it were, in our thoughts and becomes all-encompassing. This is one of the advances that esotericists should pay attention to, because the independence of our thought life is proof that we are making progress through our exercises and meditations. We feel as if our thoughts are being thought independently within us, not as before, as if we ourselves were producing our thoughts, but as if we felt the life of thought within us surrounded by an ever-expanding spiritual atmosphere, as if we were sending out a part of our ego into our thoughts and thereby becoming spiritually united with that from which we are physically separated. We expand, as it were, into our entire surroundings. And in this feeling of spiritual union with things, it can gradually become clear to us that the true being of things lies in this invisible but real spiritual atmosphere, while the material nature of things will increasingly reveal its unreal character to us.

To realize this more and more inwardly, we can meditate on the following formula:

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.—

But then there are also times when we have to do the opposite, so to speak. We must then feel completely within ourselves, feel as if the second self were arising from within us, which is our true self and which must receive more and more strength. (These two states must alternate with each other.) — And then, feeling our way through ourselves in solitude and gaining strength within ourselves, we will gradually feel, more powerfully than ever before, the good in ourselves and also the evil in ourselves. The good in us will reveal itself to us in such a way that we feel it growing, growing into a distant future where it will bear fruit; and we feel how the evil that is still in us, which we can also clearly picture in our minds, must become nourishment for the growing good. We feel that evil is something dying, while good is something growing, but we also feel that the vigorous growth of good depends on the nourishment it can obtain from the dying evil. We must be able to feel both within ourselves at the same time, the good and the evil, and at the same time know that the evil we can imagine in our minds must never become action; that we know, but must never do.

From this we see once again how serious esoteric training is. For when we clearly realize the possibilities of evil within ourselves, we are simultaneously tempted to act upon them. And we should know that just as we must recognize the possibilities of evil within ourselves and allow them to become ideas for the stronger growth of good, we must also know that we must never, even in the slightest, allow evil to become action.

What we see around us in the natural world and what serves as food for us humans is there because the gods on the old moon thought evil as well as good, just as we must now do. Just as the mineral soil provides nutrients for the plant world, so our mental images of evil within us become the soil from which good nourishes itself. The mineral kingdom of the earth came into being because the Elohim on the moon conceived evil, error; from this came the substance, the mineral kingdom of the earth, and from this substance Yahweh was able to make man, giving him his material envelope. But the fact that we also have evil in this form in our earthly development, in the form of evil deeds and everything that is bad, comes from the Luciferic gods, who did not conceive evil on the moon (where it would have been in its proper place and would have become nourishment), but on the earth. And so the “thinking of evil” of the Luciferic spirits on Earth is the cause of the evil deeds and errors of human beings.

This strong self-awareness of this living I, which begins to feel itself weaving, shining, feeling alive within itself, with clear insight into everything it carries within itself as the future blossoming of good, but also grasping in clear ideas its possibilities for evil, which must never be allowed to pass into deeds, this becoming conscious is expressed in the second formula:

Spiritual light, 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.

And then the self, having become conscious of itself, can turn outward again. But then it is resurrected from itself and recognizes things in their spiritual meaning. It realizes that where the senses see objects, there is actually nothing, that there are openings in a much more real and dense being all around. It now experiences the sensory world as round holes, as “pearls of existence”; it feels itself alive and weaving in the dense spiritual world, which has become real life where the sensory organs perceive nothing. With the third formula, which is meditated upon for this purpose, one can then test oneself. If the other two formulas are meditated every day, for example in the morning and in the evening, the first verse in the morning and the second verse in the evening, then on Sundays, in addition to these two, one can take the third verse in between, as if to test the extent to which all this has become reality. This is then again a confirmation of another formula that is actually contained in these three: E.D.N. - I.C.M. - P.S.S.R. In the first formula, we can feel what lies at the basis of sensory existence as true creative powers: E.D.N. - In the second, we go into solitude, as if we were dying, in order to find within ourselves that which knows itself to be united with Christ: 1.C.M. - And in the third, we rise from ourselves, are reborn in the spirit, and recognize the spirit being: P.S.S.R. - As I-beings, we must develop into an organ of the spiritual world.

Luminous I and luminous soul -
Hovering above true becoming
That which is conceived, that which is known
Now becomes dense spirit-being. And like light pearls of existence Live in the sea of the divine and true What deceives the senses into thinking it is real.

However, these formulas must be meditated upon, then they will bring great progress. It is not enough to know their content: even the most advanced esotericist, who has known all this for a long time, must meditate on them again and again in different ways.

Record C

My dear sisters and brothers.¹

Each of us cares deeply about progress in esoteric development, and many students ask themselves: Am I really making progress in my spiritual development? Yes, every student who conscientiously applies the exercises they have received from their teacher is making progress; and many who do their exercises punctually and conscientiously may be making more progress than they realize. They must not believe that anything tumultuous will occur during their exercises or as a result of them, for the spiritual world approaches us quietly and intimately.

Of course, one thing is certain: everyone who wants to find the way to the spiritual world must rethink their entire life of perception and feeling. But this “becoming different” is so often misunderstood. People like to think that they can transfer the knowledge they have acquired on the physical plane to the spiritual worlds; with the same means by which they have made themselves intelligent beings within the physical world, people believe they can also become knowledgeable in the spiritual world. The esotericist must learn to understand that the means by which one progresses on the physical plane are completely different from those that must be used to penetrate the spiritual world. The student must learn more and more to feel his way into the spiritual world through his devoted feelings. he must learn to tell himself that in meditation it is not so much the content of the thoughts that matters as the whole attitude, the mood of the soul from which the meditation is made. It is these that transform the soul and gradually develop the organs of the soul. Such a devoted, reverent mood of the soul not only works into the astral body, but the esotericist will also increasingly come to feel his etheric body. And that is a very important moment for esoteric development when this moment occurs.

Make the following clear to yourselves, my dear sisters and brothers: I stretch out my hand and touch the blackboard. In the physical-sensory sense, one would say that there is an object that my hand has encountered resistance from. This is correct for physical perception. In the spiritual realm, however, where I touch the blackboard, there is nothing. There is a hole, a gap in the spiritual world. Nothingness, holes are in the spiritual world where physical objects are in the physical world. But before my hand reaches this “nothingness,” I stretch it through a spiritual world, which in turn is empty, a nothingness, for physical perception. But this world is spiritually filled with realities — with spiritual beings. When we think through what has just been said as students of spiritual science, we must learn to say to ourselves: So when I look at something physical, what I actually see are the outlines of the spiritual world. The student must bring himself to this realization. He must see the spirit behind everything, and only then will he see the physical in the right way.

When he looks at an autumn landscape, what does he see? Something passing away, dying in the physical realm — but behind it he already senses the new, living seeds that are breaking free from the dying: the new life that is escaping death; that is still spiritual, but will clothe itself in matter in the spring.

A very simple example can show us that where there are objects in the physical-sensory realm, there is nothing in the spiritual realm: Take a bottle of seltzer water. You do not see the water. You do not see it in front of the glowing balls of sparkling carbon dioxide. They are only air: nothing. You do not see the water, the physical, in front of these pearls of carbon dioxide. In the same way, you cannot see the spiritual in the midst of the physical. The dazzling things of the world of perception conceal it from us.

Once the esotericist has come to terms with this fundamental truth, that he is surrounded by nothingness in the physical-sensory sense, a second truth will soon dawn on him, the truth: It thinks me, not: I think. For so long he believed that his thoughts had value in the world, but now he is gradually learning that there is a world power in the spiritual realm which creates by thinking. And that all human thinking is only a shadowy reflection of this world thinking, which is produced by a sublime spiritual being, to whom thinking is as natural as sensory perception is to humans. He learns that these human thoughts are only shadows reflected in the physical body and have only the value of shadows, which are indeed a necessity for the physical world, but which he must transform through his meditation so that the shadow images become realities.

He learns to look upon his proud thinking with ever-increasing humility. He asks himself: How can I transform it so that, through the transformation of these shadow thoughts, I can create a tool for gradually entering a spiritual world?

By striving in this way to detach himself from these shadow thoughts, the student will gradually succeed in concentrating his self in the etheric body. He will no longer feel himself to be a human being only in his physical body. He will also increasingly perceive the physical body as a shadow in which he must experience himself here on the physical plane. When a person suddenly steps in front of a mirror, it gives them the external impression of their physical form, but that is not the person themselves; it is only a reflection of the person. When they step back from the mirror, the image—themselves—is no longer there. But they are still there, even without the mirror. The mirror only gives a shadow image of their external form.

If the student has trained himself to recognize the shadow-like nature of our thoughts within ourselves—to recognize how these thought shadows exist in the outer, physical world, in science, in society, how we ourselves, as physical human beings, are only shadows of our own inner being—if he has cultivated this as a basic mood of his soul, then he grows into a spiritual world.

He looks back into the past from which he has become what he feels within himself at this moment of his soul's development. And he looks into a future that lies ahead of humanity. And he recognizes

Everything has arisen from the thoughts of the sublime spirit. [How can I free myself from all the shadowy thinking around me?] How can I learn to think in such a way that, as a human being, by drawing close to this being in devotion, I will be accepted by it! He realizes that everything we produce on earth in thoughts of goodness, benevolence, nobility, and love is transformed into lasting, imperishable values of existence that do not pass away like fleeting shadows—that will continue to exist. We see them before us—perhaps still far away, in the future. There they live, there they are effective for the good of humanity! And we see that everything evil, bad, and deceitful also lives on! It does not pass away! We see all the base, selfish thoughts of human beings in the distance, but we know that they are waste products of human development; they are fruitless in themselves. But they do have their purpose: these waste products serve as nourishment for what is to develop as good. Everything bad becomes what is to develop as nourishment for the seeds of good.

Just as here on the physical plane the mineral soil provides nourishment for the plant world, just as the “fertilizer of the stones” makes the plant possible, just as one thing always nourishes another, so all evil thoughts, all that is recognized as bad, will be the sediment for the thoughts of good, noble, and true that are germinating in the elemental world.

Through such knowledge, the occultist can interpret the bad, the erroneous, the evil that he sees in the world. He sees it around him, he should imagine it in his mind, but he knows that he must not go further than this point, where it is thought. He does not allow it to pass into action, which is always Luciferic-Ahrimanic. He looks calmly at all that is bad and evil, knowing that it will one day become the soil in which the seed of good will grow.

This is actually how it happened in the evolution of the Earth. For how did the mineral kingdom of the Earth come into being? When the Earth did not yet exist, on the old moon, the hierarchies, from the beings who were then human beings up to the spirits of form, gradually worked their way up to what surrounds us in the earthly state as wisdom. They thought error upon error. That was appropriate there. But out of all these errors, the material, the mineral, arose on Earth as a waste product.

And from this earthly substance, Yahweh-Elohim was able to form man and give him his physical shell. But Lucifer, who is on a similar level as the Elohim, still wants to accomplish the same thing. However, he can only use humans for his work by allowing them to think errors and lies within themselves.

My dear sisters and brothers, today I would like to give you three meditation formulas for your further work on your path up to the spiritual worlds. You can meditate on them as you wish, for example, the first in the morning, the second in the evening, and the third on Sundays. Or you can meditate on the first and second on Thursdays and Mondays and the third from time to time as a test of what you experienced on the first two days. Little by little, the whole depth of these meditations will become clear to you.

I. 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.—

[First line:] To things ... - the soul should really turn to the things of the outside world as if with an inner gesture. The second line: When I turn... should reinforce the first. One should really feel inwardly how one turns toward the things of the outer world with an inner jolt, not just glancing at them fleetingly, but wanting to recognize them in their essence. In the third line, the appearance of the senses itself is addressed. The soul should learn to free itself intensively for moments from these non-entities of the sensory world, and by recognizing more and more the nothingness of the sensory world, it will completely change its inner position toward the physical-material. It will learn to regard the material as necessary for life in the sensory world, but at the same time to rise above it to what lies behind it as the creative world [the nothingness]. And it will gradually learn to detach itself from them so that it spreads out far into space as if on soul wings. There it will see and feel: everything material is transitory—but the good and true in me is not transitory. That is eternal! I am allowed to participate in the eternal, to help shape the seed for a future, because my soul lives in the floods of the divine-true, the good. In that which, as the divine-creative, has been creating and working in the world since time immemorial. - E.D.N.

II. Spiritual light, 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.

In the first stanza, we rose above the merely earthly as if on wings of the soul; in this second stanza, we find the way to our own self. We sink deep into the loneliness of the soul. The self draws ever closer together! It recognizes more and more what good and noble thoughts it carries in its soul, as well as evil and foolish ones. And it recognizes that both are necessary in the development of earthly human beings. The meditator realizes the mission of evil: that it is the future nourishment for good. That this good will nourish itself like a sprouting seed from the dregs of evil, that it will consume all evil and vice and establish an eternal existence for itself.

And the soul recognizes: both evil and good are accepted by Christ. He will separate them! We must carry our entire soul existence toward him so that it may one day bear the fruits of eternity; we must learn to carry it into Christ, to let it die within him. - I. --- M.

III. Luminous I and luminous soul -
Hover over 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 That deceives the senses of existence.

One might think it is a mistake that there are two subjects here [line 1], even though the verb [line 2] is in the singular. I must admit that I did not notice this at first when the meditation was given to me from the spiritual world. One simply accepts it at first and only becomes aware of it later. In the spiritual world, however, there is nothing that can be evaluated theoretically. Everything is experienced and felt.

Nor is there any intention that each of these three meditation verses should consist of seven lines.

This last, third verse is intended to be a touchstone for the first two. When we meditate on it, this third verse should show us how fruitful the first two have been. If they have borne fruit, then we can experience how our whole being is forming itself into a chalice. And we experience that our soul chalice takes in and unites with the world spirit that permeates and floods the universe—the Holy Spirit; the soul takes in the Resurrector, and in him it awakens to a new existence—P.S.S.R.

If we truly learn to live by these three mantric sayings, we will simultaneously experience in ever new forms the inexhaustible content of our ten-word Rosicrucian saying, which is of such infinitely deep and manifold significance.

Record D

Progress in esoteric development is close to the heart of each and every one of us. Everyone who practices conscientiously makes progress; some who do their exercises punctually and conscientiously may make more progress than they think. We need only observe carefully; the spiritual world approaches us quietly and intimately.

Of course, one thing is certain: anyone who wants to find the way into the spiritual worlds must rethink their thinking. Their entire life of perception and feeling must become different. This “becoming different” is so often misunderstood. People think that they can transfer the knowledge they have acquired on the physical plane to the spiritual worlds. The esotericist must learn to understand that there are other means of advancing on the physical plane than those by which one enters the spiritual worlds. They must increasingly empathize with the spiritual world, telling themselves that when meditating, it is not so much the content, the thoughts, that matter, but rather the attitude, the mood of the soul from which the meditation is carried out. It is these that transform the soul and develop the organs of the soul. When the esotericist is in such a right state of mind, he will also increasingly come to feel his etheric body.

When I stretch out my hand and touch the blackboard here, in the physical-sensory sense one would say: there is an object that my hand has encountered resistance from — in the spiritual sense there is nothing there; there are holes, gaps in the spiritual world where objects that can be perceived by the senses exist in the physical world. But before I encounter this resistance, I pass through the spiritual world, which is completely filled with realities, with spiritual beings. In truth, we do not see objects in space, but the outlines of the spiritual world.

The esotericist must bring himself to this realization. He must see the spirit behind everything. When he stands before an autumn landscape, he must already sense the new living seeds in the passing, dying things, see them struggling to break free, sacrificing themselves in the spring by clothing themselves in matter.

A very simple example can show us that where objects are perceptible to the senses in the physical world, they are pure nothingness in the spiritual world. Take a bottle of seltzer water: Just as you cannot see the water, even though it is denser, in front of the glowing balls of sparkling carbon dioxide, which are only air, a “nothing,” so you cannot see the spiritual in front of the dazzling things of the world of sensory perception.

Once the esotericist has become accustomed to this truth, that he is surrounded by pure nothingness in the physical-sensory world, a second truth will soon dawn on him, that of “It thinks me, not I think,” namely that all our thoughts are only shadows. We are accustomed to believing that thinking takes place in the physical body, but this is not the case. In truth, the etheric body is the originator of our thoughts. The physical body is only involved insofar as it is the mirror that reflects back the thoughts produced in the etheric body.

When a person looks into a mirror, they see their reflection: the mirror reflects the external impression of their physical form; without them, their person, there could be no reflection; it is therefore only a shadow image of their external form. Similarly, the thoughts that have their living seat in the etheric body are only mirror images, shadows, when we think them in our physical brain. Through meditation and concentration, we should strive to detach ourselves from these shadow thoughts by focusing our soul, our self, in the etheric body, so that we may penetrate to the true, actual source of our thoughts, which have their life in the etheric body.

Once we have trained ourselves to recognize the shadow-like nature of our thoughts and our external environment and to let them fall away more and more, we grow into the spiritual world. Then we will also recognize that everything we produce on earth in the form of thoughts of goodness, benevolence, and nobility is transformed into lasting, imperishable values of existence that will continue to exist. We see them before us in the distance, in the future, where they live for the good of humanity.

And everything evil, bad, and deceitful also lives, all base, selfish thoughts—we see them before us as if in the distance, but they have remained behind as waste products; they are nourishment for the good. Everything evil and bad becomes that which is inherently 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 nourishment for the plants and one always feeds on the other, so all evil thoughts and all bad knowledge become the sediment for the thoughts of good, noble, and true that are germinating in the elemental world. This is why the occultist can interpret evil and error so well; he should imagine it in his mind, but he knows that he must not go beyond this point, where it is still a thought; he does not allow it to pass into action, into reality, which is always Luciferic and Ahrimanic; he knows that it provides the soil in which the seed of good will one day grow.

This is actually what happened in the evolution of the earth; this is how the mineral kingdom of the earth came into being.

On the old moon, the hierarchies from man upwards to the spirits of form thought error. That was appropriate there, and from it the material, mineral world on earth came into being. And from this earthly substance, Yahweh Elohim was able to form man and give him his physical shell. But Lucifer, who is on a similar level to the Elohim on the moon, still wants to do the same thing. However, he can only use man to do this; he can only let error be thought within man.

Since it is not possible for me to speak to individuals at the moment, I would like to give three formulas here that can be meditated on at will. For example, the first in the morning, the second in the evening, the third on Sundays, or the first and second on Mondays and Thursdays and the third only now and then as a test of what has been experienced in the other two meditations; they will then become quite clear to us.

I. 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.—

To things ... the soul should really turn to things as if with an inner gesture. The second line: I turn ... - reinforces the first; I should really feel this inwardly. In the third line, I address the senses. The soul should free itself from the physical, from the nothingness of the sensory world. It should rise from the physical and material to what lies behind things. It should spread far out into space and feel: The good in me is eternal; it is the seed for the future - Ex Deo Nascimur

II. 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.

In this verse, we should immerse ourselves in our own inner selves, in the solitude of the soul. The ego withdraws into itself; it recognizes the good and noble thoughts and the evil and foolish thoughts it carries within its soul; but it feels that both evil and good are necessary; evil is the future nourishment for good, for good will feed like a sprouting seed that consumes evil and vice and remains eternal itself. Both are taken up by Christ and carried into the future. If the good that we have created is to bear fruit, we must carry it into Christ—In --- morimur!

III. Luminous I and luminous soul—
Hovering above true becoming
The imagined, the recognized
Now become dense spirit being. And like light pearls of existence Live in the sea of the divine-true That deceives the senses of existence.

One might think it is a mistake that there are two subjects here and yet the verb is in the singular. I must admit that I did not notice this at first when the mantras were given to me from the spiritual world. One accepts it as it is and only becomes aware of it later. In the spiritual world, there is so little theory; everything is found through experience. Nor is there any intention that each of the three verses should consist of seven lines.

The third verse is intended to be a touchstone for the other two. We should test ourselves to see how fruitful meditating on the other two has been. Then we will see a chalice; as in spiritual communion, our soul will unite with the world spirit that permeates and floods the universe. We shall be raised up by the Holy Spirit—Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus.

If we truly live in these three mantras, we will simultaneously experience what is said in the three parts of our Rosicrucian motto consisting of ten words, which is of such infinitely deep and manifold meaning.

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