Awakening to Spiritual Reality: Thinking Beyond the Physical

GA 266III — 31 March 1914, Munich

Esoteric Lesson

It has often been emphasized that a distinction must be made between progress in esoteric development on the one hand and noticing progress on the other. Every esotericist makes progress if he faithfully and regularly performs his esoteric exercises, even if he is dissatisfied with their success. What matters is sincere striving.

Through these exercises we actually become different people. This happens inevitably, even if we do not notice it. For in all these exercises, whether given in books or orally, lie the forces that loosen the etheric body and draw it out of the physical body. But it is something else to become aware of these changes. The soul may indeed already have organs, but there is a difference between whether it sleeps or wakes in its spiritual environment. In order to wake up and become conscious, it needs strong power and preparation. That is why these lectures describe what the soul experiences when it awakens in the spiritual world.

Many people make it difficult for themselves to become conscious because they repeatedly imagine the spiritual world as a second physical world, only finer and more penetrating. This is a great obstacle, because they then do not notice the subtle symptoms of awakening. Such prejudices must be discarded. Those who still hold them are like people who ascend in a balloon and believe they can get out at any time and rest on a mountain top. But those who correctly understand the esoteric explanations can initially comprehend how the spiritual world is experienced when the soul awakens.

To achieve this, one must first ask oneself the question: What is thinking actually? What thinks within me? The materialist, who denies the supersensible world, says: The body, the brain thinks. One should ask him the question: Have you ever perceived thinking with your senses? Of course he has not. No one has ever heard, seen, felt as warmth, or anything like that. Consequently, it is not physical. For what belongs to the body is perceptible to the senses. Therefore, thinking is supernatural. And the materialist must either admit the supernatural world or abandon thinking as an absurdity—which might be a good thing.

So with our thinking we are always in the supernatural world, but in such a way that we do not experience it ourselves. It is like someone sailing out to sea but not seeing himself or his boat; so it is with human thinking. We do not experience it directly, for what we experience of it, the thoughts, are the reflections of thinking on the body. Just as someone standing in front of a mirror sees his reflection, so the thinking soul sees the reflection of its thinking. The brain is the mirror. Through esoteric training, human beings should now come to experience thinking itself, not just thoughts. Just as someone standing in front of a mirror, when they step aside, sees the mirror's surface, so the soul must come to see the body from outside as a mirroring apparatus. Then the human being knows how thoughts come into being, and experiences itself in the world from which thinking protrudes into the sensory world as thought.

All this can be understood by any healthy mind. And it is important for theosophists to make this very clear to themselves in order to be prepared for the objection that theosophy is based on faith, that one must believe in the existence of the supersensible world. This is not true. Everyone can comprehend this existence if they apply their thinking correctly. Those who cannot comprehend it are foolish, even if they are philosophers. However, there is still a big step between understanding this possibility of experiencing thinking and the supernatural world and actually realizing it. This can only be achieved through long work on the soul itself, but it can be achieved.

The first sign of awakening in the spiritual world is a feeling of becoming greater, as if one were expanding, flowing out. In the sensory world, I am here, the object is there, and it makes an impression on me. Consciousness comes about through our encounter with objects through the organs of touch, hearing, and sight. In the spiritual world, this self-containment ceases. One feels as if one is spreading out into other beings. In the physical world, we experience everything within our skin, for example, the pain of a needle prick. It is different in the spiritual world. There, thoughts and feelings flow out. One experiences pleasure and pain in others. For example, if one encounters a deceased person who is in pain, one must experience the pain in them as long as one is in spiritual connection with them.

This change also completely alters our relationship to the sensory world. The way we usually experience the physical world is determined by the fact that our body, through which we experience, is also sensory. If we bump our head against a hard object, we feel it because the head does not give way, that is, because it is hard, of the same nature as the object. But when we face the sensory world with supersensible experience, no impression is produced. The spiritual organs are, so to speak, too soft and yielding. Therefore, all physical things appear as empty spaces. A comparison can give an idea of this. The water in a glass is invisible in itself. In soda water, the gas bubbles are visible, and yet the bubbles are much thinner than the water; they are nothing in comparison to the heavier liquid. So there is something visible that is nothing, and something invisible. This is how it really is with the physical world for the spiritual gaze. All atoms—which until recently formed the basis of all materiality for science—are, like pearls in water, holes or empty bubbles in the spiritual realm. All physical things are composed of countless such holes. We encounter these holes, this nothingness, when we touch. The same is true of the human form. The brain, for example, when viewed spiritually, is a spiritual form. It contains countless holes or empty pearls; these constitute what the man of science examines with his instruments.

Furthermore, it follows that human beings feel everything good, right, and true that they think flowing out of themselves. They perceive it as growing into the future, as forming the seeds of the future. But the wrong, bad, and ugly things that they think and feel also grow out in this way. He feels this flowing out of him in a very real way, and he knows that the bad thoughts flowing out of him will serve as nourishment for the good ones in the future. They are therefore also necessary. This helps him understand why so many bad, wrong, and ugly thoughts and feelings assail him during meditation. When he knows that they are necessary forces, nourishment for the future, he will also judge them correctly. He will not need to complain about them if he is strong enough not to let them flow into his will and actions. Therein lies a great secret. The same forces that underlie our evil thoughts were radiated on the old moon by the beings of the hierarchies, from the angels up to the spirits of form. In this way they brought about the existence of the moon. Lucifer and Ahriman, however, remained behind and are only now radiating these forces. But now they are working their way into the physical realm, which has become more densified in the meantime, into the physical blood of human beings, and this is how evil arises. In themselves, they are not evil. Esotericists must allow them to work on them, but not let them become physically densified. Then they remain valuable for the good thoughts of the future.

The following formulas are given to promote the experience of these first steps in the spiritual world. They should be used by beginners in esotericism in such a way that the first is done in the morning, the second in the evening after reviewing the day, and the third once every few days. More experienced esotericists should not disrupt their exercises, but should occasionally use these new formulas, the first and second directly after each other, and the third once a week, for example on Sundays.

The fact that each of these formulas has seven lines is not intentional or deliberate. It arises quite naturally. The spiritual material reveals itself in such a way that it naturally takes on this seven-line form.

I. I turn to things
I turn to them with my senses;—
Senses, you deceive me!—
What flees existence as nothing:
To you is being and essence;
What must seem empty to you,
Reveal to my tantra.— II. Spiritual light warms me
Let me feel willing within you.
Good thoughts, true knowledge
As experienced, I see you shining
Webs of error, evil thoughts
Reveal yourself to the luminous soul
That I may weave within myself. III. Luminous I and luminous soul -
Hover 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.

Lines one and two of the third formula gave much food for thought. They were so revealed—but it seemed to be a grammatical inaccuracy—that it says “floats” instead of “floating.” Later it became clear that this was intentional. The weaving I and the shining soul are to be thought of as a single being. Likewise, in the next line, the imagined and the known are treated as one and the same. In the physical world, thinking and knowing are not one; in the spiritual world, they flow together. Something imagined is either false, in which case it destroys itself, or true, in which case it is also something revealed: knowledge.

Such formulas, like all those given in The Secret Science, for example, are not conceived or fabricated. The intellect is initially completely uninvolved. The seer receives things as revelations. They are simply there. Only then must he set about processing them with his intellect, just as the person to whom he transmits them must do.

The first formula describes the experience in which physical things, like pearls in water, appear to consist of nothing. The soul recognizes ordinary sensory perception as an illusion and strives for knowledge of what is truly real.

The second formula describes the experience of the emanation of good and evil thoughts.

The third formula is to be used as a test of progress, as it were. When meditating on this, one must pronounce the words inwardly so that everything sounds meaningful. Try to recognize from these lines how far you have come; for example, whether you really experience something when you say: “That which is conceived, that which is recognized / Now becomes dense spirit.” Of course, this must be continued undaunted and patiently, week after week.

These formulas can also be seen as a paraphrase of what always concludes these reflections. The first describes how, as we grow into the spiritual world, the sensual becomes insubstantial and spiritual reality is recognized as that from which we originate: Ex Deo nascimur. — The second formula describes the experience of good and evil thoughts as forces acting in the future. But this is only possible if the soul is surrounded and illuminated by the spiritual light—Christ—after it has detached itself from the physical: In Christo morimur. And the third formula represents how true knowledge is revealed to the soul awakening in the spirit: Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus.