The Heart as Divine Dwelling: Lucifer, Ahriman, and Conscience

GA 266III — 3 June 1914, Basel

Esoteric Lesson

Record A

Our exercises are designed to bring us into the spiritual world. We are also in the spiritual world at night, but we are not consciously aware of it. Why not? Because we have the habit, the cosmic habit, of perceiving through our physical senses, and we are too weak to develop consciousness without them. What are these sensory perceptions? They also contain what we can attain with higher consciousness: the imaginations, the images of higher reality; the inspirations through which spiritual beings reveal themselves to us; the intuitions through which we become one with the divine beings. All this is contained in perception, but it does not enter into us, and when we investigate why this is so, we find that it is Lucifer who burns it with the fire of passions, instincts, and desires. Lucifer has taken up residence in the heart, and there the burning of the imaginations, inspirations, and intuitions that underlie all the senses takes place, for with every breath, with every perception, the images of spiritual beings penetrate into us. At the beginning of the Lemurian era, when what the Bible describes as the battle between the Elohim and Lucifer took place, Lucifer mixed himself with his fire into the hearts of human beings.

But the heart was predestined to be something completely different; it had been created by the Elohim to be their dwelling place. Something can be small in the physical world and large in the spiritual world, and vice versa. Physically, the heart is only a small thing, and anatomists believe that it would still be the same thing if it were removed from the body, but in reality, the heart is something very large in the spiritual world and was intended to be the dwelling place of the Elohim. When Lucifer moved into the human heart, however, the Elohim reserved a place for themselves where they can still dwell, and this manifests itself in human life as the voice of conscience. Where this voice speaks, something speaks that does not belong to Lucifer with his consuming fire; through it, a direct inspiration from God reaches human beings. And we see that at important moments in human history, this voice of conscience has become objective for human beings and has stood before them. This was the case with Moses, upon whose soul the fate of his entire people weighed heavily. He climbed Mount Sinai. In the burning bush (i.e., in the fire kindled by Lucifer), he heard the voice of his God, who later gave him the commandments on Mount Sinai, which became the basis of all subsequent human laws.

After Lucifer had seized control of the human heart in this way, the Elohim had to place a counterweight on the other side of the cosmic world order in order to restore balance. This happened in the Atlantean era, when the Elohim entrenched Ahriman with all his ammunition in the human brain in order to bring his cooling effect to bear against the Luciferic fire. And that which Ahriman cools from the fire that burns the imaginations, inspirations, and intuitions of perception becomes thoughts and mental images in human beings. (There is one thing that is particularly fuel for Lucifer, and that is lovelessness.)

The ancient initiates always knew that Lucifer reigns in our hearts with his fire and that Ahriman cools this fire in the head. A final remnant of this knowledge can be found in Aristotle (who was no longer clairvoyant himself), who said that warmth emanates from the heart to the head, where it is cooled.

Now one might object: It is strange what is said, that Lucifer and the Godhead both dwell in our hearts! It sounds as if there were only one heart in the world, and yet there are as many hearts as there are human beings. Yes, this leads us to a riddle, which is only one of the smaller riddles encountered by the occultist, the riddle: How did the one become many? It is not our intention here to provide the solution to this mystery, but we can try to penetrate it further and further through meditative reflection.

(The three seven-line verses follow as a meditation formula.)

Record B

One must not believe that everything in the spiritual world is the same as in the physical world. What is large in the physical world can be small in the spiritual world, and what is large in the spiritual world is often small in the sensory world. We have an organ within us that is physically small: the heart; spiritually speaking, it is infinitely large, for it is the home of the gods. The Elohim chose it as their dwelling place, but in the Lemurian era Lucifer took possession of it. The Elohim allow imaginations, inspirations, and intuitions to flow into it, but Lucifer burns these in his furnace of passions and turns them into sensory perceptions. So that not everything burns up completely, the Elohim created a counterweight by placing the Ahrimanic beings in the human brain; these cool down the Luciferic heat in intellectual thinking, in mental images. But the Elohim have retained a small part of the heart as their dwelling place, and there they have implanted the conscience as a counterweight to Ahriman-Lucifer. It is a profound mystery: the Elohim chose the human heart as their dwelling place, and Lucifer has made his home there. How is it that instead of one heart there are now many, instead of one there is multiplicity? — Lack of love is the great obstacle to our development. - Then followed the three formulas.

Record C

The heart is a great cosmic structure in which the Elohim are active. The effect of Lucifer is that the imaginations, inspirations, and intuitions are burned, so to speak, and then appear as sensory perceptions. These are burned imaginations, etc. The counteraction of the good gods is that they have sent Ahrimanic powers that work in the brain, cooling it down. —

The effect of the Elohim appeared to Moses in the burning bush. He then received the tablets of the law. If we omit the middle word in In Christo morimur, we can experience a world. —

The heart is the dwelling place of the gods.