Notes from Meditation Text

The saying:

More radiant than the sun
One than the snow
Finer than the ether
Is the self,
The spirit in my heart
This self is me,
I am this self.

every morning to our higher self. Such sayings are not invented by the arbitrariness of a personality, but they are taken from the spiritual world. Therefore, they contain much more than one usually believes. And one thinks correctly about them when one assumes that one can never fully fathom their content, but can always find more in them the more one delves into them. Therefore, the Esoteric School can only give a few hints as to how to search for the content. Some such hints are given below.

Brighter than the sun

Man sees the objects around him only when they are illuminated by the sun. What makes them visible are the sunbeams reflected from them into the eye of the beholder. If there were no light, things would not be visible. But only the objects of the physical world become visible through this external light. A light that is “brighter than the sun” must shine for the human being if he is to see the soul and spiritual beings and things. This light does not come from an external sun. It comes from the source of light that we ignite within ourselves when we seek out the higher, eternal self within us. This higher self has a different origin from the lower self. The latter perceives the everyday environment. But what lives in this everyday environment has come into being once and will pass away. What we feel about it has only a fleeting value itself. And our fleeting self is also built up from such feelings and the thoughts about them. All things that become visible through the sun have not existed once and they will no longer be once. And the sun also came into being once and will pass away one day. But the soul is there precisely to recognize the eternal in things. When the whole earth will no longer be, the souls that inhabited it will still be. And what these souls have experienced on earth, they will carry elsewhere as a memory. It is as if a person has done me a kindness. The deed passes away. But what he has thereby planted in my soul remains. And the bond of love that has connected me with him does not pass away. What we experience is always the origin of something lasting in us. We ourselves extract the lasting from things and carry it over into eternity. And when people are transplanted to a completely different scene in the future, they will bring with them what they have gathered here. And their deeds in the new world will be woven from the memory of the old. For there is no seed that does not produce fruit. If we are connected to a person in love, then this love is a seed, and we experience the fruit in all of the future, in that we belong to such a person in all of the future. So there is something in us that is interwoven with the divine power that connects all things to the eternal fabric of the world. This “something” is our higher self. And this is “brighter than the sun”. The light of the sun only illuminates a person from the outside. My soul sun illuminates him from the inside. That is why it is more radiant than the sun.

Purer than the snow

Every thing is pure in itself. It can only become polluted when it combines with something that should not be combined with it. Water is pure in itself. But the dirt contained in the water would also be pure if it were in itself, if it had not combined with the water unlawfully. Coal is pure in itself. It only becomes dirty when it combines with water improperly. When water takes on its own form in the snow crystal, it then separates out everything that has combined with it unlawfully. In the same way, the human soul becomes pure when it separates out everything that is wrongly connected to it. And the divine, the immortal, belongs to it. Every ideal, every thought of something great and beautiful belongs to the soul's inner form. And when it reflects on such ideals, on such thoughts, then it purifies itself, as water purifies itself when it becomes snow crystal. And because the spiritual is purer than all matter, the “higher self”, that is, the soul that lives in the heights, is “purer than the snow”.

Finer than ether

Ether is the finest substance. But all substance is still dense in relation to the soul. It is not the dense that remains, but the “fine”. The stone, thought of as substance, perishes as substance. But the thought of the stone that lives in the soul remains. God has thought this thought. And from this he made the dense stone. Just as ice is only condensed water, so the stone is only a condensed thought of God. All things are such condensed thoughts of God. But the higher self dissolves all things, and in it the thoughts of God then live. And when the self is woven from such thoughts of God, then it is “finer than the ether”.

The spirit in my heart

A person has only truly grasped a concept when they have grasped it with their heart. Intellect and reason are merely mediators for the perception of the heart. Through intellect and reason, one penetrates to the thoughts of God. But when one has such a thought, one must learn to love it. Little by little, one learns to love all things. This does not mean that he should uncritically attach his heart to everything he encounters. For our experience is initially deceptive. But if one endeavors to investigate a being or thing for its divine essence, then one also begins to love it. If I have a depraved person before me, I should not love his depravity. By doing so I would only be in error, and I would not help him. But when I think about how this person has come to his depravity, and when I help him to discard the depravity, then I help him, and I myself struggle through to the truth. I must look everywhere for how I can love. God is in all things, but I must first seek this divine in a thing. I should not love the outer appearance of a being or thing without further ado, for this is deceptive, and I could easily love error. But behind every illusion lies the truth, and that can always be loved. And when the heart seeks to love the truth in all beings, then the “spirit lives in the heart”. Such love is the garment that the soul should always wear. Then she herself weaves the divine into things.

The members of the school should use some free minutes of the day to attach such thoughts to the divine sayings of wisdom given to us by the Masters from an immeasurably great world experience. Never should they believe that they have already fully understood such a saying, but always assume that there is more to it than they have already found. Through such an attitude one acquires the feeling that in all true wisdom lies the key to the infinite, and through such an attitude one connects with this infinite.

It is not important to meditate on many sentences, but to let a few live again and again in the soul that has become calm.

In meditation itself, one should speculate little, but calmly let the content of the meditation sentences take effect on oneself. But apart from meditation in the free moments of the day, one should come back to the content of the meditation sentences again and again and see what reflections one can draw from them. Then they become a living force that sinks into the soul and makes it strong and powerful. For when the soul unites with eternal truth, it itself lives in the eternal. And when the soul lives in the eternal, then the higher beings have access to it and can infuse their own power into it.