World Mysteries and Theosophy

GA 54 — 7 December 1905, Berlin

Inner Development

In a long series of lectures, we have discussed mental images about the supersensible world and its connection to the sensible world. It is only natural that the question arises again and again: Where do our insights into the supersensible world come from? Today we will deal with this question, or in other words, with the question of the inner development of the human being.

Inner development of the human being is meant here in the sense that it signifies the ascent of the human being to abilities that he must acquire if he wants to make those supersensible insights his own. Now, please do not misunderstand the purpose of this lecture. This lecture is far from establishing rules or laws that have anything to do with general human morality or with the demands of the general religion of the time. I must expressly point this out because, in our age of leveling, where no difference between human beings is allowed, the misunderstanding arises again and again that those who speak of occultism are establishing general human demands, moral principles, or the like, which apply to everyone without distinction. That is not the case. Nor is today's lecture one that should be confused with a lecture on the general principles of the theosophical movement. Occultism is not the same as theosophy. The Theosophical Society does not have the sole and certainly not the exclusive task of cultivating occultism. It could even be possible that those who join this Theosophical Society completely disapprove of occultism.

Among the things cultivated in the Theosophical Society, which also includes a general ethic, is occultism, which encompasses knowledge of those laws of our existence that elude ordinary sensory observation in the everyday realm of human experience. However, these laws are by no means unrelated to everyday experience. Occult means hidden, mysterious. However, it must be emphasized again and again that occultism is something for which certain preconditions are really necessary. Just as higher mathematics is incomprehensible to the ordinary farmer who has never heard of it, so occultism is incomprehensible to many people of our time.

However, occultism ceases to be occult once one has mastered it. I have therefore strictly limited the scope of today's lecture. No one can object — and this must be expressly emphasized after thousands of years of experience and numerous attempts — that the demands made by occultism cannot be fulfilled, that they contradict general human culture. No one is required to fulfill them. But if someone comes to me and wants to have the convictions that occultism provides, but refuses to deal with occultism, then he is in exactly the same situation as the schoolboy who wants to make a glass rod electrically charged but refuses to rub it. Without friction, it will not become electrically charged. It is much the same with those who object to the practices of occultism.

No one is required to become an occultist; everyone must come to occultism voluntarily. Those who object that we do not need occultism need not concern themselves with it. Occultism does not appeal to humanity in general at the present time. In our current culture, it is also extremely difficult to submit to the demands of a life that opens up the supersensible world.

Two prerequisites are completely lacking in our culture. The first requirement is isolation, what is called in the secret science the higher human solitude; the second is the overcoming of egoism, which in our time has risen to its highest level in relation to the innermost soul qualities and is largely unconscious to humanity.

The lack of these two prerequisites makes the development of inner life virtually impossible. Isolation or spiritual solitude is so difficult to achieve today because life is becoming increasingly scattered, fragmented, and, in short, demanding of external sensuality. In no other culture have people ever lived so much in the external world as in ours. And now I ask you again not to take anything I say as criticism, but merely as a characteristic description.

Of course, anyone who speaks as I am speaking today knows very well that it cannot be otherwise, that the great advantages and significant achievements of our time are based precisely on these characteristics. But that is why our time is so devoid of supersensible knowledge and of any influence of supersensible knowledge on our culture. In other cultures — and there are such cultures — people are able to cultivate their inner life more and withdraw from the influences of outer life. Within such cultures, what is called inner life in the higher sense then flourishes. In Eastern cultures there is what is called yoga, and those who live according to the rules of this teaching are called yogis. A yogi is therefore someone who strives for higher spiritual knowledge, but only after seeking out a master of the supernatural. No one will seek it other than under the guidance of a master, a guru. Once they have found one, they must devote a large part of their day, regularly and not irregularly, to living entirely in their soul. All the powers that the yogi has to develop are already in his soul, they are as certain and true in it as the electricity in the glass rod from which it is elicited by rubbing. It is true that no human being knows from within himself how to evoke these powers, just as no human being can figure out on his own that the glass rod can be made electric by rubbing. One must use the observations made over thousands of years and the secret scientific methods developed as a result to evoke the powers of the soul. And that is very difficult in our time, which demands that every person fragment themselves in the struggle for existence. They do not achieve the great inner concentration, not even a concept of the concentration that one had in yoga. There is no awareness of the deep solitude that the yogi must seek. He must, even if only for a short time, repeat the same thing rhythmically every day with tremendous regularity, in complete seclusion from everything else in which one otherwise lives. It is necessary and absolutely essential that all the life that otherwise surrounds us dies before the yogi, that his senses become impervious to all impressions from the outside world. The yogi must be able to make himself blind and deaf to his surroundings for the time he prescribes for himself. He must be able to be so collected within himself—and he must acquire the practice of this collection—that a cannon could be fired next to him without disturbing his focus on his inner life. He must also become free from all memory impressions, from all memories of everyday life.

Now consider how extraordinarily difficult these preconditions are to achieve in our culture, how little we have any concept of such isolation, of such spiritual solitude. All this must be achieved under one condition, namely that of never in any way losing harmony, complete balance with the outside world. And that is extraordinarily easy to do when one is so deeply immersed in one's inner self. Those who delve deeper and deeper into their inner selves must at the same time establish harmony with the outside world all the more clearly. Nothing that smacks of alienation, of distance from practical external life, must occur in them, otherwise they will go astray, otherwise their higher life may to a certain extent become indistinguishable from madness. It is truly a kind of madness when the inner life loses its connection to the outer world. To illustrate this with an example, imagine that you are knowledgeable about our earthly circumstances and have all the experience and wisdom that can be gathered on Earth. You fall asleep at night, but when you wake up in the morning, you are not on Earth, but on Mars. But conditions on Mars are completely different from those on Earth. All the knowledge you have gathered on Earth is of no use to you there. There is no longer any harmony between what lives within you and what is happening outside you. Therefore, because you cannot cope with the new conditions, you would probably be put in a Mars madhouse within an hour. Anyone who loses touch with the outside world in the development of their inner life can easily be led down such a path. We must take great care to ensure that this does not happen. These are all great difficulties in our culture.

The other obstacle is a kind of egoism in relation to inner spiritual qualities, of which the present human race is usually unaware. This is closely related to the spiritual development of human beings. One of the prerequisites for spiritual development is that it should not be sought out of egoism. Those who seek it out of egoism cannot get very far. But our age is egoistic, even in the depths of the human soul. Time and again we hear people say: Yes, what good are all the teachings spread in occultism to me if I cannot experience them myself? — Anyone who starts from this premise and does not deviate from it can hardly achieve a truly higher development, for higher development requires the most intimate consciousness of human community, so that it is indifferent whether I myself or someone else has this or that experience. I must therefore show unlimited love and complete trust to those who are more highly developed than I am. First I must bring myself to this consciousness, to the consciousness of infinite trust in my fellow human beings when they say, “I have experienced this and that.” Such trust must be a condition of community life, and wherever such occult abilities are used to a greater extent, this trust is present in a boundless way, because there is the awareness that the human being is a personality in which a higher individuality lives. The basis for me is therefore first and foremost trust and faith, because we do not only seek our higher self within ourselves, but also in our fellow human beings. Everyone who lives around us is, in their innermost being, in complete and undivided unity with us.

As long as it is my lower self that matters, I am separated from other people. But when it comes to my higher self—and only this can ascend to the supersensible world—then I am no longer separated from my fellow human beings, then I am one with my fellow human beings, then the one who speaks to me of the higher truths is myself. I must completely let go of this difference between him and me; I must completely overcome the feeling that he is ahead of me. Try to live yourself completely into this feeling, so that it penetrates into the most intimate fibers of the human soul and all egoism disappears, and the other, who is further than you, really stands before you as your own self, then you have understood one of the preconditions that belong to awakening higher spiritual life.

You can hear it precisely where guidance to occult life is given—often very wrongly and mistakenly: The higher self lives in man; he only needs to let his inner self speak, and the highest truth will reveal itself. Nothing is more correct on the one hand and more fruitless on the other than what is claimed here. Let people try to let their inner being speak, and they will see that, as a rule, even if they imagine that their higher self is coming to the fore, it is their lower self that is speaking. We do not find the higher self within ourselves at first. We must first seek it outside ourselves. We can learn something from those who are further along, because we can see it there, as it were. We can never benefit our higher self from our own selfish ego. Where those who are further along than I am stand, I will stand in the future. By nature, I truly carry the seeds of what they are within me. But first, the paths up to Olympus must be illuminated so that I can follow them.

A feeling, believe it or not — any experienced practical occultist will confirm this — a feeling is the basic condition for all occult development, which is mentioned in the various religions. The Christian religion describes it with the well-known phrase, which as an occultist you must understand completely: “Unless you become like little children, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.” Only those who have learned to worship in the highest sense of the word understand this phrase. Suppose you had heard a description of a venerable person in your early youth, a personality who awakened in you the highest mental image in a certain direction, and you are now offered the opportunity to get to know this personality better. A holy awe of this personality lives in you on the day that is to bring you the moment when you see him or her in person for the first time. Standing at the door of this person, you may feel afraid to touch the handle and open the door. When you look up to such a revered personality, you have understood something of the feeling that Christianity means when it says that one must become like little children in order to enter the kingdom of heaven. It really does not matter so much whether the person to whom the feeling is directed fully deserves it, but rather that we have the ability to look up to something with reverence from deep within ourselves. That is the significance of reverence, that one is drawn up to the one one looks up to.

The feeling of reverence is the uplifting force, the magnetic force that draws us up to the higher spheres of supersensible life. This is the law of the occult world, which everyone who seeks a higher life must inscribe in their soul as if in letters of gold. Development must begin from this basic mood of the mind. Without this feeling, nothing at all can be achieved. Then, those who seek inner development must be clear that they are doing something tremendous in relation to human beings. What they are seeking is nothing more and nothing less than a new birth, in the literal sense. The higher soul of the human being is to be born. And just as the human being was born at his first birth from the deep inner depths of existence, just as he emerged into the light of the sun, so the person seeking inner development emerges from the light of the sun, from what he can experience in the sensory world, into a higher spiritual light. Something is born within them that rests as deeply in the ordinary human being, who represents the mother, as the child rests in the mother before it is born.

Those who are not aware of the full significance of this fact do not know what occult development means. The higher soul, which is initially deeply, deeply embedded in the whole of human nature and interwoven with it, is brought out. When human beings stand before us in everyday life, lower and higher natures are intertwined, and that is a blessing for everyday life.

Some who live among us, if they followed their lower nature, might reveal malicious, evil characteristics, but within them, mixed with this lower nature, lives the higher nature that keeps the lower in check. The mixture is comparable to when we mix a yellow and a blue liquid in a glass, which produces a green liquid in which we can no longer distinguish between yellow and blue. In the same way, in human beings, the lower nature is mixed with the higher, and the two can no longer be distinguished from each other. Just as you can extract the blue from the green liquid by chemical means, so that only the yellow remains and the uniform green is separated into a complete duality, into blue and yellow, so in occult development you separate the lower nature from the higher nature. You draw the lower nature out of the body like a sword from its sheath, which then remains on its own. This lower nature emerges in such a way that it appears almost gruesome. When it was still mixed with the higher nature, nothing of this was noticeable. But now that it is separated, all the malicious, evil characteristics come to the fore. People who previously appeared benevolent often become quarrelsome and envious. These characteristics were already present in their lower nature, but were dominated by the higher nature. You can observe this in many people who are led down abnormal paths. People become liars very easily when they are introduced to the supernatural world. They easily lose the ability to distinguish between truth and falsehood. It is essential that occult training be accompanied by the strictest training of character. What history tells us about the temptations of the saints is not legend, but literal truth.

Anyone who wants to ascend to the higher world in any way is easily exposed to this temptation if they have not developed the strength and power of character and the highest morality within themselves to be able to suppress everything that comes their way. Not only do desires and passions grow, which is not even so much the case, but — and this seems wonderful at first — opportunities also increase. As if by magic, those who ascend to the higher world are beset by opportunities for evil and wickedness that were previously hidden from them. In every fact of life, a demon lies in wait to lead him astray. What he did not see before, he now sees. It conjures up such opportunities for them everywhere from the secret places of life, as it were, dividing their nature. That is why the so-called white magic, the school of occult development that leads people into the higher worlds in a good, genuine, and true way, requires a very specific character formation as indispensable. Every practical occultist will tell you that no one should dare to pass through that narrow gate—as the entrance to occult development is called—without practicing these qualities continuously. They are a necessary preliminary to occult life.

The first thing a person must develop is the ability to separate the insignificant from the significant, the transitory from the imperishable, in all their ways through life. This requirement is easy to make, but often difficult to carry out. As Goethe says, it is easy, but the easy is difficult. Take a plant or an object, for example. You learn to recognize that every object has a significant and an insignificant side, and that people are usually interested in the insignificant, in the relationship of the object to themselves or in a subordinate characteristic. Those who want to become occultists must gradually accustom themselves to seeing and seeking an essence in every object. When they see a watch, for example, they must be interested in the laws of the watch. They must be able to dissect it down to the smallest detail and develop a feeling for the laws of the watch. Suppose a mineralogist is looking at a rock crystal. Even by looking at it from the outside, they will gain significant knowledge about the crystal. The occultist, however, must take a stone in his hand and be able to feel alive what is suggested in the following monologue: In a certain respect, you are below humanity, but in a certain respect, you, the rock crystal, are far above humanity. You are below humanity because you cannot form mental images of humans in your imagination, because you do not feel. You cannot form a mental image of it, cannot think, and do not live, but you have something that humanity does not have: you are chaste within yourself, you have no desires, no wishes, and no cravings. Every human being, every living creature has wishes, desires, and cravings; you do not. You are perfect and without desires, content with what you have become, a model for humans, to which they must then add their other qualities.

If the occultist can feel this deeply, he has grasped the meaning that the stone can tell him. In this way, man can draw something meaningful from every thing. When it has become a habit for him to separate the meaningful from the meaningless, he has acquired another of the feelings that the occultist must have. Then he must connect his own life with what is significant. People err very easily in this, especially in our time. People very easily believe that the place where they stand does not belong to them. How often are people inclined to say: My fate has placed me in a place where I do not fit in. I am, for example, a postal worker. If I were placed in another position, I could convey lofty ideas to people, impart great teachings, and so on. The mistake these people make is that they do not connect their lives to the significance of their profession. If you see something significant in me because I can speak to the people here, then you do not see the significance in your own life and profession. If the mail carriers did not deliver the letters, all correspondence would come to a standstill, and much of the work already done by others would be in vain.

Therefore, everyone in their position is of extraordinary importance to the whole, and no one is higher than the other. Christ tried to express this most beautifully in the thirteenth chapter of the Gospel of John with the words: “The servant is not greater than his master, nor the apostle greater than the one who sent him.” These words were spoken after the Master had washed the apostles' feet. By this he meant to say: What would I be without my apostles? They must be there so that I can be there in the world, and I must pay them tribute by humbling myself before them and washing their feet. — This is one of the most important indications of the feeling that the occultist must have for what is significant. One must not confuse what is significant externally with what is significant internally; strict attention must be paid to this.

Then we must develop a number of qualities. First and foremost among these is becoming master of our thoughts, namely the sequence of thoughts. This is called control of the thoughts. Consider how thoughts flit back and forth in the human soul, how they flit about inside: one impression arises, then another, and each one changes the thought. It is not true that we control our thoughts; rather, our thoughts control us completely. But we must reach the point where, during a certain time of the day, we immerse ourselves in a particular thought and say to ourselves: No other thought may enter our soul and control us. In this way, we ourselves take the reins of our thought life for a time.

The second thing is that we behave in a similar way toward our actions, that is, we exercise control over our actions. In doing so, it is necessary that we at least manage to perform actions from time to time that are not prompted by anything external. Everything that we are prompted to do by our status, our profession, our position does not lead us deeper into the higher life. The higher life depends on such intimacies, for example, that we make the decision to do something for the first time, something that springs from our own initiative, even if it is only a very insignificant fact. All other actions contribute nothing to the higher life.

The third thing to strive for is productivity. People fluctuate between joy and pain, at one moment elated, the next deeply saddened. Thus, people are rocked by the waves of life, joy, and pain. But they must attain equanimity and serenity. They must not be upset by the greatest suffering or the greatest joys; they must stand firm and become productive.

The fourth is understanding for every being. Nothing expresses what it means to understand every being more beautifully than a legend that has been preserved for us about Christ Jesus, not in the Gospel, but in a Persian story. Jesus was walking across a field with his disciples, and they found a decaying dog on the way. The animal was gruesome to look at. Jesus stopped and gazed at it admiringly, saying, “What beautiful teeth this animal has.” Jesus found beauty in the hideous. Strive to find the glorious in everything, in every thing out there in reality, and you will see that every thing has something to be said for it. Do as Christ did, who admired the beautiful teeth of the dead dog. This is the path that leads to great tolerance and understanding for every thing and every being.

The fifth characteristic is complete impartiality toward everything new that comes our way. Most people judge the new things they encounter based on the old things they already know. When someone comes to tell them something, they immediately reply, “I disagree.” But we must not immediately oppose a message we receive with our own opinion; rather, we must stand on the lookout to find out where we can learn something new. And we can learn even from a small child. Even if someone were the wisest person, they must be inclined to hold back their judgment and listen to others. We must develop this ability to listen, because it enables us to approach things with the greatest possible impartiality. In occultism, this is called “faith,” and it is the power not to weaken the impressions that the new makes on us by opposing it with our own ideas.

The sixth quality is what everyone receives automatically when they have developed the qualities mentioned above. That is inner harmony. The person who has the other qualities has inner harmony. Then it is also necessary that the person who seeks occult development has developed the feeling of freedom to the highest degree, the feeling of freedom through which he can seek the center of his being within himself and stand on his own two feet, so that he does not need to ask everyone what he has to do, but stands upright and acts freely. This is also something that must be acquired.

Once a person has developed these qualities within themselves, they are above all danger that the division of their nature could cause within them; the qualities of their lower nature can no longer affect them, and they can no longer stray from the path. Therefore, these qualities must be developed with great precision. Then comes the occult life, the expression of which requires a certain rhythmization of life.

The expression “rhythmization of life” expresses the ability developed for this purpose. If you observe nature, you will find a certain rhythm in it. You will take it for granted that the violet blooms at the same time every year in spring, that the seed in the field and the grape on the vine ripen at the same time. This rhythmic succession of phenomena can be found everywhere in nature. Everywhere there is rhythm, everywhere repetition in regular succession. When you go up to beings that are more highly developed, you see this rhythmic sequence diminish more and more. You also see in animals, to an even greater degree, all characteristics arranged rhythmically. At certain times of the year, animals acquire very specific functions and abilities. The more highly developed a being is, the more life is placed in its own hands, and the more this rhythm ceases. You must know that the human body is only one of the members of its being. Then comes the etheric body, then the astral body, and finally the higher members that underlie them.

The physical body is highly subject to the rhythm to which all of external nature is subject. Just as plant and animal life proceeds rhythmically in its external form, so does the life of the physical body. The heart beats rhythmically, the lungs breathe rhythmically, and so on. All this proceeds so rhythmically because it is ordered by higher powers, by the wisdom of the world, by what the Scriptures call the Holy Spirit. The higher bodies, and especially the astral body, are, I might say, in a certain sense abandoned by these higher spiritual powers and have lost their rhythm. Or can you deny that your activity in relation to desires, cravings, and passions is irregular, that it bears no comparison to the regularity that prevails in the physical body? Those who learn the rhythm that lies in physical nature will find in it more and more the model for spirituality. If you consider the heart, this wonderful organ with its regular beat and its inherent wisdom, and compare it with the desires and passions of the astral body, which unleash all kinds of actions against the heart, you will realize how detrimental passion is to its regular functioning. But just as the functions of the physical body are rhythmic, so must the functions of the astral body become.

I want to mention something here that will seem grotesque to most people today, namely in relation to fasting. We have completely lost sight of the significance of fasting. From the point of view of the rhythmization of our astral body, however, fasting is something extremely meaningful. What does fasting mean? It means curbing the desire to eat and switching off the astral body in relation to the desire to eat. Those who fast switch off the astral body and do not develop any appetite. It is like switching off a power source in a machine. The astral body is then inactive, and the entire rhythm of the physical body and the wisdom implanted in it work up into the astral body and give it rhythm. Like the seal of a stamp, the harmony of the physical body is imprinted on the astral body, and it would be transmitted much more sustainably if it were not constantly disrupted by cravings, passions, and desires, including spiritual cravings and desires.

What is more necessary for people today than it was in earlier times is to bring rhythm into their entire higher life. Just as rhythm is implanted in the physical body by God, so must people make their astral body rhythmic. Human beings must prescribe their day for themselves, dividing it for the astral body in the same way that the spirit of nature divides it for the lower realms. Early in the morning, at a specific time, one must perform a spiritual task; at another time, which must again be strictly adhered to, another task; and in the evening, yet another. These spiritual exercises must not be chosen arbitrarily, but must be suitable for the further development of higher life. This is one way of taking life into one's own hands and keeping it there. So set yourself an hour in the morning when you concentrate. You must stick to this hour. You must create a kind of calm so that the great occult master within you can awaken. You must meditate on a great thought that has nothing to do with the outside world and let this thought come alive within you. A short time is sufficient, perhaps a quarter of an hour, even five minutes is enough if you don't have more time. However, it is worthless and pointless if you do these exercises irregularly. If you do them regularly, so that the activity of the astral body becomes as regular as a clock, then they have value. The astral body takes on a completely different appearance when you do these exercises regularly. So sit down in the morning and do these exercises, and the powers I have described to you will develop. But, as I said, it must be done regularly, because the astral body expects the same thing to be done with it at the same time, and it becomes disordered if it is not done. At least the disposition for order must be present. If you rhythmize your life in this way, you will soon notice the results, namely that the spiritual life, which is initially hidden from human beings, will become apparent to a certain degree.

Human life generally alternates between four states. The first state is the perception of the outside world. You look around with your senses and perceive the outside world. The second state is what we might call imagination, the life of the imagination, which is related to the life of dreams, and even belongs to it. In this state, the human being is not rooted in their surroundings, but is detached from them; they have no realities before them, at most reminiscences. The third state is dreamless sleep. Here, the human being has no consciousness of the ego at all, and the fourth state is that in which the human being lives in memory. This is something different from perception; it is already abstract, spiritual. If the human being had no memory, he could not undergo any spiritual development at all.

Inner life begins to develop through inner contemplation and meditation. Sooner or later, the person then realizes that they are no longer dreaming in a chaotic way, but that they are dreaming in a highly meaningful way, and that strange things are revealed to them in their dreams, which they gradually begin to recognize as revelations of spiritual truths. Of course, the trivial objection can easily be raised: It's all just a dream, what does it matter to us? — But if someone discovered the steerable balloon in a dream and then carried it out, then this dream would have revealed the truth. So an idea can be grasped in a way other than the usual way, and the truth of it must then be found in its realization. We must therefore be convinced of its inner truth from the outside.

The next stage in spiritual life is where we grasp the truth through our own qualities and consciously control our dreams. When we begin to control our dreams in a regular manner, we are at the stage where the truth becomes transparent to us. The first stage is called material knowledge, for which the object must be present. The other stage is imaginative knowledge. This is developed through meditation, through shaping life in a rhythmic way. It is difficult to achieve. But once it is achieved, the time comes when there is no longer any difference between perception in ordinary life and perception in the supersensible. When we are among the things of ordinary life, that is, in the sensory world, and change our mental state, we then experience the spiritual, supersensible world continuously, if we have trained ourselves sufficiently in this way. This is the case as soon as we are able to become truly blind and deaf to the sensory world, to remember nothing from everyday life, and yet still have a spiritual life within us. Then our dream life begins to take on a conscious form. And when we are able to pour some of this into our everyday life, then we also become aware of the soul qualities of the beings around us. We then no longer see only the outer appearance of things, but we also see the inner, the hidden essence of things, of plants, animals, and human beings. I know that most people will say: These are basically different things. — That is quite right; they are always completely different things from those seen by people who do not have such senses. The third is the state that is otherwise completely empty, but which begins to be enlivened when the continuity of consciousness occurs. Continuity comes all by itself; the person then no longer sleeps unconscious. During the time when they would otherwise be asleep, they then experience the supersensible world.

What else does sleep consist of? The physical body lies in bed and the astral body lives in the supersensible world. In this supersensible world, you go for a walk. As a rule, people with today's disposition cannot stray far from their bodies. If, through rules provided by Spiritual Science, one has developed organs for this astral body that wanders around during sleep, just as the physical body has organs, then one begins to become conscious during sleep. The physical body would be blind and deaf if it had no eyes and ears, and the astral body, which walks around at night, is blind and deaf for the same reason, because it does not yet have eyes and ears. However, these are developed through meditation, which is the means of forming the organs. This meditation must then be guided in a regular manner. It is guided in such a way that the human body is the mother and the human spirit is the father. The human body, as it stands before us physically, is a mystery in every limb it presents to us, in such a way that each limb belongs in a specific but hidden way to a part of the astral body. These are the things that the occultist knows. He knows, for example, what the point between the eyebrows belongs to in the physical body. It belongs to a specific organ in the astral organism, and when the occult scientist tells you how to direct your thoughts, feelings, and sensations to the point between the eyebrows, by connecting something that is formed in the physical body with its counterpart in the astral body, you get a certain sensation in the astral body. But this must be done regularly, and one must know how. Then the astral body begins to organize itself. From a lump, it becomes an organism in which the organs develop. I have described the astral sense organs in the magazine “Lucifer-Gnosis.” They are also called lotus flowers. These lotus flowers are formed through certain formulas. Once they are formed, the human being is able to perceive the spiritual world. This is the same world that he enters when he passes through the gate of death. Hamlet's statement that no traveler has yet returned from that unknown land is then put to shame.

So you can enter, or rather slip into, the supersensible world from the sensory world and live in both worlds. This is not a life in a cloud cuckoo land, but a life in the realm that makes life in our realm explainable and understandable to us. Just as an ordinary person who has not studied the laws of electricity enters an electrically powered factory, sees the wonderful machinery and does not understand it, so too does the ordinary person not understand the machinery of the spiritual world. The factory visitor's lack of understanding persists as long as he does not know the laws of electricity. In the same way, human beings are also ignorant in the spiritual realm as long as they do not know the laws of the spiritual. There is nothing in our world that is not dependent on the spiritual world at every turn. Everything that surrounds us here is an outward expression of the spiritual world. There is no such thing as matter. All matter is condensed spirit, and those who look into the spiritual world see the entire material, sensual world, the world itself, become spiritualized. Just as ice melts into water in the sun, so everything sensual melts into the spiritual before the soul that looks into the spiritual world, and gradually the origin of the world is revealed to the spiritual eye and the spiritual ear.

In truth, the life that human beings come to know in this way is the spiritual life that they already lead continuously within themselves, but of which they know nothing because they do not know themselves before they have developed the organs for the higher world. Imagine that you were a human being with the characteristics you have now, but had no sensory organs. You would know nothing of the world around you, you would have no understanding of the physical body, and yet you would belong to the physical world. In the same way, the human soul belongs to the spiritual world, but does not know it because it cannot hear or see. Just as our body is taken from the forces and substances of the physical world, so our soul is taken from the forces and substances of the spiritual world. We do not recognize ourselves within ourselves, but only in our surroundings. Just as you cannot see your heart and brain without perceiving them in others through your sensory organs — even with the help of X-rays, only your eyes can see your heart — so it is true that you cannot see or hear your own soul without recognizing it in your surroundings through spiritual sensory organs. You can only recognize yourself through your surroundings. In truth, there is no inner knowledge, no self-contemplation; there is only knowledge, a revelation through the organs of both physical and spiritual life around us. We belong to the worlds around us, the physical, the soul, and the spiritual worlds. We learn from the physical world when we have physical organs, and from the spiritual world, from all souls, when we have spiritual, soul organs. There is no other knowledge than knowledge of the world.

It is futile and empty contemplation when a person broods within themselves and believes that they can achieve something through mere self-contemplation. Man finds God within himself when he awakens the divine organs within himself and then finds his higher, divine self in his environment, just as he can find his lower self in his environment through his eyes and ears alone. We become clear to ourselves as physical beings through our interaction with the sensory world, and we become clear in a spiritual relationship by developing spiritual senses within ourselves. Developing the inner self means opening oneself to the divine life in the outer world around us.

Now you will understand why it is necessary that those who ascend to the higher world as I have described first experience an infinite strengthening of their character. Human beings can initially experience the sensory world for themselves because their senses are already open, because a benevolent divine spirit, who has seen and heard in the physical world, stood beside human beings in the most distant past, before they could see and hear, and opened their eyes and ears. It is from such beings that human beings must learn to see spiritually today, from beings who already know what they must learn. We must have a guru who tells us how to develop our organs, who tells us what he has done to develop his organs. Those who wish to teach must have acquired one fundamental quality: unconditional truthfulness, and this is also a key requirement that must be demanded of the student. No one may be trained as an occultist unless they have first been trained in this fundamental quality of unconditional truthfulness.

In contrast to sensory experiences, one can verify what is said. But when I tell you something from the spiritual world, you must have faith, because you are not yet at the stage where you can verify it. Anyone who wants to be a guru must have become so truthful that it is impossible for them to take such claims about the spiritual world and spiritual life lightly. The sensory world immediately corrects the errors we make in relation to this sensory world, but in the spiritual world we must have that guideline within ourselves; we must be strictly trained so that we are not forced to exercise control through the outside world, but have it within ourselves. We can only acquire this control by acquiring the strictest truthfulness here in the world. That is why, when it began to bring some elementary teachings of occultism to the world, the Theosophical Society had to adopt the principle: No law above truth. Few understand this principle. Most are satisfied when they can say to themselves, I am aware that it is true, and if it is false, they say, I was mistaken. The occultist must not insist on his subjective honesty. That is the wrong approach. He must always be in agreement with the facts of the external world, and any experience that contradicts this must be regarded as an error, as a mistake. For the occultist, “I can” and “I cannot” cease to exist. He must be in absolute harmony with the facts of life. One must begin to feel responsible in the strictest sense for every assertion one makes. Then one educates oneself to the unconditional certainty that one must have for oneself and others if one wants to be a spiritual leader.

So you see that today I have had to give you — we will have to talk about this subject again to add the higher parts — a series of qualities and methods that will seem too intimate to discuss with others, that every soul must work out for itself, that may seem unsuitable to you for achieving the tremendous goal that is to be achieved, namely, entry into the supersensible world. Those who follow the path I have described will undoubtedly achieve this entry.

When? One of the most distinguished participants in the theosophical movement, our long-deceased member Subba Row, spoke accurately about this. He answered the question of how long it takes: Seven years, perhaps seven times seven years, perhaps seven incarnations, perhaps only seven hours. — It depends entirely on what a person brings with them into life. A person may stand before us who appears to be completely stupid, but who has brought with them a higher life that is now hidden and only needs to be brought out. Today, most people are further along in occult matters than it appears, and many would be aware of this if our material circumstances and our material times did not push them so far back into the inner life of the soul. A large percentage of people today were further along in the past. Whether what is within a person comes out depends on various things. But some help can be given. Imagine a person standing before me. In his previous incarnation, he was a highly developed individuality, but now he has an undeveloped brain. An undeveloped brain can sometimes conceal great spiritual abilities. But if you teach them ordinary profane skills, it is possible that their inner spirituality will also come out. However, this does not depend solely on this, but also on the environment in which the person lives.

In a very significant way, people are a reflection of their environment. Suppose a person is a highly developed personality, but lives in an environment that only awakens and develops certain prejudices in him, which then have such an energetic effect that his higher disposition cannot emerge. If such a person does not find someone who can bring it out of him, then it remains hidden within him.

I have only been able to give you a few hints about this, but after Christmas we will talk again about the further and deeper things. The one mental image I wanted to convey is that the higher life is not developed in a tumultuous way, but quite intimately, in the deepest soul, and that the great day when the soul awakens and enters into the higher life actually comes like a thief in the night. The development toward higher life leads people into a new world, and when they have entered this new world, they see, so to speak, the other side of existence; then what was previously hidden from them is revealed. Perhaps not everyone can do this, perhaps only a few can, so everyone should say to themselves. But that should not prevent them from at least initially embarking on the path that is open to everyone, namely hearing about the higher worlds. Human beings are called to live in community, and those who isolate themselves cannot attain a spiritual life. But it is a separation in the higher sense when I say: I do not believe that, it has no bearing on me, it may be valid for the other life; it does not apply to the occultist. It is a principle for the occultist to regard other people in reality as the revelation of his own higher self, because then one knows that one must find others within oneself.

There is a subtle difference between the two phrases “finding others within oneself” and “finding oneself in others.” But in a higher sense, this means: That is you. — And in the highest sense, it means recognizing and understanding oneself in the world, as expressed in the words of the poet, which I was able to quote a few weeks ago in another context: “One succeeded, he lifted the veil of the goddess at Sais. — But what did he see? He saw — wonder of wonders — himself.” Finding oneself not in the egoistic inner self, but selflessly in the world, is true self-knowledge.