Esoteric Lesson

The physical body can be induced to expel or squeeze out the etheric body by preparing the physical body sufficiently through diet, breathing exercises, etc. Our vegetarian lifestyle basically has the sole purpose of supporting the physical body in this endeavor. These are the exoteric means of loosening. The esoteric means are our exercises, our spiritual exercises. And it must be said that these are the main thing, that we should do them with devotion and seriousness, that everything else should only be support for this main thing. In our materialistic age, many people, in their materialistic longing, would gladly follow the most extreme dietary rules and do hours of breathing exercises if they could achieve something by doing so; but to exert themselves spiritually through meditation and concentration is much more uncomfortable, and it is often only then that spiritual laziness becomes apparent. But if we were to squeeze our etheric body out of us through physical influences alone, the physical body would have nothing to give it, and it would step out empty into the unknown. Then conditions arise in which, for example, we cannot grasp something properly in our thinking when we want to think something through. We cannot make proper use of the physical with our etheric brain because we are not really in it. It is as if we were swimming in water and trying to grasp something that keeps slipping away from us. The sensible esoteric will tell himself in such situations that he must first create order through appropriate concentration of the will and mental exercises. Even with normal development, some things will happen that we must tell ourselves are temporary suffering. For when the etheric body is withdrawn, the physical body is initially similar to a plant from which the sap has been withdrawn for a time. It withers. And so the physical body also dries up to some extent, although this is not physically visible, and where it has predispositions to disease, these come to the surface. But when the etheric body has been properly saturated with spiritual truths, it draws new strength from them, and this in turn has a healing effect on the physical body. One can observe that when a person is imbued with spiritual truths, or even when they simply allow theosophical thinking to work within them, cuts and wounds in general heal more easily in the physical body.