Esoteric Lesson

And just as the danger of egoism is great when we settle into the sub-sensible world, so the danger of being lost in the world is no less great when we live our way up into the supersensible world. It is indeed the case that we become possessed by higher beings; they move into us, take possession of us in order to work through us. It is now important to preserve our “I,” our own self, and not to let it be lost. Courage, fortitude, and fearlessness help us to do this. It is completely useless to fear in advance any misfortune that may befall us. On the contrary, one should bear one's karma with courage and fearlessness; it does not help to be afraid of it. From the outset, one must imagine that one will find something different in the spiritual world than in the physical world. It is spiritual beings that we encounter there. If we now live our lives in such a way that we want to find the spiritual beings in their element, we will easily be led astray. It is true that through such exercises we can understand the former planetary states and learn to put ourselves in them. But only experiences in which intuition awakens the imagination are beneficial. If, for example, we imagine the thrones and spirits of the personality at work on ancient Saturn and at the same time the element of fire, we will be misled by our mental image of Saturn. We will only understand it if we are able to imagine both—the spiritual beings and the element—separately. Fire as something separate, as a mirror image. The same is true of the sun and the moon. The spiritual beings, whether they be the Angeloi or Archangeloi, work from above. They want to enter into human beings, take possession of them, in order to work through them on earth. We should open ourselves to them, but without giving up our ego.