Esoteric Lesson

A weak esoteric would be someone who is constantly preoccupied with talking about his difficulties and physical pains, who daily gives an account of all the great and small torments he has to endure. Those who want to progress must develop the strength within themselves not to constantly try to cure their suffering with all kinds of remedies and cures, but must understand that all this is part of an esoteric development in which the whole being of human beings is subject to transformation. It would be an example of a thoroughly sick soul life if, for example, someone were to walk across a meadow and see a colchicum and think that it wanted to devour him. But even if he is not sick, the esotericist may have the feeling that he is being seized from behind by higher beings and, as it were, sucked up. Among ordinary people, there are phenomena such as being afraid of an open window when they are on a high floor, because this gives rise to the desire to throw oneself out of the window. Or there is what is known as agoraphobia, where a person does not dare to cross a certain space. The latter sensation ceases when there is someone else nearby. Official medicine gives reasons for all these phenomena, but the real reason is that such people lack legitimate solitude. Solitude is something that all people need to a certain extent and is not mere selfishness. Anyone who wants to help others will eventually feel that they cannot continue to help unless they draw strength from solitude. Anyone who always wants to talk will eventually feel that they are only speaking empty words if they do not allow their spiritual strength to come to them in solitude. We must be alone in order to pray and meditate; communal prayer can only bring people to a certain level of group consciousness. Those who think it is selfish to seek solitude simply have a need to be with other people, not to help them, but so that they are not alone. Even the selfless “desire to help” can in reality spring from selfishness, from simply seeking company. For example, magnetism, which is supposedly used to relieve pain in others, can arise only from the need to feel good about oneself by stroking the body of another. Although love and egoism are opposites, it is nevertheless true that in certain borderline cases the two come very close to each other and it is difficult to distinguish between them.