Lecture XI

Most people's thoughts are nothing more than reflections of the environment. It is very rare to have thoughts which are not so connected. Man only has such higher thoughts when senses awaken for the mental world, so that he not only thinks the thoughts, but perceives them around him as beings. He then has the same consciousness of self in the mental world as that possessed by the Chela, the Initiate. When someone tries to eliminate first the physical world around him, then all impulses, passions, changes of mood and so on, usually no thoughts are left. Let us only try to picture everything that influences man inasmuch as he lives in space and time. Let us try to call up before the soul everything connected with the place where we live and the time in which we live. Everything that the soul continually has within it as thoughts is dependent on space and time. All this has a transient value. One must therefore pass on from the reflected impressions of the senses and allow an enduring thought content to live in one in order gradually to develop devachanic senses. A sentence such as that from ‘Light on the Path,’ “Before the eyes can see they must give up tears”,[^1] holds good for all times and all places. When we allow such a sentence to live within us, then something lives in us which is beyond space and time. This is a means, a force, which gradually allows devachanic senses to awaken in the soul for the eternal in the world.