The Rudolf Steiner Archive

2. Esoteric Development and Super-sensory Knowledge

[ 1 ] Today I would like to speak to you about an extension of the topic from the day before yesterday, about inner or esoteric development and super-sensory knowledge. In doing so, it will be necessary to take what we considered the day before yesterday as a given and build upon what passed through our souls at that time. You have seen from what we discussed that human development is not something that can be taken lightly, so to speak; it is not something that can be taken easily. On the other hand, however, it must be emphasized again and again that one must not speak in the usual trivial way about the dangers of occult development. The dangers are great, but the way these dangers are usually spoken of is not correct, and many things will have to become clear to us. Let us first form a more precise idea for ourselves of what happens to someone who has developed through certain exercises, let us say exercises that are along the lines indicated in the last lecture, and let us compare him with a person who is not undergoing such training and lives like everyone else in everyday life. We can gain a conscious understanding of this if we start, for example, from what we know about the ordinary state of sleep.

[ 2 ] From the previous lecture, you learned what the human astral body actually does during the night in the ordinary state of sleep. When a person sleeps, the physical body and the etheric body lie in bed; from these, the so-called astral body with the I has emerged; it has lifted itself out, has left them. And when this astral body is not inside the physical body, not observing and contemplating the outer world through its instruments, the sense organs, when it is not occupied by the movements and work of the physical body, then the astral body can take on a completely different task. It removes fatigue from both. The removal of this fatigue is its task, and the seer can see how this astral body works on the physical and etheric bodies from outside throughout the night to restore them, so that in the morning the human being feels the improvement of his powers as refreshment. That is why sleep is such a good doctor and why people who do not have healthy and sufficient sleep lose so much. Many things that appear to be illnesses are really just disturbances in the physical and etheric bodies. These disturbances remain when the astral body is unable to remove them. However, it is able to remove these disturbances when it is not in the body as in the waking state, but when it is outside the body.

[ 3 ] Where does the astral body get the powers and abilities with which it repairs the physical body, so to speak? In my last public lecture, I compared the astral body's exit from the physical and etheric bodies to a mass of water in a glass. If you have a thousand drops of water in this glass and these drops all form a mass, it is different from taking a thousand sponges and absorbing each drop of water individually; then you have individualized these drops, separated them. So it is with the astral body at night. If you all fall asleep now, the same thing would happen as if you squeezed the sponges and made a mass of water. Your astral body would emerge and connect with the others. But by connecting, people come into contact with those harmonious, great events that are happening in the universe. At night, our souls return to the harmony of the spheres, and from there the astral body, together with the I — which is the soul — draws the energy needed to repair the physical body.

[ 4 ] What happens to a person who receives an occult teacher and undergoes occult training? He is given certain tasks. These can only be described in general terms. He is given tasks to meditate on, to concentrate on, and so on. What is the purpose of the tasks that the teacher gives the student? - Its purpose is to gradually enable the astral body to see when it is outside the physical body at night. In ordinary human beings, when the astral body is outside, it is unconscious in the astral world, just as you would be unconscious in the physical world if you had no senses. If you have no senses, the world does not exist for you. The moment a person is given instructions to awaken the powers slumbering in their soul, their astral body receives spiritual or soul sense organs, those organs called lotus flowers. These are not flowers, any more than the lungs are wings; everyone knows that a hawk has wings that look different from the lungs. Lotus flowers are organs that have a kind of circular movement. One such organ is located under the forehead, one centimeter below the point where the eyebrows meet, in the brain. When one thinks intensely at this point while simultaneously uttering a certain word, a kind of flash occurs, a becoming light, and this is visible to the seer from outside. The sense organ enters into a kind of circular movement. It is said that the wheel turns, it comes to life. In the average person, such an organ does not exist at this point, or at most only in a rudimentary form; through training, this flash occurs when the astral body is outside the physical body. It gives the impression of a wheel turning, which can be observed from the outside by the seer. This wheel is called the swastika. Like all genuine symbols, this sign cannot be explained speculatively. They are not arbitrarily invented, but can actually be seen on the spiritual or astral plane. The swastika is a representation of this sense organ, and all more or less ingenious explanations in theosophical writings are nonsense. One should not explain things allegorically or symbolically in theosophy. That is what one must first learn to avoid: all speculation. One must learn to avoid thinking about how things might be; the only thing that matters is to penetrate into the world of facts itself. Near the larynx is the sixteen-petaled lotus flower, an organ that is very, very important in human development. Near the heart is the twelve-petaled flower, further down the ten-petaled flower, and so on.

[ 5 ] These organs develop through the exercises that the teacher gives the student, just as the senses of the physical body are developed through exercise, for example through the influence of light and sound. Consider one as a physical process and the other as a spiritual process of exactly the same duration. You must not believe that any tumultuous processes, magic, or the like can lead human beings to develop these sense organs. They are merely intimate processes, a learning within the thoughts, which have the power to develop such organs. It is always and again and again important that the human being learns what these thoughts are and that the human being thinks of a specific organ of the body, for example, a point in the brain that lies one centimeter deeper than the middle between the eyebrows. When a person thinks of this point with a very specific combination of words, they awaken certain abilities within their astral body. Everything is systematic and, one might say, technically determined.

[ 6 ] Some people find this extremely unsuitable for themselves. One hears phrases over and over again that are absurd to the true occultist: “I don't need a teacher; I must find my teacher within myself.” Such statements reveal, first of all, the greatest conceivable egoism; secondly, they are nonsense. If someone were to consider geometry from this point of view, what would be the result? Anyone can discover all the laws of geometry through inner development: it will take many thousands of years, but they can be found. But is there really any reason to rediscover geometry? Should we not build on what humanity has discovered over centuries of work and continue to develop it for the benefit of humanity, which has given us so much knowledge? Humanity has a right to this. What can we spare humanity in devoted love for the teachers of earlier generations! In the same way, we do not seek inner development for ourselves, but as workers in the great service of humanity. There have always been people who have gone before us; we have to learn from them, and if we are afraid of bowing to authority, that is unloving nonsense. Working in the spirit of the teachers of humanity, seeking out those who can guide us—this is what is first and foremost necessary for the occult teacher and the student. These things, which the teachers tell us and which have been tested and known for centuries, draw the senses out of the astral body.

[ 7 ] If anyone gives occult teachings—a real teacher will not do this—it is easy for them to give the student instructions on how to have perceptions in the astral world. One can perceive that the student begins to work on his astral body, to draw out the sense organs, but that in doing so he displays much worse habits and temperamental characteristics than before he became an occult student. It has been wondered why, in the early days of Theosophy, many incomprehensible missteps were made in relation to their character. Even the slight development of the astral body, which the theosophical teaching brought about as elementary teaching when it first became known, gave rise to very strange phenomena. For example, one student who was a cashier ran off with the money, another did quite different things; even people who had previously been peaceful became quarrelsome. This is related to the fact that with the little occult development that flows from theosophical concepts, the bad sides of the character are brought to the fore if nothing else happens. But no one should be afraid of this. Such things should simply be given attention and taken seriously. We should strive not to fall into such temptations through our strength of character. However, it is different when a real systematic occult training is given to the student. In that case, the work on the astral body is much more extensive, and then it is absolutely necessary that the physical and etheric bodies be given something to replace what has been taken away.

[ 8 ] How can we replace what is taken from the physical and etheric bodies? To do this, it is necessary to develop certain qualities in human beings. It is possible to develop qualities in human nature and essence that make it unnecessary for the physical and etheric bodies to be repaired in such an extensive manner. Imagine that during the day you do something to strengthen the physical and etheric bodies, to repair them so that they vibrate in harmony with the great universe through their own meaning and rhythm. Only then will you be able to use the forces for the astral body itself. And this must be done; it does not have to be done immediately, but the time will come when it must be done. When the teacher says, “You must concentrate your thinking,” he does not mean ordinary thinking. When he says, “You must sit down, take an ordinary thought and not allow any other thoughts to enter your mind, and think about it as intensely as possible, rejecting all other thoughts,” the person must make a certain inner effort; it is this effort that is important. It is not the object that should interest and captivate you. It is easy, for example, to think about Napoleon, but very difficult to think about a matchstick for a long time without interruption. That is the essential point. Then you will see how, after a while, you will gain a certain inner strength and confidence. You will then feel from an inner experience whether it has had an effect.

[ 9 ] Then you must move on to taking initiative in actions that you would certainly not have taken otherwise. It may be a completely insignificant action. It does not matter how significant the action is, but it must be your own action, one that comes from your own initiative. A gentleman to whom I told this told me after some time that he had taken seven steps forward and seven steps backward every day in his office, imagining evolution and involution. Excellent—it is not the magnitude of the action that is necessary, but your own initiative.

[ 10 ] I also mentioned this to some friends and gave the example that one could water flowers if one had never watered flowers before. And what did I experience? When I visited my friends, I found them all watering flowers. That was the worst thing they could have done, because they should not have done what I did, but something entirely their own, except for the invention. If you do this for a long time, you will see what kind of inner effect it has. These things harmonize and balance everything in the physical and etheric bodies to such an extent that both continue to resonate and no longer need to be repaired, so that the astral body can withdraw some of its forces from them.

[ 11 ] Then the human being must control himself in relation to pleasure and pain. In ordinary life, he is subject to the slavery of his feelings. He laughs when something particularly ridiculous is presented to him, he cries on some sad occasion. But the student must have himself under control; he must not allow himself to be controlled, but must control pleasure and pain himself. Many people think that this will make them dull, but the opposite is true. In this way, we overcome pleasure and pain, that is, what is selfish pleasure and selfish pain. We must find a way to crawl into other beings, as it were, to feel with them. No one should be deterred from this exercise by concern about becoming dull; they will feel more sensitively.

[ 12 ] A fourth exercise is one that I prefer to characterize through the telling of a legend. This legend is from the life of Jesus Christ; it is not found in the Bible, like many others; it is from Persia. Once, when the disciples were walking with Jesus Christ across the country, they saw the half-decayed carcass of a dead dog lying on the path. What a horrible carcass, said the disciples, and turned away in disgust. But Jesus Christ alone remained standing, looked at the carcass, and after a while said: What beautiful teeth the animal had. He saw the beautiful teeth in the ugly, decaying carcass. This gives us a hint that we should and must learn to see the grain of beauty in everything ugly, the good in the bad, and the truth in error. This quality of positivity must be practiced for some time; it gives inner harmony and inner rhythm.

[ 13 ] The fifth is that man acquires a certain impartiality in relation to everything new that comes his way in the world. One could also say that he must never allow the future to be influenced by what he is accustomed to from the past. The words, “I don't believe that,” must disappear completely from the mind, and if someone comes to you and says that the church tower has become crooked overnight, you must find a corner in your heart where you consider it possible that anything can really happen. But that does not mean you should become uncritical; it just means that nothing should seem impossible to you. Those who can do this can have a very significant effect on the physical and etheric bodies, bringing them into such a rhythm that the astral body is given what it needs at night in the form of meditation and concentration. For it is only gradually that this will lead people to true, real theosophy, so that they will understand everywhere why everything happens as it does and not otherwise. Those who know the mechanism of sleep also know why such exercises must be done.

[ 14 ] When a person takes these steps on the occult path for a while under appropriate guidance, much becomes visible, tangible, and experiential that would otherwise have escaped them. You must not believe that the dangers one encounters are not otherwise present in life. But you don't see them beforehand; you go through life, but you don't see them. You only learn to see what is in the spiritual world around us when you can penetrate into the higher realms. For example, what a person must find and will always find on a higher level, and what he must endure, what he must prepare himself for, is the guardian of the threshold. People usually have rather strange ideas about him.

[ 15 ] What is this guardian of the threshold? Today, let us draw attention to this experience, so to speak, by skipping over many other things and experiences. You must be clear about what human beings generally do throughout their lives. Let us take, in its true sense, the Kamaloka life, the life after death, where the human being still has a certain attachment to physical and sensory existence, and compare this life with what happens immediately before the Kamaloka life begins. A great tableau of memories appears before the soul of the person who has just left the physical body. Then the kamaloka life begins.

[ 16 ] This is very peculiar. First of all, it has the peculiarity that the human being relives his past life. In fact, they relive their entire previous life backwards, experiencing the events that preceded their death, right back to their birth. They relive all events in this way and are finished when they reach their birth. They arrive at every point they have passed through. Let's say you have reached the age of sixty, and in your fortieth year you slapped someone in the face. When you reach this point in your backward life, you are drawn to this person, and something strange happens: you feel the pain you caused. During your life, you may have harbored feelings of revenge; now you feel what the person you took revenge on or wanted to take revenge on felt. In your backward experience, you experience the feelings and emotions you have scattered around. Everything you experience there offers you a great deal of what is hindering your further development in human history. And without this stored mark of pain, you would find it easier to move forward, because this mark of inhibition remains with you as a force. And by absorbing the forces in reverse in Kamaloka, you will be guided by karma in your next life to use these forces to atone for your guilt, to make amends, to compensate. Thus, the longing to make amends for what you have failed to do begins there, and you will be drawn to make amends when the person lives with you again. This is how karma is lived out.

[ 17 ] Another example. Four judges sentenced someone to death and carried out the sentence. Why did this happen? When the lives of all these men were traced back, it turned out that in a previous life, the condemned man had been a kind of chieftain and had sentenced these four to death. The trait that brought the five together had actually developed in their previous lives. Thus, during their previous lives, people always have the opportunity to absorb those forces as inhibitions that will lead them back to life in order to pay off their debt.

[ 18 ] After a person has passed through Devachan and is about to re-enter physical life, you have the opposite image of what happens immediately after death. Now you have a kind of foresight, a kind of preview of the life that now lies ahead of you. Of course, unless they have been trained in the occult, they forget what they perceive there. There are documented cases of people who were so shocked by this preview that they did not want to enter this life. It turned out that their etheric body did not fully enter the physical body. In such cases, the etheric body of the head remained outside for quite some time and caused a very specific type of idiocy.

[ 19 ] Now, however, you must not think that karma works in such a way that we can pay off everything we caused in a previous incarnation in the next one. It is not that simple. Sometimes you have to go through many, many incarnations. If you could look back at any moment and see all the marks in your astral body that need to be balanced before you can ascend to certain heights of the occult, you would see your entire debt account.

[ 20 ] This now confronts the student and must confront him in a symbolic and tangible form — that which we still have to pay off, that which still hinders us: the unresolved karma. This is the guardian of the threshold.

[ 21 ] It can also confront us in a completely abnormal way. I know of a case where someone incarnated at the end of the 18th century and was afflicted with such an extraordinary greed for certain deeds on the physical plane that he had to undergo a strange fate after death. He died; after a very long time, he left the last remnants of his astral body. Usually, the astral body falls away after a third of the time spent on earth and remains as an astral corpse until it disappears. Such astral corpses constantly swirl around us and exert a bad influence on people. He could not remain long in the spiritual world, but soon felt the urge to descend again into the physical world. Now the disaster has befallen him, which, however, can occur very rarely. For when a person returns to physical existence, it can happen that he still finds his astral corpse. This is very bad for him, because then his present astral body is, as it were, saturated by his former astral body, which is a terrible fate. He then has it constantly beside him as a doppelganger, and this is the abnormal form of the guardian of the threshold. This can happen in special exceptional cases.

[ 22 ] But for those who are on the path of occult development, it is necessary that at a certain point in time they see their ordinary astral body with all the marks of their unbalanced karma, and they must seek to balance their unresolved karma by the means available to them. This is the true encounter with the guardian of the threshold. This is not said to frighten you, but to give you an idea of what is meant by self-knowledge in the true sense of the word. This is twofold: first, it is the knowledge of what the true self has to accomplish. Second, it is the realization of the higher self. But here, realization is something completely different. You can read in the Bible: Adam knew his wife. This is an expression for fertilization. Know thyself means: fertilize yourself with the wisdom within you, regard the soul as a female organ and fertilize yourself. If you want to have self-knowledge, search within yourself, there you will recognize all your mistakes; if you want to recognize your higher self, then search outside yourself, for there is world knowledge and self-knowledge. Everything is in the sun, for everything is sun. We must detach ourselves from ourselves. People say to me: You tell us about development and such things; but we want elevation of the soul, of the feelings. Those who speak thus are their own enemies. It is not by gazing into ourselves that we become selfless and find self-knowledge and knowledge of God, but by getting to know the world in all its parts, piece by piece.

[ 23 ] There is no worse phrase than this: One need only look within oneself. — But there one finds only the lower self. One should seek with love outside, and one will find. I have known people who said: What do I need? I need nothing, for I am Atma. — And even if they say “Atma, I am Atma” over and over again, they do not bring it into consciousness, because they know no more about Atma than that the word has four letters. Looking within oneself only leads to isolation. We are nothing but a limb of this world. The finger is only a finger because it remains part of the organism; detach it and it is no longer a finger. The finger does not separate itself from the organism; but man is so “clever” as to believe that he can separate himself from the earth, even though one would only have to lift him a few kilometers above the earth and he would perish. Man belongs to the sun, to his etheric and astral bodies, to an entire solar world. It is the greatest mistake to want to find the self within oneself. The right thing to do is to detach oneself by immersing oneself in all the details of the world. Those who enrich themselves with love and humility find godliness, while those who seek God within themselves become hardened. So you see that there is much to learn if you really want to get to know the esoteric path. And it is important that we have the right thoughts about such things. You do not need to think about it from morning till night, any more than it is necessary to constantly repeat your own name to yourself. It is enough to know the thought. There are thoughts without which the esotericist cannot be an esotericist. If he has them in the same way that he has his instincts and motives in ordinary life, then these thoughts are steps for him that lead him up to the supersensible plane of knowledge, meaning for him a penetration into world wisdom, an advance in knowledge toward love.