Lucky You! Light on the Path

 

Notes of a person in attendance at an Esoteric Lesson given by Rudolf Steiner in Mannheim on March 10, 1911:

One result of meditation is that we get a feeling that we're making contact with beings in the higher hierarchies; we experience this as a warm, vital feeling of being taken into higher worlds, as an arrival at the place where we originated. The feeling of being admitted to the spiritual world must be warm and vital.

All concepts, feelings, and knowledge must become different in an esotericist.

Memory was given to us by Luciferic beings.

People who are thrifty in physical life are often very wasteful in their soul-spiritual life. We should be economical with these forces and transform them into seeing forces. Only self-knowledge can lead us to this. We spray out our feelings and emotions too selflessly from morn to evening.

We must first pass through egoism in the soul-spiritual domain. There is a danger that by trying to enter the spiritual world one will also become egotistical in the physical world. That's why moral and intellectual purification go hand in hand in a correct training.

We should realize that the impossible is being demanded of us esotericists and that we're striving for the impossible. All such striving is impossible, and being unegotistical is also impossible.

Greed for knowledge and progress is not the right thing for an esotericist. The right thing is an earnest feeling that it's our duty to develop, for the Divine Spirit has placed forces in us that he develops without our help; these are passive forces. But the Godhead has also placed active forces in us that a man must actively develop himself. And it's the greatest sin against the Divine Spirit to not develop the forces that the Godhead has placed in us for the good of the evolution and progress of mankind. These forces in us are so strong that they lead us into the spiritual world — though it may take years and so we mustn't get impatient, but should tell ourselves: I'll wait, for I know that these forces do this — if we're just devoted to the spiritual world in the right way.

Accessory exercises develop qualities that are necessary for the physical plane, such as thought control, equanimity, etc.

Eventually we'll have a place in our heart or soul in which we preserve our most sacred things, in which we're esotericists, whereas in outside life we stand on the physical plane. Of course this doesn't happen without a battle. As esoterics we must become fighters.

Thoughts that storm in on us are the spiritual world's beings who flutter around us, and the more we try to keep them away, the more they storm in on us. We shouldn't complain about this. One can tell a pupil to be glad that this is so, for it's a result of meditation that shows that thoughts are a spiritual power. Courage, fearlessness, and confidence are what an esotericist needs.

Source: https://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/Dates/19120310e01.html