Rudolf Steiner, Dornach, Switzerland
First-Class Lesson #12
May 11, 1924
My dear friends! First, we will speak the verse that comes to us as an adjuration out of the world-all itself, summoning us to self-awareness.
O Man, know yourself!
So sounds the word of worlds.You hear it soul-forcefully,
You feel it spirit-powerfully.Who speaks so world-mightily?
Who speaks so heart-inwardly?Does it work streaming through space
Into your sense’s self-experiencing?Does it sound weaving through time
Into your life's evolving stream?Are you the one, who yourself
In sensing space, in experiencing time
Creates the word, feeling yourself
Estranged in space’s soul-emptiness,
As you lose the power of thinking
In time’s destroying stream?
It is most certainly insight into oneself, my dear brothers and sisters, that can lead us in a spiritual sense to insight into the world. And it has often been said, how appreciation must be there for the streaming forth of a true spiritual knowledge out of the spiritual world itself, how a person must have an appreciation of this, that of those who can impart such knowledge of the spiritual world, that they will certainly have approached the Threshold, at the Threshold where the Guardian of the Threshold stands, the Guardian that there protects a person in ordinary consciousness from entering the spiritual world unprepared.
But as soon as one gets to know this Guardian, initially through a healthy human mental appreciation, and later by really getting to know, after one’s healthy human mental appreciation leads the way to an appreciation of the true constitution, the reality in being, of the Guardian, then this Guardian places there what we confront as an admonition, when we first seek to enter the spiritual world in the proper manner, and then in the proper manner when we seek to remain within the experience of the spiritual world.
Now as it has also often been said, remaining in the spiritual world for the most part proceeds improperly, due to one’s wanting something else to take place instead of the reality of being in the spiritual world. Such a person wants it to be similar to the sensory world. But this is not being in the spiritual world. It is suddenly supersensory, and it cannot simply lead to the sort of gazing about that is like gazing about with the senses. This sort of imagination of supersensory gazing is only a picture. It must lead to real experiencing of the spiritual world. And quite a few of you have this experience of the spiritual world, my dear brothers and sisters, many more than you might think. They just don’t quite notice it, they pay it no attention, how it actually maintains dominion within their soul experiencing. It actually rules, and part of its action there is to bring into intimate presence of mind the true realization of this ruling actuality.
Toward this end, knowledge should flow ever and again, immediately out of the spiritual world into these Class lessons; knowledge should be flowing to you, my brothers and sisters, and it should become ever more and more your actual point of departure in making tangible your human soul in the spiritual world. And the following can be such a declamation of wisdom.
Take any one of the mantras, or any other meditative verse, and recite all that lies within such a mantra. It certainly does not come down to which one it is, but rather to one specific mantra — one specific mantra, however, that is quite well known by you. For your meditation take the mantra and say it to yourself in the most beautiful manner in which you can say it, bringing it forth for yourself, into your presence. Make it, say it to yourself, not right away in a loud tone, but rather in a soft peaceful tone, and so bring forth the specific mantra.
O Man, know yourself!
So sounds the word of worlds.
You hear it soul-forcefully,
You feel it spirit-powerfully.
And then, when you yourself have brought forth such a mantra, try to sense how it works in you, how it is. In this manner try to reach it, so that you sense the speech, you sense what sort of difference there is in your body between the condition of your being at peace, and the condition of your speaking. And so try to sense the speech in your organs, in its coursing. You ought to feel it in its forceful coursing and reverberating entrainment even in the organ of speech.
And when you have caught the aroma of its sense and feeling, then each of you must ask the following of yourself. “If I am thinking about something so as to bring my attention to bear on it, perhaps something someone said to me and I am thinking about, an otherwise external experience that has made an impression on me, in order to make it clear, when I think about something in this way, as it were, can I also sense its aroma, its feeling?
Well, when you have learned to sense speech, then it will be easy for you in addition to become able to sense thinking, made immediate when presented in this way. So in this way you can also sense thinking. It is lighter and quieter in sensing than is speech, but it may be sensed. By sensing speech, you can learn to sense the aroma of thinking, to perceive thinking.
It is good to undertake such an exercise, for such an exercise generally eases the way to intimate self-observation.
And then you proceed, my dear brothers and sisters, so that you now make a thought active in yourself, a memory-thought, perhaps something that you thought about a few days ago, or weeks, or months, some thought, however, that you can make really active within yourself. Then try to sense this memory-thought, try to perceive it, and you will have the feeling that in perceiving it you localize it underneath speech, you perceive it therefore below, below the localization of speech [yellow]. And you will say to yourself something like, “When I speak, I experience it in the region of my organ of speech, when I think, I experience it over this in my head, but when I remember, I experience it underneath the thinking.”
For this to be intimate experiential knowledge for you, if you really feel it to be so, then you will have already engaged in the spirit to some extent, which can generally be the beginning of a further progressive spiritual engagement. A great disconnectedness from the other experiences of the day is necessary, however, in order to sense it inwardly in this way. And it is not good to say to yourself, “Well of course, to attain such disconnectedness, I must take a couple of weeks off sometime to go where there are no other people, where nothing will disturb me, where I will have absolute peace and quiet, away all by myself, possibly to a cottage on Mont Blanc, in order to bring it about.” It is not good to think like this, for what is best is rather to remain in the middle of all the strife of life, to be exposed to all that life brings from morning until evening, and through all this, through one’s own power of soul, to find a certain time, be it ever so brief, to be totally outside the strife of the world, remaining within yet totally outside, purely through the power of one’s inner nature totally outside. That is best. In the solitude of going away by oneself, in order to find peace and quiet, that is certainly not the thing that is most effective, but rather through one’s own power to engender the solitude, that is the very thing that absolutely and certainly can lead to the goal. And in this manner a good foundation will be established, concerning specifically the ability to practice meditating, which most certainly is needed.
You have become acquainted with mantras, my dear brothers and sisters, to be effectively spoken out of stillness of soul. The first mantras in the Class lessons have certainly been of this sort. But we have forged ahead by means of such mantras that in part ring forth from the soul, and which also in part must be envisioned as intonations coming to us from the breadth of the world, so that in meditating we not only speak them inwardly, but also in meditating we hear them inwardly, so that we shift our position in thinking, and so hear them coming to us, being spoken to us, out of the depths of space, out of spirit-being. And directly out of this reorientation of ourselves into other entities speaking to us, directly out of this reorientation of ourselves in such a way, we may become able to really consummate this soul-reorientation inwardly, thereby feeling ourselves within the spiritual world.
Please note that today’s mantra ought to be given over to this goal. The human soul must now imagine itself to be entirely silent, utterly silent. But it should imagine that it is already on the other side of the Threshold, already in the spiritual world before which the Guardian stands, and there the soul hears three different intonations. While it remains entirely silent itself, it hears three different intonations. The first intonation resounds out of the breadth of the world-all. The second comes from the Guardian. And the third comes from the various beings that become identified by the mantra. So should it be thought, that which comes forth to your souls today as the mantra. So, out of the breadth of the world sounding forth and arriving from all sides,
Examine1 the field of thinking.
Just so we take up, we focus our attention on becoming clear about the true nature of thinking by means of a spiritual, soulful experience of the world.
Then the Guardian speaks. And as the sounding forth unto us out of the breadth of the world fades away, the spirit of which we must dwell within, then the Guardian speaks.
He speaks, who you the ways
From earthly life to earthly life
Will show in spirit light:
That is the Guardian’s speech.
Then the Angelic being speaks, who accompanies us from earth-existence to earth-existence.
Look to your senses’ radiant nature.
That is also the being, that as an Angelic being, as an Angel, conducts us from incarnation to incarnation. So is this line spoken. We hear it living, inwardly in contemplation.
The Guardian speaks again.
He speaks, who on to souls
In realms of being material free,
Will carry you on wings of soul.
Then the next line sounds, spoken by a caring being watching over us from the hierarchy of the Archangels.
Look to your thinking’s forceful impact.2
That comes down from where the Archangels are.
First it was “Look to your senses’ radiant nature.” In reality, it really is this way, similar to the sun’s glowing in sensory life. In sensory life, our senses do not seem to glow, but in actuality, they also really glow. Nevertheless, even though our senses are actually glowing, we do not take note of it. So the being admonishes us, the being belonging to us from the ranks of the Angels, “Look to your senses’ radiant nature.”
As we go about thinking in customary awareness, we generally don’t really examine the thinking, we don’t really sense it as such. We don’t actually perceive it. The being that belongs to us from the realm of the Archangels admonishes, “Look to your thinking’s forceful impact.”
Now it progresses to where the Archai are. The Guardian admonishes in three lines, and we ought to hear this being’s admonition as coming from the ranks of the Archai. The next three lines are the lines of the Guardian.
He speaks, who among spirits
In creator fields far from earth
Will give you the grounds of existence-awareness.3
I could also say “the throne of existence-awareness,” but “the grounds of existence-awareness” is better, for it will give you a sort of spiritual floor, much as here in the sensory world you have a physical floor.
After the Guardian of the Threshold has spoken this, then the being from the ranks of the Archai speaks.
Look to memory’s picture-forming.
That is the third. First, we are to look to the radiant nature of our senses, then to thinking’s forceful affect working in us, then to that which lies deep underneath, to what lies underneath speech, to what lies in the constituting of memory, “Look to memory’s picture-forming.”
And so we ourselves have managed in this disparate fashion to bring the three-part speech to our ears: first the speech from the cosmos in the very first line, “Examine the field of thinking,” then the Guardian’s respective three lines lying between directives from the cosmos and the specific hierarchies, and finally the lines of the being belonging to us out of the actual realms of the hierarchies, always speaking the specific paradigm-line, in certainty to the most profound part of our being. It is all brought together in the following manner, which I will then write down.
Examine the field of thinking:
He speaks, who you the ways
From earthly life to earthly life
Will show in spirit light:
Look to your senses’ radiant nature.
He speaks, who on to souls
In realms of being material free,
Will carry you on wings of soul:
Look to your thinking’s forceful impact.
He speaks, who among spirits
In creator fields far from earth
Will give you the grounds of existence-awareness:
Look to memory’s picture-forming.
[The mantra was now written on the board and at the same time in the first line “thinking" was underlined, and in each case the last lines of parts 1,2, and 3 were underlined.]
- Examine the field of thinking
He speaks, who you the ways
From earthly life to earthly life
Will show in spirit light:
Look to your senses’ radiant nature.
He speaks, who on to souls
In realms of being material free,
Will carry you on wings of soul:
Look to your thinking’s forceful impact.
He speaks, who among spirits
In creator fields far from earth
Will give you the grounds of existence-awareness:
Look to memory’s picture-forming.
With this we have it, which as an admonition for our self-awareness sounds forth out of the three lower hierarchies, experienced inwardly in soul: the first from the hierarchy of the Angels, the second from the hierarchy of the Archangels, the third from the hierarchy of the Archai. [“Angels” was written next to the first part, “Archangels” next to the second part, and “Archai” next to the third part.]
Before the exercise is utilized, soul-concentration can be engendered by means of a person’s bringing up before the soul a certain well-defined picture: picture an eye gazing overhead [an eye was drawn] beholding the sphere of the higher hierarchies [a curving arc] which the forces of the world allow to stream down upon the eye [upper rays], and that then beholds the sphere of the lower hierarchies [a wavy line] that intertwines itself with the higher hierarchies and sends the rays further on to human beings [lower rays].
This picture may be called up before the soul and held there in mind, the outward-looking eye, the two lines, one curved and one wavy, and the rays that come down. And you imagine yourself actually there while practicing the exercise, but without thinking further about the picture, so that while practicing the exercise, the picture remains before the soul, the picture of this outward-looking eye.
Then a person again takes up, attends to, hearkens to the sounding forth from all sides of the cosmos:
Examine the field of feeling.
Spoken then by the Guardian, the next three lines are:
He speaks, who as thought
Out of spirit sun-rays
Calls you to world existence-awareness:
It is already a higher speech, a speech that rings forth from higher hierarchies. Here [in the first mantra] we are always merely made to take note of what is already in us, whereas we are spoken to here in this mantra, by the Guardian, so that we are not merely called to observe our senses, our thinking, and our remembering, but rather so that we are called to taking note of how we ourselves are called out into the world, into world existence-awareness. That sounds forth from the hierarchy of the Exusiai.4
Spoken forth then by the being who belongs to us from the hierarchy of the Exusiai:
Feel in your breath life stirring.
Spoken again by the Guardian, the next three lines are:
He speaks, who world existence-awareness
Out of star-life-forces
Would bestow on you in spirit realms.
Then the being speaks from the hierarchy of the Dynamis:5
Feel in your blood’s welling-weaving.
Here we must think steadfastly on the interwoven fabric of the world, feeling it actually within the vibrant activity of our blood.
And the Guardian speaks again, now admonishing us, that we should hearken unto what is spoken by the being from the ranks of the Kyriotetes:6
He speaks, who spirit-sense
In light-filled gods-high-realms
Will fashion for you out of will of earth.
Then the being from the ranks of the Kyriotetes speaks:
Feel earth’s mighty counter striving.
Only when a person feels this mighty counter striving of earth-forces can a person properly remain within the purely spiritual world.
So now experience this mantra sounding as a unity:
Examine the field of feeling:
He speaks, who as thought
Out of spirit sun-rays
Calls you to world existence-awareness:
Feel in your breath life stirring.
He speaks, who world existence-awareness
Out of star-life-forces
Would bestow on you in spirit realms:
Feel in your blood’s welling-weaving.
He speaks, who spirit-sense
In light-filled gods-high-realms
Will fashion for you out of will of earth:
Feel earth’s mighty counter striving.
In ascending into the ranks of the second hierarchy, self-awareness will be quickened in us, as an entity belonging to us from the ranks of the Exusiai admonishes us. At first the Guardian will direct us, then such a being will speak to us.
Now, my dear brothers and sisters, we think in life on earth, but our thoughts are quite in vain. When, however, a being from the ranks of the Exusiai thinks, it thinks us as such. Our ego is being thought. And it is brought into being as the thought of a being from the ranks of the Exusiai. If on the earth we say “I” to ourselves, just what are we gazing upon? Yes, this ego: when we say “I” [it was drawn, a circle with the word “I” in gold], we look back on this ego [red arrows], in articulating the word “I”. But for a being from the ranks of the Exusiai [green line], for such a being this ego is a thought, but a thought with more reality, with more actuality. We exist in that we are thought by a being from the ranks of the Exusiai. And when we say “I” to ourselves, we are certainly stating in this way that we have been thought into being by a heavenly being. And in this thought-becoming by a heavenly entity is contained our higher being.
Then an entity from the ranks of the Dynamis admonishes us, that we are endowed by him with spirit-presence-in-being, which he abstracts out of life-forces from the stars and bestows on us.
And a being out of the ranks of the Kyriotetes admonishes us, that what lives in us specifically as will upon the earth, will be drawn out into the heights of heaven, and in the transmutation that takes place there, our will of earth again will be given to us, so that we can then utilize it in spirit-willing. Earth-willing is merely a transmutation of spirit-willing. Earth-willing of course will be trundled out down below and also above. On high it is heavenly-willing; below it is earth-willing. Of this we are admonished in closing, first by the Guardian, then by the being from the ranks of the Kyriotetes, who says, “Feel earth’s mighty counter striving.” [Mantra II was now written on the board and at the same time in the first line “feeling” and correspondingly the last lines of parts 1,2, and 3 were underlined.]
- Examine the field of feeling
He speaks, who as thought
Out of spirit sun-rays
Calls you to world existence-awareness:
Feel in your breath life stirring.
He speaks, who world existence-awareness
Out of star-life-forces
Would bestow on you in spirit realms:
Feel in your blood’s welling-weaving.
He speaks, who spirit-sense
In light-filled gods-high-realms
Will fashion for you out of will of earth:
Feel earth’s mighty counter striving.
And so therefore the second mantra runs as follows:
Examine the field of feeling:
He speaks, who as thought
Out of spirit sun-rays
Calls you to world existence-awareness:
Feel in your breath life stirring.
He speaks, who world existence-awareness
Out of star-life-forces
Would bestow on you in spirit realms:
Feel in your blood’s welling-weaving.
He speaks, who spirit-sense
In light-filled gods-high-realms
Will fashion for you out of will of earth:
Feel earth’s mighty counter striving.
The first is intoned from the ranks of the Exusiai,
the second from the ranks of the Dynamis,
the third from the ranks of the Kyriotetes.
[Exusiai was written next to part 1, and correspondingly Dynamis and Kyriotetes next to parts 2 and 3.]
Once again in ending, so that we may remember what we have fashioned before ourselves as a picture, after all of it has run through us, so that we may have a clear experience of it all, let us place before ourselves once again the picture which we were to have envisioned as ever standing before our souls during the entire exercise; let us pointedly place it once again before our souls. [This picture, already drawn on the board before the writing of the mantra “Examine the field of thinking”, was now again drawn on the board, the eye, the curving arc, the upper rays, the curvy line, and the lower rays.]
The further ascent into the ranks of the Seraphim, the Cherubim, and the Thrones will properly become appended to all this in the next Class lesson. However just now it may be possible to make somewhat more comprehensible and intelligible what the sense of the whole is.
My dear brothers and sisters, coming to us at the beginning of today’s Class lesson was the formulation, coming out of universal existence-awareness, coming forth out of the essential true nature of the world, admonishing us to self-awareness. Self-experience, it was alleged, leads to true knowledge of the world, although only if and when we can place the self in unity with the world.
But the self does not stand in fanciful relationship to any external entity or process of nature, but rather solely to what is in the spiritual world. That is where the beings of the hierarchies are. If we really wish to penetrate into our self, into the part of our being from which we can say “I”, then we must not coexist with external nature, but rather we must coexist with the beings of the hierarchies. For whatever emerges from external nature that can be spoken of as our inner nature, all that is certainly merely the empty external reflection of our true inner nature. What we truly refer to when we say “I” stands in the same realm within which also stand the higher hierarchies. As soon as a person enters into true self-awareness, he must enter into the ranks of the higher hierarchies. He must then take into account the language of the higher hierarchies.
So that one might do this with full force, not merely making it into a theory drained of blood, but rather doing it with full force, for this reason the admonitions of the Guardian of the Threshold are forever emplaced right there. So that the whole meditation approaches us with due greatness and majesty, for this reason placed there are the two powerful admonitions from the cosmos, “Examine the field of thinking,” and “Examine the field of feeling,” and subsequently the third, which we will hear next time.
If and only if we hold this three-part declamation within our hearts and minds full of life and force, if and when we experience ourselves in this mantric manner in the spiritual world, then we can really bring things forward. For only then have we grasped things in the appropriately correct spirited mood. We must seek this spirited mood in all things. For the actual inner sanctity which must be present — and meditation ought to be conducive of, ought to lead to, sanctity — this actual inner sanctity comes to one most certainly only through a spirited demeanor, through a specific spirited mood, one in which we are enraptured by the external world for a while, but one in which, alone and solely within oneself, the content and matter of the meditation is lived. When we entirely, full of life, attune our inner demeanor in this manner, then self-awareness is not just a sort of brooding within our inner nature, but it is rather a seed-awakening conversation with the world in the widest sense, with the Guardian, and with the Hierarchies. And then we find ourselves in the depths of true self-awareness.
This ought to be taken up by us quite broadly, so that we take it as a ground-rule, to avoid thinking on such things, unless at the same time we can bring this spirited mood to bear on it. And so we should henceforth only think about such things such as were brought forward today, if and when we can really bring forth within the soul this demeanor, this fundamental accompaniment to our perception, as the majesty of world-wide cosmic distances presses in upon us with a universal thunderclap, as within this in a soft, admonishing voice is intoned all that comes from the Guardian of the Threshold, and as then in compelling fashion a certain being of the Hierarchies itself speaks to our souls.
And only then, when we keep this in memory, and when we bring up the feeling accompanying this memory, specifically only then should we think on this mantra, only then setting ourselves inwardly in relationship with this mantra, so that in this way we should not inwardly desecrate it, thereby desecrating its power, which we might well do by thinking about it with the type of customary, dry, philistine thinking with which we usually think, rather than placing ourselves first in the appropriate mood and demeanor of soul.
And in this regard, we should also make sure that we obtain this mood of soul in order to feel that human self-awareness is something special, serious, and holy, and that in fact these things should only be spoken inwardly by the soul, silently then externally, so that they come into perception as serious, special, and sacred.
A great hindrance in progressing along an esoteric path is just this, that these things are spoken about so frequently in cliques, in which this serious, special, sacred, spirited nature is not developed at the same time, but rather, even in flights of fancy, these things are gossiped about. In doing this one forgets that in esoteric life all depends on the dominion of truth, proper full truth. Progress cannot be made in esoteric life by one who does not have this knowledge: that in esoteric life truth, full truth, must have dominion, that a person therefore cannot simply speak about the truth and then nevertheless approach such things merely in the way external profane things are approached, in the manner of making these things the subject matter of customary chitter-chatter.
And this, which happens so frequently, this customary chitter-chatter, this is what so very often places hindrances and constraints along the esoteric path. And so we must absolutely bring a serious, special, sacred, spirited tenor of soul along in focusing on all that belongs to self-awareness. Then we will also be able to allow the word to work on our soul in the proper manner, the word which in conclusion shall now be spoken again, just as it was spoken at the beginning of today’s Class lesson:
O Man, know yourself!
Yes indeed, that is a directive to self-awareness.
O Man, know yourself!
So sounds the word of worlds.You hear it soul-forcefully,
You feel it spirit-powerfully.Who speaks so world-mightily?
Who speaks so heart-inwardly?Does it work streaming through space
Into your sense’s self-experiencing?Does it sound weaving through time
Into your life's evolving stream?Are you the one, who yourself
In sensing space, in experiencing time
Creates the word, feeling yourself
Estranged in space’s soul-emptiness,
As you lose the power of thinking
In time’s destroying stream?
Fundamentally, it is a question. The answer is given in such as this. [The mantras on the board were indicated.]
| I. Vernimm des Denkens Feld: | I. Examine the field of thinking: |
|---|---|
Hüter: Es spricht, der dir die Wege Hüter: Es spricht, der dich zu Seelen Hüter: Es spricht, der unter Geistern | Guardian: He speaks, who you the ways Guardian: He speaks, who on to souls Guardian: He speaks, who among spirits |
| II. Vernimm des Fühlens Feld: | II. Examine the field of feeling: |
Hüter: Es spricht, der als Gedanke Hüter: Es spricht, der Weltendasein Hüter: Es spricht, der dir den Geistes-Sinn | Guardian: He speaks, who as thought Guardian: He speaks, who world existence-awareness Guardian: He speaks, who spirit-sense |
Source: May 11, 1924
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