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The Rudolf Steiner Archive

a project of Steiner Online Library, a public charity

Esoteric Lessons II
GA 266

Lesson 48

Stuttgart, 2-23-'12

Now let's raise our thoughts again to the high being who's in charge of today. It's always a favorable constellation if an esoteric lesson can be held on a Friday, because of the great influence that this being ours into our thoughts and feelings. (Venus mantra.)

Last time we discussed why we should become esoterics; today I'd like to tell you the real significance of daily mediation. The meditations are tested and given to us by the masters of wisdom and of the harmony of feelings for esoteric work. Their force is irresistible if they're done in the right way with the most sacred devotion. One should do the meditation shortly before going to sleep and after one has banished all thoughts from our soul that still connect us with daily life with it joys and pleasure, work and sorrows. The meditation must be our last thought that we take into the other world so that spiritual beings can connect themselves with it. We dive down into their etheric bodies and they permeate us with their force so that we can receive new forces and fresh health from them for the new day. Unfortunately, many men go over into sleep life with thoughts of material life's everyday pleasures. These thoughts that stream out create oscillations that repel spiritual beings, and such men counteract their spiritual development and health. Just as we dive down into a spiritual atmosphere in the evening, so on awakening in the morn we shouldn't immediately get caught up in the worries, desires and passions that filled us the previous day. If we suppress all of this and let our thoughts still stay in the regions from which we just descended for awhile, then after a little practice, we'll feel how this promotes our development and not just for our own inner being, for the radiant forces that flowed into us will also go out of our eyes and hands and into our deeds for the good of mankind.