Masters at Steiner's Esoteric Classes

First a prayer spoken by Dr. Steiner. Then a remark that the Masters are speaking through Dr. Steiner, that he is only the means of bringing the thoughts of the Masters to expression. Master Morya tells us about the goal of human evolution. He is the one who brings humanity its goals. Master Kuthumi is the one who shows us the way to the goals.

-July 9, 1904, Berlin, notes by Franz Seiler

The Mahatmas (Masters) have something to say to us today. The three duties of the esoteric pupil are named: overcome pride and vanity, live theosophy practically, represent theosophy to the world. Now Master Morya will speak. The Masters can be seen by us as ideals. They have attained what we must still attain to. Therefore, we can ask them about our further development. In us lie the powers, seed-like, that have grown to full blossom in the Masters.

-July 14, 1904, Berlin, notes from Franz Seiler

Necessity for the esotericist to understand the plan that humankind is unconsciously working through under the guidance of the White Lodge. In order to lead humanity to this knowledge of the moral, to reveal its laws so that a band of people arises that consciously works out of itself, the fourth Master, Christian Rosenkreutz, founded the Rosicrucian Order. The other intellectual education of the West requires a different teaching. In the East the spiritual teaching that was given to the Indians by the ancient Rishis continue to influence the folk. Christian Rosenkreutz and his seven pupils placed morality at the beginning of knowledge of the law, not in order for it to echo in human beings in the law given by the religions, but rather so that the law, recognized as such, awaken in every individual human being to individual life. The truth in the realm of morality and the good should arise within people as something felt and understood.

-November 10 or 11, 1905, Munich, notes from Eugenie Bredow

He spoke about the spirits of fire-mist, whose pupil was our Master; he spoke about the development of the human being to such a mighty being. He then spoke about Christmas and the importance of the festivals of the year; that at Christmas the Sun stood at its lowest point in the year and on the 25th began to ascend, and that in this night the Masters of the White Lodge had a conference, in which they sent out the power of the Sun of the coming year to those people who want entirely to devote themselves to them, to surrender entirely their personality and ask them for strength. If one celebrates Christmas this way, asks the Masters in this way, they send their strength into these people on this December 25, so that the power of the Master works through them. Then he spoke of the last incarnation of the Master Kuthumi and his attendance at universities in order to be able to interpret the great wisdom in other languages and in the modern spirit, that this incarnation had not been in a specific personality, but rather that his power had been at work here and there.

-December 13, 1905, Berlin, notes from Eugenie Bredow

There are two things he wanted to say to us today concerning mantras and concerning the most important rules that the lofty Master Morya would give to this pupils. There are nine characteristics that belong to the Masters: Truth, Wisdom, Immeasurability, Goodness, Illimitableness, Beauty, Peace, Blessing, and Integrity. From us he requires five things: Purification of our feelings, Purification of our love, Emptiness of our memories, Clarity of our understanding, Extinguishing or rousing of our will. The heart must be purified. Love must lose all that is unchaste and become divine. In order to become objective the memory must not hand onto anything that could awaken prejudices. Our understanding should be clear and our will, where it is selfish, should be extinguished, but where it serves as an instrument for the Master it should be roused.

-December 28, 1905, Berlin, notes from Eugenie Bredow

John the Baptist proclaimed Christ Jesus in the middle of the fourth sub-race. But the individuality of the Master Jesus is leading humanity from the fifth to the sixth sub-race – again to John the Baptist, the Waterman. Christ Jesus is the living Word. All the beings of nature stream together in the human being and create in him the Word. That is the “I” in the human being – Jesus Christ. Human beings become Christ when they experience inwardly that the whole world flows together in them, is one with them. Through the principle of brotherly love, the representative of which is the Master Jesus, the coming together of humanity into the sixth sub-race is brought about, which will grow into the future based on this principle of brotherly love. When the sixth sub-race achieves perfection, then the word Christ will be not only in a single individuality but in everyone, and the individual human beings then create together the letters of the word, the new Christ, who is the resurrected one in an entirely different sense. As an “I” his life descended into humankind already in the third root-race. Fully developed he arises the in the sixth root-race, in the totality of humankind.

K.H.

-February 12, 1906, Cologne, notes from Mathilde Scholl

As an introduction to the four masters who all work in our movement: Master Morya – Power, Master Kuthumi – Wisdom, Master Saint-Germain– One turns to him in difficulties of everyday life, Master Jesus– What is intimate in the human being.

-June 26, 1906, Berlin, notes from Eugenie Bredow

We, those of us in the esoteric school, belong to this dawning of the sixth day; we follow and serve the great Master, who is watching over its forming; our task is to create this spiritual body out of ourselves and to give birth to it.

-October 2, 1906, Berlin, notes from Marie Steiner

The four Masters told us again: Master Jesus was the “Unknown one from the Highlands” who came to Tauler, who taught the Gnostics, etc. We should always be getting to know the Masters better. Jesus was a chela of the third degree. When he was thirty years old the following occurred to him. He left his body and Christ took possession of this pure, noble body: the physical, etheric and astral body. He himself withdrew back to the astral plane, where he remained united with the brothers of the White Lodge and achieved the rank of Master himself. …Morya – his true name is only give to more advanced pupils – he strengthens the will. Kuthumi is the actual Master of Wisdom. Jesus, the leader of the church, works especially on the life of feelings. We can call upon them when we need them. All twelve Masters of the White Lodge have passed through the entire evolution of our Earth. They cannot work directly into the physical plane. We must lift ourselves up to them. Through the school they work upon us, and in us and through us. The mediator, the teacher of the school, is obligated to answer to no one except him in whose name he speaks.

-October 22, 1906, Berlin, notes from Amalie Wagner

He spoke from immediate knowledge of, and direct acquaintance with the great Masters above us, who guide our striving and our lives: Kuthumi, Morya, Jesus and Christian Rosenkreutz – the “Masters of Wisdom and Harmony of Feelings.”

-October 22, 1906, Berlin, notes from Ludwig Kleeborg

The esoteric brotherhood of the Rosicrucians is the nursery in which the human material for the coming age must be formed. In times of special darkness a specially bright light must constantly arise. Christ was born during the age of Oriphiel; when Oriphiel again comes into his regency (in a few centuries), then the spiritual light that was brought by Christian Rosenkreutz and is now spread must have created a multitude of clairvoyant people who are pioneers working consciously toward the goal. That will call into existence the separation into two main streams, a race of good people and a race of evil people. Good and evil are still relatively little differentiated. Our eyes also penetrate very little through the form of the flesh. Now it is a relatively short step from evil to good, from good to evil. If the forces of the masters, and those humans who join them with all their strength and will, and the powers of the gods of hindrance, also called Mammon (forces of Satan and the Asuras), and their human followers intervene increasingly powerfully in the life of humanity, then the good will be developed into a divine Good, and the evil into a something terrible – Antichrist. Then every one of us “world-helpers” will need all the power that can accrue to him or her through suffering and overcoming suffering, through evil and overcoming evil. The purpose of Theosophy, of Rosicrucianism, is to call people to this battle through such knowledge and to give them peace in the battle.

-November 1, 1906, Munich, notes from Therese Walther

That lofty spiritual individuality who recognized this was Christian Rosenkreutz. He was the one who, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, undertook the great work of uniting the spiritual culture of the East with that of the West. He has always lived among us and is still with us today as leader in the spiritual life. He brought the spiritual culture of the East, as it is represented in the Old and New Testaments as the highest blossom of Eastern wisdom, into intimate harmony with the wisdom that originated in Atlantis. Thus he gave us Christianity in the form in which it had been prepared and introduced by that mysterious “Unknown man from the Highlands” who came to Johannes Tauler. “Highlands” signifies the spiritual world, the kingdom of Heaven. The lofty spiritual being who was concealed in the “Unknown man from the Highlands” was none other than the Master Jesus himself, in whose body Christ once lived on Earth. He too is with us today. The Master Jesus and the Master Christian Rosenkreutz prepare for us two paths to initiation, the Christian-esoteric path and the Christian-Rosicrucian path. Both of these paths have existed since the Middle Ages. But the spiritual life has increasingly disappeared from human consciousness with the rise of materialism. At the end of the nineteenth century, materialism had become so powerful that humankind needed a new spiritual infusion if it was not to perish.

-June 1, 1907, Munich, notes from Anna Weissmann

There was a single personality who, because of her psychic constitution, was able to perceive the voice of the Master. This was H.P. Blavtasky. When she began her work not all esoteric traditions had been lost. There were, rather, in the West numerous Brotherhoods that had received [preserved] esoteric wisdom, but in a rigid, ossified form without vital life. When H.P. Blavatsky wrote her Isis Unveiled they vociferously claimed that this wisdom belonged to them, for many of the symbols and teachings were known to them and they sought to place hindrances in her path every way possible. Thus Blavatsky was harassed in the worst way possible in an attempt to prevent her from fulfilling her work in a Christian esoteric sense, as was her original intention. Indeed, at that time she had to suffer through terrible things. And those exoteric brotherhoods actually managed to bring things to the point where she had to clothe what she had to say in Eastern dress in her second work, The Secret Doctrine. Even today we are still accustomed to having most terms for esoteric connections in Eastern language. But this Eastern form of wisdom is nothing for us Western people. In can only hinder us and bring us back from our goals. The people who are to form the kernel for the following races are here in the West.

This should be given as a factual answer to what the voice of the Masters from the East made known a short while ago. Our Western Masters have also spoke, although less noisily. And we want to write deeply into our hearts what they said. The called upon us to work with them on the future evolution of humankind and to stand firmly and endure in all the battles that yet stand before us; to hold firmly to what we possess as a living, holy tradition. This call should always sound in our souls. However, no one should believe that there exist any disharmony between the Masters of the East and West.

The Masters always live in harmony. Nevertheless, in recent time a decisive change has taken place in regard for the esoteric school of East and West. Until now both schools were united in a great circle under a common leadership of Masters. Now, however, the western school has made itself independent and there now exist two school on the same level, one in the East and one in the West: two smaller circles instead of one great one. The eastern school is led by Mrs. Annie Besant and those who in their hearts feel themselves drawn to her can no longer remain in our school. Everyone should well consider for which path his or her heart longs. Two Masters stand at the head of our western school: the Master Jesus and the Master Christian Rosenkreutz. And they lead us on two paths, the Christian esoteric and the Christian Rosicrucian. The Great White Lodge guides all spiritual movements, and the Masters Jesus and Christian Rosenkreutz belong to it.

-June 1, 1907, Munich, notes from Anna Weissmann

Everything spoke in an esoteric lesson is given to us directly from the Masters, and he who speaks it is only an instrument of their intentions. The Masters are constantly speaking to human beings; only those who are prepared, whose souls are open so that the Masters can find access to them, can hear their voice. Esoteric work is of the greatest significance for the evolution of the world – but also for the human being who occupies the simplest social position.

-October 9, 1907, Berlin, notes from Mathilde Scholl and Lilla Harris

Who are the Masters? Human beings who have gone the path of human evolution, only faster than other people; human beings who have an earlier experience of spiritual development and can therefore be leaders. Such a personality was the “Unknown man from the Highlands,” who worked in various ways.

-November 23, 1907, Basel, notes from Alice Kinkel

Everything said to us in these lessons we are to regard as a message from the Masters that is entrusted to us. We can receive what is said to us in this way with the right attitude, but what we make of it depends upon our degree of development. When we are meditating, then our soul is in the world in which the Masters work, and it is united with the stream that the Masters are sending into the world. It then contributes to the overcoming of the death of humankind by life. When we close ourselves off from perception through the senses, the astral currents of the gods can flow in.

-October 25, 1908, Berlin, notes from Alice Kinkel

Outwardly and terms of content, esoteric contemplations need not differ very much at all from exoteric lectures. What is important is that one bears in mind that in esoteric lessons the Masters of Wisdom and Harmony of Feelings are speaking to us. We know that through these meditations our astral body undergoes colossal changes, that we ourselves transform our astral body, which until then was undivided and unordered, but nevertheless was a harmonious whole within itself. We create islands in it, distinct pockets, so to speak, through which we begin to form organs. These astral organs are the channels through which the Masters can send messages from higher worlds into evolution and foster it.

-November 8, 1908, Munich, notes from Mathilde Scholl

The venerable Zoroaster would not have been able to reflect upon what was given to him in moments of transcendence. He received at such times influences from the spirit of the Sun in a direct way; he saw Ahrua Mazda and in him the Christ. He prepared the impulse that Christ was to bring to the Earth. He initiated his pupil Moses in the following way: one day at noon when it was new Moon, he allowed Moses to see by means of a power that he sent to his head, the Moon spirit – the devachanic sounds of sunlight reflected. Hermes he initiated directly into the secret of the Sun spirit. He allowed him to see the Sun at midnight through the transparent Earth, after he had previously received from Zoroaster the power of the Sun spirit. The Osiris-Isis-Horus religion came from this. Zoroaster appeared again as Zarathos or Nazarathos and was the teacher of Pythagoras, who led the mysteries in the age of the Greeks as a final preparation for the appearance of Christ. The king under whom Zoroaster taught was later incarnated as Cyrus; and later in the Middle Ages Cyrus was again a king. Moses was initiated with the forces of the astral body; Jesus spoke through the “I” to us, which penetrates all three bodies. Zoroaster had given the forces of his own etheric body to Moses, those of his astral body to Hermes, and he gave his “I” to Jesus. As Zoroaster himself he worked through his physical body.

-December 21, 1908, Berlin, notes from Camilla Wandrey

Zoroaster – his earthly protector was king Vischtasp, who later, as Cyrus, spread and consolidated the teachings of Zoroaster. Nazaras or Nazaranos, Chaldean initiate, was the “I” of Zoroaster. He inspired Pythagoras, who thereby spread Christianity in Greece. Then the “I” of Zoroaster was incarnated in Jesus of Nazareth, who was for this reason able to receive Christ himself into his bodies. Zoroaster had his pupils: in Hermes his teaching reached as far as the astral body, in Moses as far as the etheric body, in Pythagoras as far as the physical body.

Hermes’ initiation happened at Christmas time, and he saw what was later to be given to humans in the mystery of Golgotha. He beheld the entire evolution of the planet and what was connected with it. Moses’ initiation went into his etheric body. Zoroaster could give him something from his own light-body. In bad weather, storm and fog he could only see the Sun weakly, but he could see the Moon clearly in its first quarter. For this reason Yahweh later appeared to him in the burning bush. Pythagoras’ initiation went into his physical body. He brought this to humanity in his propositions. The seven holy Rishis were led by Manu, each one of which was initiated in the mysteries of one of the planet; Zoroaster, however, was initiated in the mysteries of the Sun, the Christ himself.

-December 28, 1908, Berlin, Anonymous

Until approximately six hundred years after Christ the great teachers of the church, for example, Augustine, could regard the Christian truths only as a gift of grace. This is connected with the fact that they received copies of the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth interwoven into their own etheric body. Their brain was not yet so far developed that they could understand this teaching with their intellect. Later these teachers received copies of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth interwoven into their astral body. Francis of Assisi had such an astral body. A process such as this interweaving is also always connected with outer phenomena of nature. As the little Thomas Aquinas lay in the crib and next to him his little sisters, lightning struck. It killed the little sister, but the bolt of lightning made Thomas’s astral body flexible for receiving the copy of the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth.

-April 19, 1909, Dusseldorf, notes from Mathilde Scholl

The childhood of the great initiates differs little from the life of other children; perhaps there are only a few aspects that indicate the kind of spirit that lives in a child. They must learn and enrich their knowledge as others and only thus acquire what they were in previous incarnations. This was also the case with Christian Rosenkreutz. Perhaps it took many a miracle for him not to have recognized at the outset the significance of the event of Golgotha. That was because the “I” of Jesus was placed in him, as in Augustine the etheric body, and in venerable Francis Assisi the astral body. But because it was the “I” it first had to work its way through to knowledge in order to bring it to full effect. With it he had a high and important mission.

-May 27, 1909, Berlin, notes from Eugenie Bredow

GA265-08

Instruction lesson. Esoteric meetings with ritual should not be held during the 13 days between December 24 and January 6 because the Masters of the East retire into their sanctuary in this time in order to collect new forces for humanity for the following year.