May my soul bloom in love for all existence.
Rudolf Steiner
THE SIX ESOTERIC EXERCISES FOR BASIC DEVELOPMENT
The logic of thinking can lead to the greatest egotism. The logic of the heart is capable of gradually overcoming egotism and making all people part of an allencompassing human community. Rudolf Steiner
Introduction The so-called basic or essential six exercises are the key in the path of knowledge and self-development which Rudolf Steiner presented. They prepare a healthy entry to spiritual and esoteric work. Rudolf Steiner said that we need to practice them in order to develop our heart chakra. The heart chakra, a twelve-petalled lotus flower, is the chakra of our current time and near future to develop. The awakening and enlivening of this chakra only became possible towards the end of the nineteenth century, at the beginning of the Michaelic age - to be precise in November 1897. Although we commonly associate the heart as the center of our love, our compassion, and the warmth and coolness of our soul it is also the chakra of a new organ of perception: Heart-thinking. It is the transformation of purely logical thinking into a wholly new kind of thinking, characterized by Steiner in various different ways as: ‘organic-living thinking’; thinking which goes ‘beyond logic’; ‘thinking with the heart’ or ‘heart thinking’, etc. ‘The heart will become the brain of the breast, will become an organ of consciousness’. (General requirements [GA], 94, p.70) The head with the brain is only a transition organ of perception and knowledge. The organ which will furnish us with really deep and at the same time powerful insights into the world has its potential seat in our present heart. Please note, though, that I say potential. In order to become an organ of perception and knowledge, the heart will need to be transformed in a radical way. But this heart is the source and the fount of future human evolution. When the heart becomes such an organ, perception and knowledge will be warm and inward, as only love and sympathy are nowadays.(GA 266, I, p.100) Practicing six basic exercises can help us to achieve this goal. I now want to speak about the twelve-petalled lotus flower in the region of the heart. Six of its petals developed already in the very ancient past, and the other six must be developed in future... (GA 53, p.265) Acquiring this virtues will in future develop the six other petals. These six virtues are: control of thoughts, power of initiative, soul equilibrium, positivity (which enables us to find the best in everything), an outlook free of prejudice, and finally harmony of soul life. (GA 94, p.168)
Each of the six exercises consists of two parts. The first part explains the essential nature of the exercise and how to carry it out, while the second concentrates upon a delicate, subtle feeling in the astral body at the end of each exercises, corresponding to a particular energy stream of the etheric body - a particular etheric stream. This etheric streams were called ‘feelings’ be Rudolf Steiner; rightly understood, they are not experienced as physical sensations (which are directly related to the etheric body), since their effect does not extend into the physical body. Their activity at the boundary between etheric and astral body is experienced more as a felling of energy or force, as spiritual feeling.5 Pictures shown here were taken from Florin Lowndes’s book according to his own experience of these etheric streams.
The first exercise: Control of Thoughts Objectivity Concentration Focused thought The first condition is the cultivation of absolutely clear thinking. For this purpose we must rid ourselves of the will-o’-the-wisp thoughts, even if only for a very short time during the day - about 5 minutes (the longer, the better). We must become the rulers of our world of thought... (Guidance in Esoteric Training) The exercise •Choose a simple artificial (man-made) object - such as a pin, a pencil, a match or a handkerchief. Take a subject for reflection, preferably an insignificant one that holds no intrinsic interest for you but which you have to fix your attention upon.Think about it for at least 5 minutes without moving on to think of other things, always keeping focused on the same train of thought. You can prepare yourself by finding out more about subject in advance. (GA 266/3, p.258) •You can think as follows: What does it look like? What different types of it exist varying in form, material, use, etc? How are they manufactured? How were the parts prepared and put together? What are they used for? Where are they kept? Who invented it? When? Where? What harm can they do? •You can start with the a new thought each day or continue with the same one for several days. (GA 266, pp.55 f.) •When the exercise is over, it is good not to throw ourselves immediately into busy activity but to allow at least a quarter of an hour to pass. (GA 266/3, p.258) Effect and etheric stream This kind of concentration strengthens a power of thinking, and thereby we can gradually manage to observe our physical body. (GA 266/3, transcript A:p.241) This exercise awakens in the pupil a sense of stability by activating the chakra between the eyebrows. (GA 266/3, p.258) By doing this exercise, after a while you will notice a sense of stability and security... You have to hearken very quietly and attentively, then you will sense this feeling, chiefly in the front part of the head. Once you locate it, imagine pouring it into your brain and spine. Gradually you will have the impression of race streaming back from your forehead and descending into the spine. (GA 266/1, transcript A: pp.233 f.)
The second exercise: Control of Will Control of will Control of actions Mastery of will impulses Taking the initiative The second thing necessary is to relate to our own actions in a similar way, or in other words practice control of our actions. we need at least to accomplish actions which no outer cause requires of us. Every action which our profession, job or position in life requires of us does not lead us deeper into higher life. Higher life depends on intimate, subtle things - such as deciding to do an initial thing which springs from our own most inherent initiative, even if this is an entirely insignificant action. All other types of action contribute nothing to higher development. (GA 54, pp.213 f.) The exercise •Think of some action that one would otherwise certainly never undertake in the normal course of life. Now make this a self-imposed duty to be carried out each day. It will therefore be good if you choose an action that can be performed for as long as possible each day... After a while, a second such action should be added to the first, then later a third and so on; as many as you can manage without neglecting all your other daily tasks. (GA 267, pp.56 f.) •Avoid all usual, routine, necessary actions and all moments of the day, which are connected with daily routine. •The action must be born from your own initiative. •Determine exactly to the minute when each action should be carried out. •Always choose the same time for the same action. But If you missed the right time, then choose immediately a new time when the action will be repeated (but avoid similar times, i.e if you have missed carrying out action at 11.30 it is better to choose 12.32 and not 12.30). Effect and etheric stream If you do this for a long period of time you will discover its inner effect. Such things harmonize and balance everything in the physical and etheric body in such a way that these two inherently resonate, and no longer need much improvement - so that astral body can withdraw a part of its force. Having accomplished this second exercise for self-initiated action, you will become subtly aware of a sense in the soul of inner motivation; and you should pour this feeling as it were into your body, so that it streams down from the head and over the heart. (GA 267, pp.56 f.)
The third exercise: Control of Feeling Equanimity The soul’s mastery over its feelings Achieving balance (emotional) in life In the third month, life should be centered on a new exercise - the development of a certain equanimity towards the fluctuations of joy and sorrow, pleaser and pain; ‘heights of jubilation’ and ‘depths of despair’ should quite consciously be replaced by an equable mood. Care is taken that no pleasure shall carry us away, no sorrow plunge us into the depths, no experience lead to immoderate fear or vexation, no expectation give rise to anxiety or fear, no situation disconcert us, and so on. (Guidance in Esoteric Training) The exercise •To prepare for this exercise, it will be helpful to write down a list of your own common expressions of feelings. •Here is a list of types of emotional expression can be structured more systematically by taking account of the following three levels: Physical level: chiefly the facial expressions and body language (gestures, positions), but also expressions which are harder to control, such as blushing, tears, shaking, coldness, sweating etc. Etheric level: attention should, on the one hand, be focused on outer gesture (running away in panic, crying, laughing uproariously, etc), and, on the other hand, on more psychosomatic reactions such as stomach- and headache, depressive or hysterical reactions, etc. Astral level: this is mostly connected with one’s own emotional states: excitement, coldness, indifference, being distant and reserved, despondency, embarrassment, shame, etc. 5 • You can choose 3-5 emotional expressions you want to change. The focus here is not to control your feelings, but how you express your emotions. You are not trying to suppress any feeling. We should not suppress justified pain but involuntary tears; not aversion to a bad action but a blind rage of anger; not attention to a danger but useless fearfulness and so on. (GA 267, pp.57 f.) •You need to work without self-criticism. •You can make a pocket diary, which shows the whole month on one sheet where you will mark your failures each day. As you continue to practice your exercise, you will see that sheets will grow less from month to month showing you your success. Contrary to the two previous exercises you cannot fix the feeling exercise at a particular point in time. What matters is that you grasp the moment at which the feelings announce themselves and to make sure that you not only express these feelings but also ‘impress’ them. At the start of the day, just before you step into the morning, you can hold back briefly and plan to perform the exercise during the day. Looking back at the end of the day shows you the moments where you succeeded, or where you missed an opportunity. This self-observation should be carried for 15 min. a day. Looking as an outsider at the feelings that presented themselves during the day is an aid to have the presence of mind needed to catch the precise moment when it presents itself.
Effect and etheric stream By exercising you will learn to live in the present. Your communication with the world, the breathing between the inside and the outside world is being strengthened.4 You will soon notice that what occurred in you prior to this exercise is replaced by purified qualities of soul. Above all, you will eventually come to sense an inner calm in your body. (GA 267, pp.57 f.) No pain should crash us, no joy send us spinning. Fear, excitement, consternation must vanish. By this means we develop a third feeling in us: a sense of calm equanimity which makes itself felt like inner warmth. We should focus this feeling in the heart and from there let it stream into the hands, into the feet and then towards the head. (GA 266/1, p. 194)
The fourth exercise: Positivity Positivity Tolerance Patience Seeing the true and the beautiful in all things In the fourth month is a new exercise, what is sometimes called a ‘positive attitude’ to life should be cultivated. It consists in seeking always for the good, the praiseworthy, the beautiful and the like, in all beings, all experiences, all things... (Guidance in Esoteric Training) The exercise •We need to find the positive aspects through observation in everything which happens to us. •It can be suggested to write down the phenomena and occurrences which you know you fell antipathy towards. •Whenever you encounter something (situation, a thought, a person, a creature) which makes a negative, unpleasant impression on you, you should try to see its positive aspects. Once you have perceived the positive aspect, and made yourself fully conscious of it, you should cultivate within yourself the feelings that belong to it.5 However much ugliness there is in the world you can still find beauty in the ugly, a grain of truth in every untruth, a good in every evil. This does not mean relinquishing all critical faculties! People often take this to mean that they should no longer find anything bad at all... but what is really meant is that there is a grain of beauty in everything ugly, and
something good in everything bad. This draws up the soul’s higher forces. All this forms part of preparation. (GA 100, pp.202 f.) Effect and etheric stream We gain a positive attitude about life. This exercise perfects the capacity for thinking and feeling and this connection opens a new way of access to the outside world. Eventually you will start to sense a feeling of inner bliss. Concentrate this feeling in your heart, let it ray towards the head and from there out through the eyes, as if trying to radiate it through the eyes. (GA 266/1, p.194) When you sense this feeling, let it radiate out through your eyes, ears and the whole surface of your skin. (GA 266/1, p.223)
The fifth exercise: Open-Mindedness Continual openness Impartiality Freedom from judgment The fifth quality is complete open-mindedness towards anything new we encounter. Most people judge the new that approaches them in terms of what they already know. If someone comes to tell them something they reply immediately; ‘I have a different view.’ But we should not immediately counter someone else’s opinion with our own. Instead we should keep a weather eye open to discover where we may learn something new. (GA 54, p.215) The exercise •During the fifth month practice never letting your past to dictate your future. Become wholly free of prejudice, absorb everything with an open soul. (GA 266/1, p. 203) •Keep yourself flexible, always capable of absorbing something new. If someone tells you something you consider unlikely, always keep a tiny space of possibility in your heart that this might after all be true. You don’t have to loose all critical faculties, for after all you can investigate and find out. (GA 266/1, transcript A: p.234) •As with the fourth exercise it can be suggested to write a list of prejudices that you have and try to look at them with more objectivity now. •Every time you encounter a thing, a statement, a situation, etc that seems unbelievable or impossible, try to open yourself to its possibility at the very moment you encounter it. •Depending on the circumstances, either say out loud or to yourself the following or a similar formula: ‘Yes, that could be possible under certain conditions. You can also add: ‘For I haven’t yet experienced everything that exists.’
•Make yourself attentive and watchful for the moments in life when this exercise can be practiced. •Become aware of your innate, constitutional tendency to believe that only what you have already experienced, what you already know, and what is familiar to you, is true and real.5 Effect and etheric stream Our soul can become free of the past’s influence as the single determining factor of our life and then if we meet everything with an open mind, like a child, ‘hidden wisdommanas-will stream towards the childlike soul, like a gift of grace from the world of spirit.’ (GA 266/3, transcript A: pp.244 f.) Then you will soon start to feel as though something is streaming into you from the space outside you. You suck into yourself, as it were, through yes, ears and whole skin. (GA 266/1, p.203)
The sixth exercise: Harmony Inner harmony Harmonizing the five qualities Steadfastness Unison or accord between the mind, feelings and moral sphere Once the soul has acquired the previously named five qualities, a sixth - inner equilibrium, harmony of spiritual forces - arises by itself. We must find within us something like a spiritual emphasis that gives us stability and security in relation to all that pulls us in one or another direction in life. We should not avoid experiencing everything sympathetically, allowing everything to work upon us. Rather than feeling the tug and pull of circumstances we should do the opposite: give ourselves fully to life and, despite this, safely and securely preserve our inner equilibrium and harmony. (GA 12, p.33) The exercise •During the sixth month you should try to practice all five exercises systematically in regular and repeated alternation. (GA 267, p.60) You will have to practice them in manifold combinations - two by two, three and one at a time, and so on, in order to establish harmony among them. (Occult Science - an Outline, pp.249-50) •During each day of practice, first choose some of the other (five) exercises and practice them together in all possible combinations. Plan it very carefully - exactly when in the course of the day each exercise will be performed.
•Spread the chosen exercises out over the whole day. •At the end of the day, but also while practicing, observe the character of each exercise, experiencing within yourself the qualities and structure of the exercise. •Finally, try to order the individual exercises as part of the whole exercise organism; then perceive, observe and think through this totality. (2, pp. 109-111) •You must not try to accomplish the sixth step before the first five, nothing can be harmonized if there is nothing there to harmonize! (GA 266/1, transcript B: p.240) Effect and etheric stream Gradually this will develop a fine harmony in your soul. In particular you will notice that any dissatisfaction with the world will fade. A mood grows in which the soul is reconciled with all experiences. This cannot be mistaken for indifference but, on the contrary, the capacity to work in the world in a way which really brings about improvement or progress is dependent on it. A calm insight into things the soul previously had no access to now opens up. A person's gait and gestures will even change as the result of such exercises; and one day he may even notice that his handwriting has a acquired a different character. He can then say that he has got his foot on the first step of the ladder that leads him upwards. (GA 267, p.60) By practicing this exercise one will start to feel as though one is growing larger, growing out beyond one’s skin. (GA 266/1, p.419)
Sequence and duration of the exercises Rudolf Steiner made all sorts of different suggestions about the length period for each exercise: ’for several months’, ‘for about a month’, ‘until the corresponding feeling arises’, ‘a month or longer’, ‘at least four weeks’, ‘even for several months - until one feels that the exercise is bearing fruit’, ‘this exercises do not have to be carried out for an exact month each. I just had to give some idea of the amount of time’, ‘one can continue each of these exercises for six to eight weeks, or for as long as seems necessary’. What important above all is to do the exercise in this order. If you do the second one before the first it will have no benefit - it’s the sequence that is really important. Some people think they should start with the sixth exercise, with harmonizing. But can you harmonize something before it even exists? If you do not do the exercises in the right sequence they will be useless. (GA 266/1, transcript A: p.234) It is important to focus each time on new exercise while continuing to practice the exercises already learnt in the previous months. Rudolf Steiner called attention to this in
the following words referring to the second exercise although it is applicable to all exercises as well: When this [first] exercise has been practice for, say, one month, a second requirements [exercise] should be added. ... This exercise, also should last for one month. But as far as possible during this second month, too, the first exercise should continue, although it is a less paramount duty than in the first month. Nevertheless it must not be left unheeded, for otherwise it will quickly be noticed that the fruits of the first month are lost and the slovenliness of uncontrolled thinking begins again. Care must be taken that once these fruits have been won, they are never again lost. (Guidance in esoteric training, p.14) 6th exercise
whole day
5th exercise
whole day
morning
whole day
morning
afternoon
3-5
3-5
3
3
3-5 times
3 times
3 times
twice
twice
15-30 min
10 min
5 min
5 min
5 min
5 min
1st period
2nd period
3rd period
4th period
5th period
6th period
4th exercise 3rd exercise 2nd exercise 1st exercise
The above is a plan with suggestions for carrying out a whole cycle of exercises, including length and regularity of daily practice as well as the best time of day.5 Some circumstances can make it difficult for you to carry out the exercises properly. But instead of giving up altogether at such times, it is good to concentrate at least briefly on the exercise.. ‘Even if you only do it this for a minute, it is still of great significance for the rhythm of the physical and etheric body’. (GA 95) Once you’ve completed the sixth months, start all over again. (GA 266/1, transcript B: p.238)
The exercises I have described are appropriate methods for spiritual schooling because, if carried out conscientiously, they not only bring about what has been highlighted here as their direct effect in the esoteric pupil but also, indirectly, engender many other qualities needed on the path to words of spirit. If you practice these exercises sufficiently the will confront you with a range of deficiencies and flows in your psyche: but at the same time they will also furnish you with the means to consolidate and strengthen your intellect, emotional life and character. No doubt you will also need various other exercises too, depending on your capacities, temperament and character. These will develop however if you undertake the exercises referred to with sufficient perseverance. In fact, you will you will find that they also gradually provide things that don’t initially appear inherent in them. For instance, if someone has too little self-confidence, he will discover after some time that self-confidence he needs has in fact developed through these exercises. And the same applies to other qualities of soul. (Specific and more detailed exercises can be found in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds.) What is significant is that the spiritual pupil becomes increasingly able to enhance the described capacities to even higher degrees. (GA 13, pp.336 f.)
Bibliography 1. Rudolf Steiner. Six Steps in self-development: The “supplementary exercises’. Selected and completed by Ates Baydur, Rudolf Steiner press, 2010 2. Rudolf Steiner. Start now: A book of Soul and Spiritual Exercises. Edited and introduced by Christopher Bamford, Steiner books, 2004 3. Warren Lee Cohen. Raising the soul: Practicing Exercises for Personal Development, Sophia Books, 2006 4. Joop van Dam. The Sixfold Path: Six Simple Exercises for Spiritual Development, Floris books, 2012 5. Florin Lowndes. Enlivening the chakra of the heart: The Fundamental Spiritual exercises of Rudolf Steiner, Sophia books, 2005 6. Robert McDermott. The new essential Steiner: An introduction to Rudolf Steiner for the 21st Century, Lindisfarne Books,2009
