Improving Rudolf Steiner's 6 Basic Exercises for Esoteric Development
Practical instructions and commentary
The 20th century spawned countless “esoteric teachers”, following an attempt in the previous decades to revive the Western traditions. Specifically, it marks the beginning of the New Thought → New Age movement that gave us books like The Secret and Reality Transurfing.
While I don’t want to argue the merit of these philosophies or their practices too much, it should be noted that everyone was attempting to stake their claim in the Wild West that was the scene back then. Lack of primary sources, proper translations, competent historiography, and a disastrous inheritance of syncretism from Theosophy made it easy to write stream-of-consciousness, slap a few terms like Hermeticism and Atlantean, and have yourself a book deal — even easier if you were charismatic and well-connected with old money backing you up.
I could list an endless array of popular and currently revered names that fit the bill. Still, the main point of this introduction is to highlight that what was considered “occult science” is really just fiction, in the most literal sense you could muster to conceive. People were getting paid to write stories wrapped in diatribes, and even though they had a much better grasp of the material they alluded to than the consumers, they labored to construct fictitious narratives that catered to the general population, seeking comfort and having their wishes fulfilled without effort or skill.
When under all of this muck you spot something real or at least effective, it’s surprising to say the least. In the first installment of this unofficial series on uncovering 20th century gems in sand, we looked at Franz Bardon’s Black and White mirror. A useful and probably much older technique than the host-manual, it is quite effective for better understanding yourself— not so much about your esoteric development except for being part of a general psychological preparation.
Rudolf Steiner, on the other hand, has one foot on the fantastical, one foot on the real. A mystic and a scientist, he wasn’t bound by the expectations of either. In that sense, he was free to commit the most heinous crimes against these two disciplines and in doing so1, stumble upon something that was actually a secret. I’ve already explained what it was exactly in a different essay (or was it a X/Twitter post?) so I won’t repeat it here, just so I can borrow some of the mystique from the people I’m discussing.
Nonetheless, it is this discovery that made me appreciate him more and become patient with his alien psychology and exegesis of reality he proposed. In his writings, I found the now-famous basic exercises for esoteric development.
They aren’t esoteric by any means, nor do they enhance your human abilities with psionic powers2. What they’re designed to do is prepare the magus for the beginning of initiation. In other words, it’s preparation for the preparing the end of the preliminary preparation. In other other words, it’s about building mental qualities.
Frankly, these mental qualities are useful but not out of this world. They’re quite mundane, which is why they drew my attention. It’s been a very loooong time since I practiced them with the necessary devotion — one could argue that my larger practice has a different flavor altogether these days — because I’m satisfied with what I got out of them initially. But I stumbled upon an essay recently that discussed these six basic exercises and remembered I had kept logs.
Lo and behold… they’re missing. They’re probably back at home somewhere, rotting in my folks’ basement. But I remember most of the commentary I had written (I’ll cross examine when I visit!) and in my very humble nature, I also remember some the improvements I’d made — which is something all of you must get in the habit of doing eventually.
So, this is the essay. We’re going to examine the exercises, the instructions, and I’ll expand on them as I see fit.