The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The Path of Knowledge

[ 1 ] The knowledge of the spiritual science referred to in this book can be acquired by every man himself. Explanations of the kind given in this book provide a mental picture of the higher worlds. And in a certain respect they are the first step towards one's own view. For man is a being of thought. And he can only find his path of knowledge if he starts from thinking. If his intellect is given an image of the higher worlds, this is not unfruitful for him, even if it is for the time being, as it were, only a narrative of higher facts into which he does not yet have insight through his own contemplation. For the thoughts that are given to him are themselves a power that continues to work in his world of thought. This power will be active in him; it will awaken dormant dispositions. Anyone who is of the opinion that devotion to such a thought image is superfluous is mistaken. For he sees in the thought only the insubstantial, the abstract. But the thought is based on a living force. And just as it is present in the one who has knowledge as a direct expression of what is seen in the spirit, so the communication of this expression works in the one to whom it is communicated as a germ that produces the fruit of knowledge from itself. He who would turn to other powers in man for higher knowledge, spurning the work of thought, does not take into account that thinking is precisely the highest of the faculties that man possesses in the world of the senses. So whoever asks: how do I myself gain the higher insights of spiritual science? - he should be told: first of all, learn about such knowledge through the communications of others. And if he replies: I want to see for myself; I don't want to know anything about what others have seen, then the answer is: the first step towards your own knowledge lies precisely in the appropriation of the communications of others. One could say: I am initially forced to blind faith. However, a communication is not a matter of belief or disbelief, but merely an unbiased reception of what one hears. The true spiritual researcher never speaks with the expectation that he will be met with blind faith. He only ever means: this is what I have experienced in the spiritual realms of existence, and I tell you about my experiences. But he also knows that the reception of these experiences of his and the penetration of the other person's thoughts with the story are living forces for this other person to develop spiritually.

[ 2 ] What comes into consideration here will only be seen correctly by those who consider how all knowledge of spiritual and mental worlds rests in the subsoil of the human soul. It can be brought up through the "path of knowledge". You can "see" not only what you have brought up yourself, but also what someone else has brought up from the depths of the soul. Even if you yourself have not yet made any attempts to enter the path of knowledge. Correct spiritual insight awakens the power of understanding in a mind that is not clouded by prejudice. The unconscious knowledge strikes against the spiritual fact found by others. And this confrontation is not blind faith, but the right action of common sense. In this healthy understanding one should also see a far better starting point for self-knowledge of the spiritual world than in the dubious mystical "immersions" and the like, in which one often believes to have something better than in what common sense can recognize when it is brought to it by genuine spiritual research.

[ 3 ] It cannot be emphasized strongly enough how necessary it is for those who wish to develop their higher cognitive faculties to undertake the serious work of thought. This emphasis must be all the more urgent as many people who want to become a "seer" downright disdain this serious, renunciative thought work. They say that "thinking" cannot help me; it depends on "feeling", "sensation" or something similar. On the other hand, it must be said that nobody can become a "seer" in the higher sense (i.e. truly) who has not first familiarized himself with the life of thought. A certain inner comfort plays an unfortunate role for many people. They are not aware of this comfort because it is clothed in a contempt for "abstract thinking", "idle speculation" and so on. But you misjudge thinking if you confuse it with the spinning out of idle, abstract thought sequences. This "abstract thinking" can easily kill supersensible knowledge; vital thinking can become its basis. However, it would be much more comfortable if one could attain the higher gift of vision without having to think. That is what many would like. But this requires an inner firmness, a certainty of soul, to which only thinking can lead. Otherwise, all that comes about is an insubstantial flickering back and forth in images, a confusing play of the soul, which may give pleasure to some, but which has nothing to do with a real penetration into higher worlds. - If you also consider what purely spiritual experiences take place in a person who really enters the higher world, then you will also understand that there is another side to the matter. Absolute health of the soul life belongs to the "seer". There is no better care for this health than genuine thinking. Indeed, this health can suffer seriously if the exercises for higher development are not based on thinking. As true as it is that the gift of sight will make a healthy and right-thinking person even healthier and more capable in life than he is without it, it is also true that all desire to develop oneself while shying away from mental effort, all dreaming in this area, encourages fantasy and also the wrong attitude towards life. No one has anything to fear who wants to develop to higher knowledge by observing what has been said here; but it should only happen under this condition. This premise has to do only with the soul and the spirit of man; to speak of any kind of harmful influence on bodily health is absurd on this premise.

[ 4 ] Unfounded unbelief, however, is harmful. For it acts as a repulsive force in the recipient. It prevents him from receiving the fertilizing thoughts. Blind faith is not a prerequisite for the development of the higher senses, but rather the acceptance of the spiritual-scientific world of thought. The spiritual scientist confronts his pupil with the imposition: Do not believe what I tell you, but think it, make it the content of your own world of thoughts, then my thoughts themselves will already cause you to recognize them in their truth. This is the attitude of the spiritual researcher. He gives the stimulus; the power of truthfulness arises from the inner being of the recipient. And it is in this sense that spiritual scientific views should be sought. Those who have the strength to immerse their thinking in them can be sure that in a shorter or longer time they will lead them to their own contemplation.

[ 5 ] The above already indicates a first quality that must be developed in those who wish to arrive at their own perception of higher facts. It is the unreserved, unbiased devotion to that which human life or the non-human world reveal. Whoever approaches a fact of the world from the outset with the judgment that he brings with him from his previous life, closes himself off through such judgment against the calm, all-round effect that this fact can have on him. The learner must at every moment be able to make himself a completely empty vessel into which the foreign world flows. Only those moments are such moments of cognition where every judgment, every criticism that emanates from us is silent. For example, when we meet a person, it is not at all important whether we are wiser than him. Even the most incomprehensible child has something to reveal to the most wise person. And when he approaches the child with his judgment, however wise it may be, his wisdom shifts like a cloudy glass in front of what the child is supposed to reveal to him. ^{19You can see from this statement that the demand for "wholehearted devotion" is not about the elimination of one's own judgment or about devotion to blind faith. Such a thing would make no sense to a child.} This devotion to the revelations of the foreign world includes complete inner selflessness. And if a person examines the degree to which he has this devotion, he will make astonishing discoveries about himself. If a person wants to enter the path of higher knowledge, he must practise being able to extinguish himself and all his prejudices at any moment. As long as he extinguishes himself, the other flows into him. Only high degrees of such selfless devotion enable one to absorb the higher spiritual facts that surround man everywhere. You can consciously develop this ability within yourself. For example, try to refrain from any judgment of the people around you. Let go of the standard of attractive and repulsive, of stupid or clever, which you are used to applying; and try to understand people purely from within yourself without this standard. The best exercises can be done on people for whom one has a disgust. Suppress this disgust with all your might and let everything they do affect you impartially. - Or if you are in an environment that challenges this or that judgment, suppress the judgment and expose yourself to the impressions impartially. ^{20This unbiased surrender has nothing whatsoever to do with "blind faith". What matters is not that one blindly believes in something, but that one does not substitute "blind judgment" for a vivid impression.} - One lets things and events speak more to oneself than one speaks about them. And you also extend this to your world of thoughts. One suppresses within oneself that which forms this or that thought, and allows only that which is outside to effect the thoughts. - Only if such exercises are undertaken with the most sacred seriousness and perseverance will they lead to the higher goal of knowledge. He who underestimates such exercises knows nothing of their value. And those who have experience in such things know that devotion and impartiality are real power generators. Just as the heat that is brought into the steam boiler is transformed into the moving power of the locomotive, so the exercises of selfless spiritual devotion in man are transformed into the power of vision in the spiritual worlds.

[ 6 ] Through this exercise, man makes himself receptive to all that surrounds him. But receptivity must also be accompanied by correct appreciation. As long as man is still inclined to overestimate himself at the expense of the world around him, he will deny himself access to higher knowledge. Anyone who indulges in the pleasure or pain that any thing or event in the world causes him is caught up in such an overestimation of himself. For in his pleasure and in his pain he learns nothing about things, but only something about himself. If I feel sympathy for a person, I initially only feel my relationship to him. If I make myself dependent in my judgment, in my behaviour, solely on this feeling of pleasure, of sympathy, then I place my own nature in the foreground; I impose it on the world. I want to intervene in the world as I am, but not accept the world impartially and let it live itself out according to the forces at work in it. In other words: I am only tolerant of what corresponds to my own nature. I exert a repulsive force against everything else. As long as man is caught up in the world of the senses, he has a particularly repulsive effect against all non-sensual influences. The learner must develop the quality within himself to behave towards things and people in their own way, to accept each in its value, in its significance. Sympathy and antipathy, pleasure and displeasure must be given completely new roles. There can be no question of man eradicating them, of making himself dull in the face of sympathy and antipathy. On the contrary, the more he develops in himself the ability not to let every sympathy and antipathy be followed immediately by a judgment, an action, the more finely he will develop in himself the ability to feel. He will experience that sympathies and antipathies take on a higher nature if he restrains the nature that is already in him. Even the most unsympathetic thing has hidden qualities; it reveals them when a person does not follow his selfish feelings in his behavior. Those who have trained themselves in this direction are more sensitive in all directions than others, because they do not allow themselves to be seduced into insensitivity. Every inclination that we blindly follow dulls our ability to see the things around us in the right light. Following the inclination, we push ourselves through the environment, as it were, instead of exposing ourselves to it and feeling it in its value.

[ 7 ] And when man no longer has his selfish response, his selfish behavior, to every pleasure and every pain, to every sympathy and antipathy, then he also becomes independent of the changing impressions of the outside world. The pleasure one feels in something immediately makes one dependent on it. You lose yourself to the thing. A person who loses himself in pleasure and pain depending on the changing impressions cannot walk the path of spiritual knowledge. He must absorb pleasure and pain with calmness. Then he ceases to lose himself in them; but then he begins to understand them. A lust to which I surrender consumes my existence in the moment of surrender. But I should only use pleasure to come to an understanding of the thing that gives me pleasure. It should not matter to me that the thing gives me pleasure: I should experience the pleasure and through the pleasure the essence of the thing. Pleasure should only be for me the proclamation that there is a quality in the thing that is capable of giving pleasure. I should learn to recognize this quality. If I remain with pleasure, if I allow myself to be completely absorbed by it, then it is only myself who is living it out; if pleasure is only the opportunity for me to experience a quality of the thing, then I make my inner being richer through this experience. For the researcher, pleasure and displeasure, joy and pain must be opportunities through which he learns about things. The inquirer does not thereby become dull to pleasure and pain; but he rises above them so that they reveal the nature of things to him. He who develops in this direction will learn to recognize the masters of pleasure and pain. He will empathize with every being and thereby receive the revelation of its inner being. The researcher never says to himself alone: oh, how I suffer, how I rejoice, but always: how does suffering speak, how does joy speak. He surrenders himself in order to allow the pleasure and joy of the outside world to have an effect on him. As a result, a completely new way of relating to things develops in people. In the past, a person would follow this or that action with this or that impression only because the impressions pleased or displeased him. Now, however, he allows pleasure and displeasure to be the organs through which things tell him how they are in essence. Pleasure and pain are transformed from mere feelings into sensory organs through which the outside world is perceived. Just as the eye does not act itself when it sees something, but lets the hand act, so pleasure and pain do not cause anything in the spiritual inquirer, insofar as he uses them as a means of knowledge, but they receive impressions, and that which is experienced through pleasure and displeasure causes the action. If man practises pleasure and displeasure in such a way that they become organs of passage, they build up the actual organs in his soul through which the spiritual world opens up to him. The eye can only serve the body by being an organ of passage for sensual impressions; pleasure and pain will develop into the eyes of the soul when they cease to be something merely for themselves and begin to reveal the other soul to one's own soul.

[ 8 ] Through the aforementioned qualities, the cognizer puts himself in a position to allow that which is essentially present in his environment to have an effect on him without the disturbing influences of his peculiarities. But he must also integrate himself into the spiritual environment in the right way. As a thinking being he is a citizen of the spiritual world. He can only be this in the right way if he gives his thoughts a course during spirit cognition that corresponds to the eternal laws of truth, the laws of the spirit land. For only in this way can this land have an effect on him and reveal its facts to him. Man does not attain the truth if he merely abandons himself to the thoughts that continually run through his ego. For then these thoughts take a course that is imposed on them by the fact that they come into existence within the bodily nature. The world of thoughts of a person who abandons himself to the mental activity initially caused by his bodily brain appears disorderly and confused. One thought begins, breaks off, is knocked out of the field by another. Anyone who scrutinizingly overhears the conversation between two people, who observes himself impartially, will gain an idea of this mass of thoughts that is in a state of confusion. As long as man merely devotes himself to the tasks of sensory life, his confused train of thought will be set right again and again by the facts of reality. No matter how confused my thoughts are, everyday life imposes the laws that correspond to reality on my actions. My mental image of a city may be the most irregular: if I want to make a path in the city, I have to submit to the existing facts. The mechanic can enter his workshop with as many colorful and confused ideas as he likes; the laws of his machines will lead him to the right measures. Within the world of the senses, the facts exercise their constant correction for thinking. If I conceive a wrong view of a physical phenomenon or of the shape of a plant, reality confronts me and corrects my thinking. It is quite different when I consider my relationship to the higher realms of existence. They only reveal themselves to me when I enter their worlds with strictly regulated thinking. My thinking must give me the right, the certain drive, otherwise I will not find the appropriate paths. For the spiritual laws that are lived out in these worlds are not condensed to the physical-sensual kind and therefore do not exert the marked compulsion on me. I am only able to obey these laws if they are related to my own, as those of a thinking being. Here I must be a sure guide for myself. The cognizer must therefore make his thinking a strictly self-regulated one. His thoughts must gradually wean themselves completely from taking the everyday course. They must take on the inner character of the spiritual world in their entire course. He must be able to observe himself in this direction and have it in hand. One thought must not follow another at random, but only as it corresponds to the strict content of the world of thought. The transition from one idea to another must conform to the strict laws of thought. As a thinker, the human being must to a certain extent always represent an image of these laws of thought. Everything that does not flow from these laws must be forbidden to his imaginative process. If a favorite thought gets in his way, he must reject it if it disrupts the inherently regulated process. If a personal feeling wants to impose a certain direction on his thoughts that does not lie within them, he must suppress it. - Plato required those who wanted to attend his school to first complete a course in mathematics. And mathematics, with its strict laws that are not based on the everyday course of sensory phenomena, really is a good preparation for those seeking knowledge. If he wants to make progress in it, he must renounce all personal arbitrariness, all disturbances. The seeker of knowledge prepares himself for his task by overcoming all self-acting arbitrariness of thought through arbitrariness. He learns to follow purely the demands of thought. And so he must learn to proceed in all thinking that is to serve the knowledge of the spirit. This life of thought itself must be a reflection of undisturbed mathematical judgment and reasoning. Wherever he goes and stands, he must endeavor to be able to think in this way. Then the laws of the spiritual world will flow into him, passing by and through him without a trace if his thinking has the everyday, confused character. Ordered thinking leads him from safe starting points to the most hidden truths. However, such hints should not be taken one-sidedly. Even if mathematics is a good discipline for thinking, it is also possible to achieve pure, healthy and vital thinking without doing mathematics.

[ 9 ] And what the seeker of knowledge strives for in his thinking, he must also strive for in his actions. This must be able to follow the laws of the noble, beautiful and eternally true without any disturbing influences from his personality. These laws must be able to give him direction. If he begins to do something that he has recognized as the right thing to do, and if his personal feeling is not satisfied by this action, he must not leave the path he has taken because of it. But he must also not pursue it because it gives him pleasure if he finds that it does not agree with the laws of the eternally beautiful and true. In everyday life, people allow their actions to be determined by what satisfies them personally, what bears fruit for them. In this way they force the direction of their personality onto the course of world events. They do not realize the true that is predetermined in the laws of the spiritual world, they realize the demand of their arbitrariness. Only then does one work in the sense of the spiritual world when one alone obeys its laws. What is done merely out of the personality does not give rise to forces that can form a basis for knowledge of the spirit. The seeker of knowledge cannot merely ask: what brings me fruit, what makes me successful, but he must also be able to ask: what have I recognized as good? Renunciation of the fruits of action for the personality, renunciation of all arbitrariness: these are the serious laws that he must be able to outline for himself. Then he walks in the ways of the spiritual world, his whole being permeates itself with these laws. He becomes free from all the constraints of the world of the senses: his spiritual man lifts himself out of the sensual envelope. In this way he enters into progress towards the spiritual, in this way he spiritualizes himself. One cannot say: what use are all my intentions to follow the laws of truth if I am perhaps mistaken about this truth? It depends on the striving, on the attitude. Even the erring person has a power in striving for what is true that diverts him from the wrong path. If he is in error, this power takes hold of him and leads him to the right path. Even the objection: I can also be wrong, is disturbing unbelief. It shows that the person has no trust in the power of truth. For it is precisely this that is important, that he does not miss the opportunity to set himself goals from his selfish standpoint, but that he gives himself selflessly and allows the Spirit to determine his direction. It is not the selfish will of man that can dictate to the true, but this true itself must become the ruler in man, must permeate his whole being, must make him the image of the eternal laws of the spirit land. He must fill himself with these eternal laws in order to let them flow out into life. - Like his thinking, the seeker of knowledge must be able to keep his will in strict control. He thus becomes, in all modesty - without presumption - a messenger of the world of truth and beauty. And by becoming this, he rises to become a participant in the spiritual world. This raises him from one level of development to the next. For one cannot attain the spiritual life merely by looking at it, but one must attain it by experiencing it

[ 10 ] If the seeker of knowledge observes these presented laws, those spiritual experiences that relate to the spiritual world will take on a completely new form. He will no longer merely live in them. They will no longer merely have a meaning for his own life. They will develop into spiritual perceptions of the higher world. In his soul, feelings, pleasure and displeasure, joy and pain will grow into organs of the soul, just as in his body his eyes and ears do not merely lead a life for themselves, but selflessly allow external impressions to pass through them. And thereby the seeker of knowledge gains the calmness and security in the state of soul that are necessary for research in the spiritual world. A great pleasure will no longer merely make him rejoice, but will be able to announce to him qualities of the world that previously escaped him. It will leave him calm; and through the calm the characteristics of the pleasure-giving entities will reveal themselves to him. A pain will no longer merely fill him with sorrow, but will also be able to tell him what qualities the being causing the pain has. Just as the eye desires nothing for itself, but indicates to man the direction of the path he has to take, so pleasure and pain will guide the soul safely along its path. This is the state of mental equilibrium into which the cognizer must come. The less pleasure and pain exhaust themselves in the waves they raise in the inner life of the cognizer, the more they will form eyes for the supersensible world. As long as man lives in pleasure and suffering, he does not know through them. When he learns to live through them, when he draws his sense of self from them, then they become his organs of perception; then he sees, then he recognizes through them. It is incorrect to believe that the cognizer becomes a dry, sober, pleasureless and sorrowless person. Pleasure and suffering are present in him, but then, when he researches in the spiritual world, in a transformed form; they have become "eyes and ears".

[ 11 ] As long as we live personally with the world, things reveal only that which links them to our personality, but that is their transience. If we withdraw from our transient nature and live with our sense of self, with our "I" in our permanent nature, then the transient parts of us become mediators; and what is revealed through them is something imperishable, something eternal about things. The cognizer must be able to establish this relationship between his own eternal and the eternal in things. Even before he takes up other exercises of the kind described and also during them, he should direct his mind towards this imperishable. When I observe a stone, a plant, an animal, a human being, I should be able to remember that an eternal is expressed in all of them. I should be able to ask myself what lives as something permanent in the transient stone, in the transient human being? What will outlast the passing sensual appearance? - We should not believe that directing the mind towards the eternal in this way eradicates devotional contemplation and the sense for the qualities of everyday life in us and alienates us from immediate reality. On the contrary. Every leaf, every beetle will reveal countless secrets to us if our eye is not only directed at them, but through the eye of the spirit. Every glitter, every nuance of color, every tone of voice will remain vivid and perceptible to the senses, nothing will be lost; only unlimited new life will be gained. And whoever does not know how to observe the smallest detail with the eye will only come to pale, bloodless thoughts, but not to spiritual vision. - It depends on the mindset we acquire in this direction. How far we get will depend on our abilities. We only have to do the right thing and leave everything else to development. First of all, it must be enough for us to focus our minds on what remains. If we do this, then through this the realization of the permanent will dawn on us. We must wait until it is given to us. And it will be given at the appropriate time to everyone who waits and works in patience. - Under such exercises, man soon realizes what a tremendous transformation is happening to him. He learns to take each thing as important or unimportant only to the extent that he has recognized the relationship of this thing to something permanent and eternal. He arrives at a different evaluation and appreciation of the world than he had before. His feelings take on a different relationship to the whole environment. The ephemeral no longer attracts him merely for its own sake as before; it also becomes a member and parable of the eternal. And he learns to love this eternal that lives in all things. It becomes familiar to him, just as the transient was familiar to him before. This does not alienate him from life either, but he only learns to appreciate every thing according to its true meaning. Even the vain trinkets of life will not pass him by without a trace; but by seeking the spiritual, man no longer loses himself to it, but recognizes it in its limited value. He sees it in the right light. He is a poor recognizer who only wants to walk in the clouds and would lose his life over it. A truly cognizant person will know how to put every thing in its place from his lofty heights through a clear overview and the right perception of everything.

[ 12 ] This opens up the possibility for the cognizer to no longer follow the unpredictable influences of the external world of the senses alone, which sometimes direct his will here, sometimes there. Through cognition he has seen the eternal essence of things. Through the transformation of his inner world, he has within himself the ability to perceive this eternal being. For the cognizer, the following thoughts take on a special importance. When he acts out of himself, he is aware that he is acting out of the eternal essence of things. For the things express their essence in him. He therefore acts in the sense of the eternal world order when he gives direction to his actions from the eternal living in him. He no longer knows that he is merely driven by things; he knows that he drives them according to the laws implanted in them, which have become the laws of his own being. - This action from within can only be an ideal towards which one strives. The achievement of this goal lies in the distant future. But the cognizer must have the will to see this path clearly. This is his will to freedom. For freedom is acting out of oneself. And only those who draw their motives from the eternal can act out of themselves. A being that does not do this acts according to motives other than those implanted in things. Such a being resists the world order. And this must then prevail over it. In other words: ultimately, it cannot do what its will dictates. It cannot become free. The arbitrariness of the individual destroys itself through the effect of its actions.

[ 13 ] Whoever is able to influence his inner life in this way progresses from stage to stage in the knowledge of the spirit. The fruit of his exercises will be that certain insights into the supersensible world will open up to his spiritual perception. He will learn how the truths about this world are meant; and he will receive confirmation of them through his own experience. Once he has reached this stage, something approaches him that can only be experienced through this path. In a way whose meaning can only now become clear to him, the so-called initiation is granted to him by the "great spiritual guiding powers of the human race". He becomes a "disciple of wisdom". The less one sees in such an initiation something that consists in an external human relationship, the more correct will be the idea formed about it. We can only hint here at what happens to the cognizer. He receives a new home. He thus becomes a conscious native in the supersensible world. The source of spiritual insight now flows to him from a higher place. The light of knowledge now does not shine towards him from outside, but he himself is transferred to the source of this light. From now on he no longer talks to the things that are shaped by the spirit, but to the shaping spirit itself. In the moments of spirit knowledge, the personality's own life is then only there to be a conscious parable of the Eternal. Doubts about the spirit, which could still arise in him before, disappear; for only those whom things deceive about the spirit reigning in them can doubt. And since the "disciple of wisdom" is able to converse with the spirit itself, every false form under which he previously imagined the spirit also disappears. The false form in which one imagines the spirit is superstition. The initiate is beyond superstition, for he knows the true form of the spirit. Freedom from the prejudices of personality, doubt and superstition, these are the characteristics of one who has ascended to discipleship on the path of knowledge. One should not confuse this unification of the personality with the all-embracing spiritual life with an annihilation of the personality in the "All-Spirit". Such a "disappearance" does not take place in the true development of the personality. It remains preserved as a personality in the relationship it enters into with the spirit world. It is not overcoming, but a higher shaping of the personality that takes place. If one wants a parable for this coincidence of the individual spirit with the All-Spirit, then one cannot choose that of different circles that coincide into one in order to sink into it, but one must choose the image of many circles, each of which has a very specific shade of color. These differently colored circles fall over one another, but each individual nuance remains in the whole of its essence. None loses the fullness of its own powers.

[ 14 ] The further description of the "path" will not be given here. It is given, as far as this is possible, in my "Secret Science", which forms the continuation of this book.

[ 15 ] What is said here about the spiritual path of knowledge can all too easily through a misunderstanding tempt us to see it as a recommendation of those moods of the soul that entail a turning away from the immediate joyful and energetic experience of existence. On the other hand, it must be emphasized that the mood of the soul that makes it capable of directly experiencing the reality of the spirit cannot be extended over the whole of life like a general requirement. The explorer of spiritual existence can take it into his power to bring the soul into the necessary detachment from sensory reality for this exploration, without this detachment generally making him an unworldly person. - On the other hand, however, it must also be recognized that a recognition of the spiritual world, not only by entering the path, but also by grasping the truths of spiritual science with the unprejudiced common sense of man, also leads to a higher moral state of life, to truthful knowledge of sensual existence, to life security and inner spiritual health.