The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Third Meditation

The meditator tries to form ideas about the clairvoyant knowledge of the elementary world

[ 1 ] One experiences a world that remains unknown to sensory perception and ordinary intellectual thinking when one does not perceive through the sensory body, but outside of it through the elementary body. If we want to compare this world with something that belongs to ordinary experience, we are presented with the world of memories, of ideas of memory. Just as these arise from within the soul, so it is with the supersensible experiences of the elementary body. The only difference is that the soul knows in the case of a memory that it relates to an earlier experience within the world of the senses. The supersensible imagination also carries a relationship within it. Just as the memory-image announces itself as something that cannot be described as a mere figment of the imagination, so does the supersensible image. It emerges from the experience of the soul, but it immediately reveals itself as an inner experience that relates to something external. Through the memory-imagination something becomes present in the soul that one has experienced. Through the supersensible imagination, an inner experience of the soul becomes what is present at some time or somewhere in the supersensible world. It is thus revealed by the nature of the supersensible ideas themselves that they can be seen as inwardly revealing messages from a supersensible world.

[ 2 ] How far one gets with the experiences in the supersensible world in this way depends on how energetically one pursues the strengthening of the soul life. Whether one merely obtains a concept that a plant is not merely that which one perceives within the sense world, or whether one obtains a similar concept of the whole earth, both belong to the same area of supersensible experience. If a person who has acquired the ability to perceive outside his sensory body looks at a plant, he can perceive a subtle form that permeates the whole plant in addition to what the senses show about it. This form presents itself to him as an entity of force; and he comes to regard this entity of force as that which forms the plant out of the substances and forces of the sense world, that which brings about the circulation of its juices. He can say, if he wants to use a useful, if not quite accurate, expression: there is something in the plant that brings the juices into circulation in the same way that my own soul lifts my arm. He is looking at an inner being in the plant. And he must allow this inner being of the plant to be independent of what the senses see in the plant. He must also concede to it that it exists before the sensual plant. He comes to observe how a plant grows, withers, sprouts and how a new plant emerges from the latter. The supersensible form of power is at its most powerful when the observation is made of the plant germ. There the sensual entity is inconspicuous in a certain respect; the supersensible, on the other hand, is multi-layered. It contains everything that contributes to the development and growth of the plant from the supersensible world. - The supersensible observation of the whole earth reveals a power entity of which one can be quite certain that it was present before everything that is sensually perceptible on and within the earth came into being. In this way we come to experience the supersensible forces that worked on the earth in prehistoric times. What one experiences in this way can also be called the etheric or elemental basic beings or bodies of the plant and the earth, just as one calls the body through which one perceives outside the physical body one's own elemental or etheric body.

[ 3 ] Even at the beginning of the supersensible faculty of observation, one will be able to ascribe such elementary basic entities to certain things and processes of the sensory world in addition to their sensory properties. One will speak of an etheric body of the plant or the earth. But the elementary entities observed in this way are by no means the only ones that present themselves to the supersensible experience. The elemental body of a plant is said to shape the substances and forces of the sensory world and thus lives itself out in a sensory body. But we can also observe beings that lead an elemental existence without living out their existence in a sensory body. So there are also purely elemental beings for supersensible observation. One does not merely experience something in addition to the sense world; one experiences a world within which the sense world presents itself, such as pieces of ice floating in water. He who could only see the ice and not the water would be able to concede reality only to the ice and not to the water. Whoever wants to stick only to what is revealed through the senses denies the supersensible world, within which the sensory world is a part, just as the pieces of ice in the water are a part of the whole mass of water.

[ 4 ] It will now be found that those people who can make supersensible observations describe what they see in such a way that they make use of expressions borrowed from sensory perceptions. Thus one can find the elementary body of a being of the sense world, or a purely elementary being, described in such a way that it is said to reveal itself as a self-contained, variously colored body of light. It flashes in colors, glows or shines and lets us know that this appearance of color or light is its expression of life. What the observer is actually talking about is quite invisible, and he is aware that the light or color image has nothing to do with what he perceives other than, for example, the writing in which a fact is communicated has to do with this fact itself. Nevertheless, one has not merely expressed something supersensible in an arbitrary way through sensory perceptions; rather, during the observation one has actually had an experience that is similar to a sensory impression. This is due to the fact that in supersensible experience the liberation from the sensory body is not complete. It still lives together with the elementary body and brings the supersensible experience into a sensible form. The description that is given of an elementary entity is then actually such that it appears as a visionary or fantastic compilation of sensory impressions. If the description is given in this way, then it is nevertheless the true representation of the experience. Because you have seen what you are describing. The mistake that can be made does not lie in describing the image as such. A mistake is only made when the image is taken for reality and not what the image indicates as the reality corresponding to it.

[ 5 ] A person who has never perceived colors - a person born blind - will not, if he acquires the corresponding ability, describe elementary entities in such a way that he says they flash as color phenomena. He will use the sensory concepts he is used to expressing. For people who can see with their senses, however, a description that makes use of the expression, for example, that a figure of color flashed out, is quite suitable They can thereby form the perception of what the observer of the elementary world has seen. And this applies not only to communications which a clairvoyant - let it be called a person who can observe through his elementary body - makes to a non- clairvoyant, but also to the communication between clairvoyants. In the world of the senses, man lives in his sensory body, and this body clothes his supersensible observations in sensory forms; therefore, within human earthly life, the expression of supersensible observations through the sensory images they produce is initially a useful form of communication.

[ 6 ] It is important that the person who receives such a communication has an experience in his soul which is in the right relationship to the fact under consideration. The sensory images are only communicated so that something can be experienced through them. They cannot occur in the world of the senses as they present themselves. That is precisely their peculiarity. And that is why they also evoke experiences that do not relate to anything sensual.

[ 7 ] In the beginning of his clairvoyance, it is difficult for a person to free himself from the expression of the sensory image. However, as the ability develops further, the need will arise to devise more arbitrary means of representation to communicate what is seen. With these, there is always a need to first explain the certain signs that are used. The more the culture of the time demands that supersensible knowledge be made generally known, the more the need will arise to give this knowledge through the means of expression of everyday life in the world of the senses.

[ 8 ] The supersensible experiences can occur in such a way that they arise at certain times. They then overtake the person. And he then has the opportunity to learn something about the supersensible world through his own experience, to the extent that he is more or less often graced by it to the extent that it shines into his ordinary soul life. A higher faculty, however, consists in bringing about clairvoyant observation at will out of the ordinary life of the soul. The way to attain this ability is generally through a vigorous continuation of the inner strengthening of the soul life. But much also depends on the attainment of a certain mood of soul. A calm, serene attitude towards the supersensible world is necessary. An attitude that is just as far removed from the burning desire to experience as much and as clearly as possible as it is from a personal lack of interest in this world. The burning desire acts in such a way that it spreads something like an invisible fog in front of the bodiless seeing. The disinterest behaves in such a way that the supersensible things really reveal themselves, but are simply not noticed. This lack of interest is sometimes expressed in a very special form. There are people who would like to have the most honest experiences of clairvoyance. But from the outset they form a very specific idea of what they must be like if they are to recognize them as genuine. And then real experiences come; but these flit by without any interest being shown in them because they are not as they were imagined to be.

[ 9 ] When clairvoyance is induced arbitrarily, the moment comes in the course of the inner activity of the soul when one knows that the soul is now experiencing something that it has not experienced before. The experience is not a specific one, but the general feeling that one is not facing the sensual outer world, that one is not in it, but that one is also not in oneself, as one is in the ordinary life of the soul. The outer and the inner experience merge into one, into a feeling of life which was hitherto unknown to the soul, and which it knows it could not have if it lived with the outer world only through the senses, or if it lived in its ordinary sensations and memories. One then continues to feel that something from a hitherto unknown world pushes its way into this state of the soul. But one cannot come to an idea of this unknown. One experiences, but cannot imagine. On the other hand, those who experience such things are overcome by the feeling that their physical-sensory body is an obstacle to imagining what is pushing its way into the soul. If one now continues the inner effort of the soul again and again, then after some time one will feel like the conqueror of one's physical resistance. The physical mental apparatus has so far only been capable of forming ideas that are connected to experiences in the sensory world. At first it is incapable of elevating to a concept what wants to reveal itself from the supersensible world. It must first be processed in such a way that it is able to do so. Just as the child has the outer world around him, but his intellectual apparatus must first be prepared by experiencing the outer world in order to form ideas about the surroundings, so man is generally incapable of imagining the supersensible world. The budding clairvoyant accomplishes the same thing on a higher level in his imaginative apparatus that takes place in the child. He allows his intensified thoughts to act on this apparatus. This gradually transforms it. It becomes capable of absorbing the supersensible world into the life of the imagination. One feels how one has a formative effect on one's own body through the activity of the soul. At first it asserts itself as a heavy counter-pressure against the life of the soul; one feels it like a foreign body within oneself. Then one notices how it adapts itself more and more to the soul experience; finally one no longer feels the body, but instead one has the supersensible world before one, just as one does not perceive the eye through which one sees the world of colors. The body must become imperceptible before the soul can behold the supersensible world. Once you have succeeded in this way in making the soul clairvoyant at will, you will generally be able to bring about this state again and again if you concentrate on a thought that you can experience particularly powerfully within yourself. As a result of devotion to this thought, clairvoyance will then be induced. At first, you will not yet be able to see something specific that you want to see. Supersensible things or processes will play into the life of the soul for which one is not prepared in any way and which one did not want to bring about as such. But in the further course of the inner effort one comes to direct the spiritual gaze to such things that one intends to recognize. Just as one tries to bring a forgotten experience to mind by recalling a related one to the soul, so as a clairvoyant one can start from an experience which one may rightly believe to be related to the one sought. If one devotes oneself intensively to the known, then often after a longer or shorter time the one one intends to experience is added. In general, however, it should be noted that it is of the greatest value for the clairvoyant to wait calmly for favorable moments. You should not try to bring anything about. If a desired experience does not materialize, it is good to refrain from it for the time being and bring the opportunity back another time. The human cognitive apparatus requires the calm maturation of certain experiences. Those who do not have the patience to wait for such maturation will make incorrect or inaccurate observations.