The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fourth Meditation

The meditator tries to form an idea of the "Guardian of the Threshold"

[ 1 ] When the soul has attained the ability to observe something outside the sensory body, it may experience certain difficulties in its emotional life. It may be forced to adopt a completely different attitude to itself than it was previously accustomed to. She faced the world of the senses in such a way that she regarded it as the outer world and the experiences of the inner world as her own. She cannot relate to the supersensible outer world in this way. As soon as it perceives this outer world, it flows together with it, so to speak; it cannot imagine itself as separate from it as from the sensory outer world. As a result, everything that it can describe as its own inner world in relation to this supersensible outer world takes on a certain peculiarity that is initially difficult to reconcile with the ideas of inwardness. One can no longer say: I think, I feel, or I have my thoughts and form them. One must say: something thinks in me, something lets feelings light up in me, something shapes the thoughts so that they appear in a very specific way and show themselves as present in consciousness.

[ 2 ] This feeling can now have something extraordinarily oppressive when the kind of supersensible experience proves to be one that gives certainty that one is experiencing a reality correctly and is not indulging in fantasy or illusion. As it occurs, it can show that the supersensible outer world does want to feel itself, to think itself, but that it is prevented from doing what it wants to do. At the same time, one receives the sensation that what wants to enter the soul is the true reality, and that it alone can enlighten us about what we have experienced as reality up to now. This sensation also takes on the form that the supersensible reality shows itself as something that infinitely outshines the reality previously known to the soul. This sensation has something oppressive about it because one comes to the thought that the next step, which one now has to take, must be wanted. It is in the nature of what one has become through one's inner experience to take this step. It would feel like a denial of what one is, indeed like self-destruction, if one did not take the step. And yet the feeling can also arise that you cannot take it, or if you do take it, as it is possible, it remains imperfect.

[ 3 ] All this is transformed into the imagination: just as the soul is now, there is a task before it that it cannot accomplish because it is not received by the supersensible outer world as it is, because the latter does not want it within itself. Thus the soul comes to feel itself in opposition to the supersensible world, it must say to itself that you are not such as you can flow together with this world. But it can only show you the true reality, and also how you yourself relate to this true reality; you have thus separated yourself from the genuine observation of what is true. This feeling means an experience which becomes more and more decisive about the whole value of your own soul. You feel that you are standing with your full life in an error. But this error differs from other errors. These are thought, but it is experienced. An error that is thought is removed when the correct thought is put in the place of the incorrect thought. The experienced error has become a part of the life of the soul itself; one is the error; one cannot simply improve it, for one may think as one pleases, it is there, it is a part of reality, and indeed of one's own reality. Such an experience has a devastating effect on one's own self. One feels one's inwardness painfully repelled from everything one longs for. This pain, which is felt at a stage of transmigration, far surpasses all the pain that can be felt in the sensory world. And that is why it can also surpass everything that you have been able to cope with in your previous soul life. It can have a numbing effect. The soul is faced with the anxious question of where to find the strength to endure what is imposed on me. And it must find this strength within its own life. They consist in something that can be described as inner courage, as inner fearlessness.

[ 4 ] In order to progress further in the transmigration of the soul, one must be led to develop from within such powers of endurance of one's experiences that result in inner courage and inner fearlessness, such as one did not need for life within the sensual body. Such powers only arise through true self-knowledge. At this stage of development one basically realizes how little one has really known about oneself. We have left ourselves to our inner experience without looking at it in the same way as we look at a part of the outside world. However, through the steps that have led to the ability to experience outside the body, one receives special means of self-knowledge. One learns, so to speak, to look at oneself from a point of view that only arises when one is outside the sensory body. And the oppressive feeling described above is itself the beginning of true self-knowledge. Experiencing oneself in error in one's relationship to the outside world shows one's own soul being as it really is.

[ 5 ] Now it is in the nature of the human soul to experience such enlightenment about itself as painful. It is only when one experiences this pain that one realizes how strong the natural longing is to consider oneself as a human being, as one is, as valuable, as meaningful. It may seem ugly that this is so; one must freely confront this ugliness of one's own self. One did not feel this ugliness before for the very reason that one has never really penetrated one's own being with one's consciousness. It is only at such a moment that one realizes how one loves oneself, which one is now supposed to perceive as ugly. The power of self-love shows itself in all its greatness. And at the same time it shows how little inclination one has to discard this self-love. When it comes to the qualities of the soul that are relevant to ordinary life, to relationships with other people, the difficulty is great enough. Through true self-knowledge, for example, one learns that one has hitherto believed oneself to be benevolent towards a person, and yet one harbors hidden envy or hatred or the like in the depths of one's soul. You realize that these feelings, which have not yet come to light, will certainly want to express themselves one day. And one realizes that it would be quite superficial to say to oneself: now you have realized that this is the way things are with you, get rid of the envy and hatred within you. But one discovers that with such a thought one will certainly prove to be quite weak one day, when the urge to satisfy the hatred, to live out the envy, will burst forth from the soul as if by force of nature. Such special self-knowledge occurs in this or that person depending on the nature of his soul. They arise when experience occurs outside the sensory body, because then the self-knowledge becomes a true one and can no longer be clouded by the desire to find oneself in one way or another, as one only loves to be.

[ 6 ] This particular self-knowledge is painful, it is oppressive for the soul. Those who want to acquire the ability to experience outside the body cannot avoid them. For they necessarily arise through the very special relationship in which he must place himself to his own soul. But the strongest powers of the soul are needed when it is a question of quite general human self-knowledge. One observes oneself from a point of view that lies outside the previous life of the soul. You say to yourself: you have observed and judged the things and processes of the world according to your human nature. Try to imagine that you could not look at them and judge them in this way. Then you would not be what you are at all. You would have no inner experiences. You yourself would be nothing. It is not only the person who stands in everyday life and only rarely has ideas about the world and life who has to say this to himself. Every scientist, every philosopher must say so. For philosophy, too, is only an observation and judgment of the world according to the characteristics of the human soul. But such an assessment cannot flow together with the supersensible outer world. It is rejected by it. But this rejects everything that we have been up to now. One looks back on one's whole soul, on one's "I", as something that one must discard if one wants to enter the supersensible world. - But now the soul cannot do otherwise than regard this "I" as its actual being before it enters the supersensible world. It must see in it the true human entity. It must say to itself: through this ego of mine I must form ideas about the world; this ego of mine must not be lost if I do not want to lose myself as an entity. The strongest impulse in it is to preserve the ego everywhere in order not to lose all ground under its feet. What the soul must justifiably feel in ordinary life, it must no longer feel as soon as it enters the supersensible outer world. There it must cross a threshold at which it must not leave behind only one or two valuable possessions, at which it must leave behind what it has hitherto been to itself. It must be able to say to itself that what has hitherto been your strongest truth must now appear to you as the strongest error on the other side of the threshold to the supersensible world.

[ 7 ] The soul can shrink back in the face of such a demand. It can feel what it would have to do so strongly as a surrender, a declaration of nullity of its own being, that at the designated threshold it more or less admits its own powerlessness to meet the demand. This admission can take all kinds of forms. It can occur quite instinctively and appear to the person who thinks and acts in its sense as something quite different from what it really is. For example, he may feel a deep aversion to all supersensible truths. He may consider them to be dreams, fantasies. He only does this because he has a secret fear of these truths in the depths of his soul, which are unknown to him. He feels that he can only live with what the senses and the judgment of the intellect reveal. He therefore avoids approaching the threshold of the supersensible world. He cloaks this avoidance in such a way that he says that what lies beyond this threshold is not tenable before reason and science. But the point is that he loves reason and science, as he knows them, because they are bound to his ego. It is a very generally human form of self-love. But this cannot be included in the supersensible world.

[ 8 ] However, it can also happen that this instinctive stopping at the threshold is not enough. That the person consciously steps up to it and then turns back because he feels fear of what lies ahead. He will then not easily be able to blur the effects which his approach to the threshold will have on his ordinary soul life. These will lie in the consequences that the powerlessness he has felt spreads over his entire soul life.

[ 9 ] What is to occur is that man should make himself capable of discarding what he feels to be the strongest truth in ordinary life when he enters the supersensible world, and should set himself up in a different way of feeling and judging things. He must only be aware that when he is again confronted with the world of the senses, he must again use the mode of perception and judgment that is valid for it. He must not only learn to live in two worlds, but also to live in both in quite different ways. He must not impair his sound judgment for his ordinary standing in the sensory and intellectual world, because he is forced to use a different kind of judgment for another world.

[ 10 ] Such an opinion is difficult for the human being. The capacity for it is only attained through continued energetic and patient strengthening of the soul life. Whoever experiences the threshold feels that it is a blessing for the ordinary human soul life not to be led to this threshold. The sensations that arise in him are such that one cannot help but think that this benefit comes from an essential power that protects man from the danger of experiencing the horrors of self-destruction at the threshold. - Behind the outer world, which is given to ordinary life, lies another. Before its threshold stands a strict guardian who ensures that man experiences nothing of the laws of the supersensible world. For all doubts, all uncertainty about this world are even easier to bear than the sight of what one must leave behind when one wants to enter it.

[ 11 ] Man remains protected from the experiences described as long as he does not approach this threshold himself. The fact that they receive stories of their experiences from those who have entered or crossed this threshold does not change the fact that they are protected. On the other hand, such acceptance can serve him in a good sense when he approaches the threshold. In this case, as in many others, an action is better accomplished if one can form an idea of it beforehand than in the opposite case. However, such foreknowledge does nothing to change what the wanderer into the supersensible world is supposed to gain in self-knowledge. It is therefore not in accordance with the facts when some clairvoyant persons or persons familiar with the nature of clairvoyance claim that such things should not be spoken of at all in the circle of people who are not about to make the decision to enter the supersensible world themselves. We are currently living in a time in which people must become more and more familiar with the nature of the supersensible world if they want to be able to cope with the demands of life. The dissemination of supersensible knowledge and thus also that of the Guardian of the Threshold is one of the tasks of the present and the near future.