The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Sixth Meditation

The meditator tries to form an idea of the "I-body", or "thought-body"

[ 1 ] The feeling of being outside one's sensory body is stronger when experiencing within the astral body than when experiencing in the elementary body. In the latter, one feels outside the area in which the sensory body is; but one feels it too. In the astral body, however, one feels the sensory body itself as something external. When passing into the elementary body one feels something like an extension of one's own entity, but when entering the astral body one feels a kind of leaping over into another entity. And into this entity one feels a spiritual world of beings working in. One feels connected in one way or another, or even related to these entities. And one gradually learns to recognize how these beings themselves relate to each other. The world expands for the human consciousness towards the spirit. Man sees spiritual entities which, for example, cause the successive epochs of human development to be really determined in their character by entities. These are the spirits of time, or elemental forces. We get to know other beings whose existence proceeds in such a way that their thoughts are at the same time effective forces of nature. We come to recognize that it is only for sensory perception that the forces of nature appear to be as this sensory perception believes them to be. In reality, wherever a natural force is at work, a thought of an entity is expressed, just as a human soul is expressed in the movement of the hand. - All this is not because man, through some theory or other, imagines entities standing behind the natural processes; the person experiencing himself in the astral body enters into such a concept-free, concrete relationship with these entities as man enters into with other individual human beings in the sense world. - Within the entities into whose realm one enters in this way, one can distinguish a series of levels and speak of a world of higher hierarchies. The entities whose thoughts reveal themselves to sensory perception as natural forces can be called spirits of form.

[ 2 ] Experience in this world requires that one perceives one's being within the world of the senses as something external, just as one looks at a plant as an external being in the senses. - One will experience this way of being outside of what one must feel in ordinary life as the whole extent of one's own being as extremely painful as long as no other experience is added. In the case of energetic inner spiritual work, which leads to the right condensation and strengthening of the soul life, it is not necessary for this pain to occur to a particularly strong degree. For a slow entry into the other experience can occur at the same time as living in the astral body.

[ 3 ] This other experience will consist in the fact that one can feel everything that was previously in and about one's own soul as a kind of memory, and that one thus relates to one's ego as it was before in the same way as one relates to memories in the sensory world. Only through such an experience does one attain the full awareness that one truly lives in a completely different world than the sense world, with one's own being in it. One now has the knowledge that one carries the previous "I" as something other than what one actually is. You can now confront yourself. And you get an idea of what is now facing your own soul and of which it previously said: I am myself. Now it no longer says, I am this myself, but rather, I carry this as something on me. Just as the ego in ordinary life feels itself to be independent of its memories, so the ego that has now arisen feels itself to be independent of the former ego. It feels that it belongs to the world of purely spiritual entities. And as this experience - and again not a theory - presents itself, one recognizes what that which one has hitherto regarded as one's ego entity actually is. It presents itself as a fabric of memories that are effected by the sensory body, by the elemental and astral body, like a reflection through a mirror. As little as a person considers himself one with his mirror image, so little does the soul, which experiences itself in the spiritual world, consider itself one with what it experiences of itself in the sense world. The comparison with the mirror image can naturally only be taken as a comparison. For the mirror image ceases to exist when the person changes their position in relation to the mirror. The fabric, which is woven as if from memories and represents what one sees in the world of the senses as one's own being, has a greater independence than a mirror image. In its own way, it has an essence of its own. And yet it is like an image of its own essence to the true soul being. The true being of the soul feels that it needs this image for its self-revelation. It knows that it is something else, but that it would never have come to really know anything about itself if it had not first grasped itself as its own image in that world which has become an external world for it after its ascent into the spiritual world.

[ 4 ] The fabric of memories that one now sees as one's former "I" can be called the "I-body" or also "thought body". In such a context, the word "body" must be taken in a broader sense than what we are otherwise used to calling a "body". "Body" here means everything that one experiences in oneself and of which one does not say that one is it, but that one has it in oneself. Only when the clairvoyant consciousness has reached the point of experiencing that which it has hitherto described as itself as a sum of memories, can it gain an experience in the true sense of what is hidden behind the appearance of death. For it has now reached the essence of a truly real world, in which it feels itself as a being that can hold on to what is experienced in sense existence as if in a memory. In order to continue to live its existence, what is experienced in the senses requires an entity that can hold on to it in the same way as the ordinary ego holds on to its memory pre-divisions in the senses. Supersensible knowledge reveals that man has an existence within the world of spiritual being, and that it is he himself who retains his sense existence within it like a memory. The question, what can I be after death that which I am now, is answered for clairvoyant research as follows: you will be what you retain of yourself by virtue of your existence as a spiritual being among other spiritual beings.

[ 5 ] You recognize the nature of these spirit beings and within them your own. And this realization is direct experience. Through it one knows that the spirit beings and with them also one's own soul have an existence for which the sense being is a temporary revelation. - If ordinary consciousness - in the sense of the first meditation - shows that the body belongs to a world whose true part in it is revealed in its dissolution after death, clairvoyant observation shows that the human ego being belongs to a world to which it is bound by quite different ties than the body is bound to the laws of nature. The bonds with which the ego being is bound to the spiritual beings of the supersensible world are not affected by birth and death in their innermost essence. In the sensual life of the body these bonds only reveal themselves in a special way. What appears in this life is the expression of connections of a supersensible nature. Since the human being as such is a supersensible being - and also appears as such to supersensible observation - the connection from human soul to human soul is also not impaired by death in the supersensible. And what appears to the soul as an anxious question before the ordinary consciousness in the primitive form: will I see again after death those whom I have known to be connected with me in sensory life, must be answered by real research, which is entitled to an experiential judgment in this field, with a decisive "yes".

[ 6 ] Everything that has been said here about the experience of the soul being as a spiritual reality within the world of other spirit beings can be seen through the often-mentioned amplification of the soul life. However, this experience can still be helped by special sensations that are formed. - In ordinary experience within the world of the senses, we relate to what we perceive as our destiny in such a way that we perceive one as sympathetic and the other as antipathetic. A self-contemplation which can be quite impartial towards itself will have to admit that the sympathies and antipathies under consideration here are among the strongest that man can feel. An ordinary consideration of the kind that everything is necessary in life, that one must bear one's fate, can go a long way towards creating a serene mood in life. But in order to achieve a grasp of the true nature of man, even more is necessary. The consideration indicated will be of the best service to the life of the soul; but it will often be noticed that whatever sympathies and antipathies one has shed in the direction indicated have only disappeared for the immediate consciousness. It has withdrawn into the deeper reasons of the human being and lives itself out as a mood of the soul, or also as feelings of tension or other feelings of the body. True equanimity towards fate can only be attained if one behaves in this field in exactly the same way as with the repeated, intensified surrender to thoughts or sensations to strengthen the soul in general. It is not enough to have the reflection that leads to the insight of the mind, but it is necessary to live intensively with such reflection, to hold it in the soul for a long time while at the same time keeping the sensory experiences and the other memories of life at a distance. Through such practice one arrives at a certain basic mood of the soul towards one's life destiny. One can thoroughly drive out of oneself the antipathies and sympathies in this area and can finally see everything that happens to man approaching him, just as one, as a completely external observer, sees a jet of water falling over a rock and hitting the bottom. This is not to say that in this way one should come to stand numbly before one's fate. He who comes to look with indifference at everything that happens to him is certainly not on a prosperous path. But one is not indifferent to the outside world with regard to that which does not touch one's own soul in terms of destiny. One sees what takes place before one's eyes with joy or with aversion. The person striving for supersensible knowledge should not seek a lack of participation in life, but rather a transformation of the share that the "I" initially has in relation to everything that fatefully touches it. It is quite possible that through this transformation the vividness of the emotional being is even strengthened, not weakened. In ordinary life, tears well up in the eyes over many things that affect one's own soul in a fateful way. But one can also come to the conclusion that one has the same vivid feeling towards one's own misfortune that one feels when the same misfortune befalls another person. It is easier for a person to arrive at this kind of experience in relation to incidents that affect him as fate would have it than, for example, in relation to his own abilities. The thought is not so easily attainable, which is just as easily expressed in joy when another has an ability as when one possesses it oneself. If self-contemplation seeks to penetrate to the deepest depths of the soul, it is possible to discover a great deal of selfish joy about many things that one can do oneself. An intensive, repeated (meditative) coexistence with the thought that in many respects it is the same for the course of human life whether you yourself or another person can do something, can lead far in terms of true serenity towards what one feels to be the innermost destiny of life. - Such inner thoughtful reinforcement of the life of the soul, if it is done correctly, can never lead to a mere dulling of the feeling for one's abilities: on the contrary, one transforms it. One feels the need to behave in accordance with these abilities.

[ 7 ] And this already indicates the direction that such a thoughtful strengthening of the soul life takes. One learns to recognize something within oneself that appears to the soul as a second being. This is particularly evident when one connects with it the thoughts which show how one brings about this or that in fate in ordinary life. One can perceive that this or that would not have happened to you if you yourself had not behaved in a certain way in an earlier time. What happens to people today is often the result of what they did yesterday. With the aim of taking his soul experience further than it is at a certain point in time, he can now look back at his previous experiences. In doing so, one can seek out everything that shows how one has previously prepared later incidents of fate. With such a retrospective view of life one can try to reach that point in time when the child's consciousness awakens in such a way that in later life it remembers what it has experienced. If such a retrospection is made in such a way that it is connected with the mood of the soul which eliminates the usual spiritual sympathies and antipathies with fateful events, then when one reaches the designated time of the child's life in terms of memory, one faces oneself in such a way that one says to oneself: The possibility that you feel yourself in yourself and consciously work on your soul life has only just begun; but this "I" of yours was also there before, it did not work knowingly in you, but it even brought you to your ability to know, as to everything else you know about. What no intellectual consideration can recognize is brought about by the described position in relation to your own destiny. You learn to look at the incidents of fate with composure; you see them approaching you impartially; but you see yourself in the entity that brings these incidents to you. And when one sees oneself in this way, the conditions of one's own destiny, which are already given at birth, present themselves to the soul in connection with one's own self. One struggles to say that just as you have worked on yourself in the time after your consciousness has awakened, so you have already worked on yourself before your present consciousness has awakened. Such working through to a superior ego being in the ordinary ego not only leads to being able to say to oneself that my thought leads me to theoretically conceive of such a superior ego, but it also leads to feeling the living being of this "ego" in its reality as a power within oneself, and to feeling the ordinary ego as a creature of this other within oneself. This feeling is a true beginning of seeing the spiritual being of the soul. And if it leads to nothing, it is only because one leaves it at the beginning. This beginning can be a barely perceptible, dull sensation. It may remain so for a long time. But if you continue to pursue strongly and vigorously what led to this beginning, you will finally come to see the soul as a spiritual being. And he who has come to this vision will find it quite understandable when someone who has gained no experience in this field says that he who believes to see such things has only brought himself to the imagination - autosuggestion - of the superior ego through spiritual behavior. But the person who is equipped with such vision also knows that such an objection can only stem from this lack of experience. For anyone who seriously experiences what has been described also acquires the ability to distinguish his imagination from reality. The inner experiences and activities that are necessary in such a journey of the soul, if it is to be a correct one, lead one to exercise the strictest caution against oneself with regard to imagination and reality. If one strives purposefully to experience oneself as a spiritual being in the superior "I", one will see the main experience in that which is characterized at the beginning of this meditation, and recognize that which is mentioned in second place as an aid to the transmigration of the soul.