Cosmology, Religion and Philosophy
GA 25
III. Methods of Imaginative, Inspired and Intuitive Knowledge or Cognition
[ 1 ] The inner life of man assumes another form from that of ordinary consciousness when it enters upon imaginative knowledge. His relationship to the world is also changed. This change is brought about by the concentration of all the powers of the soul on a presentation-complex which can easily be seen in its entirety. This last condition is necessary to avoid any kind of unconscious process playing a part in the meditation; for in this everything must come to pass only within the psychic and spiritual spheres. The man who thinks out a mathematical problem can be fairly certain that he is employing only psychic-spiritual forces. Unconscious memories, influenced by feeling or will, will not enter into it. It must be the same with Meditation. If we take for it a thought which is brought up out of memory, we cannot know how much at the same time we introduce into the consciousness from the physical, or instinctive, or unconsciously psychical, and cause it to react in the soul on the presentation during meditation. It is, therefore, best to choose for a subject of meditation something which one knows for certain to be quite new to the soul. If we seek advice on this point from an experienced spiritual investigator, he will lay particular stress on this. He will recommend a subject which is perfectly simple and which quite certainly cannot have occurred to us before. It is of no importance that the subject should even correspond with some known fact taken from the world of the senses. We can take as an idea something pictorial, but not necessarily representing a picture of the outer world, e.g., ‘In Light lives streaming Wisdom’. It depends on the power of reposeful meditation with such an image-presentation. The spiritual and psychic powers are strengthened by such a calm meditation just as the muscles are strengthened by performing a piece of work. The meditation can be short at a time, but it must be repeated over a long period to be successful. With one person success can be attained after a few weeks, with another only after years, according to natural predisposition. The man who wishes to be a true Spiritual Investigator must do such exercises systematically and intensively. The first result of meditation in the way here indicated is that the man who practises it has through his inner life a greater control over the statements of a Spiritual Investigator than the man of ordinary healthy intellect, though the latter, if sufficiently unfettered and unprejudiced, is also quite capable of such control.
[ 2 ] Meditation must call to its aid the exercise in character strengthening, inner truthfulness, calmness of soul, self-possession and deliberation. For only then, when it is thoroughly imbued with these qualities, will the soul gradually imprint on the whole human organization what in meditation appears as a process.
[ 3 ] When success is reached by means of such exercises, we find ourselves in the etheric organism. The thought-experience receives a new form. We experience the thoughts not only in the abstract form as before, but in such a way that one feels the power in them. Thoughts of former experience can only be thoughts, they have no power to stimulate action. Whereas the thoughts we now have, have as much power as the powers of growth which accompany man from childhood to maturity, and just for this reason it is necessary to carry out meditation in the right way. For if unconscious forces intervene in it, if it is not an act of complete and deliberate thoughtfulness, and done in self-possession taking a purely psychic and spiritual course, impulses are developed which step in as do the natural powers of growth in our own human organism. This must in no wise occur. Our own physical and etheric organism must remain completely untouched by meditation. The right kind of meditation enables us to live with the newly-developed power of thought-content quite outside our own physical and etheric organism. We have the etheric experience; and our organism itself attains to a personal experience of a relationship with a relative objectivity. We look at it (our organism) and in the form of thought it radiates back what we experience in the ether. [ 4 ] This experience is healthy if we arrive at the condition in which we can with complete freedom of choice alternate between an existence in the ether and one in our physical body. The condition is not right if there is something which forces us into the etheric existence. We must be able to be in ourselves and outside ourselves in accordance with perfectly free orientation.
[ 5 ] The first experience which we can win through such an inner labour is a review of the course of our own past life on earth. We see it as it has progressed by means of the powers of growth from childhood upwards. We see it in thought-pictures which are condensed into powers of growth. They are not simply remembered scenes of our own life which we have before us. They are pictures of an etheric course of events, which have happened in our own existence, without having been taken into the ordinary consciousness. That which the consciousness and memory hold is only the abstract accompanying appearance of the real course. It is, as it were, a surface wave which is in its shape the result of something deeper.
[ 6 ] In the process of viewing this progress the working of the etheric Cosmos on man is brought out. We can experience this work as the subject-matter of Philosophy. It is wisdom, not in the abstract form of the conception, but rather in the form of the working of the etheric in the Cosmos.
[ 7 ] In ordinary consciousness it is only the young child who has not yet learnt to speak who is in the same relationship to the Cosmos as the man who uses his imagination correctly. The child has not yet separated the powers of thought from the general (etheric) powers of growth. This happens only when he learns to speak. Then the powers of abstract thought are separated from the universal powers of growth which alone were previously present. In the course of his later life man has these powers of abstract thought, but they are part of his physical organism, and are not taken up into his etheric being. He cannot, therefore, bring his relationship to the etheric world into his consciousness. He can learn to do this , through Imagination.
[ 8 ] A quite small child is an unconscious philosopher; the ‘imaginative philosopher’ is again a small child, but wakened to full consciousness.
[ 9 ] Through the exercise of ‘Inspiration’ a new capacity is added to those already developed, namely, the capacity to obliterate from the consciousness pictures which have been dwelt upon in meditation. It must be clearly emphasized that here the capacity must be developed again to obliterate when one likes pictures which have previously been taken up in meditation by one's freewill. It is not enough to obliterate presentations which have not been implanted in the consciousness by free choice. It requires a greater psychic effort to abolish pictures which have been created in meditation than to extinguish those which have entered into the consciousness in another way. And we need this greater effort to advance in supersensible knowledge.
[ 10 ] On such lines we achieve a wakeful, but quite empty soul-life; we remain in conscious wakefulness. If this condition is experienced in full thoughtfulness the soul becomes filled with spiritual facts, as through the senses it is filled with physical. And this is the condition of ‘Inspiration’. We live an inner life in the Cosmos just as we live an inner life in the physical organism. But we are aware that we are experiencing the cosmic life, that the spiritual things and processes of the Cosmos are being revealed to us as our own inner soul-life. Now the possibility must have remained of always momentarily exchanging this inner experience of the Cosmos with the condition of ordinary consciousness. For then we can always relate what we experience in Inspiration to something we experience in ordinary consciousness. We see in the Cosmos that is perceived by the senses a reproduction of what we have spiritually experienced. The process may be compared with that by which one compares a new experience in life with a memory-picture which rises in the consciousness. The spiritual outlook which we have won is like the new experience, and the physical view of the Cosmos like the memory-picture.
[ 11 ] This spiritual outlook, thus attained, differs from the imaginative. In the latter we have general pictures of an etheric occurrence; in the former, pictures appear of spiritual beings who live and move in this etheric occurrence. What we know in the physical world as Sun and Moon, Planets and Fixed Stars, these we find again as Cosmic beings; and our own psychic-spiritual experience appears enclosed in the orbit of these cosmic essences. The physical organism of man now becomes intelligible for the first time, for not only all that his senses take in Contributes to its shape and life, but also the beings who work creatively in the affairs of the sense-world. Everything which is thus experienced through inspiration remains completely shut out from the ordinary consciousness. Man would only be conscious of it if he experienced the process of breathing in the same way as he experienced the process of observation. The cosmic disposition between man and world remains hidden for ordinary consciousness. The Yoga-philosophy seeks the road to a Cosmology whereby the process of breathing is transformed into a process of observation. Modern western man should not imitate that. In the course of human evolution he has entered upon an organization which for him excludes such Yoga-exercises. He would never through them get quite away from his organism, and so would not satisfy the requirement to leave untouched his physical and etheric organism. Such practices corresponded with a period of evolution which has gone by. But what was attained by them had to be gained in the same way as has just been described for inspired knowledge; the method, that is, of experiencing in a state of full consciousness what in past times man had to experience in waking dreams.
[ 12 ] If the Philosopher is a child with fully-developed consciousness, the Cosmologist must become in a fully conscious way a man of past ages, in which the Spirit of the Cosmos could still be seen by means of natural faculties.
[ 13 ] In ‘Intuition’ man is completely translated—through the exercises of the Will described last time—together with his consciousness into the objective world of the cosmic, spiritual beings. He attains a condition of experience which alone on earth the first men had. They were in as close a connection with the inwardness of their cosmic surroundings as they were with the processes of their own bodies. And these processes were not completely unconscious as with modern man. They were reflected in the soul. Man felt in the soul his growth, and the chemical changes of his body, as in waking dream-pictures. And this experience enabled him to feel also the processes of his cosmic circumstances with their spiritual inwardness as in a dream. He had dreamlike intuition of which we find to-day only an echo in some people specially inclined to it. The world around him was, in the consciousness of primitive man, both material and spiritual; and what he experienced then in a semi-dream state was for him religious revelation, a direct continuation of the other aspects of his life. These experiences in the spirit world, of which primitive man was only half conscious, remain completely unknown to modern man. The man with supersensible, intuitive knowledge brings them into his full consciousness, and so in a new way he is transported back to the condition of primitive man, who still derived the religious content from his world-consciousness.
[ 14 ] As the Philosopher resembles the fully-conscious child, and the Cosmologist the fully-conscious man of a past middle human period, so the man with religious cognition in a modern sense resembles primitive man, except that he experiences the spiritual world in his soul, not as in a dream, but with full consciousness.
III. Imaginative, inspirierte und intuitive Erkenntnismethode
[ 1 ] Beim Eintreten in die imaginative Erkenntnis nimmt das Innenleben des Menschen eine andere Form an, als die des gewöhnlichen Bewußtseins ist. Und auch das Verhältnis des Menschen zur Welt ändert sich. - Man hat diese Änderung durch das Konzentrieren aller Seelenkräfte auf einen leicht überschaulichen Vorstellungskomplex herbeigeführt. Leicht überschaulich muß dieser sein, damit nichts von einem unbewußten Vorgang in die Meditation hineinspielt. In dieser muß alles nur innerhalb des Seelisch-Geistigen verlaufen. Wer ein mathematisches Problem durchdenkt, der kann ziemlich sicher sein, daß er dabei nur das Seelisch-Geistige engagiert. Unbewußte, gefühls- oder willensbeeinflußte Vorstellungsreminiszenzen werden da nicht hineinspielen. So muß es im Meditieren sein. Nimmt man hierzu eine Vorstellung, die man aus der Erinnerung herausholt, so kann man gar nicht wissen, wieviel aus dem Körperlichen, Instinktiven, dem Unbewußt-Seelischen man zugleich in das Bewußtsein hereinholt und beim Ruhen auf der Vorstellung zur seelischen Wirksamkeit bringt. - Es ist daher am besten, wenn man zum Meditationsinhalt etwas wählt, von dem man sicher ist, daß es der Seele ganz neu ist. Läßt man sich darinnen von einem erfahrenen Geistesforscher raten, so wird er vor allem darauf Rücksicht nehmen. Er wird einen Meditationsinhalt vorschlagen, der ganz einfach ist und den man ganz gewiß noch niemals gedacht haben kann. Es kommt dabei nicht darauf an, daß der Inhalt einem schon erfahrenen oder überhaupt einem Tatbestande der Sinnenwelt entspricht. Man kann zu einer bildhaften Vorstellung greifen, die nichts Äußerliches ab-bildet, z. B. «im Lichte lebt strömend Weisheit». Es kommt auf das Ruhen auf einem solchen Vorstellungskomplex an. Bei diesem Ruhen verstärken sich die geistig-seelischen Kräfte, wie sich die Muskelkräfte beim Verrichten einer Arbeit verstärken. Auf einmal kann die Meditation kurz sein; sie muß aber durch lange Zeiten wiederholt werden, wenn ein Erfolg eintreten soll. Je nach der Veranlagung kann dieser Erfolg bei der einen Persönlichkeit schon nach Wochen, bei der andern erst nach Jahren eintreten. Will jemand wirklicher Geistesforscher werden, so muß er solche Übungen in streng systematischer, intensiver Art machen. Zunächst wird durch ein Meditieren in der hier angedeuteten Art das erreicht werden, daß der Meditierende durch sein Innenleben eine Kontrolle von größerer Sicherheit über die Aussagen eines Geistesforschers hat als der gewöhnliche gesunde Menschenverstand. Doch reicht auch dieser, wenn er genug unbefangen und vorurteilslos ist, zu einer solchen Kontrolle durchaus aus.
[ 2 ] Dem Meditieren muß zu Hilfe kommen die Uebung in der Charakterstärke, inneren Wahrhaftigkeit, Ruhe des Seelenlebens, völliger Besonnenheit. Denn nur wenn die Seele von diesen Eigenschaften durchzogen ist, wird sie das, was im Meditieren als ein Vorgang sich bildet, der ganzen menschlichen Organisation allmählich einprägen.
[ 3 ] Ist durch solches Ueben der richtige Erfolg eingetreten, dann erlebt man sich im ätherischen Organismus. Das Gedankenerlehnis erhält eine neue Form. Man erlebt die Gedanken nicht nur in der abstrakten Form wie früher, sondern so, daß man in ihnen Kräfte fühlt. Die vorher erfahrenen Gedanken können nur gedacht werden; sie haben keine Macht zu einer Aktivität. Die Gedanken, die man jetzt erlebt, haben eine Macht wie die Wachstumskräfte, die den Menschen vom kleinen Kinde zum Erwachsenen umbilden. Eben deshalb aber ist es notwendig, daß die Meditation in richtiger Art ausgeführt wird. Denn greifen in sie unterbewußte Kräfte ein, ist sie nicht ein in voller Besonnenheit rein seelisch-geistig verlaufender Akt, so werden Impulse entwickelt, die so wie die natürlichen Wachstumskräfte in den eigenen menschlichen Organismus eingreifen. Das darf in keiner Art geschehen. Der eigene physische und ätherische Organismus muß durch die Meditation völlig unberührt bleiben. Man kommt bei richtiger Meditation dazu, mit dem neu entwickelten Gedanken-Kräfte-Inhalt außerhalb des eigenen physischen und ätherischen Organismus zu leben. Man hat das Äther-Erleben; und der eigene Organismus gelangt zu dem persönlichen Erleben in ein Verhältnis einer relativen Objektivität. Man schaut ihn an, und er strahlt in Gedankenform zurück, was man im Äther erlebt.
[ 4 ] Gesund ist dieses Erleben, wenn man in den Zustand kommt, durch den man in völlig freier Willkür abwechseln kann zwischen einem Dasein im Äther und einem solchen in seinem physischen Leibe. Liegt etwas vor, was einen in das Ätherdasein hineinzwingt, dann ist der Zustand kein richtiger. Man muß in sich und außer sich nach völlig freier Orientierung sein können.
[ 5 ] Das erste Erlebnis, das man durch eine solche innere Arbeit sich erringen kann, ist die Anschauung des eigenen verflossenen Erdenlebenslaufes. Man schaut denselben, wie er durch die Wachstumskräfte von Kindheit auf geformt worden ist. Wie in Gedankengebilden, die zu Wachstumskräften verdichtet sind, schaut man ihn an. Man hat nicht etwa bloß die Erinnerungsbilder des eigenen Lebens vor sich. Man hat Bilder von einem ätherischen Tatsachenverlauf vor sich, der sich in der eigenen Wesenheit abgespielt hat, ohne daß er in das gewöhnliche Bewußtsein eingetreten ist. Was im Bewußtsein ist und in der Erinnerung lebt, das ist nur die abstrakte Begleiterscheinung des realen Verlaufes. Es ist gewissermaßen nur eine obere Welle, die in ihrer Formung ein Ergebnis des Tiefenvorganges ist. Man überschaut das Weben und Wirken des eigenen Ätherorganismus im Zeitverlauf des Erdenlebens.
[ 6 ] In der Anschauung dieses Verlaufes offenbart sich das Wirken des ätherischen Kosmos auf den Menschen. Was da gewirkt wird, das kann man als Inhalt der Philosophie erleben. Es ist Weisheit, aber nicht in der abstrakten Form des Begriffes, sondern als Form des Ätherwirkens im Kosmos.
[ 7 ] Für das gewöhnliche Bewußtsein ist nur das ganz kleine Kind, das noch nicht sprechen gelernt hat, in demselben Verhältnis zum Kosmos wie der regelrecht Imaginierende. Aber dieses Kind hat noch nicht aus den allgemeinen Wachstums-(ätherischen)Kräften die Gedankenkräfte abgesondert. Das geschieht erst im Sprechenlernen. Da sondern sich aus den vorher vorhandenen nur allgemeinen Wachstuniskräften die abstrakten Gedankenkräfte ab. Der Mensch in seinem späteren Lebensverlaufe hat diese abstrakten Gedankenkräfte; aber sie sind nur am physischen Organismus; sie sind nicht in das Ätherdasein aufgenommen. Der Mensch kann daher das Verhältnis, das er zum Äther hat, sich nicht zum Bewußtsein bringen. Der iniaginierende Mensch lernt dieses.
[ 8 ] Das ganz kleine Kind ist ein unbewußter Philosoph; der imaginierende Philosoph ist wieder das kleine Kind, aber zum vollen Bewußtsein erwacht.
[ 9 ] Durch die Inspirationsübung wird zu den vorher entwickelten Fähigkeiten eine neue hinzugebracht, nämlich Bilder, auf denen man in der Meditation geruht hat, wieder aus dem Bewußtsein fortzuschaffen. Es muß ausdrücklich betont werden, daß hier die Fähigkeit entwickelt werden muß, vorher willkürlich in der Meditation ergriffene Bilder fortzuschaffen, und zwar wieder in völlig freier Willkür. Das Fortschaffen von Vorstellungen, die nicht durch freie Willkür in das Bewußtsein versetzt worden sind, genügt nicht. Es ist eine größere seelische Energie notwendig zum Fortschaffen von Bildern, die in der Meditation erworben sind, als zum Auslöschen von Vorstellungen, die in anderer Art in das Bewußtsein gekommen sind. Und diese größere Energie braucht man zum Fortschreiten in übersinnlicher Erkenntnis.
[ 10 ] Man gelangt dazu, ein waches, aber ganz leeres Seelenleben auf diese Art sich zu erringen. Man beharrt in wachem Bewußtsein. Erlebt man diesen Zustand in völliger Besonnenheit, dann erfüllt sich die Seele mit den geistigen Tatsachen, wie sie sich durch die Sinne mit den physisch-sinnlichen erfüllt. Das ist der Zustand der Inspiration. Man erlebt sich mit einem Innenleben im Kosmos, wie man sich sonst mit einem solchen Innenleben in dem physischen Organismus erlebt. Aber man weiß, daß man das kosmische Leben in sich erlebt, daß die geistigen Dinge und Vorgänge des Kosmos sich als eigenes inneres Seelenleben offenbaren. Es muß nun die Möglichkeit geblieben sein, dieses innere Erleben des Kosmos stets mit dem Zustande des gewöhnlichen Bewußtseins in freier Willkür zu vertauschen. Dann kann man, was man in der Inspiration erlebt, stets auf etwas beziehen, was man im gewöhnlichen Bewußtsein erlebt. Man schaut in dem sinnlich wahrgenommenen Kosmos ein Abbild des geistig erlebten. Der Vorgang läßt sich dem vergleichen, durch den man eine neue Erfahrung des Lebens mit einem Erinnerungsgebilde vergleicht, das im Bewußtsein auftaucht. Die geistige Anschauung, die man erlangt, ist wie die neue Erfahrung, und die sinnliche Anschauung des Kosmos ist wie das Erinnerungsbild.
[ 11 ] Die geistige Anschauung, die man in dieser Art von dem Kosmos erlangt, ist verschieden von der imaginativen. Bei dieser entstehen allgemeine Bilder eines ätherischen Geschehens; bei der Inspiration ergeben sich Bilder von geistigen Wesenheiten, die in diesem ätherischen Geschehen walten. Was man als Sonne und Mond, als Planeten und Fixsterne in der physisch-sinnlichen Welt kennengelernt hat, findet man als kosmische Wesenheiten wieder. Und das eigene seelisch-geistige Erleben erscheint in den Kreis des Waltens dieser kosmischen Wesenswelt eingeschlossen. Der physische Organismus des Menschen wird jetzt erst verständlich, denn zu seiner Form und seinem Leben wirkt nicht nur das, was die Sinne des Menschen überschauen, sondern die Wesenheiten, die in den Tatsachen der Sinnenwelt schaffend walten. Alles, was so durch die Inspiration erlebt wird, bleibt dem gewöhnlichen Bewußtsein völlig verschlossen. Es würde dem Menschen nur bewußt sein, wenn er seinen Atmungsprozeß so erlebte wie den Wahrnehmungsprozeß. Für das gewöhnliche Bewußtsein bleibt das kosmische Walten zwischen Mensch und Welt verborgen. Die Yoga-Philosophie sucht auf dem Wege zu einer Kosmologie zu kommen, daß sie den Atmungsprozeß in einen Wahrnehmungsprozeß umwandelt. Das sollte der abendländische Mensch der modernen Zeit nicht nachahmen. Er ist im Laufe der Menschheitsentwickelung in eine Organisation eingetreten, die solche Yoga-Übungen bei ihm aus-schließt. Er würde durch dieselben sich nie ganz von seinem Organismus loslösen und dadurch der Forderung nicht genügen, den physischen und den ätherischen Organismus unberührt zu lassen. Solche Übungen entsprachen einer abgelaufenen Epoche der Menschheitsentwickelung. Was aber durch sie erreicht wurde, muß so errungen werden, wie dies soeben für die inspirierte Erkenntnis beschrieben worden ist. Dadurch wird vollbewußt erlebt, was in abgelaufener Zeit von der Menschheit in wachen Träumen erlebt werden mußte.
[ 12 ] Ist der Philosoph ein vollbewußtes Kind, so muß der Kosmologe in vollbewußter Art ein Mensch der Vorzeit werden, einer Zeit, in der der Geist des Kosmos noch durch natürliche Fähigkeiten angeschaut werden konnte.
[ 13 ] In der Intuition wird durch die schon das letzte Mal geschilderte Willensübung der Mensch mit seinem Bewußtsein ganz in die objektive Welt der kosmischen geistigen Wesenheiten hineinversetzt. Er erlangt einen Erlehniszustand, den nur die Urmenschheit auf Erden hatte. Diese war mit dem Innensein der kosmischen Umgebung so verbunden wie mit den Vorgängen des eigenen Körpers. Diese Vorgänge waren nicht völlig im Unbewußten wie bei dem neuzeitlichen Menschen. Sie spiegelten sich in der Seele. Der Mensch erlebte seelisch sein Wachstum, seinen Stoffwechsel wie in wachen Traumbildern. Und was er in solcher Art erlebte, das befähigte ihn, auch die Vorgänge seiner kosmischen Umgebung traumhaft-fühlend mit ihrem geistigen Innensein wahrzunehmen. Er hatte eine traumhafte Intuition, von der heute in besonders veranlagten Menschen nur ein Nachklang vorhanden ist. Die Umwelt war für das Bewußtsein des Urmenschen zugleich materiell und geistig. Was da halb traumhaft erlebt worden ist, war für den Urmenschen die religiöse Offenbarung. Für ihn war diese eine geradlinige Fortsetzung seines übrigen Menschenlebens. Diese von der Urmenschheit traumhaft gewußten Erlebnisse in der Geisterwelt bleiben dem neuzeitlichen Menschen völlig unbewußt. Der übersinnlich intuitiv Erkennende bringt sie sich zum vollen Bewußtsein. Er wird dadurch auf eine neue Art in den Zustand der Urmenschheit zurückversetzt, für die das Weltbewußtsein noch den religiösen Inhalt abgab.
[ 14 ] Wie der Philosoph zum vollbewußten Kinde, der Kosmologe zum vollbewußten Menschen einer abgelaufenen mittleren Menschheitsepoche, so wird der im modernen Sinne religiös Erkennende wieder ähnlich dem Urmenschen, nur daß er in seiner Seele die geistige Welt nicht wie dieser traumhaft, sondern vollbewußt erlebt.
III. Imaginative, inspired and intuitive method of cognition
[ 1 ] When entering into imaginative cognition, the inner life of the human being takes on a different form than that of ordinary consciousness. And man's relationship to the world also changes. - This change has been brought about by concentrating all the powers of the soul on an easily comprehensible complex of ideas. This must be easy to grasp so that nothing from an unconscious process plays into the meditation. In this, everything must only take place within the mental-spiritual realm. Anyone who thinks through a mathematical problem can be fairly certain that he is only engaging the mental-spiritual. Unconscious, emotional or volitional reminiscences of the imagination will not play a role. Meditation must be like this. If one takes an imagination for this purpose, which one brings out of memory, one cannot know how much of the physical, instinctive, the unconscious-spiritual is brought into the consciousness at the same time and brought to spiritual effectiveness when resting on the imagination. - It is therefore best to choose something for meditation that is certain to be completely new to the soul. If you take advice on this from an experienced spiritual researcher, he will take this into consideration above all. He will suggest a meditation content which is quite simple and which you have certainly never thought of before. It is not important that the content corresponds to an already experienced or even a fact of the sensory world. One can resort to a figurative idea that does not depict anything external, e.g. "wisdom flowing in the light". It depends on resting on such a complex of ideas. During this resting, the spiritual and mental forces intensify, just as the muscular forces intensify when performing work. Meditation can be short at one time, but it must be repeated for long periods if success is to be achieved. Depending on one's disposition, this success may come after weeks for one personality and years for another. If someone wants to become a real spiritual researcher, he must do such exercises in a strictly systematic, intensive way. First of all, by meditating in the manner indicated here, the meditator will achieve a greater degree of control over the statements of a spiritual researcher through his inner life than ordinary common sense. But even this, if it is sufficiently unbiased and unprejudiced, is quite sufficient for such a control.
[ 2 ] Meditation must be aided by training in strength of character, inner truthfulness, tranquillity of soul and complete prudence. For only when the soul is imbued with these qualities will it gradually imprint on the entire human organization what is formed as a process in meditation.
[ 3 ] Once the right success has been achieved through such practice, one experiences oneself in the etheric organism. The experience of thought takes on a new form. One experiences thoughts not only in the abstract form as before, but in such a way that one feels forces in them. The thoughts experienced before can only be thought; they have no power to be active. The thoughts that one now experiences have a power like the forces of growth that transform a person from a small child into an adult. For this very reason, however, it is necessary that meditation is carried out in the right way. For if subconscious forces intervene in it, if it is not an act that proceeds in a purely soul-spiritual manner in full contemplation, impulses are developed that intervene in the human organism in the same way as the natural forces of growth. This must not happen in any way. One's own physical and etheric organism must remain completely untouched by meditation. With correct meditation one comes to live with the newly developed thought-power content outside one's own physical and etheric organism. One has the etheric experience; and one's own organism enters into a relationship of relative objectivity with the personal experience. You look at it, and it radiates back in thought form what you experience in the ether.
[ 4 ] This experience is healthy when you reach a state in which you can alternate freely between an existence in the ether and one in your physical body. If there is something that forces you into the etheric existence, then the state is not the right one. One must be able to be in oneself and outside oneself according to completely free orientation.
[ 5 ] The first experience that can be gained through such inner work is the contemplation of one's own past earthly life. One sees it as it has been shaped by the forces of growth from childhood onwards. One looks at it as in thought-formations that are condensed into growth forces. You don't just have the memory images of your own life in front of you. We have before us images of an etheric course of events which has taken place in our own being without having entered our ordinary consciousness. What is in the consciousness and lives in the memory is only the abstract concomitant of the real process. It is, so to speak, only an upper wave, which in its formation is a result of the deep process. One overlooks the weaving and working of one's own etheric organism in the course of earthly life.
[ 6 ] The effect of the etheric cosmos on the human being is revealed in the contemplation of this process. What is at work there can be experienced as the content of philosophy. It is wisdom, but not in the abstract form of the concept, but as the form of the etheric working in the cosmos.
[ 7 ] For the ordinary consciousness, only the very small child who has not yet learned to speak is in the same relationship to the cosmos as the regular imaginer. But this child has not yet separated the forces of thought from the general growth (etheric) forces. This only happens when learning to speak. There the abstract powers of thought are separated from the previously existing general powers of growth. The human being in his later course of life has these abstract powers of thought; but they are only in the physical organism; they are not absorbed into the etheric existence. Therefore man cannot bring to consciousness the relationship he has to the ether. The iniaginating human being learns this.
[ 8 ] The very small child is an unconscious philosopher; the imagining philosopher is again the small child, but awakened to full consciousness.
[ 9 ] The inspirational exercise adds a new ability to the previously developed abilities, namely to remove images on which one has rested in meditation from one's consciousness. It must be expressly emphasized that here the ability must be developed to create away images previously grasped arbitrarily in meditation, and again completely at will. It is not enough to create images that have not been brought into consciousness by free will. Greater mental energy is needed to create images that have been acquired in meditation than to eradicate images that have entered consciousness in a different way. And this greater energy is needed to progress in supersensible knowledge.
[ 10 ] In this way one achieves an awake but completely empty soul life. One persists in awake consciousness. If one experiences this state in complete prudence, then the soul fills itself with the spiritual facts, just as it fills itself with the physical-sensual facts through the senses. This is the state of inspiration. One experiences oneself with an inner life in the cosmos, as one otherwise experiences oneself with such an inner life in the physical organism. But one knows that one experiences the cosmic life within oneself, that the spiritual things and processes of the cosmos reveal themselves as one's own inner soul life. It must now remain possible to exchange this inner experience of the cosmos with the state of ordinary consciousness at will. Then one can always relate what one experiences in inspiration to something that one experiences in ordinary consciousness. One sees in the sensually perceived cosmos an image of the spiritually experienced cosmos. The process can be compared to that by which one compares a new experience of life with an image of memory that appears in consciousness. The spiritual perception that one attains is like the new experience, and the sensory perception of the cosmos is like the memory image.
[ 11 ] The spiritual view of the cosmos that one attains in this way is different from the imaginative view. With the latter, general images of an ethereal event arise; with inspiration, images of spiritual entities arise that reign in this ethereal event. What one has come to know as the sun and moon, as planets and fixed stars in the physical-sensual world, one finds again as cosmic entities. And one's own soul-spiritual experience appears to be included in the circle of the rule of this cosmic world of beings. Only now does the physical organism of the human being become comprehensible, for not only that which the human being's senses perceive, but also the beings that are creatively active in the facts of the sense world, contribute to its form and life. Everything that is thus experienced through inspiration remains completely closed to ordinary consciousness. Man would only be aware of it if he experienced his breathing process in the same way as the process of perception. For the ordinary consciousness, the cosmic action between man and the world remains hidden. Yoga philosophy seeks to arrive at a cosmology by transforming the process of breathing into a process of perception. Western man of modern times should not imitate this. In the course of the development of mankind he has entered into an organization which excludes such yoga exercises. He would never completely detach himself from his organism through such exercises and thus not meet the requirement of leaving the physical and etheric organism untouched. Such exercises corresponded to a past epoch in the development of mankind. But what was achieved through them must be attained in the same way as has just been described for inspired knowledge. In this way, what had to be experienced by mankind in waking dreams in the past is experienced fully consciously.
[ 12 ] If the philosopher is a fully conscious child, the cosmologist must become, in a fully conscious way, a human being of prehistoric times, a time in which the spirit of the cosmos could still be seen through natural abilities.
[ 13 ] In intuition, through the exercise of will already described last time, man's consciousness is completely transferred into the objective world of cosmic spiritual beings. He attains a state of enlightenment that only primitive mankind had on earth. They were as connected with the inner being of the cosmic environment as they were with the processes of their own body. These processes were not completely in the unconscious as in modern man. They were reflected in the soul. Man experienced his growth and metabolism in his soul as if in waking dream images. And what he experienced in this way enabled him to perceive the processes of his cosmic environment in a dreamlike, feeling way with their spiritual inner being. He had a dreamlike intuition, of which only an echo remains today in particularly gifted people. For the consciousness of primitive man, the environment was both material and spiritual at the same time. What was experienced in a semi-dreamlike way was religious revelation for primitive man. For him this was a straightforward continuation of the rest of his human life. These experiences in the spirit world, which primitive man knew in a dreamlike way, remain completely unconscious to modern man. The supersensible intuitive cognizer brings them to full consciousness. He is thus transported back in a new way to the state of primitive mankind, for whom world consciousness still provided the religious content.
[ 14 ] Like the philosopher to the fully conscious child, the cosmologist to the fully conscious man of an expired middle epoch of humanity, so the religious cognizer in the modern sense again becomes similar to primitive man, only that he experiences the spiritual world in his soul not as a dream, but fully consciously.