The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Ninth Lecture

[ 1 ] Yesterday we spoke about the so-called Rosicrucian path into the spiritual worlds. We pointed out that this path is the one best suited to modern humanity according to the laws of human evolution. We described how, through certain practices involving the life of the soul, a person ascends to imaginative knowledge, inspired knowledge, and intuitive knowledge. If one had nothing else but what was described yesterday, if one had nothing at one’s disposal but the methods one applies to one’s soul at will, then the ascent through these three stages of knowledge would be as was essentially indicated yesterday. One would therefore first have to train the spiritual organs of knowledge, and only after a period of self-denial would one actually be able to ascend from a certain shadowy, barely perceptible experience to real experiences. But in the present cycle of human development, one is not yet solely dependent on what one arbitrarily undertakes with one’s own soul. And when, in a distant, distant future, one will be dependent on this, the laws of human development will already be so different that one will consciously enter the spiritual worlds from the very beginning. Today, of course, this is also possible, but only because something comes to one’s aid in the course of development.

[ 2 ] Yesterday we did not discuss at all how, for someone who is in the midst of such spiritual development and who applies to his soul the methods described yesterday, what we call the strengthening forces of the life of sleep manifest themselves. If a person did not have sleep during their development, it would take them a very, very long time to become attentive to the very subtle experiences that arise through the methods described yesterday. But precisely because the person undergoing development allows their life to alternate between waking and sleeping, they benefit from the forces of sleep while developing those organs we called the lotus flowers yesterday. And even if one cannot yet perceive anything through the lotus flowers at first, forces are channeled to us in the life of sleep from the higher worlds, from the macrocosm, and these forces, which flow to us in sleep, bring about the fact that, indeed, a genuine experience of the spiritual world gradually sets in, so that one can already see something. The prerequisite is that one has worked for a shorter or longer period on the formation of the lotus flowers in such a way that one has repeatedly taken refuge in symbolic images, has lived in such images over and over again, and has thereby strengthened oneself inwardly to the point of having a rich inner life, even when external impressions are not at work. Imaginative insight, when truly attained, thus enables a person to glimpse into the spiritual world in a certain way.

[ 3 ] And this happens in the following way. A person must spend a relatively long time in deep contemplation of symbols that speak to their soul—symbols drawn directly from life itself, or certain formulas that briefly encapsulate great cosmic mysteries. But then, one day, they will realize—first in the morning upon waking, and then also when they turn their attention away from external experiences during the day—that something stands before their soul which, in essence, appears just like the symbols they have formed, but which they now have before them just as ordinary consciousness has stones or flowers before it, knowing that they did not form them themselves. Over the course of the time spent preparing, through the care with which one forms one’s own symbols, one learns to recognize how to distinguish illusions and false symbols from true ones. The person who has truly prepared himself with care and who has thereby learned to eliminate his own personal opinions, his wishes, desires, and passions from his higher life—who has learned not to regard something as true simply because it pleases him, but has trained himself to set aside his own opinion—knows, upon seeing such a symbol, how to distinguish immediately: This is something true; this is something false.

[ 4 ] Now—and this is important to note for the distinction between true and false symbols—something occurs in the person who develops in this way that can only be described as “thinking with the heart.” This is something that arises quite naturally in the course of the development described yesterday. In everyday life, people have the feeling that they think with their heads. Of course, this is only a figurative expression; one thinks with the spiritual organs that underlie the brain; but everyone understands what it means to think with one’s head. One has a completely different feeling toward the kind of thinking that arises when one has progressed a little further along the path of development we have described. One truly has the feeling that what is usually located in the head is now located in the heart. It is, however, not the physical heart that thinks, but that organ which develops as a spiritual organ near the heart, the so-called twelve-petaled lotus flower. It becomes a kind of thinking organ; and this thinking that arises there differs very greatly from ordinary thinking. In ordinary thinking, everyone knows that they must apply reasoning to arrive at a truth. One must proceed from concept to concept. One starts from a point, then proceeds logically to other points, and what one arrives at over time by making logical considerations is called truth, knowledge. This is knowledge attained through ordinary thinking. It is different when one wishes to recognize the truth in relation to what has been described as real, as actual symbols. One has these real symbols before one as external objects, but thinking about these symbols cannot be confused with ordinary intellectual thinking. For whether something is true or false, whether one has this or that to say about a thing or a fact of the higher worlds, this does not require deliberation as in ordinary thinking, but rather it arises immediately. As soon as one has the images before one, one knows what one has to say to oneself and to others about them. This immediacy is the characteristic of heart-thinking.

[ 5 ] In everyday life, there aren’t many things that can be compared to this, but let’s take a specific example to make it clearer. In everyday life, these are primarily the events we encounter that, so to speak, leave us speechless—events we perceive as coming from a higher world. Take, for example, a situation where you are confronted with an event that appears before you in a flash, and you are startled by it. No thought intervenes between the external impression and your startle; the event immediately triggers the startle. Your inner experience—the startle—is something that can, so to speak, make your mind stand still. That is a very apt expression people use here, for in such an experience they truly feel the mind coming to a standstill. And the same can happen when, for instance, one becomes angry at the sight of some action on the street. There, too, it is the immediate impression that evokes the inner soul experience. In most such cases, one will notice that when one begins to reflect, one judges differently than one did based on the first impression. These experiences, where a soul experience follows the first impression, can be compared—even from ordinary life alone—to the experiences the spiritual researcher has when he is to speak about what he experiences in the higher worlds. In fact, when one begins to critically analyze these experiences from the higher worlds using logic, one drives them away; through excessive speculation based on ordinary thinking, these experiences fade away, and one no longer has them. That is one aspect. The other, however, is that by applying ordinary thinking, one usually arrives at the wrong conclusions regarding these matters.

[ 6 ] Just as it is necessary—as has already been emphasized—to first undergo training in sound, rational thinking, where one first learns to grasp things before ascending to higher worlds, so too is it necessary to rise above this ordinary thinking to a level of direct perception. And precisely because it is so necessary to learn to perceive directly in the higher world, one must, on the other hand, lay that logical foundation. One must do so because otherwise one would certainly be led astray by one’s feelings and sensations. One is not capable of judging in the higher world if one carries ordinary intellectual thinking up there; one is not capable of judging in the higher world unless one has first developed intellectual thinking in the physical world. Some people, however, may perhaps find a reason, based on the peculiarity of higher thinking—heart-thinking—to renounce ordinary logic entirely. They say that since one must forget the ordinary logic of the physical plane anyway, there is no need to learn it in the first place. — But this overlooks the fact that one becomes a different person when one has undergone logical thinking on the physical plane as training, as practice. One does not go through this process in order to comprehend the higher worlds with this thinking, but to transform oneself into a different person. One does, after all, experience something through logical thinking. Above all, one experiences a kind of conscience through logical thinking. There is a kind of logical conscience, and when one develops this, one acquires in one’s soul a certain sense of responsibility toward truth and untruth; and without this sense of responsibility toward truth and untruth, one cannot accomplish much in the higher worlds.

[ 7 ] It is indeed true that there are many reasons in life to disregard thinking when ascending to the higher worlds. For in ordinary life, people frequently experience these three stages: The vast majority of people today are at the stage—which therefore falls entirely within normal consciousness—where an immediate, natural feeling toward things tells them: This is right, this is wrong, you should do this, you should not do that. — People are usually guided by such an immediate feeling regarding what they should consider true or false.

[ 8 ] Ask people today how many of them take the trouble to really think about what they consider their most sacred possessions. By virtue of having been born into certain circumstances, into a certain community—not, for my part, in Turkey, but in Central Europe—they have been instilled with an immediate, innate sense that Christianity is the right path and not Islam; they therefore—through a certain feeling—do not consider the truths of Islam to be correct, but rather what they have in Christianity. One must not misunderstand this; reflecting on it leads to a true understanding of life. So we must be clear that, for the vast majority of people today, an immediate feeling still determines what they consider to be true or false. That is one stage of development.

[ 9 ] The second stage of development is the one in which human beings begin to think. Today, more and more people are beginning to move beyond their original feelings and reflect on the things into which they were born. This is why we see so much criticism today of ancient, sacred traditions and creeds. This is the reaction of the mind and intellect to what has been accepted uncritically by the mind out of feeling, out of sensation. We see the same capacity of the human soul, which here exercises itself critically upon what is instilled or innate, prevailing in what we call science. Science in the modern sense is essentially the work of the very same soul forces that have just been described. External experiences and perceptions—whether gained directly through the senses or through the refinements of the senses offered by the telescope, the microscope, or similar instruments—are combined into laws with the aid of the intellect, and from this arises intellectual science.

[ 10 ] So you see these two stages of development in the human soul. When it comes to believing certain things to be true, human beings are at a stage where an original, undeveloped feeling speaks—a feeling that is either innate or acquired through upbringing. At the second stage, in addition to feeling, reason and intelligence come into play. But now, anyone who engages in a little self-observation within the soul knows that this intelligence has a very specific quality. It must possess this quality, which has a stifling, extinguishing effect on feeling. Who, upon careful observation of the soul, would not know that all mere intellectual activity, all mere activity of the mind, stifles feeling and sensation? Hence also the reluctance of those people who, out of certain primal feelings—which are, after all, entirely justified at a certain stage of human development—have a tendency toward this or that truth, to allow their creeds, their truths of faith, to be corrupted by the scorching, corrupting power of intelligence. This is a justified reluctance. But if this reluctance goes so far that those concerned say: “In order to ascend to the higher worlds, we want to guard ourselves against all thinking whatsoever; we want to remain in our emotional life”—then they can never ascend to the higher worlds, but remain in the immediate, undeveloped emotional life. One can have all sorts of experiences; but these will remain at a low level. One must be willing to endure the inconvenience of truly training one’s thinking. In doing so, one acquires something that is also of the utmost benefit to the outer world. Thinking is not necessary to ascend to the higher worlds; it serves as preparation, as an exercise. Whoever understands this will therefore never sing the praises of ordinary intelligence, because the truths of the higher worlds cannot be determined by mere logic. That is impossible. The kind of thinking applied in the natural sciences cannot be applied in the same way to the experiences of the higher worlds. And anyone who were to begin to reason about the higher worlds using logical thinking, their intellect, or their intelligence, would only be able to arrive at superficial truths that lack depth. So while thinking is immediately necessary for the outer physical world—for we cannot construct a machine or build a bridge without intelligence, we cannot practice botany or zoology without intelligence, we cannot study medicine without applying intelligence to the immediate object—for higher development, intelligence has roughly the same significance as learning to write in youth. Learning to write only has meaning once one has mastered it. Once one has moved beyond it, one looks back on it as the prerequisite for being able to write. As long as we are learning to write, we cannot yet express our thoughts through writing. We can only do so once we have mastered the process of learning to write. Learning to write is the practice of a skill that must be completed before one can apply what one wishes to learn. The same is true of logic. Anyone who wishes to undergo higher development must devote a certain amount of time to training in logical thinking; but they must also be able to shed all of that in order to then arrive at the thinking of the heart. What remains for them from their logical training is the habit of conscientiousness regarding what is held to be true in the higher worlds. Anyone who has undergone this training will not regard every illusion, every arbitrary symbol, as a true imagination or interpret it in any sense, but will possess the inner strength to approach reality and see and interpret it in the right sense. It is precisely for this reason that such subtle and thorough preparation is necessary, because one must return to direct perception, must have a sense of whether something is true or false. To be precise, the following must occur. While engaging in reflection in ordinary life, one must have trained one’s soul in relation to higher matters to such an extent that one is able to decide immediately what is true or false.

[ 11 ] Furthermore, it is good preparation for such an immediate decision to acquire a little of something that is present only to a very limited extent in everyday life. In everyday life, most people will feel pain, perhaps even cry out, if you prick them with a needle or pour hot water over their head, or in similar situations. But let us ask ourselves: how many people feel something akin to pain when someone asserts something foolish or absurd? For many people, this is quite tolerable. But anyone who wishes to develop that immediate feeling we have just spoken of—so that they can have an immediate experience of the imaginative world: this is true, that is false—must train themselves so that an error truly hurts them, causes them pain, and so that the truth that confronts them also brings them pleasure and joy here in physical life. Learning this is, of course, tiring and exhausting, apart from everything else; the grueling nature of the preparation for entering the higher worlds is connected to this in a certain way. To pass by error or truth with indifference is, of course, more comfortable for our health than to feel pain at error and delight in the truth. After all, we have ample opportunity for this today when we pick up this or that book or newspaper and feel pain at the foolishness contained therein. To feel sorrow and pain in the face of the untrue, the ugly, and the evil, even when it is not inflicted upon us personally, and to take pleasure in the beautiful, the true, and the good, even when it does not concern us personally—this is part of the training for those who wish to learn to think with the heart, who then wish to ascend to the level where they have such an immediate feeling toward an imagination as has been described.

[ 12 ] But there is something else that is part of the preparation when one ascends into the world of the imagination. When one perceives in images that which belongs to a higher world, one must acquire something that one does not have in ordinary life: one must learn to think in a new way about what one calls a contradiction in ordinary life, or about something that is in harmony. In ordinary life, many will find that when this or that is asserted, two statements contradict each other. Even if we do not reflect on the trivial saying, “When two people say the same thing, it is not the same thing,” we can still encounter in ordinary life the fact that two people experience something quite different under the same circumstances. When one person describes their experience, it can be quite different from how the other describes it, even if it took place under the same circumstances, and yet both can be right from their own point of view. Let’s suppose someone tells us: “I was in a place where the air is healthy; there I felt revitalized, there I felt refreshed.” — We listen to him and must believe him at first. Then another person comes along, who comes from the same place and says: “Yes, but this place is actually no good at all; I lost all my strength there, I became completely weak; it is a highly unhealthy place.” — We can only believe him as well. Both can, in essence, be right. Let’s assume the first is a robust person who was simply worn out and tired; he may find the crisp air extraordinarily refreshing. But let’s assume a sickly person comes to this place, a person who simply cannot tolerate the fresh air. He feels even worse, is brought down by the very thing that was healing for the other. Both are right, because both came to the place with different conditions. These opposing claims can, when all things are taken into account, be reconciled even in ordinary life.

[ 13 ] However, things become much more complicated when one ascends into the higher worlds. For example, it happens that someone hears a certain statement—let’s say, in a lecture on this or that—and in another lecture hears something that seems different from it, and now he applies the standard used in ordinary life to the matter and says: “Well, one of them can’t be true, because one statement contradicts the other.” — I would like to take up a related point immediately: Someone heard in one of my earlier lecture series the statement that when a human being descends to a new birth, one can observe how he traverses astral space at tremendous speed, as it were, and seeks out the place where he wishes to incarnate. This observation, which can certainly be made, was once mentioned in the course of a lecture series. In this current series, however, it was said that human beings have long, long been contributing to what they ultimately receive at birth as their inherited characteristics, that they contribute to the characteristics they ultimately encounter in the family and the people into which they are born. If one wishes to judge such matters in the usual way, one can of course easily find something contradictory in them. Nevertheless, both are genuine experiences. Because not everything can always be told, it is naturally not always possible, when one experience is described, to also describe its counterpart on the other side. Both are correct. If one wishes to draw a comparison, the following can resolve the contradiction. Have you not yet experienced, for example, that someone has carefully carved out this or that over five or six days, and on the seventh day he can no longer find it? Then they have to search around the room to see where they put it. There you can indeed see: for five or six days they prepare the object very precisely, and on the seventh day you can watch as they search for the very same object they had prepared. Something similar can occur in the higher worlds. Such preparation for incarnation certainly takes place; but because the experiences are very complex, it is possible that the human being, at the very moment when he descends from the higher worlds and wishes to unite with the physical and etheric bodies, must search for them, because a kind of darkening of consciousness occurs. And because this darkening of consciousness occurs, the human being must, with a lower degree of consciousness, seek that which he has prepared for himself in a higher degree of consciousness.

[ 14 ] This example shows us that there is something essential to keep in mind when ascending into these higher worlds: one must always be aware of the fact that, in the world of the imagination, this or that thing presents itself to us in a specific image. Once one has developed a sufficiently strong feeling so that, through the thinking of the heart, one can affirm the truth of the image, it may happen that, when following a different path at another time, one arrives at a different imagination that looks entirely different; and again, the immediate feeling says: This is true. — This is, of course, initially somewhat confusing for those who enter the higher world, the world of imagination. But this confusion is resolved by the fact that one is made aware of it at the appropriate moment.

[ 15 ] One will gain the proper perspective, the proper relationship to this whole matter, by seeking one’s own “I” within the world of the imagination. We have described how one looks back upon one’s “I” while standing outside of it. When passing by the Guardian of the Threshold, one has it objectively before one; but one can seek out this “I” once, twice, or three times, and one always arrives at different images. Now, if one were to approach these things with the expectations one has become accustomed to in the physical world, one could become utterly confused and might say: Now I have seen how I am in the higher world, and the second time I found myself again and am something entirely different, the third time yet something else. — That is certainly the case. The fact is that the moment one enters the imaginative world through the training we have described and sees one’s I in the image, one must be clear that one can see twelve different images of one’s I. There are twelve different images of the individual ‘I’. And only then, in essence, when one has looked back upon oneself from twelve different vantage points from which one stood outside one’s ‘I’, has one grasped one’s complete ‘I’. This view of the ‘I’ from the outside is exactly like something that is reflected in the relationship of the twelve constellations of the zodiac to the sun. Just as the sun passes through the twelve constellations and has a different power in each constellation, just as it appears in a certain constellation in the spring, then moves on and passes through the twelve constellations of the zodiac over the course of a year, thus shining upon our Earth from twelve different vantage points, so too does the human ego shine upon itself from twelve different vantage points, illuminating itself from twelve different vantage points when it looks back from the higher world.

[ 16 ] Therefore, we must tell ourselves: As we ascend to the higher worlds, it is essential that we not be content with a single perspective. — To do this, one must train oneself to be able to avoid confusion. This is possible only if one becomes accustomed, even in the physical world, to the fact that a one-sided view from a single standpoint is not the sole salvation of human life. Among the people of our time, there are those who are materialists, others who are spiritualists, others who are monists, and others who are monadologists. The materialists claim that everything is matter and its laws. The spiritualists claim that everything is spirit, and attach significance only to the spirit. The monists claim that everything must be explained from the perspective of unity. And the monadologists seek to explain the diversity of phenomena through the interaction of many individuals. People argue back and forth in discussions in the outer world, the materialists against the spiritualists, the monists against the monadologists or against the dualists. They argue and perhaps even come to blows. But anyone who wishes to prepare themselves for a true understanding of the higher worlds must tell themselves: Materialism has a certain validity. We must adopt this way of thinking in terms of material laws, but we may apply it only to the material world; we understand the material world through these laws, but not the spiritual world. We must understand the material world through material laws, otherwise we cannot cope, and whoever seeks to explain the material world differently will not get very far. If, for example, someone were to explain a clock by saying, “There are two little demons inside that make the hands move forward; I don’t believe in mechanics”—we would laugh at them. So too is the explanation that the external movements of the stars follow mechanical laws fully justified. The mistake of the materialists does not lie in the fact that this explanation is false, but in the fact that they think they can explain the whole world with it. Haeckel, for example, does not make a mistake by explaining morphology with materialistic laws—in doing so, he has accomplished something great and valuable for humanity. The error of the materialistic way of thinking consists in applying it to everything, including the spiritual. |

[ 17 ] So we must say: It is useful to adopt materialistic thinking, but it is necessary to know that materialistic thinking is valid only within a specific realm. Just as materialistic thinking is valid for the material realm, so too is it necessary to adopt spiritual thinking for the spiritual realm. What proceeds according to the laws of spirituality cannot be explained by mechanical laws. If someone says: “Here you come with a special psychology that is supposed to have its own laws; but I know that certain processes take place in the brain that explain thinking!”—then we must say: He is mixing into the explanation of thinking things that are of a different nature, that apply to a different realm. They are making the same mistake as someone who tries to explain the movement of the clock hands by the workings of two demons. Just as that is impossible, so too is it impossible to explain thinking through processes in the brain. — Or whoever seeks to explain the fatigue that sets in in the evening by saying that toxins accumulate may be giving the correct explanation for the physical aspect; but for the soul, he explains nothing at all; there we must illuminate the matter from the other side, from the side of soul experiences.

[ 18 ] The same is true of monism. It is certainly true that if one tries to explain the world from the perspective of harmony, one must arrive at a unity, but it is an abstract unity, and one is impoverished in the process; for if one seeks to reduce everything to an abstract unity, as some philosophers do, one ultimately ends up with nothing at all. I knew a clever fellow who was determined to explain the whole world logically and monistically in just a few sentences. He once came to me in great joy and said: “Now I have two very simple sentences, and with them I can explain the whole lot.” — By “stuff” he meant the whole world. He was immensely pleased that he could summarize the phenomena of the entire world in two abstract propositions. This is something that reveals the one-sidedness of a monistic explanation. Monism must be something we envision as a grand goal, so that all thoughts regarding the explanation of the world ultimately harmonize in a great unity. Monism must be supplemented by the monadological idea, by proceeding from the most diverse points and ultimately arriving at unity.

[ 19 ] By, as it were, immersing oneself in the most diverse points of view, one becomes accustomed to discerning the objectively valid aspects of each one. By viewing things from the most varied perspectives, one trains oneself in what is so necessary for being able to observe one’s own self from the most diverse perspectives in the higher worlds as well. One cannot do enough to prepare oneself for this. But in today’s world, there is truly little understanding for such an immersion into the objective, into the factual aspects of the various viewpoints. Anyone who has tried to immerse themselves objectively in the various points of view can certainly tell a thing or two today about how strangely the world behaves when one tries to set aside the standpoint of mere personal opinion and enter into another person’s perspective.

[ 20 ] For example, I myself have tried to portray Nietzsche—not according to my own opinion—for what does the world care about my personal opinion of Nietzsche?—but rather as one must portray him when, so to speak, one steps outside oneself and enters into him. The people who read that took it amiss when my next book came out and said I was inconsistent. They couldn’t grasp that one doesn’t have to be a Nietzschean to describe Nietzsche’s point of view positively, from the inside out. It was the same when I wrote about Haeckel; everyone judged: “That’s a Haeckelian who wrote that.”

[ 21 ] This is something one must necessarily learn to do: to be able to step outside oneself, so to speak, to see through the eyes of another, from a different perspective. Only then does what truly leads to comprehensive truth emerge. It is like looking at a rosebush not just from one side, but standing here one moment, there the next, and viewing it from all sides or photographing it. In this way, one trains oneself to be able to truly possess what one must have as soon as one ascends into the higher worlds. In the physical world, one can get used to doing this. In the higher worlds, it is confusing if one enters with a personal point of view. One then immediately has an illusion instead of the truth before one, because one brings one’s own personal opinion into it.

[ 22 ] To arrive at the thinking of the heart, we must have the strength to step outside ourselves, to truly become completely alien to ourselves, and to look back at ourselves from the outside. Those who are in normal consciousness stand in a certain place, and when they say, “This is me!”—they mean the sum of what they believe and what they stand for. But whoever ascends into the higher worlds must be able to leave their ordinary personality in its place; they must be able to step outside of themselves, look back at themselves, and say to themselves with the same feeling: “That is you!”—The former “I” must, in the truest sense, become a “you.” Just as one says “you” to another, so must one be able to say “you” to oneself. This must not be a theory, but must become an experience. We have already seen that this can be achieved through training. It does not require much at all; one must do relatively simple things; then one earns the right to think with the heart. The true descriptions of the higher worlds arise from such thinking with the heart. Even if it often appears outwardly as though they were logical arguments, there is nothing in the descriptions that are truly brought down from the higher worlds that has not been thought with the heart. What is described there from the perspective of spiritual science is an experience lived through the heart. However, the person who must describe what they have experienced with the heart must cast it into such thought forms that it is understandable to other people.

[ 23 ] That is the difference between genuine spiritual science and what is subjectively experienced mysticism. Anyone can have their own subjectively experienced mysticism; it remains confined within the individual, cannot be communicated to another, and, strictly speaking, is none of another’s business. But what constitutes genuine, true mysticism arises from the ability to have imaginations, to receive impressions in the higher worlds, and to classify and organize these impressions with the thinking of the heart, just as one organizes the things of the physical world with the intellect.

[ 24 ] This, however, is linked to the fact that the truths given from the higher worlds are indeed imbued with a kind of heartfelt passion, that they bear the imprint of the heart’s thinking. However abstract they may seem, and however much they may be cast in thought-forms, they are imbued with heartfelt passion, for they are experienced directly from the soul. From the moment the thinking of the heart is developed, the person who enters the imaginative world knows: What you have before you and what looks like a vision is not a vision, but is an expression of a spiritual-soul aspect that lies behind it, just as the red color of the rose here is the outward expression of the material rose. The spiritual seer directs the spiritual eye into the imaginative world; he has the impression of blue or violet, or he hears some sound, or he has a feeling of warmth or cold—he knows through his thinking of the heart that this is not mere imagination, not mere vision, but the expression of a spiritual-soul being, just as the red of the rose is the expression of the material rose. In this way one lives oneself into the beings; one must step out of oneself and connect with the beings themselves. Therefore, all exploration in the spiritual world is at the same time linked to the surrender of one’s own personality, to a much greater degree than is the case with external experiences. One is more intensely affected, for one is actually immersed within the things themselves. Whatever good and evil, beauty and ugliness, truth and falsehood they possess, one must experience within the beings themselves. Where other people in the physical world view an error with indifference, the spiritual researcher in the imaginative world must not only look at the error, but must live through it with pain. He must not only look at the ugly and the abominable to see if they affect him, but must experience them inwardly. Through the training described, which is particularly suited to humanity today, he comes to experience the good, the true, and the beautiful, but also the evil, the ugly, and the error, without being captivated by them or losing himself, for the thinking of the heart acquired through proper preparation enables him to distinguish through direct feeling.

[ 25 ] Anyone who describes the spiritual world must use the language of logical thought. When one attempts to translate what is experienced in the spiritual world into logical thoughts, it feels somewhat like approaching a hill with a marvelous formation of rock formations and having to break stones out of it because one needs them to build houses for people. That is how one feels when one must transform the experiences of the spiritual world into logical thoughts of the intellect. Just as a person in the ordinary world must express in words what they experience in the soul if they wish to communicate it to others—and just as one must not confuse the words with the thoughts—so too must the spiritual researcher, if they wish to communicate what they have experienced with the heart, clothe it in the language of logical thinking. Logical thinking is not the thing itself; logical thinking is merely the language in which the spiritual researcher communicates what he has experienced in the spiritual worlds. Anyone who takes offense at the logical form of thought and does not sense that there is more behind it is in the same position as a listener who hears only the words of a speaker and does not take in the thoughts clothed within them. This may be the fault of the speaker if someone clothes so-called spiritual-scientific truths in such thoughts that the listener finds no truths or insights of the heart within them. But it need not be so; it may also be the fault of the listener if he hears only the sound of the words and is unable to penetrate to the thoughts lying behind them.

[ 26 ] From this exploration of the heart, only that which can be cast into clearly formulated, logical thoughts can be communicated to humanity. That which cannot be cast into logical thoughts is not yet ready to be communicated to humanity. The touchstone is whether it can be cast into clear words, into clearly formulable thoughts that have sharp contours. Thus, we must accustom ourselves, even when we hear the deepest truths of the heart, to perceive them in thought forms and to look beyond these forms to the content.

[ 27 ] Theosophists must make this a habit if they truly wish to contribute to the dissemination among humanity of that which can be revealed through the spirit. It would be selfish for anyone to seek only their own mystical experiences, which apply only to them. The findings of true mystical research must become the common heritage of humanity, and their results will be published more and more in the future, just as the findings of intellectual research are common knowledge. Only when we are able to approach the revelations of true mystical research in this spirit can we comprehend the mission of spiritual science for humanity.