The Rudolf Steiner Archive

10. Imagination as a Prerequisite for Higher Spiritual Abilities

[ 1 ] During their beautiful friendship, which was so significant for modern intellectual life, Goethe and Schiller exchanged the works they were writing. When Schiller received parts of Wilhelm Meister from Goethe, he wrote to Goethe, overwhelmed by the impact of the chapter he had just received: “This much is certain, however: the poet is the only true human being, and even the best philosopher is merely a caricature in comparison.”

[ 2 ] At the time, this may have sounded strange, but for us today that is no longer the case. We can put ourselves in Schiller’s shoes and gain insight into the truth of his words when we measure them against the significant letter Schiller wrote to Goethe shortly after their friendship began. Both had expounded on their views of nature and the world in their conversations. In the aforementioned letter, Schiller now expresses how Goethe does not arrive at his views through speculation, but rather seeks a necessity within the totality of the world’s phenomena. Everything is contained within Goethe’s intuition, and he has little reason to borrow from philosophy, which can only learn from him.

[ 3 ] In Goethe’s way of viewing the world, in the inner attitude from which he created his works, Schiller thus sees something that introduces human beings particularly deeply into the mysteries of existence. When one examines the ideas and opinions shared between Goethe and Schiller, one sees Schiller absorbed in Goethe’s imagination, in the inner truth of Goethe’s imagination. At that time, Schiller wrote the “Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man,” in which he explains how human beings can attain full humanity through development—a state inherent in every person as the higher human being. In Goethe’s way of allowing his imagination to radiate, Schiller found something that makes a person a fully human being; he saw in it a path to living oneself into that which can bring a person into true communion with the primal sources of things.

[ 4 ] When one hears great minds speak of imagination in this way, it strikes one differently than when people speak of imagination today. Now that it is contrasted with objective observation, it is as if imagination were something arbitrary that leads people to piece things together in any way they please. (Gap in the transcript.)

[ 5 ] When we consider that Goethe was, so to speak, an expert as a naturalist, his following statements take on double significance: Man strives to fathom the mysteries of nature and longs for its worthy interpreter, art. Art and beauty are manifestations of secret laws of nature that could never be fathomed without them. When the imagination mixes the mode of perception—which arises solely from feelings and impulses—with other achievements of the human soul, we must admit that it sometimes leads us away from the truth. It is of no use to science and research. Yet as a precursor to higher cognitive faculties, it points the way to hidden connections between things that one would not see without it. But for certain areas of life, it is absolutely necessary that what the imagination combines be substantiated and verified through research in strict external evidence.

[ 6 ] Accordingly, Goethe’s words or Schiller’s position seem to make it necessary for us to observe in Goethe how he perceives in the imagination something that contains an element of truth, as opposed to an arbitrary, rule-less play that we might call a fantastical play of ideas. When we seek to fathom the laws of nature through scientific inquiry, our observations compel us to form our judgment. This is not the case with the imagination. Certain ideas or thoughts must nevertheless be linked by an inner necessity if they are to be considered true. There must be something that guides them inwardly from thought to thought in a specific direction.

[ 7 ] When we hear great thinkers speak of such truths, it is surely permissible to measure their insights against the methods employed by spiritual research, which lead to these often-discussed truths. These methods are the so-called clairvoyant ones, which enable communications regarding the facts and beings of the spiritual world. In describing them, we will also touch upon the lower forms of clairvoyance, but only briefly, for they can never lead to true goals. In contrast, we will make the method and scope of higher clairvoyance—achieved through proper training—the subject of our consideration.

[ 8 ] Some people, who are familiar only with the lower forms of clairvoyance—such as somnambulism—consider it a disease. There are states in which a person’s inner life is filled with images from other worlds. It is a kind of sleep, perhaps so shallow that the layman mistakes it for complete wakefulness. When such a “clairvoyant” perceives images in this sleep-like state, they sometimes present something strange and astonishing. They can be of a prophetic nature. Such a person can make statements about medical conditions before they have occurred, or—what seems even more astonishing to the layman—he can specify exactly what will help, and so on. In such states, the person in question has another world before them. Anyone who denies this has not investigated the matter. However, what is gained through such lower clairvoyance is not the subject of our consideration today, but rather what is acquired on the path of trained clairvoyance.

[ 9 ] The aspiring clairvoyant takes every step consciously, exercising strict self-control. The question is simply this: How are we to imagine the development of such a clairvoyant? If we wish to define the essential, we can certainly compare it to the methods of external research. In science, the researcher seeks to fathom the mysteries of nature with the aid of instruments. The trained clairvoyant, too, works with an instrument—indeed, with a very complex instrument—without which he can explore nothing. His instrument is none other than himself—not in his everyday state, but only once he has transformed his cognitive faculties into a different soul constellation through spiritual scientific methods and has created new spiritual organs for himself; that is, once he can speak from his own experiences. It cannot be that the external senses exhaust all knowledge. With every new organ, a new content of the environment takes shape. These may be worlds hidden from us. For the trained clairvoyant, the otherwise hidden world becomes just as real as the external one. Just as after an operation for someone born blind, a whole world flows toward the clairvoyant, which is his experience.

[ 10 ] One must not believe that this can be achieved through external means. Of course, I can only hint at how this happens. Later, I hope to be able to tell you more about how such research is conducted. A person observes most faithfully when they take in what the sensory world tells them without being influenced by subjective factors. What matters is that a person simply gives nature the opportunity to express itself. The less subjective interpretation is involved, the better. A person cannot help but reflect on the external world from which they derive their perceptions, but it is by no means the case that all their concepts, ideas, and images flow into them from the external world. After all, he draws the essential from within himself. This is evident, for example, in the way modern thinking arrived at the structure of the solar system. Copernicus and Galileo certainly saw the same thing that has always presented itself to the external eye. But the laws were first formulated by them. Copernicus added new combinations to the old observational data and thereby accomplished the essential work. This also applies to orthodox Darwinism. Similar observations were made before Darwin and Haeckel, but they approached things with a new mindset. We must realize that concepts and ideas are not something that flows into us from the outside, but something that human beings themselves must bring forth. When you sail out to sea, where you see no land, the vault of heaven seems to rest in the form of a circle on the surface of the sea. You will only understand why this is so when you are able to construct the circle around the point in the center in your mind. In this way, you can grasp all laws, and then reality must correspond to them. Kepler could never have discovered the motion of the planets if elliptical orbits had not first appeared in his mind.

[ 11 ] Thus we bring our ideas to the external world, which tells us: “We will accomplish what you have thought.”—And so you come to realize that the very same thing that lives in your soul underlies this external sensory world as a law. Now imagine that a person tries to hold onto a thought that has been formed within their own soul. If the person manages to set aside all external observation and direct their entire inner attention to the thought, a psychological process takes place that is called concentration. The human soul must first hold onto something that lives only within the soul and cling to it with all inner rigor. Of course, this alone is not enough; it must be repeated over and over again. However, what a person holds onto in terms of mental images that come from the outside is not effective.

[ 12 ] We now have experience in this area, and advice is available on how best to develop the soul’s powers through concentration. There are certain key principles. You do not need to be convinced of their reality from the outset. The more open-minded you are, the better. One instruction, for example, says: Fill your soul with a specific content; devote yourself solely to this soul content. You do not need to believe in it, but you must allow it to work within you, concentrate on it, and you will find that you achieve an effect in your soul through this content. It may be that the external truth does not apply to the statement; that is irrelevant; what matters is the active force within the soul. You will see that inner experiences arise through constant repetition.

[ 13 ] Symbolic images are particularly powerful. I would especially like to recall one: the deeply meaningful symbol of the black cross with the roses. Let us bring to mind the abstract meaning of the Rose Cross, Goethe’s “Die and Become”—namely, the demand that in the development of the soul we must rise above the things of the sensory world, so that they disappear around us, die away. Whose soul remains empty is but a “gloomy guest on the dark earth.” If you succeed and are quite certain that something higher is emerging from the hidden depths of your soul, then you have been reborn in higher worlds. Dying in the cross, rising in the roses—this is the meaning of the symbol of the Rosicrucian Cross. In the mineral and plant worlds, a spiritual element lives everywhere, and intuition allows us to sense that the underlying spiritual is the origin of the physical. The outer world is, in the final analysis, merely the physiognomy of a spiritual world. The human soul is like steel or flint; it conjures up divine-spiritual content from within itself in the life of the human soul. The point is to find the right symbol. Someone might say: You may speculate at will about what the Rosicrucian symbol is supposed to mean. The researcher is indifferent to that. When we establish a law of nature in physics, it tells us something; science explains it. The Rosicrucian symbol tells us nothing. — But that is not the point. Symbols are most effective when they are open to multiple interpretations. One enters into a pure, inner activity of the soul, and by leaning on the symbol—simply to have a starting point—one concentrates the soul on this symbol.

[ 14 ] Let us consider what the soul is consciously doing here; that is what matters. What is at work within a person are forces capable of awakening what lies dormant, experiences that only provide the assurance that this is an inner reality when the person comes to feel: Actually, the cross was only a kind of bridge. Now I have received something in my inner life, something quite different that rises within my soul—an experience I cannot obtain through external means. —At first, the student does not know whether they are facing a mirage or reality. It is a matter of developing further abilities, for even what has just been described is still a detour for the clairvoyant; they are images. As the path of practice continues, the sensation arises: What matters is what is expressed in the images. — If you press on your eye or conduct an electric current into it, a glimmer of light may appear, caused by the inner constellation of the eye. It is much the same when the images appear; they flicker through the soul like spiritual flashes of lightning. You know, when you encounter an object, that it is not produced by your eye, but communicates itself to your eye. The same occurs in the spiritual realm. The seer now knows just as surely that he has not created the object, that the object reveals itself to him through his inner organs. In fact—as the images are now experienced—objective facts reveal themselves. Just as one distinguishes externally between imagination and perception, so it is necessary that the beholder remain in possession of his sound senses, for in hardly any other realm are confusions so easily possible as in that of inner experience. That is why something else must proceed in parallel with it.

[ 15 ] If the observer were to practice only what has just been described, he could become a madman who believes he can conjure up the illusion of reality through his own personality. It is necessary for a person to learn, in experiencing the higher spiritual world, to renounce everything connected with their desires and inclinations. Psychologically, modern people behave differently. They may correct external sensory impressions, but in doing so, emotion and subjective inclination all too easily come into play. The experience of spiritual reality must be preceded by the renunciation of any desire that something might be one way or another. Only when all sympathy is set aside can one experience the objective spiritual realm.

[ 16 ] There is one more essential point. For those who are guided along the path to clairvoyance by experts rather than amateurs—those who learn to see in a way that corresponds to the truth—it is of great value that they do not embark on this path without certain prerequisites. It is a difficult path. One must therefore have previously absorbed truths, messages from those who have already explored these realms. One can also embark on the path with less knowledge, but then the soul’s world remains impoverished, its contents crammed together like fixed ideas. This is how those clairvoyants come into being who, for example, believe they have united with God, describe Him, and so on. When such clairvoyants describe the higher worlds, their accounts seem trivial. But to those who approach the higher worlds with the proven experience of the spiritual researcher, a manifold world-content appears, and everything external proves to be, by contrast, only a small fragment of the great world. The person who makes this experience their own knows that what they are experiencing there is not deceiving them. They can perceive spiritually with the same certainty as in the external sensory world. This is trained clairvoyance.

[ 17 ] What, then, must happen for these higher senses to be developed? For spiritual science, the human being is not merely an outer physical body; for higher perception, he also possesses the otherwise invisible etheric body and the astral body, the bearer of pleasure and pain. You know what sleep represents for spiritual research. There, the physical and etheric bodies remain in bed, while the astral body and the ego act upon the physical body from the outside. Upon awakening, the astral body returns to the physical and etheric bodies, and the sensory world reappears. Thus, sleep is a stepping out of the physical body by the astral body and the ego. By what means, then, can a human being hear and see the sensory world? Through eyes and ears; otherwise, the world would be colorless, lightless, and soundless. When the astral body steps out of the physical body, it is indeed in the spiritual world, but it possesses no organs. If it had such organs, it could perceive the spiritual environment just as it perceives its surroundings in the physical world. If a person is to perceive the spiritual world, therefore, spiritual senses must develop within them. This occurs through that methodical training of the soul life. When the astral body emerges from a person trained in this way using spiritual methods, it is in a completely different state than under ordinary circumstances. It is as if what was previously a chaotic mass within the astral body becomes structured and forms organs. What was once a misty, smoky mass takes on a beautiful form. This takes a long time. Since ancient times, this process has been called catharsis, purification, or refinement. The inner being of the person is then purified of instincts, desires, and passions. This is the first stage.

[ 18 ] This first stage is followed by a second. When a person returns to their physical-etheric body in the morning, the outer organs possess the stronger forces; they drown out the subtle new tones in the inner organs. These are always present, but remain weak as long as they are drowned out by the forces of the etheric body in the sense organs. Later, the human being learns to use the inner organs so that, alongside sensory perceptions, they also perceive spiritual perceptions. This process is called enlightenment, Photismos. These are entirely real processes that have been experienced.

[ 19 ] Step by step, in every detail, the individual applies the prescribed method to train themselves to become an instrument of perception. The training is thus intended to endow the inner self with spiritual organs. Just as nature has perfected the outer human being, so the path of development continues, and what nature has begun is carried forward by the human being himself. When the human being gains insight into the spiritual in this way, he owes it to the fact that his inner being has become the ruler of the physical and etheric bodies. Man has become his own master. First, he gains mastery over his etheric body. In the trained clairvoyant, this occurs in such a way that the etheric body adapts its powers to the astral body; it becomes elastic. If clairvoyance arises spontaneously in pathological states, this stems from other causes. Although it falls under the same laws, it is uncontrollable. If a certain influence is exerted on the person, or if they are ill, the etheric body can become partially or completely detached from the physical body; it can be loosened. This is not normal. Then the person has an etheric body that is not as firmly bound to their physical body as is the case in normal connection, and which is therefore easy to handle. In contrast, the spiritual student strengthens the astral body and thereby helps it to gain control over the etheric body. In the event of illness, a part of the etheric body may become free, which is then controlled by the astral body. Because this state is based on the same principles, such people can sometimes gain genuine insights into the spiritual world, but they are not reliable. The rigorous results of spiritual research are not achieved in this way.

[ 20 ] One sometimes hears the question: How can a disease process give rise to extrasensory perceptions? — Health and insight need not follow the same path; there is no contradiction in this, but neither is there any recommendation. In any case, we see what underlies the process that brings facts of the higher world into a person’s field of vision. Just as we take delight in the surrounding world, so do we find in the spiritual world that which first makes the sensory world comprehensible to us. The communications of the spiritual researcher are based on experiences he has had. By recounting these, he conveys facts about a world that can also be understood by the ordinary mind, whereas our inner world is otherwise determined by what takes place in the physical realm. That, for example, the image of the rose can have an effect on me is made possible by the rose’s forces flowing into me. So it is in the spiritual realm as well. The trained clairvoyant experiences the spiritual outer world in his soul life. He says to himself: The sensory world is governed by laws set forth by beings whose workings and activities are revealed to me. I see that a flower appears to me in this way, shaped from the spiritual, from spiritual depths. I must make sacrifices in my inner life in order to allow the world of higher spiritual beings to flow into me. — Imagine that this world exists and is active, that a human being could enter it. This world, which the clairvoyant sees, surrounds him. It acts upon the human being as a determining force, which he does not see, but which flows into him in a way that is subconscious to him. The clairvoyant is not content merely to see the human being as he is shaped on the outside.

[ 21 ] Imagination, too, can function as a power of the soul that is inspired by the spiritual worlds. Therein lies the true basis of imagination, and we come to understand Schiller’s statement, which characterizes what is created in this way. Thus we can understand why Goethe says: There is an imagination that possesses an inner certainty. - There is a kind of fantasy that combines, and there is the imagination that is inspired by the forces perceived by the clairvoyant. Given his life circumstances at the time, Schiller could not have foreseen spiritual science, but he sensed and felt that Goethe was justified in attributing to the imagination the ability to fathom certain mysteries. |

[ 22 ] No matter how many external facts our intellect may provide, true imagination can be far more real. Human beings are predisposed to ascend into the spiritual realms, for the necessary abilities lie dormant within each of us. Every human being, even if it takes many lifetimes, will attain this. Until then, they can be inspired by art, in which not merely the sensory world is expressed, but the creative spirit itself, which has passed through the medium of imagination. It is the outward reflection of that spirit. Thus we may say that imagination and clairvoyance are set before humanity as a share in spiritual life, as a great goal, as something that some have already attained, and which stands above all other forms of existence. Trained clairvoyance leads humanity into the higher worlds. Its representative in the sensory world is imagination. That is why it holds a preeminent significance among the powers of the human soul. Imagination is the representative of clairvoyance in the sensory world.