SUPERSENSIBLE KNOWLEDGE:
Its Secrecy in the Past and Publication in our Time
THERE are two experiences whence the soul may gain an understanding
for the mode of knowledge to which the supersensible worlds will open
out. The one originates in the science of Nature; the other, in the
Mystical experience whereby the untrained ordinary consciousness
contrives to penetrate into the supersensible domain. Both confront
the soul of man with barriers of knowledge barriers he cannot
cross till he can open for himself the portals which by their very
essence Natural Science, and ordinary Mysticism too, must hold fast
closed.
Natural Science leads inevitably to certain conceptions about reality,
which are like a stone wall to the deeper forces of the soul; and yet,
this Science itself is powerless to remove them. He who fails to feel
the impact, has not yet called to life the deeper needs of knowledge
in his soul. He may then come to believe that it is impossible in any
case for Man to attain any other than the natural-scientific form of
knowledge. There is, however, a definite experience in Self-knowledge
whereby one weans oneself of this belief. This experience consists in
the insight that the whole of Natural Science would be dissolved into
thin air if we attempted to fathom the above-named conceptions with
the methods of Natural Science itself. If the conceptions of Natural
Science are to remain spread out before the soul, these limiting
conceptions must be left within the field of consciousness intact,
without attempting to approach them with a deeper insight. There are
many of them; here I will only mention two of the most familiar:
Matter and Force. Recent developments in scientific theory
may or may not be replacing these particular conceptions; the fact remains
that Natural Science must invariably lead to some conception or another of
this kind, impenetrable to its own methods of knowledge.
To the experience of soul, of which I am here speaking, these limiting
conceptions appear like a reflecting surface which the human soul must
place before it; while Natural Science itself is like the picture,
made manifest with the mirror's help. Any attempt to treat the
limiting conceptions themselves by ordinary scientific means is, as it
were, to smash the mirror, and with the mirror broken, Natural Science
itself dissolves away. Moreover, this experience reveals the emptiness
of all talk about Things-in-themselves, of whatsoever kind, behind
the phenomena of Nature. He who seeks for such Things-in-themselves is
like a man who longs to break the looking-glass, hoping to see what
there is behind the reflecting surface to cause his image to appear.
It goes without saying that the validity of such an experience of soul
cannot be proved, in the ordinary sense of the word, with the
habitual thoughts of presentday Natural Science. For the point will
be, what kind of an inner experience does the process of the proof
call forth in us; and this must needs transcend the abstract proof.
With inner experience in this sense, we must apprehend the question:
How is it that the soul is forced to confront these barriers of
knowledge in order to have before it the phenomena of Nature? Mature
self-knowledge brings us an answer to this question. We then perceive
which of the forces of man's soul partakes in the erection of these
barriers to knowledge. It is none other than the force of soul which
makes man capable, within the world of sense, of unfolding Love out of
his inner being. The faculty of Love is somehow rooted in the human
organisation; and the very thing which gives to man the power of love
of sympathy and antipathy with his environment of sense, takes
away from his cognition of the things and processes of Nature the
possibility to make transparent such pillars of Reality as Matter
and Force. To the man who can experience himself in true
self-knowledge, on the one hand in the act of knowing Nature, and on
the other hand in the unfolding of Love, this peculiar property of the
human organisation becomes straightway apparent.
We must, however, beware of misinterpreting this perception by lapsing
again into a way of thought which, within Natural Science itself, is
no doubt inevitable. Thus it would be a misconstruction to assume,
that an insight into the true essence of the things and processes of
Nature is withheld from man because he lacks the organisation for such
insight. The opposite is the case. Nature becomes sense-perceptible to
man through the very fact that his being is capable of Love. For a
being incapable of Love within the field of sense, the whole human
picture of Nature would dissolve away. It is not Nature who on account
of his organisation reveals only her external aspect. No; it is man,
who, by that force of his organisation which makes him in another
direction capable of Love, is placed in a position to erect before his
soul images and forms of Reality whereby Nature reveals herself to
him.
Through the experience above-described the fact emerges, that the
scientific frontiers of knowledge depend on the whole way in which
man, as a sense-endowed being, is placed within this world of physical
reality. His vision of Nature is of a kind, appropriate to a being who
is capable of Love. He would have to tear the faculty of Love out of
his inner life if he wished no longer to be faced with limits in his
perception of Nature. But in so doing he would destroy the very force
whereby Nature is made manifest to him. The real object of his quest
for knowledge is not, by the same methods which he applies in his
outlook upon Nature, to remove the limitations of that outlook. No, it
is something altogether different, and once this has been perceived,
man will no longer try to penetrate into a supersensible world through
the kind of knowledge which is effective in Natural Science. Rather
will he tell himself, that to unveil the supersensible domain an
altogether different activity of knowledge must be evolved than that
which he applies to the science of Nature.
Many people, more or less consciously aware of the above experience of
soul, turn away from Natural Science when it is a question of opening
the supersensible domain, and seek to penetrate into the latter by
methods which are commonly called Mystical. They think that what is
veiled to outwardly directed vision may be revealed by plunging into
the depths of one's own being. But a mature self-knowledge reveals in
the inner life as well a frontier of knowledge. In the field of the
senses the faculty of Love erects, as it were, an impenetrable
background whereat Nature is reflected; in the inner life of man the
power of Memory erects a like background. The same force of soul,
which makes the human being capable of Memory, prevents his
penetrating, in his inner being, down to that experience which would
enable him to meet along this inward path the supersensible
reality for which he seeks. Invariably, along this path, he reaches
only to that force of soul which recalls to him in Memory the
experiences he has undergone through his bodily nature in the past. He
never penetrates into the region where with his own supersensible
being he is rooted in a supersensible world. For those who fail to see
this, mystical pursuits will give rise to the worst of illusions. For
in the course of life, the human being receives into his inner life
untold experiences, of which in the receiving he is not fully
conscious. But the Memory retains what is thus half-consciously or
subconsciously experienced. Long afterwards it frequently emerges into
consciousness in moods, in shades of feeling and the like, if not
in clear conceptions. Nay more, it often undergoes a change, and comes
to consciousness in quite a different form from that in which it was
experienced originally. A man may then believe himself confronted by a
supersensible reality arising from the inner being of the soul,
whereas, in fact, it is but an outer experience transformed an
experience called forth originally by the world of sense which
comes before his mental vision. He alone is preserved from such
illusions, who recognises that even on a mystic path man cannot
penetrate into the supersensible domain so long as he applies methods
of knowledge dependent on the bodily nature which is rooted in the
world of sense. Even as our picture of Nature depends for its
existence on the faculty of Love, so does the immediate consciousness
of the human Self depend upon the power of Memory. The same force of
the soul, endowing man in the physical world with the
Self-consciousness that is bound to the bodily nature, stands in the
way to obstruct his inner union with the supersensible world. Thus,
even that which is often considered Mysticism provides no way into the
supersensible realms of existence.
For him who would penetrate with full conscious clarity of
understanding into the supersensible domain, the two experiences above
described are, however, preparatory stages. Through them he recognises
that man is shut off from the supersensible world by the very thing
which places him, as a self-conscious being, in the midst of Nature.
Now one might easily conclude from this, that man must altogether
forego the effort to gain knowledge of the Supersensible. Nor can it
be denied that many who are loath to face the painful issue, abstain
from working their way through to a clear perception of the two
experiences. Cherishing a certain dimness of perception on these
matters, they either give themselves up to the belief that the
limitations of Natural Science may be transcended by some intellectual
and philosophic exercise; or else they devote themselves to Mysticism
in the ordinary sense, avoiding the full enlightenment as to the
nature of Self-consciousness and Memory which would reveal its
insufficiency.
But to one who has undergone them and reached a certain clarity
withal, these very experiences will open out the possibility and
prospect of true supersensible knowledge. For in the course of them he
finds that even in the ordinary action of human consciousness there
are forces holding sway within the soul, which are not bound to the
physical organisation; forces which are in no way subject to the
conditions whereon the faculties of Love and Memory within this
physical organisation depend. One of these forces reveals itself in
Thought. True, it remains unnoticed in the ordinary conscious life;
indeed there are even many philosophers who deny it. But the denial is
due to an imperfect self-observation. There is something at work in
Thought which does not come into it from the faculty of Memory. It is
something that vouches to us for the correctness of a present thought,
not when a former thought emerging from the memory sustains it, but
when the correctness of the present thought is experienced directly.
This experience escapes the every-day consciousness, because man
completely spends the force in question for his life of thought-filled
perception. In Perception permeated by Thought this force is at work.
But man, perceiving, imagines that the perception alone is vouching
for the correctness of what he apprehends by an activity of soul where
Thought and Perception in reality always flow together. And when he
lives in Thought alone, abstracted from perceptions, it is but an
activity of Thought which finds its supports in Memory. In this
abstracted Thought the physical organism is cooperative. For the
every-day consciousness, an activity of Thought unsubjected to the
bodily organism is only present while man is in the act of
Sense-perception. Sense-perception itself depends upon the organism.
But the thinking activity, contained in and co-operating with it, is a
purely supersensible element in which the bodily organism has no
share. In it the human soul rises out of the bodily organism. As soon
as man becomes distinctly, separately conscious of this Thinking in
the act of Perception, he knows by direct experience that he has
himself as a living soul, quite independently of the bodily nature.
This is man's first experience of himself as a supersensible
soul-being, arising out of an evolved self-knowledge. The same
experience is there unconsciously in every act of perception. We need
only sharpen our selfobservation so as to Observe the fact: in the act
of Perception a supersensible element reveals itself. Once it is thus
revealed, this first, faint suggestion of an experience of the soul
within the Supersensible can be evolved, as follows: In living,
meditative practice, man unfolds a Thinking wherein two activities of
the soul flow together, namely that which lives in the ordinary
consciousness in Sense-perception, and that which is active in
ordinary Thought. The meditative life thus becomes an intensified
activity of Thought, receiving into itself the force that is otherwise
spent in Perception. Our Thinking in itself must grow so strong, that
it works with the same vivid quality which is otherwise only there in
Sense-perception. Without perception by the senses we must call to
life a Thinking which, unsupported by memories of the past,
experiences in the immediate present a content of its own, such as we
otherwise only can derive from Sense-perception. From the Thinking
that co-operates in perception, this meditative action of the soul
derives its free and conscious quality, its inherent certainty that it
receives no visionary content raying into the soul from unconscious
organic regions. A visionary life of whatsoever kind is the very
antithesis of what is here intended. By self-observation we must
become thoroughly and clearly familiar with the condition of soul in
which we are in the act of perception through any one of the senses.
In this state of soul, fully aware that the content of our ideation
does not arise out of the activity of the bodily organism, we must
learn to experience ideas which are called forth in consciousness
without external perceptions, just as are those of which we are
conscious in ordinary life when engaged in reflective thought,
abstracted from the enter world. (As to the right ways of developing
this meditative practice, detailed indications are given in the book
Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment
and in several of my other writings.)
In evolving the meditative life above-described, the human soul rises
to the conscious feeling perception of itself, as of a supersensible
Being independent of the bodily organisation. This is man's first
experience of himself as a supersensible Being; and it leads on to a
second stage in supersensible self-knowledge. At the former stage he
can only be aware that he is a supersensible Being; at the second he
feels this Being filled with real content, even as the I of
ordinary waking life is felt by means of the bodily organisation. It is of
the utmost importance to realise that the transition from the one stage to
the other takes place quite independently of any co-operation from
outside the soul's domain namely from the mere organic life. If we
experienced the transition, in relation to our own bodily nature, any
differently from the process of drawing a logical conclusion for
example, it would be a visionary experience, not what is intended
here. The process here intended differs from the act of drawing
logical conclusions, not in respect of its relationship to the bodily
nature, but in quite another regard; namely in the consciousness that
a supersensible, purely spiritual content is entering the feeling and
perception of the Self.
The kind of meditative life hitherto described gives rise to the
supersensible self-consciousness. But this self-consciousness would be
left without any supersensible environment if the above form of
meditation were unaccompanied by another. We come to an understanding
of this latter kind by turning our self-observation to the activity of
the Will. In every-day life the activity of the Will is consciously
directed to external actions. There is, however, another concomitant
expression of the Will to which the human being pays little conscious
attention. It is the activity of Will which carries him from one stage
of development to another in the course of life. For not only is he
filled with different contents of soul day after day; his soul-life
itself, on each succeeding day, has evolved out of his soul-life of
the day before. The driving force in this evolving process is the
Will, which in this field of its activity remains for the most part
unconscious. Mature self-knowledge can, however, raise this Will, with
all its peculiar quality, into the conscious life. When this is done,
man comes to the perception of a life of Will which has absolutely
nothing to do with any processes of a sense-perceptible external
world, but is directed solely to the inner evolution of the soul
independent of this world. Once it is known to him, he learns by
degrees to enter into the living essence of this Will, just as in the
former kind of meditative life he entered into the fusion of the
soul's experiences of Thinking and Perception. And the conscious
experience in this element of Will expands into the experience of a
supersensible external world. Evolved in the way above described, and
transplanted now into this element of Will, the supersensible
self-consciousness finds itself in a supersensible environment, filled
with spiritual Beings and events. While the supersensible Thinking
leads to a self-consciousness independent of the power of Memory which
is bound to the bodily nature, the supersensible Willing comes to life
in such a way as to be permeated through and through by a
spiritualised faculty of Love. It is this faculty of Love which
enables the supersensible self-consciousness of man to perceive and
grasp the supersensible external world. Thus the power of
supersensible knowledge is established by a self-consciousness which
eliminates the ordinary Memory and lives in the intuitive perception
of the spiritual world through the power of Love made spiritual.
Only by realising this essence of the supersensible faculty of
knowledge, does one become able to understand the real meaning of man's
knowledge of Nature. In effect, the knowledge of Nature is inherently
connected with what is being evolved in man within this physical world
of sense. It is in this world that man incorporates, into his
spiritual Being, Self-consciousness and the faculty of Love. Once he
has instilled these two into his nature, he can carry them with him
into the super sensible world. In supersensible perception, the
ordinary power of Memory is eliminated. Its place is taken by an
immediate vision of the past a vision for which the past appears as
we look backward in spiritual observation, just as for
sense-perception the things we pass by as we walk along appear when we
turn round to look behind us. Again the ordinary faculty of Love is
bound to the physical organism. In conscious supersensible experience,
its place is taken by a power of Love made spiritual, which is to say,
a power of perception.
It may already be seen, from the above description, that supersensible
experience takes place in a mood of soul which must be held apart, in
consciousness, from that of ordinary Perception, Thinking, Feeling and
Willing. The two ways of looking out upon the world must be kept apart
by the deliberate control of man himself, just as in another sphere
the waking consciousness is kept apart from the dream life. He who
lets play the picture-complexes of his dreams into his waking life
becomes a listless and fantastic fellow, abstracted from realities.
He, on the other hand, who holds to the belief that the essence of
causal relationships experienced in waking life can be extended into
the life of dreams, endows the dream-pictures with an imagined reality
which will make it impossible for him to experience their real nature.
So with the mode of thought which governs our outlook upon Nature, or
of inner experience which determines ordinary Mysticism: he who
lets them play into his supersensible experience, will not behold the
supersensible, but weave himself in figments of the mind, which, far
from bringing him nearer to it, will cut him off from the higher world
he seeks. A man who will not hold his experience in the supersensible
apart from his experience in the world of the physical senses, will
mar the fresh and unembarrassed outlook upon Nature which is the true
basis for a healthy sojourn in this earthly life. Moreover, he will
permeate with the force of spiritual perception the faculty of Love
that is connected with the bodily nature, thus tending to bring it
into a deceptive relationship with the physical experience. All that
the human being experiences and achieves within the field of sense,
receives its true illumination an illumination which the deepest
needs of the soul require through the science of things that are
only to be experienced supersensibly. Yet must the latter be held
separate in consciousness from the experience in the world of sense.
It must illumine our knowledge of Nature, our ethical and social life;
yet so, that the illumination always proceeds from a sphere of
experience apart. Mediately, through the attunement of the human soul,
the Supersensible must indeed shed its light upon the Sensible. For if
it did not do so, the latter would be relegated to darkness of
thought, chaotic wilfulness of instinct and desire.
Many human beings, well knowing this relationship which has to be
maintained in the soul between the experience of the supersensible and
that of the world of sense, hold that the supersensible knowledge must
on no account be given full publicity. It should remain, so they
consider, the secret knowledge of a few, who have attained by strict
self-discipline the power to establish and maintain the true
relationship. Such guardians of supersensible knowledge base their
opinion on the very true assertion that a man who is in any way
inadequately prepared for the higher knowledge will feel an
irresistible impulsion to mingle the Supersensible with the Sensible
in life; and that he will inevitably thus call forth, both in himself
and others, all the ill effects which we have here characterised as
the result of such confusion. On the other hand believing as they
do, and with good reason, that man's outlook upon Nature must not be
left to grope in utter darkness, nor his life to spend itself in blind
forces of instinct and desire, they have founded self-contained and
closed Societies, or Occult Schools, within which human beings
properly prepared are guided stage by stage to supersensible
discovery. Of such it then becomes the task to pour the fruits of
their knowledge into life, without, however, exposing the knowledge
itself to publicity.
In past epochs of human evolution this idea was undoubtedly justified.
For the propensity above described, leading to the misuse of
supersensible knowledge, was then the only thing to be considered, and
against it there stood no other circumstance to call for publication
of the higher knowledge. It might at most be contended that the
superiority of those initiated into the higher knowledge gave into
their hands a mighty power to rule over those who had no such
knowledge.
None the less, an enlightened reading of the course of History will
convince us that such conflux of power into the hands of a few, fitted
by self-discipline to wield it, was indeed necessary.
In present time, however meaning present in the wider
sense the evolution of mankind has reached a point whenceforward it
becomes not only impossible but harmful to prolong the former custom. The
irresistible impulsion to misuse the higher knowledge is now opposed
by other factors, making the at any rate partial publication of
such knowledge a matter of necessity, and calculated also to remove
the ill effects of the above tendency. Our knowledge of Nature has
assumed a form wherein it beats perpetually, in a destructive way,
against its own barriers and limitations. In many branches of Science,
the laws and generalisations in which man finds himself obliged to
clothe certain of the facts of Nature, are in themselves of such a
kind as to call his attention to his own supersensible powers. The
latter press forward into the conscious life of the soul. In former
ages, the knowledge of Nature which was generally accessible had no
such effect. Through Natural Science, however, in its present form
expanding as it is in ever widening circles mankind would be led
astray in either of two directions, if a publication of supersensible
knowledge were not now to take place. Either the possibility of a
supersensible world-outlook would be repudiated altogether and with
growing vehemence; and this would presently result in an artificial
repression of supersensible faculties which the time is actually
calling forth. Such repression would make it more and more impossible
for man to see his own Being in a true light. Emptiness, chaos and
dissatisfaction of the inner life, instability of soul, perversity of
will; and, in the sequel, even physical degeneration and illhealth
would be the outcome. Or else the supersensible faculties-uncontrolled
by conscious knowledge of these things-would break out in a wild
tangle of obtuse, unconscious, undirected forces of cognition, and the
life of knowledge would degenerate in a chaotic mass of nebulous
conceptions. This would be to create a world of scientific phantoms,
which, like a curtain, would obscure the true supersensible world from
the spiritual eye of man. For either of these aberrations, a proper
publication of supersensible knowledge is the only remedy.
As to the impulse to abuse such knowledge in the way above described,
it can be counteracted in our time, as follows: the training of
thought which modern Natural Science has involved can be fruitfully
employed to clothe in words the truths that point towards the
supersensible. Itself, this Science of Nature cannot penetrate into
the supersensible world; but it lends the human mind an aptitude for
combinations of thought whereby the higher knowledge can be so
expressed that the irresistible impulsion to misuse it need not arise.
The thought-combinations of the Nature-knowledge of former times were
more pictorial, less inclined to the domain of pure Thought.
Supersensible perceptions, clothed in them, stirred up without his
being conscious of it those very instincts in the human being which
tend towards misuse.
This being said, it cannot on the other hand be emphasised too
strongly that he who gives out supersensible knowledge in our time
will the better fulfil his responsibilities to mankind the more he
contrives to express this knowledge in forms of thought borrowed from
the modern Science of Nature. For the receiver of knowledge thus
imparted will then have to apply, to the overcoming of certain
difficulties of understanding, faculties of soul which would otherwise
remain inactive and tend to the above misuse. The popularising of
supersensible knowledge, so frequently desired by overzealous and
misguided people, should be avoided. The truly earnest seeker does not
call for it; it is but the banale, uncultured craving of persons
indolent in thought.
In the ethical and social life as well, humanity has reached a stage
of development which makes it impossible to exclude all knowledge of
the supersensible from public life and thought. In former epochs the
ethical and social instincts contained within them spiritual guiding
forces, inherited from primaeval ages of mankind. Such forces tended
instinctively to a community life which answered also to the needs of
individual soul. But the inner life of man has grown more conscious
than in former epochs. The spiritual instincts have thus been forced
into the background. The Will, the impulses of men must now be guided
consciously, lest they become vagrant and unstable. That is to say,
the individual, by his own insight, must be in a position to illumine
the life in the physical world of sense by the knowledge of the
supersensible, spiritual Being of man.
Conceptions formed in the way of natural-scientific knowledge cannot
enter effectively into the conscious guiding forces of the ethical and
social life. Destined as it is within its own domain to bear the
most precious fruits, Natural Science will be led into an absolutely
fatal error if it be not perceived that the mode of thought which
dominates it is quite unfitted to open out an understanding of, or to
give impulses for, the moral and social life of humanity. In the
domain of ethical and social life our conception of underlying
principles, and the conscious guidance of our action, can only thrive
when illumined from the aspect of the Supersensible. Between the rise
of a highly evolved Natural Science, and present-day developments in
the human life of Will with all the underlying impulses and
instincts there is indeed a deep, significant connection. The force
of knowledge that has gone into our science of Nature, is derived from
the former spiritual content of man's impulses and instincts. From the
fountain-head of supersensible Realities, the latter must now be
supplied with fresh impulsive forces.
We are living in an age when supersensible knowledge can no longer
remain the secret possession of a few. No, it must become the common
property of all, in whom the meaning of life within this age is
stirring as a very condition of their soul's existence. In the
unconscious depths of the souls of men this need is already working,
far more widespread than many people dream. And it will grow, more and
more insistently, to the demand that the science of the Supersensible
shall be treated on a like footing with the science of Nature.
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