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Rudolf Steiner e.Lib
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Occult Science - An Outline
Rudolf Steiner e.Lib Document
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Occult Science - An Outline
Knowledge of the Higher Worlds
The trustworthiness of the Imaginative stage of cognition can be
assured if the pupil will lend support to his meditation by acquiring
the habit of what may be called sense-free thinking. When
we form a thought, basing it on something we have observed in the
physical world, the thought is dependent on the physical senses. This
is, however, not the only kind of thought we are able to entertain.
There is no need for our thinking to be empty of content when it is no
longer being filled with the data of sense-observation. The surest way
to attain sense-free thinking, the way too that lies nearest at hand
for the pupil, is to let his thinking lay hold of the facts of the
higher world, communicated in spiritual science. These facts cannot be
observed with the physical senses. Yet the pupil will find that with
sufficient patience and perseverance he can grasp them. It is
impossible to undertake research in the higher world, impossible to
observe there for oneself, without spiritual training; one can however
without higher training understand what is communicated by those who
have carried out such research. If someone asks: But how can I take on
trust what spiritual researchers say, when I cannot see it for myself?
the question is in reality unjustified. For it is perfectly
possible, by simple reflection, to arrive at the sure conviction that
the communications are true. If anyone finds himself unable to do so,
it is not because it is impossible to believe something
one does not see; it is due to the fact that the thought he has given
to it has not been sufficiently free from prejudice, not comprehensive
or deep enough. To be quite clear on this point, we must be ready to
recognize that man's thinking can, if he applies it with energy and
determination, grasp more than is generally supposed. For this
thinking has within it an inner reality of being which has connection
with the supersensible world. Man is, as a rule, unconscious of the
connection, since he is accustomed to apply his thinking faculty to
the sense-world alone; hence, when he hears of communications from the
supersensible world, he sets them down as incomprehensible. They are
however thoroughly comprehensible and not alone to those whose
thinking has been educated through spiritual training, but to
every thinking person who is conscious of the full power of his
thinking and ready to apply it.
By continuously apprising ourselves of what spiritual science tells,
we grow accustomed to a thinking that does not take its start from
outer observation by the senses. We learn now within our mind thought
weaves on thought, thought seeks out thought, even when the
connections have not been suggested by sensory observation. We make
the significant discovery that the world of thought is inherently
alive, and that when we are really and truly thinking we are already
in the realm of a supersensible and living world. We say to ourselves:
There is something in me that is developing a living organism of
thought; moreover I myself am at one with it. As we continue to devote
ourselves to sense-free thinking, we actually come to feel that there
is something of real being real inner substance flowing
into our inner life, even as when we observe with the senses there
flow into us by way of our physical organs the properties of the
things of sense.
Out there in space, says the observer of the sense-world, is a rose. I
do not feel it in any way strange or remote, for it makes itself known
to me by means of its color and its scent. We need only be
sufficiently free from preconceived ideas to be able also to say, when
sense-free thinking is at work in us: Something quite real is making
itself known to me, uniting thought with thought, forming within me a
living body of thought. Yet there is an essential difference between
the feeling we have towards the things we see in the external world of
sense and on the other hand towards the reality of being that
communicates itself to us in sense-free thinking. The observer of the
external world of the senses will feel that he himself is
outside the rose he is seeing with his eyes, while one who is
devoting himself to sense-free thinking will feel within him
the reality that is making itself known to him. He feels himself at
one with it. And anyone who (whether quite consciously or less so) is
only prepared to attribute reality to what confronts him as an
external object, will naturally not entertain the idea that something
inherently real can also become known to him through his being
inwardly united and at one with it. There is an inner experience we
need, to see the matter rightly. We have to learn to distinguish
between the associations of thought which we ourselves produce more or
less arbitrarily, and those we experience within us when we have
silenced our own arbitrary will. In the latter instance we can say: I
remain perfectly still, I myself bring about no association of thought
with thought; I give myself up to that which thinks in me.
We are then perfectly justified in saying: Something real is at work
in me no less justified than when on seeing the rose color and
perceiving its scent, we say: A rose is there making an impression on
me.
The fact that we receive the content of the thoughts from
communications made by the researcher in the Spirit does not
contradict this. True, the thoughts are already there; but it is not
possible for us to think them without creating them anew every time in
our soul. That is really the whole point. The researcher in the Spirit
awakens in his hearers and readers thoughts that they have to evoke
out of themselves, whereas one who is describing a real
object real in the world of the senses is calling
attention to what his hearers and readers can observe in the external
world.
(The path that leads to sense-free thinking by way of the
communications of spiritual science is thoroughly reliable and sure.
There is however another that is even more sure, and above all more
exact; at the same time, it is for many people also more difficult.
The path in question is set forth in my books The Theory of
Knowledge implicit in Goethe's World-Conception and The
Philosophy of Spiritual Activity. These books tell of what man's
thinking can achieve when directed, not to impressions that come from
the outer world of the physical senses, but solely upon itself. When
this is so, we have within us no longer the kind of thinking that
concerns itself merely with memories of the things of sense; we have
instead pure thinking which is like a being that has life
within itself. In the above-mentioned books you will find nothing at
all that is derived from communications of spiritual science. They
testify to the fact that pure thinking, working within itself alone,
can throw light on the great questions of life questions
concerning the universe and man. The books thus occupy a significant
intermediate position between knowledge of the sense world and
knowledge of the spiritual world. What they offer is what thinking can
attain, when it rises above sense-observation, yet still holds back
from entering upon spiritual, supersensible research. One who
wholeheartedly pursues the train of thought indicated in these books
is already in the spiritual world; only it makes itself known to him
as a thought-world. Whoever feels ready to enter upon this intermediate
path of development will be taking a safe and sure road, and it will
leave him a feeling in regard to the higher world that will bear rich
fruit through all time to come.)
Last Modified: 02-Nov-2024
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