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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 organs of soul and spirit, the lotus flowers, that are in course
of development in one who is undergoing training, reveal themselves to
supersensible consciousness in the neighborhood, as it were, of
particular bodily organs. From among the number of these organs of the
soul, mention will here be made of the following. There is, first, the
organ that is perceived as though about midway between the eyebrows
(the so-called two-petalled lotus-flower;) then, the organ in the
region of the larynx (the sixteen-petalled lotus-flower;) thirdly, the
organ in the region of the heart (the twelve-petalled lotus-flower;)
and then a fourth in the neighborhood of the pit of the stomach.
Others come to view near other parts of the physical body. (The
appellation two-or sixteen-petalled is not inappropriate, for the
organs in question are in appearance comparable to flowers with these
numbers of petals.)
The lotus-flowers become manifest to the consciousness of the pupil in
his astral body. As soon as he has developed one or other of them, he
knows that he has it. He feels he can make use of it and that in doing
so he does actually enter a higher world. The impressions he receives
there still resemble in many respects those of the physical world. One
who has attained Imaginative cognition will thus be able, in speaking
of this new higher world, to describe his impressions by reference to
sensations, for example, of warmth or of cold; or he may compare them
to hearing music or speech, or to the effect upon him of light or
color. For this is the kind of feeling he has of them. He is however
conscious that perceptions acquired in the Imaginative world tell of
something altogether different from those acquired in the world of
sense. He knows that what gives rise to them is not physical or
material, but of the nature of soul and spirit. Suppose he receives an
impression resembling the sensation of warmth. He will not ascribe it,
for example, to a piece of hot iron, but will consider it as emanating
from some soul situation or event of a kind that he has hitherto been
aware of only in his inner life of soul. He knows that his Imaginative
perceptions are due to things and happenings of the nature of pure
soul and spirit, even as his physical perceptions are due to facts and
entities of a material, physical nature.
Along with this resemblance of the Imaginative to the physical world
there is at the same time a significant difference between them. One
ever-present feature of the physical world shows itself in the
Imaginative world in a totally different way. In the physical world we
can observe a continual coming into being and passing away again, a
constant alternation of birth with death. In the Imaginative world we
find instead perpetual transformation taking place one
thing changing into another. For instance, in the physical
world we see a plant droop and die. In the Imaginative world, as the
plant fades away, another form invisible to the physical senses
is all the time seen to be arising, into which the dying plant
gradually changes. When the plant has quite disappeared, before us in
its place is this new form, fully developed. Birth and death are
conceptions which lose their meaning in the Imaginative world. In
their place we have the concept of transformation or metamorphosis
one thing changing into another.
This is how it is that the truths concerning the being of man which
have been communicated in the chapters on the Nature of
Humanity become accessible to Imaginative cognition. With the
physical senses, only the processes of the physical body can be
perceived, and these take place in the realm of birth and
death. The other members of man's nature the life-body,
the sentient body and the I are subject to the law of
transformation; Imaginative cognition is therefore able to perceive
them. One who has progressed to this stage can see how at death
something as it were releases itself from the physical body and lives
on further in a different kind of existence.
But spiritual development does not come to an end in the Imaginative
world. If we wanted to remain in that world and go no farther, we
would be unable to give any explanation for the changes that were
taking place; we could not find our bearings in the world to which we
had gained access. The Imaginative world is a restless place.
Everywhere in it there is movement, nothing but movement and change;
nowhere does it come to rest. Only when we develop beyond the stage of
Imaginative cognition and reach what may be called cognition
through Inspiration do we find a resting-place.
It is not essential that one who sets out to attain knowledge of the
supersensible world shall first acquire Imaginative knowledge in full
measure and only then proceed to Inspiration. A pupil's training may
be so regulated that exercises leading to Imagination are continued
side by side with exercises for the development of Inspiration. He
will then, in due time, come into a higher world where he does not
merely perceive but can also orientate himself a world in which
he can begin to see meaning. In point of fact, it will indeed
generally happen that as the pupil progresses, glimpses of the
Imaginative world are first of all vouchsafed him, and that then,
after a time, he has the feeling: Now I am beginning also to find my
bearings.
Yet it must also be realized that the world if Inspiration is
something different and new, compared to that of Imagination. With
Imaginative cognition we perceive events and processes in mutual
transformation. With Inspiration we come to know the inner qualities
of the beings who are undergoing transformation. With
Imagination we see the manifestation of these beings in the realm of
soul. With Inspiration we penetrate to their inner spiritual nature;
above all, we come to know a multiplicity of beings and learn of the
connections between them. In the physical world we also have to do
with a multiplicity of beings or entities of various kinds, but in the
world of Inspiration this multiplicity is of quite another character.
There each single being has its distinctive connections with other
beings, connections that are determined, not as in the physical world
by some outward impressions that the beings make upon one another, but
by their inner character and spiritual nature. When we perceive a
being in the world of Inspiration, we are not looking at some external
influence that the being is exerting upon another being, comparable
with the influence exerted by one physical being upon another; what
confronts us there is a relationship between two beings that comes
about solely through the inner character both of the one and of the
other. There is in the physical world one kind of relationship to
which this may bear comparison such a relationship as obtains
between the several sounds or letters of a word. Say we have before us
the word bold. The word comes about through the sounding
together of the sounds b-o-l-d. The sounds b and o, for example, do
not collide or react on one another in some external way; they act
together and each fulfils it part within the whole by virtue of its
inner character. The activity of observing in the world of
Inspiration can therefore be compared with reading. The beings
in that world present themselves to the observer like letters that he
must first learn and that will then be revealed to him in their
several relationships, forming as it were a spiritual script or
supersensible writing. Spiritual science may therefore avail itself of
this comparison and call the knowledge acquired through Inspiration:
the Reading of the Hidden Script.
How the Reading of the Hidden Script is done, and how what is read may
be communicated shall now be explained with reference to the earlier
chapters of the present book. A description was given in the first
place of the being of man, telling of how it is built up of several
members. Then it was shown how the world in which man is evolving has
itself passed through various stages of evolution the Saturn
condition, then the Sun, the Moon and now the Earth condition.
Imaginative cognition brings within our reach perceptions that make us
acquainted, on the one hand with the members of man's being, on the
other hand with the successive conditions of our Earth and the changes
it has undergone up to the present time. We then had to go further and
learn of the relationship that exists between the Saturn condition of
our Earth and the physical body of man, between the Sun condition and
his ether-body and so on. We were shown how the seed for the physical
body came into being as long ago as the Saturn condition, and has
continued developing throughout Sun, Moon and Earth conditions right
up to its present form. It became necessary also to show, for example,
what changes came about in the being of man owing to the separation of
the Sun from the Earth, and again what further changes were wrought in
him by the parallel event in respect of the Moon; and then what kind
of co-operation was needed to bring about those still later changes in
mankind that found expression during the Atlantean time and the epochs
that followed it the Indian, Persian, Egyptian and so on. The
picture that was given of these connections was derived not from
Imaginative perception, but from knowledge attained through
Inspiration, from Reading in the Hidden Script. In relation to this
reading the perceptions of Imagination are like the
individual letters or sounds. Nor is it only explanations of this kind
for which the reading is required. The course of man's life could not
be understood if we were to study it with the help of Imaginative
knowledge alone. We would, it is true, perceive how at death the
soul-and-spirit members disengage themselves from what remains behind
in the physical world; but we would not understand how the events that
happen to man after death are related to past and future conditions,
unless we already know our way about the world we perceived
Imaginatively. Without the knowledge acquired through Inspiration, the
Imaginative world is like a script at which we merely stare, without
being able to read it.
When the pupil of the Spirit goes forward from Imagination to
Inspiration, he very quickly realizes what a mistake it would be to
neglect to cultivate an understanding for the great events and
phenomena of the Universe and to want to restrict his attention to the
facts that bear upon his more immediate human interests. It can easily
happen that one who has not been initiated into these matters will
say: The one thing of importance for me is to learn about the
destiny of the soul of man after death. If I can receive information
upon that, then I am satisfied. Why does spiritual science set before
me such remote matters as the Saturn and Sun conditions of our Earth,
the separation of the Sun and later of the Moon from the
Earth, and so on? Whoever has been introduced in the right way to the
whole subject of higher knowledge will come to see that he cannot
attain authentic information about man's destiny after death, until he
has first learned about those greater themes that might have seemed
unnecessary. A picture of the condition into which man is brought
after death will remain for him quite unintelligible and therefore
worthless, if he cannot bring it together with conceptions that have
grown out of these more remote themes. The very simplest observation
that can be made by means of supersensible cognition requires him to
be acquainted with them. When, for instance, a plant passes from the
flowering stage and begins to bear fruit, then if we are watching it
with supersensible powers of observation, we see a change taking place
in an astral entity which in the flowering time has been enveloping
the plant from above like a cloud. But for the
fertilization as it is called (leading from flower to
fruit,) this astral entity would have passed on into an altogether
different form from the one it has assumed in consequence of
fertilization. And we can only comprehend the whole process when seen
with supersensible perception if we have prepared our understanding by
studying the great cosmic event which the Earth and all her
inhabitants experienced at the time of the separation of the Sun.
Before fertilization the plant it is in a similar condition to that of
the whole Earth before the Sun went out from her. After fertilization,
the flower of the plant is like the Earth was when the Sun had left
and the Moon forces were still within her. If we have mastered the
conceptions that can be acquired by studying the separation of the Sun
from the Earth, then the significance of the fertilization
of a flowering plant will present itself to us in a way we can express
by saying that before it the plant is in a Sun-like, and after it in a
Moon-like condition. It is not too much to say that the smallest event
in the world can only be rightly comprehended when we recognize in it
an image of the great cosmic events. Without this recognition we are
as far from understanding its real nature as we would be from
understanding a Raphael Madonna that was all covered over except for
one little patch of blue.
Everything that happens to man is in this way an image, having its
prototype amid those great events of cosmic evolution with which his
existence is bound up. If we would understand what supersensible
consciousness perceives in human life whether in the life
between birth and death, or in the life between death and a new birth
we shall find we are able to do so if we take to our help the
sublime conceptions that can be gained from dwelling on the great
events of cosmic evolution. These will furnish us with the key to an
understanding of the life of man. From the point of view of spiritual
science, study of Saturn, Sun and Moon evolution is thus at the same
time study of man.
Through Inspiration we learn how the Beings of the higher world are
related to one another. A still further stage of knowledge opens up
the possibility of coming to know these Beings in their innermost
nature. This stage may be given the name of Intuitive cognition. (the
words intuitive and intuition are sometimes
used for a kind of vague insight or sudden notion that may or may not
quite accord with truth. What is here meant by Intuition
is altogether different. It means a kind of cognition that is of the
utmost light-filled clarity, a cognition that carries with it absolute
assurance of its validity.) To have knowledge of an object perceived
by the senses is to be outside the object and judge it in
accordance with the impression it makes upon us from without. To know
a Spirit-Being through Intuition is to become one with that Being, to
be inwardly united with him. Stage by stage the pupil of the Spirit
rises to a knowledge of this kind. With Imagination, he is already
beyond feeling that his perceptions reveal the mere external
characteristics of the Beings he perceives. Imagination leads him to
recognize, in his perceptions, emanations of a living reality of soul
and spirit. Inspiration takes him a step further into the inner
essence of the spiritual Beings: he learns to understand what they are
to one another. In Intuition, he penetrates right into their inner
being.
Once again we can refer to the account of evolution that has been
given in this book, in order to demonstrate the significance of
Intuition. The foregoing chapters do not only relate how Saturn, Sun
and Moon evolution took their course, they also tell of Beings who
took part in this progress in many different ways. Allusion was made
to the Thrones or Spirits of Will, to the Spirits of Wisdom, Spirits
of Movement and so forth. And in connection with Earth evolution
itself, the Spirits of Lucifer and of Ahriman were mentioned. The
whole edifice of the Universe was traced back to Beings who all had
their share in bringing it into existence. What can be learned
concerning these Beings is acquired by Intuitive cognition. And the
Intuitive cognition is likewise needed if we want to understand the
course of human life. What is released from the physical body after
death passes through various stages, as time goes on. The situation in
which man finds himself immediately after death is, up to a point,
capable of description by the exercise of Imaginative cognition. What
happens later, however, when man is further on in the time between
death and a new birth, would have to remain totally incomprehensible
if Inspiration did not supervene. Inspiration is required to discover
what can be said about the life of man in Spirit-land when the time of
purification is over. Then comes a state where even Inspiration no
longer suffices, where it loses the way and fails to understand. In
the course of man's development between death and a new birth, he
enters upon a time where Intuition alone can follow him. The part of
man that undergoes this experience is however always in him,
and if we would understand it in its true inwardness, then we must
look for it also again by means of Intuition during the
time between birth and death. Whoever is content with a knowledge of
man acquired by Imagination and Inspiration will find himself without
means of access to what goes on in man's very innermost being from one
incarnation to the next. It is therefore only with Intuitive cognition
that adequate research can be made into repeated lives on Earth and
into the workings of Karma. Everything that claims to be true
information concerning these must be derived from research that is
made by means of Intuitive cognition. And if man desires knowledge of
himself in his inmost being, this too he can attain only through
Intuition. By means of Intuition he perceives that within him which
goes forward from one Earth-life to another.
Last Modified: 02-Nov-2024
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