LECTURE II
Identification with the Signs and Spiritual Realities of the
Imaginative World
We
will remind ourselves again of what I told you yesterday about
the actual relationship of man to the world. I said: In reality
it is Maya, illusion, to assume that as human beings of
soul-and-spirit we are inside our skin, that things are merely
round about us and we take their images into ourselves. In
reality, as human beings of soul-and-spirit, we live in the
things themselves. We could not become aware of them if our
experiences were not reflected to us by our organism.
Living in the ordinary physical world, the things are reflected
by our physical organism, by its sensory system, by its
thinking system, feeling system, willing system.
The
truth, then, is this: our organism is a reflecting
apparatus. What we experience is not produced in us by
our physical organism — which is an erroneous conception
of materialism — but it is reflected. Now just as little
as a mirror produces what is seen in it, does our organism
produce what we experience in our life of soul about the things
around us. And the materialist who asserts that the brain or
some other organ produces the experiences in our life of soul,
is stating, in regard to these things, the same as one who
declares that the face he sees when looking in a mirror,
belongs not to him but has been produced by the mirror.
The
truth of the matter, therefore, has to be experienced when we
progress, in the way described yesterday, to the stage of
occult reading. After due preparation we experience the more
fleeting, more fluctuating beings and happenings of the
spiritual world — more fleeting and fluctuating by
comparison, of course, with the physical world. We see them
inasmuch as we experience them in our astral body and they are
mirrored by our etheric body. And we experience these
reflections as pictures.
I
said yesterday that, generally speaking, we can regard these
pictures merely as signs of the spiritual reality. I
made this clear by pointing out that anyone who experienced
these pictures as dream-pictures (although they are far more
living than ordinary dream pictures) would be subject to error.
To regard these dream pictures as reality would be like someone
who regarded the word BAU (building) not merely as the sign of
the building but as the reality itself. We have to envisage
that when those fleeting, fluctuating pictures of the spiritual
world are reflected from outside by our etheric body, we have
the world before us like an open book, like a book which has
been opened for us but which we must first learn to read in the
right way. In general terms, this is correct. But there is one
principle which applies to experiences of the higher worlds
far, far more strongly than to those of the physical plane: it
is the principle that there are exceptions to everything, real
exceptions. Especially are there exceptions to those things of
which I have been speaking. Z his must be realised. What I have
said holds good in general and if we pay heed to it we can find
our bearings in the spiritual world. But there are exceptions
and I will explain more concretely the extent to which this is
so.
I
will take a definite case. Let us suppose that somebody who has
developed certain genuine clairvoyant powers, endeavours
— and this lies near to the hearts of many people —
to find, in the spiritual world, one who recently or some time
previously has passed through the gate of death and is now
living in the spiritual world in the existence which we
describe as the life between death and a new birth.
As
I emphasised yesterday, such a search is dependent upon the
grace of the spiritual world. It is an act of grace on the part
of the spiritual world to be able actually to behold the dead
whom we are seeking. As a rule, in such striving, curiosity
will certainly not be satisfied. Anyone who were to start
merely with the intention of satisfying his curiosity in
searching for someone who is dead, would either see
nothing at all or inevitably be exposed to errors of every
possible kind.
But
now we will assume that this is not the case, that there is an
important reason, recognised by the Beings of the spiritual
world, for meeting the dead. Let us assume that everything is
in order — to use a trivial expression — and that a
meeting with the dead is permissible. Here again I speak quite
generally. It will not be a simple matter of the
clairvoyant concerned transporting himself through
meditation into the spiritual world and there directing his
desires, his wishes or his thoughts to the dead in order to
have the grace of vision bestowed upon him. To embark on such
an undertaking presuming in advance that it will succeed,
would be an error. For as a rule, something quite different
will happen.
Please realise that one can only describe special cases; it is
not possible to give general, abstract theories when one is
speaking, as I am doing now, of a theme like this which
concerns the occult world. I can only give an example.
Let
us therefore assume that a seer has a justified reason for
coming into contact with someone who is dead and through
meditation, through concentration of his thoughts finds
measures which enable this contact to take place. To describe
the character of these measures would lead us too far today but
let us assume that they are right. If through meditation and
concentration the soul is really in the condition in which the
dead can be perceived, the seer may possibly, to begin with
— if he has not already had experiences in this sphere
— be very easily inclined to see something that he does
not connect at all with the manifestation of the dead or with
anything to do with him. He may see before him a widespread
world of pictures, pictures that are far more living
than those of ordinary dreams. Again, and again I must
emphasise, because so many errors are current in this respect,
that this world of pictures is a world of signs, signs of the
higher world. It is this world of signs that we learn to
understand. We experience inwardly mobile pictures, all kinds
of happenings that are connected with this or that personality.
This is experienced — only to begin with there is hardly
any resemblance to be found between what we are seeking and the
pictures that are experienced. But one thing reveals itself
when we are not on the wrong track: within this moving world of
pictures we shall experience something that seems to be
the most essential point. In the case of the other pictures,
you will say to yourselves: these pictures contain something
that reminds you of all kinds of things which might also arise
from your own memory. Although you have no remembrance of these
actual events, nevertheless it is possible — because they
are connected with what you have experienced — for them
to have given rise to remembrances that are interwoven with
fantasy. It is precisely now that the genuine clairvoyant must
be on the alert and remember that he is here concerned with a
world of pictures which might have been gathered
together from his memories. But there is some one point which
no memory presents. You can therefore make a precise
distinction between what might possibly be the result of
fantasy in connection with memories and the other element that
is there on its own, and around which everything else groups
itself. Of that one point you know that it is not a
memory, that it could never have come in a dream into your
field of vision. Certainly, one must have had a certain
practice in distinguishing dream-pictures from reality before
this difference can be seen quite precisely. But then the point
comes where one knows: There is something there.
I
will try to speak quite precisely. As a rule, this one thing
among the pictures may, in a sense, seem even to be
paradoxical, absurd. It is possible for something strange and
very curious to appear in a sequence of pictures which may
otherwise be so beautiful, so splendid, so powerful. The seer
will very often find that this experience passes away from him
again, that he really cannot begin to make anything of it.
Then, of course, he must make the attempt over and over again,
from the start. After he has had certain practice in seership,
he will find as a rule that again and again such a sequence of
pictures comes before him, pictures perhaps of a quite
different kind, but there will always be among them something
that is certainly the same as what previously constituted the
central point of the series of pictures.
Now
a certain stage of seership must have been attained if one is
to succeed at the first or second attempt in doing the right
things with these pictures. When the pictures are in front of
us, we must grasp them, be completely conscious
so that they do not fade away like dream-pictures. We must face
them just as we face a thing in the external world, when we
have it in our hand and can say: ‘I am here, and you are
there.’ We must be able to distinguish ourselves
from the picture and must not be absorbed by it.
In
order to achieve this, it is good to try deliberately to
change something in the picture as it stands before one.
Let us suppose that the picture is there in front of us and we
have a conscious hold of ourselves, being able to distinguish
ourselves from the picture … let us suppose that
some personality comes into the pictures and looks at us
with a frowning, unfriendly expression. And now try, while
remaining in the whole situation and without freeing ourselves
from the clairvoyant vision, now try to feel: How would it be
if I were really kind to this person, so that he no longer
looks at me frowningly, but with friendliness? If something
then changes in the world of pictures it is at once easier to
maintain our position within it.
The
next stage must be this … it is difficult to find the
right words because the affairs of the spiritual world are so
different from those of the physical world. ... The next stage
is that we must identify ourselves with the picture, with all
the pictures, sink down into them, become one with them.
For by becoming one with them we put an important truth into
execution, as we shall see. If I may use another trivial
expression here — we have to consume this whole, series
of pictures spiritually, devour them, take them into ourselves,
identify ourselves with them, sink into them. In other words,
we must realise and know: I have now distinguished
myself from these pictures, I have maintained my position
outside them, and now, by my own will, I sink into them, just
as if I were jumping into water in order to swim in it. —
And now comes the important experience — for now you
experience in your own soul everything that is expressed in
this series of pictures, as if one person were fighting or
wounding another or being kind to him. The experience,
therefore, is: I am the wounder, also the one who is wounded. I
am everything that is in this picture. It is as if you had a
picture before you, let us say, of someone who is being
beheaded and you experience yourself simultaneously as the one
who is doing the beheading and the one who is being beheaded.
It is in this real way that you experience yourself in this
whole fluctuating world of pictures. You yourself are every
picture, every movement in it. Then the picture as such, as an
Imagination, becomes invisible, but the inner
experiences as such become all the more full of meaning.
You cease, now, to behold the picture, but you live in a world
of rich experience.
When we really succeed in living right in the pictures, the
second act begins. But it needs by no means follow
immediately.
From this point onwards, a great deal of discouragement may be
in store for seership. It may quite well happen that the moment
comes when the resolve is made to sink down into the pictures,
to swim in them, and lo! they have vanished like a dream or
like something that is forgotten. It may happen —
but it will be in the rarest of cases — that the
experience of which I shall now speak, comes immediately.
But most often of all, what will happen is that the whole
episode seems to have entirely vanished, like a dream. Now as
genuine clairvoyants we must realise that it need not
necessarily be a fact that it has gone altogether. The second
experience — which, as I have said, follows in the rarest
of cases immediately upon the first — may come much
later, may come right out from among the day or night
experiences. For very often, what we have thus consumed takes
time to be wholly united with us, to be wholly
‘digested,’ by the soul. It may take a long time. ... But when
we are sufficiently united with the experience, when it is
sufficiently digested, the moment comes when we know: Now I am
connected with the personality, or rather with the
individuality of the dead and he is sending his thoughts
into me. Now I am thinking what the dead is experiencing in his
soul. That is what I am thinking now. I am connected
with him; he is now speaking to me and I am listening to
him.
In
reality it is the picture with which we have united ourselves
or the series of pictures we have taken into ourselves which
has now become one with us — it is this that really hears
and takes in the truth. As a rule, this hearing, this spiritual
hearing is no longer bound up with pictures but is borne by the
consciousness that the soul of the seer is connected with the
dead and is enabling the dead to say to him things that cannot
be heard by the physical ear, nor perceived with physical sight
but are received together with the thoughts. Then the seer
knows: This is not thy thought; it is what the dead is
saying to thee. —
As
you can realise, a certain preparation is necessary to come
near an individual who has passed through the gate of death
— a preparation which can be described as I have just
done. Then, when we have reached this stage of hearing the
dead, after having identified ourselves with the picture, all
possibility of delusion is eliminated. For delusion could only
be like a delusion on the physical plane if I were to meet a
human being and take him to be somebody else. That, as a rule,
will not occur; a human being is recognised on the physical
plane. When I meet a Mr. X on the physical plane, I need not
prove to myself on the basis of theoretical principles: ‘That
is Mr. X.’ The being himself whom I meet enables me to
recognise him. As soon as we stand before a being of the
spiritual world, we know that we are in his presence ...
although in the spiritual world he naturally speaks to us in a
spiritual way, communicating something to us in a spiritual
way.
What I have just described to you denotes the transition from
the signs with so many meanings which we read and do not
attempt to interpret with the intellect, but by absorbing,
become one with them. We ‘consume’ them, as it were. Through
the process which is set going in the soul as the result of
having become one with the pictures, we prepare ourselves to
hear the objective process, the objective reality.
The
reading is a truly living process — one's very soul has
to be directed to it. Something quite different is demanded
than is ever demanded on the physical plane. Suppose someone
were to publish a book on the physical plane and were to demand
that in order to understand the book, we must first eat it,
consume it ... Then suppose we were so organized that we could
digest an ‘A’ in a different way from an ‘I’ and, through the
inner process, realise the difference. If we could experience
all this, then the process would be comparable with the
spiritual process just described.
We
cannot approach a spiritual happening or a spiritual being
until we have given up our whole soul to understanding the
happening or being concerned. We must ourselves have become one
with the signs or letters of the spiritual world. We must read
— and then, while we are reading, we must hear,
spiritually.
I
have said that this holds good as a general principle. But in
Spiritual Science we must speak quite accurately. I say, ‘as a
general principle,’ for there are also exceptions. For
instance, it may happen that some seer, when in a clairvoyant
state, does not only experience a series of pictures as I have
described, but actually experiences as a picture, as an
Imagination, something that resembles the dead as he was in
life, as an external figure. Then, of course, the seer may
think that he is confronting the dead. But he can never be
quite sure. It may be so, but it need not necessarily be
absolutely certain. In order to explain this case, let me again
make a comparison. Our ordinary script, printed script or
writing script, consists of signs. If I write the word BAU
(building), this word in itself has no resemblance whatever to
a building. But it was not always so in the evolution of
writing. If we go back to olden times we find a picture-script.
Men drew pictures which still had a resemblance to what they
were meant to represent. And it was out of this pictorial
script that our script, consisting of signs or letters,
evolved.
It
is the same with the clairvoyance which may arise as the result
of development by our Rosicrucian methods or the atavistic,
more or less primitive clairvoyance which may arise as the
result of certain conditions.
Just as our modern script of signs and letters is something
that has developed, and the pictorial script is more primitive,
so the clairvoyance which immediately sees what is being looked
for, is a more primitive form. It is precisely developed
clairvoyance that often will not immediately be able to see
what is there to be seen. With developed clairvoyance things
will be as I have described. But there are also exceptions, as
for example a man may have the powers, without having trained
his clairvoyance, simply from the nature of his organism. In
the pictures which come to a natural clairvoyant there may be
far more similarity with the spiritual happenings than there is
in the pictures which come to the trained clairvoyant who
has to go through the whole procedure I have described.
Naturally, however, primitive clairvoyance can never succeed in
reaching true Imaginations, can never learn anything with
certainty. And even when things are known with certainty, they
are only happenings which are connected with earthly life.
I
will give you an example. Suppose someone has died and before
his death put a Will somewhere, without being able to tell
anyone where it is. He dies. Some person endowed with
primitive, untrained clairvoyance may, in a kind of trancelike,
imaginative condition, come into connection with the dead man.
This person can be led by the dead so that he can actually
discover the place where the Will was placed. The clairvoyant
in question may even be able to show the place, the cupboard,
for example, where it lies. Such things may happen, but these
cases are always connected with the physical plane and with
something that has happened on the physical plane. They may be
very complicated, but they are always connected in some way
with the physical life.
One
will not come much further than this in the sphere of primitive
clairvoyance. To move about with absolute clarity and certainty
in the spiritual world the preparations of which I have spoken
are necessary.
In
order that in the following lectures we may get down to details
of spiritual reading and hearing, I must still say something
more precise about what I have told you.
I
said that what lies behind the Maya of external experience
becomes a truth the moment we enter the spiritual world in the
way described. It is not enough to see a picture through
clairvoyance and just to see pictures as we see beings on the
physical plane. That is not enough. We must be able to plunge
right into the pictures, we must make it come true that we
are in the spiritual world. We do this by submerging
ourselves in the pictures. We put ourselves consciously
into a condition in which we also are under other
circumstances, but without knowing anything about it. If,
therefore, I have this series of pictures, with what I have
described as the centre-point of them, I must go right into
them, I must consume them, must be within them.
What I have described is a spiritual experience and what
matters about a spiritual experience is that we understand it.
To understand it we must be able to practice spiritual
self-observation. During the process of submerging ourselves in
the pictures, something happens that we feel — we feel it
in ourselves. Just think ... I have told you that we become
conscious of our own position — separate from the
Imagination ... and then we sink into the pictures. When
we are still consciously standing before them, the feeling is
different from what it is when we have sunk down into them. I
must try to describe these two feelings.
The
moment we have sunk down into them, knowing that now we have
made these pictures disappear by identifying ourselves with
them, in that moment we are seized with the feeling of
insufficiency concerning ourselves. These things are difficult
to describe. The feeling is this: ‘I am now only a part
of what I was before — only one part.’
Naturally, such observations must be made again and again
before we are able to interpret these things rightly.
Again, a comparison is best. It is just as though one had a 12
kilos weight, and then, without anything happening, the 12
kilos weight suddenly became only a 1 kilo weight. The feeling
is: ‘You are only one-twelfth of yourself and the other
eleven-twelfths are outside in the universe.’ It can be
expressed in a diagram. One feels oneself somewhere out in the
Universe, but with one's whole being. One feels: ‘Out there in
the Universe are still eleven-twelfths of me; my being is
distributed.’ It can be expressed by saying: ‘I myself am at
some point in a circumference and the other eleven-twelfths are
distributed around that circumference. Here am I, at the point
AI and there are the other eleven-twelfths.’
Diagram 1
At
this stage we realise that we are actually within the Universe;
we have become one-twelfth part of ourselves. We have left the
other eleven-twelfths of our being in a circumference.
The
occult expression can be used here. We can say: Man becomes a
living Zodiac. Man has himself become the Zodiac. Then comes
the hearing; it comes from within that Zodiac. So, if I
keep my former example, that of speaking with one who is dead,
the dead is speaking from within the Zodiac.
Diagram 2
Just think of the difference between this and an experience in
the physical world. In the physical world we feel enclosed
within our skin; objects are outside, and they seem to come
into us as we look at them. In the spiritual experience we are
outside at some point, in one-twelfth of the spiritual horizon.
Now the world at which we are looking is within our
circumference. We look inwards from outside; in ordinary
life we look outwards from within. And now there come what seem
to be spiritual voices from within, with which the dead speaks
to us — we become aware of them when we accustom
ourselves to listen in a different way, when we learn to pay
attention in a different way. More exact details will be given
— I will now just indicate it figuratively. At this stage
we may have the feeling: ‘I am aware of what the dead is
saying; he is speaking within the circumference ... I hear him
only when my spiritual ear is turned for instance, to the 5
(see diagram). Now he ceases to speak there ... but he goes on
again, and now I only hear him when I turn my spiritual ear to
another point (i i) and so on.’ Knowledge comes gradually when
seven voices, seven different voices are distinguished within
the circumference. Seven voices have to be distinguished. They
are heard in the most diverse ways, according to the point from
which they are heard. Everything that we experience here speaks
from within the circumference, as it were from seven
voices.
We
have now gone out into the circumference of the Universe ...
whatever we are to experience is within this circumference. We
must learn to feel ourselves as one part of that circumference
and with a kind of cosmic humility, shall I say, make no claim
to be anything more than one-twelfth of the circumference. But
the other eleven-twelfths have to be called to our aid. We must
endeavour to acquire the faculty of distinguishing what speaks
to us. We must differentiate in all kinds of ways what a being
can say to us in this way.
Again here, only a comparison makes things clear. — What
speaks to us from within this sphere can really be called:
Spiritual Vowels. And everything that we ourselves are,
everything that lives at the periphery are Spiritual
Consonants. Consonants and vowels work together; the
consonants are stationary when we have poured out our being in
twelve parts into the Universe; the vowels move within it,
bringing to expression what is to be voiced.
Once again, I will return to our example. — I am seeking
for one who is dead, trying to come into contact with him. A
series of pictures appears to me and, among the pictures,
something that seems paradoxical, perhaps even absurd. I
realise however that this is something which could not
have come to me from my own life of soul. Then I succeed in
sinking down into the pictures, I become one with them. At this
moment I stand at a definite point — A.
My
being is so submerged in what is outside that I have released,
as it were, one-twelfth of my being.
You
must remember that language must be precise when occult
matters are spoken of. I have told you that the series of
pictures belongs to us; we have this series of pictures in
ourselves; the pictures are within that one-twelfth, and
everything else that cannot become one with these pictures is
now distributed over the periphery. At, this stage, for a short
or long period, we may really be able to receive the spiritual
voice, the communication of the dead. Then we hear the dead
speaking from the periphery that we ourselves have formed
around that with which we want to be related.
Diagram 3
What is it that has really been done? We have gone out of
ourselves, have become one with the Universe, but with only one
part of the Universe. Therefore, we have ourselves to become
part of the Universe, to grasp with the whole of our being that
of which we want to become aware. We have, as it were, built a
spiritual aura around one part ... but we cannot build it
completely, we can only stand at one point; we have to build
the aura out of what we, ourselves, are not.
Again, let us repeat. — I perceive a series of pictures.
To begin with I stand outside these pictures, but then I plunge
into them; thereby I build a cosmic sphere around what I want
to perceive; I build it with what I have given up, offered up.
This cosmic sphere contains within itself — like seven
planets — the vowels through which the dead can
speak to us when we ourselves form the consonants through the
twelve-foldness of our being.
We
can only come into connection with a being of the
spiritual world by enfolding him, embracing him in such a way
that this very act of enfolding forms the cosmic consonants;
the being can then announce himself to us in the cosmic vowels:
The cosmic vowels can then act together with the cosmic
consonants which we ourselves have fashioned. Then reading and
hearing work together. Thus, do we penetrate into a particular
sphere in the spiritual world.
Now
I beg you not to be led by what I have said into the error of
thinking that what I have described has anything to do with the
physical Zodiac or with the seven physical planets. That is not
the case and is not meant so. What happens is that in the
twelve-foldness a cosmic sphere is built around the being whom
we want to find. We build a world for ourselves.
Whenever, on the physical plane, we want to get to know
something, we have to look at it from many different sides,
from many standpoints; we have to go around it. In the
spiritual world this must become a reality. Not only
must we go around it with our whole being, we must so divide
our being that we create a periphery around what we perceive.
Every time there is a real spiritual perception, a spiritual
periphery of this kind has been created. And only because those
Divine Beings whom we have learnt to know as the higher
Hierarchies have done this on a vast scale, has the Zodiac
appeared.
Suppose that what I have described has been attained. —
Intercourse with someone who is dead has been achieved. Suppose
this intercourse could be consolidated, held static ... then
this consolidation would represent a human being — a
spiritual human being, of course, divided into twelve parts,
twelve fixed stars. If that which is perceived could be
consolidated, a planetary system would arise. Inasmuch as the
Gods did this and consolidated it into a gigantic plan, our
world-system arose. Whereas we, in our single acts of
clairvoyance create something transitory which naturally passes
away again when the clairvoyance is over.
Our
whole world-system is consolidated clairvoyance of the Gods, of
the higher Hierarchies. That is why we shall know this world
only when our knowledge is based on spiritual foundations.
The
physical world is something that is not at all real, it is just
as little real as the water of a flowing river is real. The
Spiritual alone is real. So it is too, with a whole solar
system. Thus, we must learn to know the solar system in its
reality, by deciphering it in spiritual reading and hearing. In
many respects we have already done this.
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