A Road To Self Knowledge - R Steiner
A Road To Self Knowledge - R Steiner
A Road To Self Knowledge - R Steiner
By
Rudolf Steiner
Contents:
Introduction
1 - Meditation (First)
In which the Attempt is made to obtain a True Idea of the Physical
Body.
2 - Meditation (Second)
In which the Attempt is made to form a True Conception of the
Elemental or Etheric Body
3 - Meditation (Third)
In which the Attempt is made to form an Idea of Clairvoyant
Cognition of the Elemental World
4 - Meditation (Fourth)
In which the Attempt is made to form a Conception of the
Guardian of the Threshold
5 - Meditation (Fifth)
In which the Attempt is made to form an Idea of the Astral Body
6 - Meditation (Sixth)
In which the Attempt is made to form a Conception of the EgoBody or Thought-Body
7 - Meditation (Seventh)
In which the Attempt is made to form an Idea of the Character of
Experience in Super-sensible Worlds
8 - Meditation (Eighth)
In which the Attempt is made to form an Idea of the Way in which
Man beholds his Repeated Earth-Lives
Introduction
It is the endeavour of this treatise to convey spiritual-scientific
knowledge concerning the being of man. The method of
representation is arranged in such a way that the reader may grow
into what is depicted, so that, in the course of reading, it becomes
for him a kind of self-conference. If this soliloquy takes on such a
form that thereby hitherto concealed forces, which can be
awakened in every soul, reveal themselves, then the reading leads
to a real inner work of the soul; and the latter can see itself
gradually urged on to that soul-journeying, which truly advances
towards the beholding of the spiritual world. What has to be
imparted, therefore, has been given in the form of eight
Meditations, which can be actually practised. If this is done, they
can be adapted for imparting to the soul, through its own inner
deepening, that about which they speak.
It has been my aim on the one hand, to give something to those
readers who have already made themselves conversant with the
literature dealing with the domain of the supersensible, as it is here
understood. Thus through the style of the description, through the
communication directly connecting with the soul's experience,
perhaps those who have knowledge of supersensible life will here
find something that may appear of importance to them. On the
other hand, many a one can find that just through this method of
representation profit may be gained by those who yet stand far
distant from the achievements of Spiritual Science.
Although this work is intended as an amplification of my other
Rudolf Steiner.
Munich
August 1912
First Meditation
In which the Attempt is made to obtain a True Idea of the Physical
Body
When the soul is surrendered to the phenomena of the outer world
by means of physical perception, it cannot be said - after true selfanalysis - that the soul perceives these phenomena, or that it
actually experiences the things of the outer world. For, during the
time of surrender, in its devotion to the outer world, the soul
knows in truth nothing of itself. The fact is rather that the sunlight
itself, radiating from things through space in various colours, lives
or experiences itself within the soul. When the soul enjoys any
event, at the moment of enjoyment it actually is joy in so far as it is
conscious of being anything. Joy experiences itself in the soul.
The soul is one with its experience of the world. It does not
experience itself as something separate which feels joy, admiration,
delight, satisfaction, or fear. It actually is joy, admiration, delight,
satisfaction, and fear. If the soul would always admit this fact, then
and only then would the occasions when it retires from the
experience of the outer world and contemplates itself by itself
appear in the right light. These moments would then appear as
forming a life of quite a special character, which at once shows
itself to be entirely different from the ordinary life of the soul.
It is with this special kind of life that the riddles of the soul's
existence begin to dawn upon our consciousness. And these riddles
are, in fact, the source of all other riddles of the world. For two
worlds - an outer and an inner - present themselves to the spirit of
man, directly the soul for a longer or shorter time ceases to be one
with the outer world and withdraws into the loneliness of its own
existence.
Now this withdrawal is no simple process, which, having been once
accomplished, may be repeated again in much the same way. It is
much more like the beginning of a pilgrimage into worlds
previously unknown. When once this pilgrimage has been begun,
every step made will call forth others, and will also be the
preparation for these others. It is the first step which makes the
soul capable of taking the next one. And each step brings fuller
knowledge of the answer to the question: "What is Man in the true
sense of the word?" Worlds open up which are hidden from the
ordinary conception of life. And yet only in those worlds can the
facts be found which will reveal the truth about this very
conception. And even if no answer proves all-embracing and final
the answers obtained through the soul's inner pilgrimage go
beyond everything which the outer senses and the intellect bound
up with them can ever give. For this " something more " is
necessary to man, and he will find that this is so, when he really
and earnestly analyses his own nature.
At the outset of such a pilgrimage through the realms of our own
soul, hard logic and common sense are necessary. They form a safe
starting-point for pushing on into the supersensible realms, which
the soul, after all, is yearning to reach. Many a soul would prefer
not to trouble about such a starting-point, but rather penetrate
the soul's experience. Its processes are such as to allow the soul to
live through it and to gain experience of itself in it.
A time will come, however, when this will not be so. The life in the
body will some day be subject to laws quite different from those
which it obeys to-day whilst living for you, and for the sake of your
soul's experience. It will become subject to those laws, according to
which the material and forces in nature are acting, laws which have
nothing more to do with you and your life. The body to which you
owe the experience of your soul, will be absorbed in the general
world-process and exist there in a form which has nothing more in
common with anything that you experience within yourself
Such a reflection may call forth in the inner experience all the
horror of the thought of death, but without the admixture of the
merely personal feelings which are ordinarily connected with this
thought. When such personal feelings prevail it is not easy to
establish the calm, deliberate state of mind necessary for obtaining
knowledge.
It is natural that man should want to know about death and about
a life of the soul independent of the dissolution of the body. But the
relation existing between man himself and these questions is perhaps more than anything else in the world - apt to confuse his
objective judgment and to make him accept as genuine answers
only those which are inspired by his own desires or wishes.
For it is impossible to obtain true knowledge of anything in the
spiritual realms without being able with complete unconcern to
accept a "No " quite as willingly as a "Yes." And we need only look
conscientiously into ourselves to become distinctly aware of the
fact that we do not accept the knowledge of an extinction of the life
of the soul together with the death of the body with the same
equanimity as the opposite knowledge which teaches the continued
existence of the soul beyond death.
No doubt there are people who quite honestly believe in the
annihilation of the soul on the extinction of the life of the body,
and who arrange their lives accordingly. But even these are not
unbiased with regard to such a belief. It is true that they do not
allow the fear of annihilation, and the wish for continued existence,
to get the better of the reasons which are distinctly in favour of
such annihilation. So far the conception of these people is more
logical than that of others who unconsciously construct or accept
arguments in favour of a continued existence, because there is an
ardent desire in the secret depths of their souls for such continued
existence. And yet the view of those who deny immortality is no
less biased, only in a different way. There are amongst them some
who build up a certain idea of what life and existence are. This idea
forces them to think of certain conditions, without which life is
impossible.
Their view of existence leads them to the conclusion that the
conditions of the soul's life can no longer be present when the body
falls away. Such people do not notice that they have themselves
from the very first fixed an idea of the conditions necessary for the
existence of life, and cannot believe in a continuation of life after
death for the simple reason that, according to their own
very thought, with the result that it would feel itself to be devoid of
meaning. But nevertheless this thought might be the actual truth of
the matter, even although it made the soul feel itself to be
meaningless.
When the soul turns its eyes to the body, it ought only to take into
consideration that which the body may reveal to it. It then seems as
if in nature such laws were active as drive matter and forces into a
continual process of change, and as if these laws controlled the
body and after a while drew it into that general process of mutual
change.
You may put this idea in any way you like: it may be scientifically
admissible, but with regard to true reality it proves itself to be quite
impossible. You may find it to be the only idea which seems
scientifically clear and sensible, and that all the rest are only
subjective beliefs. You may imagine that it is so, but you cannot
adhere to this idea with a really unbiased mind. And that is the
point.
Not that which the soul according to its own nature feels to be a
necessity, but only that which the outer world, to which the body
belongs, makes evident, ought to be taken into consideration. After
death this outer world absorbs the matter and forces of the body,
which then follow laws that are quite indifferent to that which
takes place in the body during life. These laws (which are of a
physical and chemical nature) have just the same relation to the
body as they have to any other lifeless thing of the outer world. It is
impossible to imagine that this indifference of the outer world with
truth. In fact, both those who deny and those who believe in
immortality think in this way. The former will probably say that
the conditions of the bodily processes during life are involved in
the laws which act upon the body after death; but they are
mistaken if they believe that they are really capable of imagining
these laws to be in a different relation to the body during life when
it is the vehicle of the soul from that which prevails after death.
The only idea possible in itself is that the special combination of
forces which comes into existence with the body, remains quite as
indifferent to the body in its character of a vehicle for the soul, as
that combination of forces which produces the processes in the
dead body. This indifference is not existent on the part of the soul,
but on the part of the matter and the forces of the body. The soul
gains experience of itself by means of the body, but the body lives
with, in, and through the outer world and does not allow any more
importance to the soul as such than to the processes of the outer
world. One comes to the conclusion that the heat and cold of the
outer world have an influence upon the circulation of the blood in
our body which is analogous to that of fear and shame which exist
within the soul.
So, first of all, we feel within ourselves the laws of the outer world
active in that special combination of materials which manifests
itself as the form of the human body. We feel this body as a
member of the outer world, but remain ignorant of its inner
workings. External science of the present day gives some
information as to how the laws of the outer world combine within
that particular entity, which presents itself as the human body.
We may hope that this information will grow more complete in the
future. But such increasing information can make no difference
whatever to the way in which the soul has to think of its relation to
the body. It will, on the contrary, bring more and more into
evidence that the laws of the outer world remain in the same
relation to the soul before and after death. It is an illusion to expect
that the progress of the knowledge of nature will show how far the
bodily processes are agents of the life of the soul. We shall more
and more clearly recognise that which takes place in the body
during life, but the processes in question will always be felt by the
soul as being outside it in the same way as the processes in the
body after death.
The body must therefore appear within the outer world as a
combination of forces and substances, which exists by itself and is
explainable by itself as a member of this outer world. Nature
causes a plant to grow and again decomposes it. Nature rules the
human body, and causes it to pass away within her own sphere. If
man takes up his position to nature with such ideas, he is able to
forget himself and all that is in him and feel his body as a member
of the outer world. If he thinks in such a way of its relations to
himself and to nature, he experiences in connection with himself
that which we may call his physical body.
Second Meditation
In which the Attempt is made to form a True Conception of the
Elemental or Etheric Body
Through the idea which the soul has to form in connection with the
fact of death, it may be driven into complete uncertainty with
regard to its own being. This will be the case when it believes that it
cannot obtain knowledge of any other world but the world of the
senses and of that which the intellect is able to ascertain about this
world. The ordinary life of the soul directs its attention to the
physical body.
It sees that body being absorbed after death into the workshop of
nature, which has no connection with that which the soul
experiences before death as its own existence. The soul may indeed
know (through the preceding Meditation) that the physical body
during life bears the same relation to it as after death, but this does
not lead it further than to the acknowledgment of the inner
independence of its own experiences up to the moment of death.
What happens to the physical body after death is evident from
observation of the outer world. But such observation is not possible
with regard to its inner experience. In so far then as it perceives
itself through the senses, the soul in its ordinary life cannot see
beyond the boundary of death. If the soul is incapable of forming
any ideas which go beyond that outer world which absorbs the
body after death, then with regard to all that concerns its own
A man may carry out the inner strengthening of the life of his soul
which has been indicated for a long period without perhaps
anything happening in his inner life which is able to alter his usual
way of thinking with regard to the world. Suddenly, however, the
following may occur. Naturally the incident to be described might
not occur in exactly the same way to two different persons. But if
we arrive at a conception of one experience of this kind, we shall
have gained an understanding of the whole matter in question.
A moment may occur in which the soul gets an inner experience of
itself in quite a new way. At the beginning it will generally happen
that the soul during sleep wakes up, as it were, in a dream. But we
feel at once that this experience cannot be compared with ordinary
dreams. We are completely shut off from the world of sense and
intellect, and yet we feel the experience in the same way as when
we are standing fully awake before the outer world in ordinary life.
We feel compelled to picture the experience in ourselves. For this
purpose we use ideas such as we have in ordinary life, but we know
very well that we are experiencing things different from those to
which such ideas are normally attached. These ideas are only used
as a means of expression for an experience which we have not had
before, and which we are also able to know that it is impossible for
us to have in ordinary life.
We feel, for instance, as though thunderstorms were all around us.
We hear thunder and see lightning. And yet we know we are in our
own room. We feel permeated by a force previously quite unknown
to us. Then we imagine we see rents in the walls around us, and we
feel compelled to say to ourselves or to some one we think is near
Third Meditation
In which the Attempt is made to form an Idea of Clairvoyant
Cognition of the Elemental World
When we have perceptions by means of the elemental body and not
through the physical senses, we experience a world that remains
unknown to perception of the senses and to ordinary intellectual
thinking. If we wish to compare this world with something
belonging to ordinary life, we shall find nothing more appropriate
than the world of memory. Just as recollections emerge from the
innermost soul, so also do the supersensible experiences of the
elemental body. In the case of a memory-picture the soul knows
that it is related to an earlier experience in the world of the senses.
In a similar way the supersensible conception implies a relation.
Just as the recollection by its very nature presents itself as
something which cannot be described as a mere picture of the
imagination, so does also the supersensible conception. The latter
wrests itself from the soul's experience, but manifests itself
immediately as an inner experience that is related to something
external. It is by means of recollection that a past experience
becomes present to the soul. But it is by means of a supersensible
conception that something, which at some time can be found
somewhere in the supersensible world, becomes an inner
experience of the soul. The very nature of Supersensible
conceptions impresses upon our mind that they are to be looked
upon as communications from a supersensible world manifesting
The outer and inner experiences melt into one, into a feeling of life,
hitherto unknown to the soul, concerning which, however, the soul
knows that it could not be felt if it were only living within the outer
world by means of the senses or by its ordinary feelings and
recollections. We feel, moreover, that during this condition of the
soul something is penetrating into it from a world hitherto
unknown. We cannot, however, arrive at a conception of this
unknown something. We have the experience but can form no idea
of it. Now we shall find that when we have such an experience we
get a feeling as if there were a hindrance in our physical bodies
preventing us from forming a conception of that which is
penetrating into the soul. If, however, we continue the inner efforts
of our soul we shall, after a while, feel that we have overcome our
own corporeal resistance.
The physical apparatus of the intellect had hitherto only been able
to form ideas in connection with experiences in the world of the
senses. It is at the outset incapable of raising to a picture that
which wants to manifest itself from out of the supersensible world.
It must first be so prepared as to be able to do this. In the same
way as a child is surrounded by the outer world, but has to have his
intellectual apparatus prepared by experience in that world before
he is able to form ideas of his surroundings, so is mankind in
general unable to form an idea of the supersensible world.
The clairvoyant who wishes to make progress prepares his own
apparatus for forming ideas so that it will work on a higher level in
exactly the same way as that of a child is prepared to work in the
world of the senses. He makes his strengthened thoughts work
Fourth Meditation
In which the Attempt is made to form a Conception of the
Guardian of the Threshold
When the soul has attained the faculty of making observations
whilst remaining outside the physical body, certain difficulties may
arise with regard to its emotional life. It may find itself compelled
to take up quite a different position towards itself from that to
which it was formerly accustomed.
The soul was accustomed to regard the physical world as outside
itself, while it considered all inner experience as its own particular
possession. To supersensible surroundings, however, it cannot take
up the same position as to the outer world. As soon as the soul
perceives the supersensible world around it, it must merge with it
to a certain extent: it cannot consider itself as separate from these
surroundings as it does from the outer world. Through this fact all
that can be designated as our own inner world in relation to the
supersensible surroundings assumes a certain character which is
not easily reconcilable with the idea of inward privacy. We can no
longer say, "I think," "I feel," or "I have my thoughts and fashion
them as I like." But we must say instead, "Something thinks in me,
something makes emotions flash forth in me, something forms
thoughts and compels them to come forward in an absolutely
definite way and make their presence felt in my consciousness."
Now this feeling may contain something exceedingly depressing
when the manner in which the supersensible experience presents
will make more and more clear and decisive the exact value of our
own soul.
We feel ourselves and our whole life to be steeped in an error. And
yet this error is distinct from other errors. The others are thought;
but this is a living experience. An error that is only thought may be
removed when the wrong thought is replaced by the right one. But
the error that has been experienced has become part of the life of
our soul itself; we ourselves are the error, we cannot simply correct
it, for, think as we will, it is there, it is part of reality, and that, too,
our own reality. Such an experience is a crushing one for the "self."
We feel our inmost being painfully rejected by all that we desire.
This pain, which is felt at a certain stage in the pilgrimage of the
soul, is far beyond anything which can be felt as pain in the
physical world. And therefore it may surpass everything which we
have hitherto become able to master in the life of our soul.
It may have the effect of stunning us. The soul stands before the
anxious question: Whence shall I gather strength to carry the
burden laid upon me? And the soul must find that strength within
its own life. It consists in something that may be characterised as
inner courage, inner fearlessness.
In order now to be able to proceed further in the pilgrimage of the
soul, we must have developed so far that the strength which
enables us to bear our experiences will well up from within us and
produce this inner courage and inner fearlessness in a degree never
required for life in the physical body. Such strength is only
produced by true self-knowledge. In fact it is only at this stage of
believed itself to be. The soul must be able to say to itself: "That
which until now has seemed to me to be my surest truth, I must
now, on the other side of the threshold of the supersensible world,
be able to consider as my deepest error."
Before such a demand the soul may well recoil. The feeling may be
so strong that the necessary steps would seem a surrender of its
own being, and an acknowledgment of its own nothingness, so that
it admits more or less completely on the threshold its own
powerlessness to fulfil the demands put before it. This
acknowledgment may take all possible forms. It may appear merely
as an instinct and seem to the pupil who thinks and acts upon it as
something quite different from what it really is. He may, for
instance, feel a great dislike to all supersensible truths. He may
consider them as day dreams, or imaginary fancies.
He does so only because in those depths of his soul of which he is
ignorant he has a secret fear of these truths. He feels that he can
only live with that which is admitted by his senses and his
intellectual judgment. He therefore avoids arriving at the threshold
of the supersensible world, and he veils the fact of his avoidance of
it by saying: " That which is supposed to lie behind that threshold
is not tenable by reason or by science." The fact is simply that he
loves reason and science such as he knows them, because they are
bound up with his ego. This is a very, frequent form of self-love and
cannot as such be brought into the supersensible world.
It may also happen that there is not only this instinctive halt before
the threshold. The pupil may consciously proceed to the threshold
and then turn back, because he fears that which lies before him. He
will then not easily be able to blot out from the ordinary life of his
soul the effect of thus approaching it. The effect will be that
weakness will spread over the whole of his soul's life.
What ought to take place is this, that the pupil on entering the
supersensible world should make himself able to renounce that
which in ordinary life he considers as the deepest truth and to
adapt himself to a different way of feeling and judging things. But
at the same time he must keep in mind that when he again
confronts the physical world, he must make use of the ways of
feeling, and judging that are suitable for this physical world. He
must not only learn to live in two different worlds, but also to live
in each in quite a different way, and he must not allow his sound
judgment, which he needs for ordinary life in the world of reason
and of the senses, to be encroached upon by the fact that he is
obliged to make use of another kind of discernment while in
another world.
To take up such a position is difficult for human nature, and the
capacity for doing so is only acquired through continued energetic
and patient strengthening of our soul-life. Any one who goes
through the experiences of the threshold realises that it is a boon to
the ordinary life of the soul not to be led so far.
The feelings that awaken are such that one cannot but think that
this boon proceeds from some powerful entity, who protects man
from the danger of undergoing the dread of self-annihilation at the
threshold. Behind the outer world of ordinary life there is another.
Fifth Meditation
In which the Attempt is made to form an Idea of the Astral Body
When we experience through our elemental body a surrounding
supersensible world, we feel ourselves less separated from that
world than we are from physical surroundings when in our
physical body. And yet we bear a relation to these supersensible
surroundings, which may be expressed by saying that we have
attached to ourselves certain substances of the elemental world in
the form of an elemental body, just as in the physical outer world
we carry some of its materials and forces attached to us in the
shape of our physical body.
We observe that this is so when we want to find our way about in
the supersensible world outside the physical body. It may happen
that we have before us some fact or being of the supersensible
world. It may be there, and we can behold it, but we do not know
what it is. If we are strong enough, we may drive it away, but only
by carrying ourselves back into the world of the senses by energetic
concentration upon our experiences in that world.
We are, however, unable to remain in the supersensible world and
compare with other beings or facts the being or the fact perceived.
And yet it is only by so doing that we could form a correct estimate
of what is beheld. Thus our "sight" in the supersensible world may
be limited to the perception of single things without the faculty of
moving freely from one thing to another. We then feel fettered to
that single thing.
We may now look for the reason of this limitation. This can only be
found when through further inner development the life of our soul
has been still more strengthened and we arrive at a point when this
limitation is no longer there. And then we shall discover that the
reason why we could not move from one thing to another is to be
found in our own soul. We learn that sight in the supersensible
world differs in this way from perception in the world of the senses.
One can, for instance, in the physical world see every visible thing
when one has got sound eyes.
If one sees one thing one can also, with the same eyes, see all other
things. This is not so in the supersensible world. One can have the
organ of supersensible perception developed in such a way that one
can experience this or that fact, but if another fact is to be
perceived one's organ must first be specially developed for this
purpose. Such a development gives one the feeling that an organ
has awoke to a particular region of the supersensible world.
One feels as if one's elemental body were in a kind of sleep with
regard to the supersensible world, and as if it had to be awoke with
regard to each particular thing. It is in fact possible to speak of
being asleep and being awake in the elemental world; but they are
not alternate states as in the physical world. They are states
existing in man simultaneously. As long as we have not attained
any faculty for experience through our elemental body, that body is
asleep. We always carry this body about with us, but it is a sleeping
body. With the strengthening of the life of our soul the awakening
begins, but at first only for a part of the elemental body. The more
we awaken our elemental being, ' the deeper we penetrate into the
elemental world.
In the elemental world itself there is nothing that can aid the soul
to bring about this awakening. However much may be beheld, one
thing perceived adds nothing to the possibility of perceiving
another thing. Free movement in the supersensible world can be
attained by the soul through nothing that is found in the elemental
environment. When we continue the exercises to strengthen the
soul, we attain more and more this power of moving in particular
regions. Through all this our attention is drawn to something in
ourselves, which does not belong to the elemental world, but is
discovered within ourselves through our experience of that world.
We feel ourselves as particular beings in the supersensible world,
who seem to be the rulers, directors, and masters of their
elemental bodies, and who by and by awaken these bodies to
supersensible consciousness.
When we have arrived so far, a feeling of intense loneliness
overwhelms the soul. We find ourselves in a world that is elemental
in all directions; we see only ourselves within endless elemental
space as beings which can nowhere find their equal. It is not
affirmed that every development to clairvoyance should lead to this
fearful loneliness, but any one who consciously and by his own
efforts acquires a strengthening of his soul, will meet with it. And if
he follow a teacher who gives him directions from step to step in
order to further his development, he will, perhaps late, but still
some day, have to realise that his teacher has left him all to himself.
He will find that his teacher has left him, and that he is abandoned
to loneliness in the elemental world. Only afterwards will he
something beside the physical and the elemental bodies. Let us call
this something the astral body, and this expression shall, for the
time being, mean nothing but that which in the way described is
experienced within the being of the soul.
Sixth Meditation
In which the Attempt is made to form a Conception of the EgoBody or Thought-Body
The feeling of being outside our physical body is stronger during
experiences within the astral body than during those within the
elemental body. In the case of the elemental body we feel ourselves
outside the region in which the physical body exists, and yet we feel
connected with the latter body. In the astral body we feel the
physical body itself as something outside our own being.
On passing into the elemental body we feel something like an
expansion of our own being; but in identifying our consciousness
with the astral body it is as though we made a jump into another
being. And we feel a world of spiritual beings sending their
activities into that being. We feel ourselves in some way or other
connected with or related to these beings. And by degrees we learn
to know how these beings are mutually connected. To our human
consciousness the world widens out in the direction of the spiritual.
We behold spiritual beings, for example, who bring about the
succession of epochs in the development of mankind so that we
realise that the different characters of the different epochs are, as it
were, stamped upon them by real spiritual entities. These are the
Spirits of Time or Primordial Powers (Archai). We learn to know
other beings, whose psychic life is such that their thoughts are at
the same time active forces of nature. We are led to understand
that only to physical perception do the forces of nature appear to
considering all that, which before filled and was connected with
our own soul, as a kind of recollection, so that we stand in the same
relation to our own former ego as we do to our recollections in the
physical world. Only through such an experience do we attain to
full consciousness of ourselves as truly living with our own real
being in a world quite different from that of the senses.
We now possess the knowledge that that which we carry about with
us and have hitherto considered as our ego is something different
from what we really are. We are now able to stand opposite to
ourselves, and we may form an idea concerning that which now
confronts our own soul and of which it formerly said, "That is
myself." Now the soul no longer says, "That is myself," but, " I am
carrying that something about with me." Just as the ego in
ordinary life feels independent of its own recollections, so our
newly-found ego feels itself independent of our former ego.
It feels that it belongs to a world of purely spiritual beings. And as
this experience - a real experience: no mere theory - comes to us,
so we realise what that really is which we hitherto considered as
our ego. It presents itself as a web of recollections, produced by the
physical, the elemental, and the astral bodies in the same way as an
image is produced by a mirror. Just as little as a man identifies
himself with his rejected picture, so little does the soul,
experiencing itself in the spiritual world, identify itself with that
which it experiences of itself in the world of the senses. The
comparison with the rejected image is, of course, to be taken
merely as a comparison.
For the reflected image vanishes when we change our position with
regard to the mirror. The web woven of recollections and
representing what we in the physical world consider as our own
being, has a greater degree of independence than the image in the
mirror. It has in a certain way a being of its own. And yet to the
real being of the soul it is only like a picture of our real self. The
real being of the soul feels that this picture is needed for the
manifestation of its real self. This real being knows that it is
something different, but also that it would never have attained to
any real knowledge of itself if it had not at first realised itself as its
own image within that world, which, after its ascent into the
spiritual world, becomes an outer world.
The web of recollection which we now regard as our former ego
may be called the "ego-body" or "thought-body." The word "body"
must in this connection be taken in a wider sense than that which
is usually called a "body." By "body " is here meant all that we
experience as belonging to us and of which we do not say, "We are
it," but, "We possess it."
Only when clairvoyant consciousness has arrived at the point
where it experiences, as a sum of recollections, that which it
formerly considered to be itself, does it become possible to acquire
real experience of what is hidden behind the phenomenon of death.
For then we have arrived at a truly real world in which we feel
ourselves as beings who are able to retain, as though in a memory,
what has been experienced in the world of the senses.
This sum total of experiences in the physical world needs - in order
that happen to our own soul in the way of fate. We are, however,
able to win our way to a standpoint where the unfortunate fate of
others awakens in our soul the same keen interest and feeling as
are induced by our own unhappy experiences.
It is easier to arrive at such a standpoint with regard to misfortunes
that fate brings us than, for example, with regard to our mental
capacities. It is not so easy, after all, to experience as great a joy
when you discover a capacity in another, as when you discover that
you possess that capacity yourself. When self-observation strives to
penetrate into the depths of the soul, much selfish satisfaction with
many things which we can do ourselves may be discovered.
An intense, repeated meditative union with the thought, that in
many instances it is quite indifferent to the course of human life
whether we ourselves or others are able to do certain things, may
carry us a long way towards true imperturbability with regard to
that which we feel to be the innermost working of fate in our own
lives. Such inner reinforcement of the life of our soul, by steeping it
in thought, when rightly done, can never lead to a mere blunting of
our feeling for our own capacities. Instead they are transformed
and we realise the necessity of behaving in accordance with these
capacities.
And here we have already indicated the direction taken by this
strengthening of the life of the soul by thought. We learn to realise
something in ourselves which appears to the soul as a second being
within it. This becomes especially manifest, when we connect with
it thoughts which show how in ordinary life we bring about this or
that event in our destiny. We are able to see that this or that would
not have happened to us, if we had not behaved in a certain way at
an earlier period in our life.
What happens to us to-day is truly in many ways the result of what
we did yesterday. We may now, with the intention of carrying our
soul's experience further than some point at which we have arrived,
look back upon our past experience. We may then search out all
that shows how we ourselves have prepared our later destinies. We
may try in so doing to go back so far as to reach that point where
the consciousness awakens in the child, which enables it later in
life to remember what it has experienced.
If we set about this retrospect in such a way that we combine with
it an attitude of mind which eliminates the usual selfish
sympathies and antipathies with regard to occurrences in our own
destiny, then, having reached in memory the above-mentioned
point in our childhood, we face ourselves in such a way as to be
able to say: At that time the possibility of feeling ourselves in
ourselves and of conscious work upon the life of our soul first
presented itself; but this ego of ours was there before, and it,
although not working consciously within us, has brought us our
capacity for knowledge as well as everything we now know. The
attitude towards our own destiny just described brings about what
no intellectual reflection is able to produce.
We learn to look at the events of destiny with equanimity; we meet
them with an unprejudiced mind; but we see in the being who
brings these happenings upon us our own self. And when we look
upon ourselves in this way, we find that the conditions of our own
destiny, already given us at birth, are connected with our own self.
We win our way to the conviction that just as we have worked upon
ourselves since the awakening of our consciousness, so we had
already been working before our present consciousness awoke.
Now such a working of ourselves up to the realisation of a higher
ego-being within the ordinary ego leads us not only to admit that
our thoughts have brought us to a theoretical statement of the
existence of such a higher ego, but also makes us realise as a power
within ourselves the living activity of this ego in all its reality and
feel the ordinary ego as a creation of the other. This feeling is, in
fact, the first step towards beholding the spiritual being of the soul.
And if it leads to nothing, it is because we rest satisfied with the
beginning only.
This beginning may be a scarcely perceptible dull sensation. It may
remain so perhaps for a long time. But if we strongly and
energetically pursue the course which has led us up to this
beginning, we shall at last arrive at beholding the soul as a spiritual
being. And having brought ourselves thus far we shall easily
understand why some one, without any experience in these matters,
may say that in believing we see such things we have only created
an imaginative picture of a higher ego through auto-suggestion.
But one who has had the experience knows that such an objection
can only be derived from lack of this very experience.
For those who seriously go through this development acquire at the
same time the capacity to distinguish between realities and the
Seventh Meditation
In which the Attempt is made to form an Idea of the Character of
Experience in Supersensible Worlds
The experiences that showed themselves to be necessary for the
soul, if it wants to penetrate into supersensible worlds, may seem
deterrent to many people. These may say they do not know what
would befall them if they ventured upon such processes, or how
they would be able to stand them. Under the influence of such a
feeling the opinion is very easily formed that it is better not to
interfere artificially with the development of the soul, but calmly to
surrender to the guidance of which the soul remains unconscious,
and to await its effect in the future upon one's inner life.
Such a thought must, however, always be repressed by a person
who is able to make another thought a living power within him;
namely, that it is natural to human nature to progress, and that if
no attention were paid to these things it would mean disloyally
consigning to stagnation forces in the soul which are waiting to be
unfolded. Forces of self-unfolding are present in every human soul,
and there cannot be a single one that would not listen to the call for
unfolding them if in some way or other it could learn something
about these powers and their importance.
Moreover, nobody will allow himself to be deterred from the ascent
into higher worlds unless beforehand he has taken up a false
position towards the processes through which he has to go. These
processes are described in the preceding meditations. And if they
conviction it may have, and only live with it and in it again and
again so as to become one with it. It is not necessary that it should
be a thought of things belonging to the higher worlds, although
such a thought is more effective. For inner meditation we can even
use a thought which pictures an ordinary experience. Fruitful for
instance, are emotions which represent resolutions with regard to
deeds of love, and which we kindle within ourselves to the highest
degree of human warmth and sincere experience.
Effective - especially where knowledge is concerned - are symbolic
representations, gained from life, or accepted on the advice of such
persons as are in a certain way experts in these matters, because
they know the fruitfulness of the means employed from what they
themselves have gained by them.
Through these meditations, that must become a habit, nay, a
necessity of life, just as breathing is necessary for the life of the
body, we shall concentrate the powers of the soul, and by
concentrating strengthen them. Only we must succeed during the
time of inner meditation in remaining in such a state that neither
outer impressions of the senses nor any recollections of such play
upon the soul.
Recollections also of all that we have experienced in ordinary life,
all that gives pleasure or pain to the soul, must remain silent so
that the soul may surrender itself exclusively to that which we
ourselves determine shall occupy it. The capacities for
supersensible knowledge grow legitimately only out of that which
we have acquired in this way by inner meditations, the content and
the form of which have been fixed by the power of our own soul.
The important point is not the source whence we derive the object
of the meditation; we may take it from an expert in these matters
or from the literature of spiritual science; the important point is to
make its substance an inner experience of our own life and not
merely to choose it out from thoughts which may arise in our own
soul, or from things which we feel inclined to consider as the best
objects for meditation.
Such an object has but little power, because the soul is already
familiar with it and cannot consequently make the necessary effort
in order to become one with it. It is in making this effort, however,
that the effective means of acquiring the faculties for supersensible
knowledge are to be found, and not in the mere fact of becoming
one with the substance of the meditation as such.
We can also arrive at supersensible sight in other ways. People may
arrive at fervent meditation and inner experience by reason of their
whole constitution. And so they may be able to liberate powers for
acquiring supersensible knowledge in their soul. Such powers may
all of a sudden manifest themselves in souls which do not seem at
all predetermined for such experiences.
In the most varied ways the supersensible life of the soul may
awaken; but we can only arrive at an experience of which we are
the masters as we are the masters of ourselves in ordinary life, if
we tread the path of knowledge here described. Any other irruption
of the supersensible world into the experiences of the soul will
outside the being in question. A being which must feel that it has
not a certain quality, which, according to that being's nature, it
should have, beholds another being endowed with that quality,
Moreover it cannot help having this other being always before it.
As in the physical world the eye naturally sees what is visible, so in
the supersensible world the want of a quality always carries a being
into the neighbourhood of another being endowed with the quality
in question. And the sight of this other being becomes a continual
reproach that acts as a real force, making the being, who is
hampered with the fault, desirous of amending it. This is a quite
different experience from a desire in the physical world; for in the
spiritual world free will is not interfered with through such
circumstances. A being may oppose itself to that which the sight of
something else will call forth within it. It will then succeed by
degrees in being taken away from its model.
The consequence, however, will be that the being who opposes
itself to its model will bring itself into worlds where the conditions
of existence will be worse than those would have been which were
given to it in the world for which it was in a certain way
predestined.
All this shows the soul that its world of conceptions must be
transformed when entering supersensible realms. Ideas must be
changed, widened, and blended with others if we want to describe
the supersensible world correctly. That is the reason why
descriptions of supersensible worlds given in terms of the physical
world without any alteration or transformation are always
Eighth Meditation
In which the Attempt is made to form an Idea of the Way in which
Man beholds his Repeated Earth-Lives
We are not really entitled to speak of dangers during the
pilgrimage of the soul through supersensible worlds, when this
pilgrimage is undertaken in the right way. The method would not
lead to its goal if amongst the psychic instructions given there were
those which created dangers for the pupil. The goal is rather to
make the soul strong, to concentrate its forces, so that man should
become able to bear his soul's experiences, which he has to go
through when he wants to see and understand other worlds than
the physical. Moreover, an essential difference between the
physical world and the supersensible worlds is that beholding,
perceiving, and understanding are related to one another in quite a
different way in the two worlds.
When we hear about some part of the physical world, we have a
certain right to feel that we can only arrive at a complete
understanding of it through beholding and perceiving it. We do not
believe we have understood a landscape or a picture until we have
seen it. But the supersensible worlds can be thoroughly understood
when with unbiased judgment we accept a correct description of
them. In order to understand and to experience all the forces for
the strengthening and fulfilment of life which belong to spiritual
worlds, we only need the descriptions of those who are able to see.
Real knowledge of those worlds at first hand can only be obtained
by those who are able to investigate when outside their physical
body.
Descriptions of the spiritual worlds must always originate with the
seers. But such knowledge of these worlds as is necessary to the life
of the soul may be obtained through the understanding. And it is
perfectly possible to be unable to look into supersensible worlds
oneself and yet be able to understand them and their peculiarities,
with an understanding for which the soul has under certain
circumstances a perfect right to ask, and indeed must ask.
Therefore it is also possible that we should choose our means of
meditation out of the store of conceptions which we have acquired
concerning the spiritual worlds. Such a means of meditation is by
far the best and the one which leads us most safely to the goal.
Although such a notion may seem very natural, it is, however, not
correct to believe that knowledge of higher worlds obtained
through the understanding before attaining to supersensible vision
is an obstacle to the development of such vision. The contrary is in
fact more correct, namely, that it is easier and safer to arrive at
clairvoyance with some preliminary understanding than without.
Whether we stop short at understanding only, or go on to strive
after clairvoyance, depends upon the awakening or non-awakening
of an inner craving for firsthand knowledge. If such a craving is
there, we cannot but look for every opportunity to start on a real
personal pilgrimage into supersensible worlds.
The wish for an understanding of the higher worlds will spread
more and more amongst the people of our day; for close
the close of these quite different kinds of existence are found, and
all this shows itself in its totality as a development inspired by
sublime wisdom.)
The knowledge of repeated terrestrial lives may also be reached by
reasonable observation of physical existence. In my books
Theosophy and An Outline of Occult Science, as well as in lesser
writings of mine, the attempt has been made to prove
reincarnation along such lines of reasoning as are characteristic of
the modern doctrine of evolution in natural science. It is there
shown how logical thought and investigation that really follow up
scientific research (and its results) to its full consequences are
absolutely bound to accept the idea of evolution, presented to us by
modern science, in such a sense as to consider the true being, the
psychic individuality of man, as something which is evolving
through a sequence of physical existences alternating with
intermediate purely spiritual lives.
The proofs attempted in those writings are naturally capable of
much further development and completion. But the opinion does
not seem unjustified that proofs in this matter have precisely the
same scientific value as that which in general is called scientific
proof. There is nothing in the science of spiritual things which
cannot be confirmed by proofs of that kind. But of course we must
admit the difficulty is greater for spiritually scientific proofs to be
acknowledged than proofs of natural science.
This is not on account of their less stringent logic, but because in
the face of such proofs one does not feel those underlying physical