The Rudolf Steiner Archive

17. Ancient European Clairvoyance

[ 1 ] Throughout these winter lectures, there has been repeated mention of the existence of insights into supersensible worlds. We have discussed how human beings can arrive at such insights, and we have spoken on more than one occasion about the results of these insights into supersensible worlds. Now, in two lectures, I shall present something of an illustration of what is called knowledge of higher worlds. And through examples, I shall show how clairvoyant perception has developed in a certain field—that clairvoyant perception which, in essence, has been or should have been overcome by humanity today. Today we shall speak of clairvoyant perception that is, so to speak, bestowed by natural forces and natural abilities. Next time we shall discuss how clairvoyant perception can be attained through rigorous training and very specific methods, again using specific examples. Today we will speak of that clairvoyant perception which, so to speak, led our ancestors to their views—views that have now been overcome; next time we will discuss that clairvoyant faculty of perception which leads into the higher worlds in a free and self-conscious manner.

[ 2 ] It has already been mentioned that spiritual science speaks of an evolution of human consciousness. What we call our consciousness today—through which we recreate the external world within ourselves in thoughts, mental images, and ideas—is only one stage of evolution. In the course of human evolution, another form of consciousness preceded it, and another will follow. When people speak today of “development” in the ordinary sense, they generally mean the development of external forms, of the material aspects of existence. Spiritual science speaks of the evolution of the soul and the spirit—and thus also of the evolution of consciousness. We can look back on an earlier form of consciousness that has been transcended by our present stage of evolution, and we can look forward to the prospect of a future consciousness that will only gradually unfold. If we call today’s stage of consciousness simply “consciousness,” then we can call the earlier form of consciousness the subconscious, and that to which our present consciousness will evolve through spiritual scientific methods, the superconscious. Thus, we distinguish three successive stages: the subconscious, consciousness, and the superconscious.

[ 3 ] In a certain sense, all present-day consciousness is a stage in the development of consciousness in general, just as higher animal forms are developmental forms of the general animal form. Present-day consciousness has evolved from lower stages of consciousness. We can characterize our present-day consciousness—which we might also call “object consciousness”—by saying that it perceives external objects through the senses, such as hearing, sight, touch, and so on. It forms concepts, representations, and ideas from what was initially mere perception. Thus, an external world of objects acting upon our senses is reflected in our consciousness.

[ 4 ] The subconscious was not yet like that; it had a much more immediate nature. In a certain sense, we may call it a lower form of clairvoyant consciousness, because the being who possessed this consciousness did not approach objects with the sense organs and, as it were, feel them out in order to form a concept of them, but rather the concepts were immediately present; images rose and fell. Let us suppose that consciousness encounters an external object that is dangerous to it. Today we see the object, and the mental image evoked by sight causes the awareness of danger to arise within us. This was not the case with clairvoyant consciousness in earlier times. The external object was not perceived in distinct outlines—in earlier times, not at all. Something like a dream image would arise and indicate to the being whether something pleasant or unpleasant was approaching it. We can illustrate this by thinking of dreaming today, with its ebbing and flowing dream images. Just as dreaming is today in the normal state, it can be characterized as something that has no real connection to the external world. On the other hand, if we imagine dream consciousness in such a way that every image that arises within us as a dream image corresponds to and is associated with something very specific—so that a certain image arises in the face of danger, another in the presence of a useful object—in other words, if a specific relationship to us existed through these images—then we could say, it would not matter to us whether we are dreaming or awake; we could then organize our practical lives according to these dream images as well.

[ 5 ] Today’s consciousness emerged from such a real dream life—one in which the inner nature, the inner spiritual essence of things, rose up in images—from such a state of consciousness. And it has taken on the most diverse forms until it developed into its present form. If we look back through history, as spiritual science presents it, we would find among ancient peoples—in the distant, distant past—a stage of development in which the external world was not perceived; rather, the environment was perceived inwardly through an ancient, clairvoyant consciousness. But this clairvoyant consciousness was accompanied by a quality of the soul that must be described as an imperfect stage compared to the fundamental quality of our soul today. The human soul was not a self-conscious soul; it could not say “I” to itself, nor could it distinguish itself from the external world. It was only through the external objects, with their distinct contours, presenting themselves to the soul that the soul learned to distinguish itself from them. This consciousness could only develop as the old consciousness faded away and the consciousness of the day—or of objects—took its place.

[ 6 ] Thus, human beings had to pay for their self-awareness by giving up their old, originally clairvoyant state. Every stage of development is at the same time a higher form of development, even if certain advantages of earlier stages must be relinquished in the process. Now, so to speak, something remains from each stage into later times, and in a certain sense we can still see such legacies of earlier times extending into the present. This is something abnormal today. It has already been pointed out that we also have such atavisms in our external form—for example, the muscles near the ear that used to move the ear. In animals, these muscles still serve a purpose in moving the ear. In humans, they no longer serve any purpose, and only a few people can move their ears at will. What are such muscles? They are remnants of an earlier stage of development. Humans once had a head shape that allowed the ears to move. |

[ 7 ] Just as such organ forms have been left behind in the course of evolution, so too do certain ancient states of consciousness remain. That is why we see such remnants, such vestiges of ancient clairvoyance, extending into our present-day consciousness; but they are clouded and altered at our current stage of development and are therefore abnormal. When we point to what has remained of clairvoyance, we can easily characterize the ancient European form of clairvoyance, which is found in the development of all European peoples and can be distinguished from the clairvoyance of the Orient. These differences will be highlighted today.

[ 8 ] What are the legacies of humanity’s ancient clairvoyant state? We can distinguish two categories here. One stands, so to speak, entirely on its own and belongs to the divine legacies. These are dreams and dream experiences. The other remnants belong to an entirely different category. Dreams have been transformed not by human beings, but by the ongoing process of evolution itself. The other legacies are visions, intuitions, and “deuteroscopy” or the “other sight.”

[ 9 ] Let us first consider the dream. It is a remnant of the old pictorial consciousness. But in that old pictorial consciousness, the dream was still connected to reality. What is the dream like today? It still exhibits certain characteristic features of the old pictorial consciousness, but it has lost the real value—the value of reality—of that old pictorial consciousness. Let’s consider an example: Someone dreams that they see a tree frog in front of them, reach for it, and grab it. Then they wake up and find the corner of the bedspread in their hand. The dream symbolizes the external event. If the person had approached this dream with object consciousness, they would have seen that they were holding the bedspread in their hand. But as it is, the dream symbolizes. It can become a great drama. For example, a student dreams that, upon leaving the lecture hall, he is jostled by another person—a crime that can only be atoned for by a duel. He now challenges the other to a pistol duel; the seconds are appointed; they meet at the agreed-upon location; the distance is measured; the pistols are loaded; and the first shot is fired. At that very moment, however, the student wakes up and has knocked over the chair next to his bed. Here we have the same phenomenon again: the dream transforms an external event into an image. If the person in question had observed what happened with a sense of objectivity—if he had been awake—he would have seen that the chair had been knocked over.

[ 10 ] In these dreams, we see that there is a certain arbitrary connection between what the dreamer has experienced and what is happening in the external world. The dream has retained from the ancient pictorial consciousness the fact that it deals with an image of external realities, but it has not retained the direct relationship to the external world. If it still had this direct relationship, then a person would not need to touch the salt with their tongue to recognize it; rather, a very specific dream image would arise before them—a different one for vinegar, sugar, dangerous creatures, and so on. Each kind of being corresponded to a very specific image.

[ 11 ] This consciousness has remained as a remnant, like a heirloom in today’s dream consciousness. Because human beings, so to speak, were wholly absorbed in their self-consciousness—because they had torn themselves away from their surroundings—the images in the dreams of modern humans no longer have any connection to the external world. Because human beings ascended in a completely normal way from dream consciousness to self-consciousness, the relationship between dreams and the external world has been lost.

[ 12 ] The situation is different with the three other remnants: vision, intuition, and deuteroscopy, or the “other face.” If you recall the entire evolution of the human being, as it has often been described here, it presents itself to us as follows: Human beings, as they stand before us today, consist of four members: the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body, and the ego. The ego is the final stage of development, and through the ascent to the ego, human beings have become self-conscious beings. When, then, did human beings possess this pictorial consciousness? He possessed it when his “I” was still slumbering within the astral body, when the astral body itself was the bearer of consciousness. It was the astral body that allowed these images to rise and fall. It is, as it were, as if the human being had emerged from the astral body and thereby attained his present-day object consciousness. This also explains why human beings must have been even more deeply connected to the other aspects of their nature. Just as they were immersed in the astral body in earlier times, so too were they immersed in the etheric body and, even more deeply, in the physical body. We thus have three levels of the subconscious beneath our present-day object consciousness.

[ 13 ] Imagine a person swimming beneath the surface of the sea, deep within the ocean. Suppose he were able to see what lies within the sea. He sees what is happening on the ocean floor, what is taking place there, what is swimming and floating there. There, they are surrounded by something different than when they surface, look up, and see the star-filled sky above them. This is how we can imagine consciousness: raised from its lower stages—where a person was aware of what their astral, etheric, and physical bodies conveyed to them—up to today’s object consciousness. Now, however, in certain abnormal cases, a person can once again dive down, so to speak, into this sea of the subconscious. He can enter it in such a way that he takes with him down into it what he had already mastered after surfacing from the sea of the subconscious.

[ 14 ] Imagine a person who has seen everything up above, then dives back down and can now compare everything perceived down below with what he knows from above. So it is with people today: they take with them what they have acquired up above. It is not like the diver, who carries everything with him only in memory and can compare it. For those who dive down after having been a person living in the present, everything down below is colored by the experiences from above. One brings what was experienced above into this subconscious like a shell, and as a result does not obtain a pure conception, an unclouded image, but rather an image that is clouded by the experiences of object consciousness.

[ 15 ] When a person delves down into their astral body, they artificially transport themselves back to the sphere that occupied their consciousness when they themselves were still living in the astral body. This gives rise to the vision in the present sense. If a person were to descend into the consciousness of the astral body without knowing anything about the present world, they would truly experience those images that represent the inner nature of objects. But since, when he descends, he takes with him what he has experienced above, all things—which would otherwise appear to him in their true form—appear to him in such a way that they deceive him, making him believe he is experiencing what can only be experienced here in the world of the material. This is the truth and the deception of the vision.

[ 16 ] When someone descends into the world of vision, they can always be certain that there are reasons for this that lie in the spiritual environment; but it is also certain that what appears before them as a vision will be illusions, that the true form of things will not be revealed to them, but rather afterimages of what is seen in the upper world. That is why people’s visions usually appear in such a way that they allude to what people are currently experiencing. This can be verified down to the finest details, even from decade to decade.

[ 17 ] Imagine a person entering that world at a time when there were no telegraphs or telephones. In the underworld, too, he would not have seen any telegraphs or telephones. In contrast, in our time, seeing telegraphs and telephones in visions will become increasingly common. This is also why a devout Catholic who has often seen the Virgin Mary in the form in which she appears to the conscious mind, when he descends, takes this image with him, and it appears to him in the vision. As a rule, those who are not devout Catholics will not experience the Virgin Mary in their visions either. What is seen in the vision does not correspond to reality; rather, what takes on the guise of reality is what the person has first brought down with them. They carry down into this world what they have experienced here. We see, then, that in a vision, a person does indeed, in a certain way, color what they experience.

[ 18 ] When he returns to the etheric body, he experiences what is called a premonition. But here it is even more dangerous, because this state of consciousness lies even further back. There, the human being is interwoven into all the intricate threads of existence from which he has ascended to his sense of self, but he cannot perceive the threads in their true form. Consider how little people grasp the interconnections that surround them. They ponder a small segment of the world—cause and effect—but they forget that the entire world is interconnected with its surroundings, as in a web where connections weave back and forth. Today, human beings are set apart from all of this; they survey, as it were, an island, but this island is interconnected with the entire cosmos. And in their etheric body, human beings are intimately connected with the cosmos. If they were to descend into their etheric body without bringing anything from their bright daytime consciousness with them, they would see how something is taking shape in its infancy that will not occur, let’s say, for another ten years. Now you can imagine that a person brings their intellect down with them. They carry their little intellect, their little mental soul, down with them. As a result, what appears as an intuition is already distorted. When intuition arises naturally, it usually—like a vision—has little objective value.

[ 19 ] But then, when a person plunges into the depths of the physical body, that intuition can give way to the ability to penetrate space. While intuition is still tied to time, in deuteroscopy—the “other sight”—one can see what cannot be perceived with the physical eyes. The images appear to the person like a mirage. Abnormal phenomena, such as those reported by Swedenborg, for example, belong to this category. You can infer from what has been said that in the spiritual realm, the deceptions must be even greater and that nothing should be accepted without verification.

[ 20 ] What appears today as pathological conditions is the residual legacy of ancient clairvoyance; in ancient times, it was entirely healthy—it was something through which human beings truly established a relationship with their environment. If we look back, particularly at the development of the European peoples, we find everywhere, to a greater or lesser extent, the ancient pictorial consciousness that views the world as it is inwardly, as it is in its spiritual and soul-nature. But self-consciousness is still entirely undeveloped. And what, then, remains of what the ancients saw and recounted, who did not yet possess full self-consciousness? We can see that there was a transition from the ancient pictorial consciousness to object consciousness. Oh, there is a fine, beautiful legacy of this: the myths and legends, the entire content of mythology. What mythology contains is often presented today as folk poetry. Clouds are viewed as flocks of sheep, or lightning and thunder are reinterpreted in some way. There is perhaps no “poetry” more arbitrary than this interpretation of the ancient myths and legends. Everything that remains today in myths and legends stems from ancient clairvoyance. What was experienced in the subconscious was recounted, and these accounts are the legends, myths, and also the fairy tales.

[ 21 ] All legends and myths are based on experience, not invented; yet they were not experienced within our present-day objective consciousness, but rather within the ancient, twilight consciousness. And we can, as it were, look deeply into the workings of this twilight consciousness when we recall something profound in the religious scriptures. Recall that significant passage in the Old Testament where it says: “And God, the eternal God, breathed the breath of life into man, and man became a living soul.” A certain aspect of the breathing process is linked here to human development. This passage seeks to show us that human beings owe their present-day sense of self—this particular way of living in and with their blood—to the specific form of the breathing process that they have acquired over the course of time and that they still possess today. It was only by learning to breathe as upright beings that human beings rose above image-consciousness.

[ 22 ] Animals today still possess either direct or indirect visual awareness because they do not have upright lungs. It has rightly been pointed out that the dog is much more intelligent than the parrot, and yet only the parrot learns to speak, while the dog does not. This is related to the fact that the parrot has a larynx that is, in a sense, upright. The fact that humans have a particular configuration of organs is connected to the fact that humans have evolved to their present level of object consciousness.

[ 23 ] If we want to understand the Bible passage cited correctly, we must say: Through the laws of the universe, the human organs were formed in such a way that today’s respiratory process developed. Those who understood this process spiritually—who knew that a spiritual element lives in everything—said to themselves: The spiritual element of the air must penetrate us in such a way that free self-consciousness can develop. — If this process occurs irregularly, if the spirits of the air do not find the right path to work on our blood in the proper way—as befits our present-day self-consciousness—then an irregularity in our consciousness also arises: it is set back to an earlier stage. That is why the ancient European perceived every irregularity in the breathing process as nothing other than a setting back of consciousness.

[ 24 ] What is the physical manifestation of irregular breathing? It is a nightmare. The word derives from Alb, Alf, or Elb, Elf, and is also connected to Orpheus. Thus we see that this is nothing other than a spiritual force that acts within the breathing process in such a way that the “I” cannot reach its full development. When the breathing process is irregular, the host of lower spirits gains access to the human being. And now, call it pathological or whatever you like—that is not the point; what matters is what develops within the human being as a result. From our present-day standpoint, this condition must indeed be described as pathological. For even if it is a regression to an earlier state, this condition today represents a transition from the normal to the abnormal.

[ 25 ] Our present-day breathing process has its origins in a process that survives as a remnant in the dream state—where it has its final vestige—a process in which human beings did not require as much oxygen. When human beings were still closer to the plant state, they had a different form of consciousness; they were immersed in the old, twilight-like consciousness. Then they emerged from it, and during the transition—when human beings were alternately here and there in their consciousness—the ancient European human experienced everything that we encounter in all alb and elf beings.

[ 26 ] In this way, we naturally look back to ancient states. In nightmares, we see the present-day outward manifestation of something that was spiritual, and which represents nothing other than the remnant of the ancient clairvoyant consciousness—the pictorial consciousness that creates myths and legends.

[ 27 ] But as breathing underwent a transformation, many other things were transformed as well. The external perception of objects also emerged. The “visual perception” of objects was not linked to the perception of their external contours or surfaces. Human beings did not see the outer surfaces of objects. There was also a transitional phase in which human beings experienced the old images fading away and the image of external objects emerging. And again, there was an intermediate state in which human beings had already developed the ability to see, but in abnormal states—where external vision receded—they entered clairvoyant states. The vernacular has an old word for this state, where normal consciousness recedes, where one looks at an object and yet does not see it. This is called “spannen” or “staunen,” and this word is etymologically related to the word “Gespenst” (ghost), so that here, so to speak, you have the ghost before you—that which emerged as an inner image, which was not yet an external object but was perceived through astral forces. Today this is considered abnormal. During the transition, when this occurred, people had to tell themselves: “But I want to see; I don’t want you to stare at me; I want to see.” — Thus, what stood before them as an external reality appeared to them as something they had to overcome. All legends that revolve around blinding that which stares at one—overcoming it so that it no longer stares at one—have their origin here. From the legend of Polyphemus, through the blinding of the giant, to the wondrous legend in which Dietrich von Bern overcomes the giant Grim—everywhere we find this moment of consciousness.

[ 28 ] Yet the sheer strangeness of these phenomena could also hold a certain allure for the soul. Because they appeared to belong to an unknown world, they had a certain allure; as a result, these entities were capable of exerting a seductive, alluring influence on human beings. The word “Lur” or “Lore” is the root word for a seductive specter. When a person caught sight of it, they could not help but see it as having arisen from within things themselves. Now for something else curious: The word “Lei” is intrinsically linked to the word “Heimat” (homeland), hence “Lorelei Rock.” This is the alluring specter that retreats into the “Lei”—that is, into its homeland—which was located there. The word “Lei” can be found in a wide variety of regions. Thus, we have, so to speak, the subconscious experience of seeing the Lore or Lure, which occurs when a specific outward vision develops. The Alps or elves are connected to this in that human beings develop their sense of self within themselves.

[ 29 ] But there is another legend that has been passed down to us as a legacy, one that is still alive today in certain Slavic regions. It is the legend of the Noon Lady. When people go out into the fields and, instead of going home at noon, stay outside, the Noon Woman appears to them in the form of a white woman. She poses questions to the person until the noon bell rings. If the person can answer these questions, the Noon Woman says at the end: “It is good; you have set me free.” What do we see in such a legend? Once again, we see an ancient clairvoyant experience expressed here. Just as a person inhales the spirit of the “I” along with the air, so too has he built up his entire inner being—his entire microcosm—from the spiritual environment, from the macrocosm. Everything that is within has come from without. Our inner intelligence is the result of outer intelligence.

[ 30 ] There is a transition from the time when humans could see the spiritual beings who guided the structure of the world—who guided the formation of flowers and crystals—to the emergence of external intelligence. External intelligence has, so to speak, marched into human beings, and they have become aware of it. Suppose that consciousness were simply extinguished by the midday sun. Those who knew this spiritually called the midday sun the “midday demon.” Suppose that the luminous consciousness were to be extinguished—through a latent, partial sunstroke, one might say—and that what appears before human beings is that which is like the external impetus, the external cause of their intellectual powers. How must this occur? Only by the person having to engage their intelligence. What is, so to speak, interwoven with them from the world confronts them objectively. They must overcome it by being able to exert their intelligence long enough to respond before the noon bell rings. If he succeeds, he has fulfilled the task, and consciousness is reunited with his “I.” And now apply this to the most beautiful form this spiritual experience has taken, as it confronts us in ancient Greece—and vividly in ancient Egypt—where the great questioner, the Sphinx, appears. The Sphinx is nothing other than the most highly intensified form of the Noon Woman. She, too, poses questions to human beings—questions about the riddle of humanity—to which they must apply their highest intelligence. For all the Sphinx’s questions demand the answer: “Man.” Thus, what a human being is at the core confronts him in the form of the Sphinx, and whoever was able to solve the Sphinx’s riddle could redeem her. Then she threw herself into the abyss—that is, she united with the inner nature of humanity.

[ 31 ] We have seen from individual examples how the wondrous world of legends expresses nothing other than the process of the development of consciousness. From the ancient pictorial consciousness, humanity advanced to its present clear, waking consciousness, which has brought self-awareness to human beings. And whereas in the past humans could not look within themselves—could not find a self there—when they looked outward, they found spiritual beings everywhere: in the spring, in the air, in the tree—everything was animated by spiritual beings. When they looked out with their twilight consciousness and saw the air, they knew that it was the embodiment of the God who shaped their inner being. When the air entered him, he knew: this moves my “I.” — When the wind, which he otherwise breathed in, roared across the earth outside on cold, stormy winter nights, he knew that Wotan was riding through the roar of the storm.

[ 32 ] We could go through all the myths and legends in this way. We would likely find them transformed by poetry, but they all trace back to an ancient clairvoyant consciousness. Yet this clairvoyant consciousness, as it developed within Europe, differs quite significantly from that of the peoples of the East. Every people has a special mission, a special task to fulfill within the course of evolution. While the Easterners, throughout the period in which they were experiencing that very transition from ancient clairvoyance to the formation of the “I,” possessed this “I” only to a very limited degree—so that this “I” very easily surrendered to the higher beings—personality consciousness was developed early on within European life. This is what particularly characterizes those transitions: the “I” plunges with tremendous force into those transitional stages leading to object consciousness. Human beings could look into the inner nature of things, but they asserted their “I” to the utmost degree, feeling from the very beginning like strong fighters against the beings who sought to entangle them in the threads of the surrounding spiritual world. Therefore, their helpers are primarily those beings who work toward the attainment of self-consciousness and the liberation of the “I.”

[ 33 ] We see that the victory the spirits seek to achieve—one that grants personal self-awareness over the astral spirits—involves something that plays a major role in Germanic and European mythological literature. The nightmare spirit that enslaves is present everywhere in European consciousness—in the Midgard Serpent, in the figures of the giants, and also in the figures of the sirens. Everywhere you see how, so to speak, the gods become companions to humankind in the development of personal self-awareness. We see how the god who lives in the breath, Wotan, becomes a companion to humankind in the struggle against all the lower spirits. We see how the mighty god stands by humanity when it comes to overcoming the lower consciousness. It is Donar, or Thor, with his hammer, who overcomes the giants and the Midgard Serpent; it is he who, in the truest sense, expresses how humanity, with its sense of self, steps out of the spiritual world into the world of sensory perception.

[ 34 ] In Europe, the groundwork for Christianity was laid by the fact that this victory over the astral forces—which seek to enslave humanity—constitutes a central theme. As a result, the European mind had to experience something that the peoples of the East did not feel. In Europe, there was a driving urge to emerge from the subconscious with the free “I.” That is why the European mind felt most intensely: “I have emerged with my ‘I’ from the spiritual world into the physical-sensory world. I have lost the realm where my soul once dwelt in ancient times; I have conquered the physical world, but this has blinded me to the old astral world; I have cast aside my old, twilight-like consciousness.” — This must find its strongest expression precisely where the victory over the astral world was to be expressed. The ancient European consciousness perceived Baldur, so to speak, as the guide in the luminous astral world from which the human soul is born. He, the sun-bright god, is the guide of the souls insofar as they belonged to their homeland, the bright astral world. Now the souls are enclosed within the physical body. There, in the sensory world, the guide is Hödur—who is blind to the spiritual world—and who slays Baldur.

[ 35 ] Thus, the ancient Europeans perceived the decline of the clairvoyant soul as the temporary death of the soul. But they also perceived this decline as a transition. They sensed that something new was bound to follow. Hence the “twilight of the gods”—the decline of that world order which presented external objects to our eyes only as images. And because personal consciousness was particularly pronounced in ancient times, especially among the European peoples, the personal God who appeared in Christ Jesus could also be understood and embraced most deeply and intensely by the European peoples. The seed for the acceptance of the personal God in Christ had already been sown there long ago.

[ 36 ] We have seen how modern consciousness in Europe developed out of earlier forms of consciousness. Next time, our task will be to show how the great initiates, even in the ancient mysteries—long before the advent of Christianity—pointed to higher worlds. In the next lecture, we will hear how the mysteries have continued to develop right up to our own time.

[ 37 ] What the initiate once beheld, humanity will learn to see on a higher level through spiritual science, when it looks into the spiritual world with full, free consciousness.

[ 38 ] Human beings, as beings living in their subconscious, have descended from the spiritual world to acquire self-consciousness in the sensory world. They will, in turn, ascend to the supersensory world with their self-consciousness. The clairvoyance of the past was not his own, but rather what other beings had instilled in him. The clairvoyance that human beings will acquire in the future will be a self-conscious, “I”-imbued clairvoyance. This is best expressed by a saying of Jesus Christ. By pointing out the connection between truth and freedom, Jesus Christ looked toward a distant future; and his saying points to this future: “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free!”