The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Third Lecture

[ 1 ] From the discussions we had yesterday and the day before, you will have seen that occult reading and occult hearing consist of experiences of the human soul. I have used various comparisons to explain how one must first become one with the signs that present themselves to the seer in the imagination, and then, of course, with what these signs signify in terms of spiritual realities.

[ 2 ] I would now like to give you a more detailed mental image—as far as is possible given the brevity of the few lectures that can be held, and even if, due to the limited time, this can only be an approximate mental image—of everything that is necessary to ascend from disordered clairvoyance to regulated, true clairvoyance, which can be called occult reading and occult hearing. The first thing I would like to discuss could be called the vocalism of the spiritual world. The way in which one learns, so to speak—though this is, of course, a relative expression—to hear and read the vowels of the spiritual world is, naturally, a far more inner process than any of the processes of ordinary life, and through various descriptions we will only be able to approach what might be called the experience of the vowels, the self-sounds of the cosmos. From what I indicated yesterday, you will also have seen that one can speak of seven such vowels; for we can symbolically draw a parallel between them and the planetary system.

[ 3 ] Now let us return to what I mentioned yesterday, for example: visiting a deceased person. That was my starting point. On that occasion, I specifically sought to discuss the kind of experiences through which one gradually grows into the experience of the spiritual world. We have heard that one first comes to see a series of images through the various preparations the seer must undergo. One essentially faces this series of images in much the same way as one faces the things of the external world. One also faces a dream image in the same way as one faces things in the external world. Only gradually, as we have seen, does one come to identify with the images, to absorb them, as it were, to become one with these images, to live entirely within them.

[ 4 ] But now we must take a close look at the fact that when we are truly confronted with spiritual realities—that is, when these images ultimately lead, say, to finding the dead or some other event or being of the spiritual world, as was discussed yesterday—they are signs of spiritual realities. Then, as images, they are realities in themselves, expressing a spiritual reality. And the images are a reality, for they are there, these images.

[ 5 ] The question must now arise: Are these images present only when the seer prepares himself accordingly and brings about the vision of these images? These images are not present only then, and it is very important to keep this in mind. Suppose you were standing or sitting somewhere, sufficiently prepared to see something, and a series of images were to appear before your soul, fluctuating and unfolding. Now, if instead of a seer being in this situation, another person comes along to view this series of images—someone who has no seer’s gift whatsoever and sees only the ordinary images of the physical world in their surroundings—are these images not there? They are always there; they are truly always there.

[ 6 ] In other words, as I explained the day before yesterday: We are actually inside this little bouquet; our perception of it is based on the reflection through our own organism. The moment the seer, building on his preparation, comes to have a corresponding spiritual image before his soul, he is already within it. Through the subsequent process of identifying with it, he is merely carrying out a process of consciousness; in truth, he is already inside. But it is not only the seer who is within it, but every other human being as well. When one faces an object with the ordinary physical eyes and physical mental image, one is not only within the physical object—which, as we have seen, is merely an illusion—but one is also within the spiritual being. One is always also inside the spiritual beings that are not physically embodied. So in the images of which the seer sees a fragment, the human being is always inside them. They are constantly present in the surroundings; the human being is always within them. They remain imperceptible, invisible, for the reason—one might say abstractly—that the human faculty of perception is too dull and too coarse to perceive these fine, weaving entities and formations with its ordinary, coarse senses.

[ 7 ] That is speaking in abstract terms. But we could raise another question: Why is it the case in the world that we do not perceive what is mentally flooding the world, even though we are right in the midst of it? Why is that actually the case? One only learns why this is so when one begins to identify with the imaginations, when one truly carries out the process I discussed yesterday. Then one learns why human beings cannot be consciously present in the spiritual world that is, after all, all around them. How does one learn this?

[ 8 ] Let it be said once more: a series of images stands before the soul. One tries to identify with it, one digests it, as it were, one unites with the series of images, one is now within it. One knows this now. But at this very moment one can also answer the question of why one must actually remain outside one’s body, why one must, so to speak, step out of one’s body, identify with the series of images from the outside, if one wishes to perceive them, and can, as we have seen, receive them only as reflected back from one’s own etheric body. One learns why this is necessary, why it is arranged this way in the world, when one experiences it.

[ 9 ] Through what one now experiences with these images, once one has identified with them, one knows this immediately: If one were now to return to the physical body, having become one with the series of images, and were not to remain outside waiting until the etheric body reflects the essence of the images, but were to carry everything with which one has become one into one’s physical body—that is, into the space enclosed by the skin—one would immediately destroy the physical body to the point of death. It would immediately become the seed of death within the physical body. It is not possible to carry into the physical body that with which one has identified oneself there. A human being can only identify with it when death truly occurs. When death truly occurs in earthly existence, then the soul is ready to identify with what lives outside as imagination in the natural course of life. But then death also occurs.

[ 10 ] So you see, one can take in all seriousness that which runs through all occult considerations like a powerful motto. This is the statement made by all occultists who have truly become occultists in the genuine, true sense of the word: At the moment one attains true clairvoyance, one has an experience through which one faces death. One arrives at the gate of death. — I have often emphasized this from other perspectives: one learns to recognize what happens to a human being when they pass through the gate of death. One cannot attain clairvoyance without going through this serious, momentous moment, which occultists describe as standing at the gate of death.

[ 11 ] But one learns something else as well. I have already alluded to this in a series of lectures in Munich, though from a different angle. One now learns, in all seriousness, to raise a question that is a fundamental issue in Spiritual Science. One learns to raise the question: Yes, what is the actual state of affairs with us human beings, since we essentially live constantly within the fluctuating fabric of spiritual beings that we cannot carry into our physical bodies without carrying the seed of death into them? Outwardly, we are always surrounded by imaginations; we are, as it were, within a sphere of imaginations; but these must not enter into us. What, then, enters us from these imaginations? Shadow images, reflections, mirror images—as our thoughts, as our mental images. Out there are the full, vivid real imaginations. They are reflected within us; we experience them in the attenuated, shadowy form of our thoughts and mental images. If we were to carry them into ourselves in their full vividness, if we were not merely to reflect them, we would face the danger of death at every moment.

[ 12 ] What is actually at work here? It is nothing less than the fact that the structure of the world protects us from experiencing the spiritual beings and processes that surround us in all their fullness. We are protected by the fact that in our ordinary everyday consciousness, only shadow images of these fully vibrant spiritual beings touch us. And yet, a whole host of these imaginations belongs to us, belongs to the forces that are creatively at work within us. In this world of imaginations, the creative forces live within us. We cannot experience them in their original form, only in the shadowed form in which they exist as thoughts within us. This can only happen because someone relieves us, in our ordinary experience, of the experience of these imaginations that belong to our thoughts. They must, after all, be experienced. We cannot experience them; they must be experienced by beings stronger than we are, by beings who can bear them within their spirit-soul constitution without being brought into danger of death. While we think, while we live with our soul, a being must continually preside over us, relieving us of the experience of the imaginations underlying our mental images. If you have any thought, anything you experience in your soul, this experience corresponds to a world of imaginations out there. And a being must preside over you, one who, as it were, protects, safeguards, and watches over you, who takes upon itself what you cannot carry out yourself.

[ 13 ] We have now reached a point where we can speak of the beings of the next higher hierarchy—the Angeloi—in an even more concrete sense than we have done so far. These beings are, as it were, within reach. We see how they must watch over and protect that which we ourselves cannot accomplish. But it can happen—and must happen—for the seer that he perceives what I have just said much, much more clearly. This is the case when he advances one step further in his seership.

[ 14 ] Yesterday we mentioned what leads us to identify with the imagination, the series of images that appears before us. This identification is experienced in such a way that one, as it were, digests the imagination, absorbs it into oneself. As a result, it ceases to exist as an imagination separate from us, but we experience ourselves within it; we are one with it. But things can go even further. I would like to begin by describing the subjective experience. I said yesterday that one arrives at what I have repeatedly described when one immerses oneself in meditation and concentration. There one comes to experience a series of images with which one can identify. I already mentioned yesterday that when one has evoked such a series of images through meditation and concentration, and has attempted to, as it were, crawl into this series of images, then the occult reading and hearing—the actual perception of the spiritual being of the deceased one is seeking—need not occur immediately. It may break off, just as a process in a dream breaks off, and later what is to occur as a consequence may take place.

[ 15 ] But if one continues to progress further and further, if one has the necessary patience and perseverance to advance steadily in one’s occult development through meditation and concentration, then one experiences the process in yet another way. One can experience it as follows: One sets oneself the task of observing a being or a process in the spiritual world. One enters into meditation, into concentration. Through this, one withdraws from the physical body and enters a state where the content of the soul—which one has evoked through meditation—flows out, where one senses the transition and notices: now it becomes, as it were, dark. What you have evoked in your soul flows out, and from the indeterminate a series of images emerges, more vivid, much more vivid than dreams are.

[ 16 ] Now one consciously faces the series of images. And when one knows that one is facing this series of images, then one consciously immerses oneself in it. By immersing oneself, the moment can arise again when one knows: Yes, you have now identified with the series of images; you have become one with it; you are within it. But in fact, one no longer feels oneself; one feels as if sinking into the universe, into the cosmos; one feels as if in a general nothingness within it. You have identified yourself, have completely erased the series of images, have received nothing in their place. But through the practice of meditation, you must gain the strength not to lose heart, not to despair, not to come to believe that you are now dissolving into nothingness. One has the confidence that one will not arrive at the feeling of complete abandonment, which one could easily reach. In short, one submerges into the general cosmos, as if swimming into nothingness. And then it is as if one were waking up, but not from sleep, rather from something fully conscious. The moment you wake up, you know: That was not a sleep you were in just now. You did not experience that the way you experience the emptiness of consciousness during sleep. That was something else. Something happened in the meantime, something you were part of. And now you have woken up again. Now these events enter your consciousness—events you could not experience fully consciously, but of which you know quite precisely afterward: You have experienced them. — It is like a memory. You remember something you did not go through with your ordinary self, but which you experienced in such a way that you were lifted out of your ordinary self. And now, as it enters consciousness, one experiences what one set out for, what one set one’s course toward, what one set as one’s task to behold. Now one knows: you have lived through something—one might say lived through it in thought—though “in thought” has a much higher meaning here than in the physical realm—you have lived through something in thought. But no matter how developed you are as a human being, what you can be as a human being cannot experience what you went through there while you were, as it were, submerged in relative nothingness. A human being cannot think this through, cannot live it through in thought. That is why, in the time between submerging and resurfacing, another being had to take over the function of thinking for you, thinking within you. You cannot think for yourself. You can only remember afterward what this being, the Angelos being, thought within you. One knows that in the meantime one had been interwoven with one’s Angelos being, which thought for one while consciousness was suppressed. Now one awakens, and one remembers through the ordinary experience of thought what the Angelos experienced and thought within one.

[ 17 ] That is the process. This is generally how one attains spiritual experiences of the kind we have often spoken of. One attains them by knowing that one must first enter a state in which a being of the next higher hierarchy enters into one, identifies itself with one, so that what one could not do in one’s own weakness, one is able to do through the being of the next higher hierarchy resting within one—though with a subdued consciousness. It must not be experienced in reality at first, but only afterward in memory with full self-awareness.

[ 18 ] This is why the spiritual experiences granted to us are actually experienced at one time and become conscious to us at another. For example, if I have experienced something like what I described regarding our dear friend Christian Morgenstern, then you have such a real experience. Of course, however, it only becomes conscious after the experience, because during the experience a being from the next higher hierarchy had to take over the function of knowing.

[ 19 ] Once again, you may wonder why this must be so. If we were to first introduce into our own organism what a being of the higher hierarchy experiences within us, we would not only kill our own organism, but we would shatter its structure into atoms. We would not only be causing its death, but at the same moment its incineration.

[ 20 ] Now you see once again that clairvoyance connects us with what we call the gate of death. One might say that the only way to truly perceive what death is and what it means is by rising to the spiritual states of mind that emerge through the experiences described. For through this one grasps the human individuality outside the physical body, and one then knows how it must immediately be received outside the physical body into the bosom of the beings of the higher hierarchies, so that it does not become destructive or death-bringing to one’s own being on the physical plane. And real, infinitely real, becomes the feeling of the human soul resting in the bosom of a being of the higher hierarchies. Now one begins to know what lies beyond death. One knows: Here on Earth we are surrounded by the mineral, plant, animal, and human kingdoms. Beyond death we enter the bosom of the higher hierarchies, to whose environment we belong just as we belong here to the environment of the physical beings surrounding us. A certain feeling of belonging with the beings of the higher hierarchies takes root in our soul. We can allow this feeling to permeate us. And we thus come to truly understand that a genuine entry into the spiritual worlds is not at all possible without bringing with us certain feelings that can be called religious and devout feelings—feelings of devotion to the higher spiritual world.

[ 21 ] The feelings I have just described are so nuanced that they evoke a particular state of mind. This state of mind, which I can describe only as a state of resting in the bosom of spiritual beings, is necessary for the true experience of the spiritual worlds, just as in the physical human world one is compelled, in order to communicate with other people, to produce the sound “I” through one’s larynx and other speech organs. What makes it possible to produce an “I” in ordinary human speech is, in the higher worlds, the soul feeling that flows from devotion. The experience of this kind of devotion is one of the vowels of the higher worlds. And one cannot perceive, read, or hear anything in the higher worlds unless one can, as it were, maintain this soul mood—and then wait to see what the beings of the higher worlds have to communicate, because one meets them with this soul mood. The vocalism of the cosmos is composed of such moods of the soul, of such a way of facing the higher worlds.

[ 22 ] So, when you feel that a world surrounds you, but you cannot live in that world with your limited human powers, what surrounds you—as you live in your physical body—may only be perceived as a shadow image of your mental images and ideas, or, rather, reflected from within you; you must not experience these images directly; that must be taken from you in ordinary life by the angelic being that protects you—if one feels this inwardly with the necessary tone of inner piety, then one has the ability to perceive one of the vowels of the spiritual world.

[ 23 ] The next stage depends on developing something that I have already alluded to in my book *The Threshold of the Spiritual World*. As I described there, one immerses oneself in the spiritual world. The process shows that one, as it were, steps outside of oneself and identifies with something else. But that is not enough, not by any means. It is necessary not only to be able to identify with others, but also to be able to transform oneself into other beings, so that one does not merely remain what one was when one stepped out of oneself, but is able to transform into other beings, thereby truly becoming what one enters into.

[ 24 ] A good way to prepare for this is to practice, over and over again, showing loving interest in everything that surrounds us in the world. It is impossible to overstate how infinitely significant it is for the aspiring occultist to increasingly perceive that a loving interest in everything that surrounds us in the world is awakening. This is a point that, unfortunately, is not usually taken seriously enough, which explains the limited success often achieved in occultism. After all, it is only too natural that, as a rule, people direct the necessary energy of interest solely toward themselves. Truly, even if one does not quite want to believe it and gives the matter a different name, one is most interested in oneself, and to the very least degree in anything else.

[ 25 ] However, it must also be said that the very structure of the universe ensures that one must constantly be interested in oneself. One really has to make an effort not to be constantly interested in oneself. For, isn’t it true that life on the physical plane inherently entails being interested in oneself? I will leave aside the fact that, of course, when one is struck by an illness and this or that hurts or is not right, one naturally takes an interest in oneself. That is only natural; one cannot help but take an interest in oneself. Even in such a case, it might be possible, through effort, to achieve the state of not taking an interest in oneself; but that is extraordinarily difficult. It could be that one is struck by an illness and is not actually particularly interested in the fact that one has this illness, that one is, rather, completely indifferent to having this illness, but that one is interested in how something like this process could arise out of the entire cosmos. One might be interested in the fact that something occurs at a point in the cosmos that lies within one’s own skin—that is, that one takes as much interest in a serious illness as one does in something that lies outside oneself.

[ 26 ] You will admit that what I have described is quite difficult. And so it is with the vast majority of things one experiences on the physical plane. It is already very difficult to take even the most ordinary things that our senses and our thinking experience and view them as if we were standing outside ourselves, observing them as objects. But that is precisely what one must try to do; precisely because it is so immensely difficult, it is generally not even attempted. Whoever conscientiously and eagerly performs the exercises described in the book *How to Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds* will gradually come to attain, to a certain degree, the perspective just described. One will reach it only by roundabout means, because it is infinitely difficult. But one will reach it to a certain degree, namely to the extent that one’s interest in oneself diminishes, so that one is no longer an interesting subject but only an interesting object. One can be that; it does no harm; it is even very useful to take an interest in oneself once one has become an object. But one must not confuse the objectification of one’s own subject with the subject itself.

[ 27 ] To the same extent that one begins to become an object to oneself, one begins to take an interest in everything outside of oneself, in everything around oneself. Then one truly gains a loving, interested devotion to the world and its phenomena. And as one cultivates this loving devotion to the world and its phenomena more and more, this mood within the soul can reach the degree necessary to step outside of oneself and transform, metamorphose, into other beings. One gradually comes to be able to do this. But in order for this loving devotion to be possible—such things are truly difficult for the human soul—one must try to find all kinds of support.

[ 28 ] Today I want to suggest one that can be helpful. One can begin by using the physical world—which is, after all, given to us from the start—as the starting point for a kind of occult reading. I have often used an image, and it is good to begin with this image. When we stand before a person and look at their face, we realize that what the eye sees—these contours, these lines of the skin—is not what matters. What matters is the soul that lives behind this physiognomic expression. And if one were to recreate the physiognomic lines in papier-mâché, the lines themselves would not be what matters; what matters is the soul that gives form to the lines. In the same way, we can view what surrounds us in the external natural world as if it were an external physiognomy. Materialistic researchers and the average person approach the things in the external natural world as if one were studying only the external form of a human being. It is as if one were to say of a human being: “Whatever is spiritual within is nonsense; it is just some convoluted superstition of dreamers. I am concerned only with the forms that can be precisely measured and examined.” This is how ordinary people examine the external world. But one can say to oneself: Just as it is natural to see the human face as an expression, as the physiognomy of the soul, so too can one view the whole of external nature not merely as it usually appears, but as a physiognomy of the spiritual beings that stand behind it. And in this regard, it is good to view the entire animal world as the physiognomy of nature.

[ 29 ] Now, however, a deeper study of the soul is required so that we do not see in animals what we usually see, but rather something that can be described as follows: There flies the eagle in the air, soaring toward the sun; that is the direction upward, into the heights, into the spiritual worlds. I wish to regard the eagle as the symbol of the ascent into the spiritual worlds. Behind the human skull, I see the thoughts that, with a sense of foreboding, soar like an eagle into the spiritual worlds. I see how this striving upward is expressed in the soaring eagle, just as the human soul is expressed in physiognomy. The eagle belongs to the physiognomy of outer nature. In the upward-flying eagle, I sense something that resembles the forehead in human physiognomy.

[ 30 ] I look at the bull lying there ruminating, bound to physical nature, to earthly matter, how he, so to speak, lives in reality in his element only when he is completely absorbed in digestion, how he remains connected in all his life processes to what he draws from the earth. He seems earthbound to me. I look at the human being and feel in my mind: there is also something earthbound here, but it is kept in balance by the eagle-like quality. The bull-like quality does not come to the fore. I sense how the Taurus-like quality is inherent in human beings; but it does not manifest in the same way as the Taurus-like quality I encounter in the external world. Physiognomically, the Taurus-like, earthbound heaviness of external nature becomes part of the human being.

[ 31 ] The same is true of the lion-like. Physiognomically, the human heart is to the human being what the lion is to the external natural world. And so it can be for the entire animal kingdom, both higher and lower. Those who have related the eagle, the bull, and the lion to the human soul have given us an image, a symbol. They have attempted to read what is written for us in the external animal world, and to discern from it—broken down into individual letters—that which is experienced as a whole within the human being. In short, one could say: The physiognomy of nature is the animal world.

[ 32 ] But what interests us about human beings is not merely their physiognomy. When we attempt to delve even more deeply into the soul, what interests us is what we call the expression, the play of expressions—that is, what arises when the physiognomy comes into motion. There we stand, as it were, even closer to the soul that we perceive through the play of expressions than to the soul that we perceive only through physiognomy. And again, we can also seek out in the external natural world that which is the play of expressions of the spiritual world behind it, if we observe the plant world in a similar way to how we have seen it in the animal world. When we observe the plant world as it blossoms in spring, in all that it does throughout the summer—how, on the one hand, the earth sends it forth, and on the other, the forces of the spheres penetrate it and draw out the living life that appears in the infinite nuances of the plant blossoms, growth, and greening with their teeming and weaving—when we observe them in this way and relate them to an underlying spiritual being of the cosmos, just as we relate the facial expressions of a human being to their soul, then we have once again done something we should practice. So that we can say: The expression of nature is the plant world.

[ 33 ] What we observe further in the soul, beyond the play of facial expressions, are the gestures—the movements that flow from the soul. Just as we can describe the animal world as the physiognomy of nature and the plant world as the expression of nature, so too can we regard the forms of the mineral world as the gesture of nature, as the gesture of nature. And for those who wish to practice occult reading and occult hearing in detail, one of the most beautiful experiences they can have is to experience the mineral world in such a way that, in the form of the boundary surfaces and their peculiar relationship to the outer cosmos, in the translucence, in the transparency, in the crystalline clarity of rock crystal, of rock crystal, quartz, calcite, emerald, and chrysoprase, gradually assimilates the infinitely varied gestures of the spiritual beings of nature.

[ 34 ] When one performs such exercises, when one reaches the point where one can truly experience within the otherwise lifeless realm of stone that which is expressed through this lifeless realm—and which is like a soul expressing in living gestures that which lives within it—when one practices in this way, one helps oneself to develop a loving interest in all beings other than oneself. Then one gradually truly ascends to such a phase, such a state of one’s development, in which it becomes possible—if one acquires the gift of clairvoyance—to transform oneself into the beings outside as well. One realizes that one possesses within oneself the power to transform into the beings outside. One can transform into all other human beings. The human being is capable of infinite metamorphoses in this regard, but it must be practiced in the manner described.

[ 35 ] Once again, we can now raise a question. But before I raise this question, I would like to emphasize the emotional aspect of what I have discussed. While the first point I mentioned leads us to a certain attitude toward the hierarchies—to the awareness that “you are protected”— to a feeling imbued with piety, so the feeling that one can transform into the most diverse beings leads us to hold the humanity of human beings in high esteem, to truly appreciate them in their full dignity—but the humanity that one does not possess within oneself in the physical world, but which one finds only when one becomes someone else. If one truly attains the sense of the ability to transform, it cannot lead to arrogance; for every single transformation tells one that one is not as worthy as the being into which one must first transform. The fact that one has the sense of the ability to transform leads one to become humble. A feeling of the deepest religious humility is connected with the sense of the ability to transform.

[ 36 ] But we can raise another question: We summon these powers of transformation from within ourselves; are they not, then, constantly within us? Yes, these powers are always within us. Just as the powers of imagination are always within us, yet we must summon them to perceive spiritual beings, so too are the powers of self-transformation always within us. However, to be conscious of them, we must develop them in the manner described. At every moment, we are not only ourselves but also every other being; we simply do not develop into them because we do not expand our consciousness to include the other being. Why is this so? This becomes clearest to us when we consider one of those instances in life where a human being on the ordinary physical plane transforms into another being.

[ 37 ] However, on the physical plane, it does happen that one uses the forces that are otherwise the forces of transformation. One uses them without even realizing it. One uses them every time one wrongs one’s fellow human beings by unjustifiably making one’s own will the master of others. It begins as soon as one lies to another. Through the lie, one implants a piece of falsehood within them. One gains a certain power over them because the lie continues to have an effect within the other person.

[ 38 ] The same is true when one does something evil. The forces with which one does evil in the world are these transformative forces, only applied in the wrong place. All evil in the world is the improper application of these transformative forces. It truly allows one to gain deep insight into the mystery of existence when one knows where the injustice, the evil, the crime, and the calamity that occur in the world come from. This happens because human beings apply the best and holiest forces that exist—namely, the forces of transformation—in a perverse manner. There would be no evil in the world if the most sacred powers of transformation did not exist. I even once pointed out in a public lecture this peculiarity: that evil is a misapplication of powers which, if applied in their proper place, would lead to the highest good. This mood in the human soul—I know that here in the soul there is something which, on the one hand, can transform itself into all other human beings and beings, and which, on the other hand, can transform itself into egoism—this mood one must be able to hold up to the cosmos if one wishes to hear spiritually. This is a second vowel.

[ 39 ] The attitude one can have toward the mystery of evil, as I have now described it, is the third vowel—that is, what one experiences when one knows what can cause a person to become evil. When one knows this mystery—that it is the highest forces being misapplied in evil—then one has the mood of a third cosmic vowel. One _must_ experience such moods of the soul; that is what matters.

[ 40 ] Today we have spoken of three cosmic vowels. Tomorrow we will speak of other vowels. Today I first had to explain the principle that is essential for us to establish that inner kinship with the cosmos in our inner experience, through which, by surrendering our own soul forces, we become listeners and readers of what is taking place out there in the spiritual world.