The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fourth Lecture

[ 1 ] Yesterday I endeavored to explain how, through the development of imaginative mental images, it becomes possible to gain insight into the nature of human sensory perception in a different way than is possible when one approaches this task solely with the results of ordinary sensory perception and the combining intellect. I have particularly emphasized that this imaginative mental image—the development of which, as I have already said, I will describe in greater detail later—must proceed in psychological experience in such a way that it is modeled on mathematical mental images, the development, analysis, and so on of mathematical structures.

[ 2 ] Now, I’m sure it will be clear to you from this what I went on to explain: that in exactly the same way that one approaches external sensory reality in the mineral-physical realm using the results of internally developed mathematization, one approaches—let us say for now—the realm of the human senses with what is given to the mental image, in order to recognize what takes place within these—as I said yesterday—waves that the physical-sensory external world sends into the human organism. Now, however, the point is that whoever has developed such imaginative perception comes to something else at the same time as gaining insight into the nature of the human senses—that is, into the actual primary organization of the human being. For example, they come to be able to form mental images about the nature of the vegetative realm. I already hinted at this yesterday. Isn’t it true that when we approach plant growth, plant form, and so on, using only the results of spatial and algebraic mathematics, we cannot gain the sense that what we have established in mathematical consciousness could in any way permeate the plant kingdom, just as it can permeate the mineral kingdom? On the other hand, the moment we first develop an imaginative mental image purely inwardly, we come to perceive the plant realm in the same way that we otherwise perceive the mineral realm in the manner described.

[ 3 ] But then something peculiar happens: one begins to approach the plant world in such a way that the individual plant actually appears to be merely a part of a greater whole. It is only in this way that one truly begins to form a mental image of the plant world within the earthly realm. One gains the impression, in fact, that the entire plant kingdom of the earthly realm actually forms a great unity together with this earthly realm. This becomes apparent purely empirically to the imaginative gaze. Of course, with our physical existence, we can never encompass more than some part of the Earth’s plant world. We observe the plant world of a particular territory; even if we are botanists, our empirical knowledge of the plant world remains, in relation to the total plant world of the Earth, always something very partial. But one also knows this through direct observation. One says to oneself: Here you do not have a whole; here you have something that is only a part of a totality, something that belongs together with other things. — The impression one would get when faced with such a partial plant world is roughly the same as the one one would have upon encountering a person who is completely covered by something, with the exception of a single arm and a hand. One would know then that one is not facing a self-contained whole, but rather something that is part of a whole and whose very existence is possible only as a part of such a whole. But one also forms the mental image that one cannot conceive of the earthly realm at all in the way a physicist, mineralogist, or geologist does; rather, one forms the mental image that just as much a part of earthly existence is what manifests as forces in the plant world as what manifests in the geological or mineralogical realms and so on. Not in the sense of a vague analogy, but in the sense of true insight, the Earth becomes a kind of organic being. Admittedly, an organic being that, through its various stages of development, has separated the mineral kingdom from itself and, on the other hand, has differentiated the plant kingdom.

[ 4 ] What I am developing here can, of course, very easily be arrived at through mere analogies, as is the case, for example, with Gustav Theodor Fechner. However, the Spiritual Science referred to here attaches no value whatsoever to such mere analogies, but rather relies solely on direct perception. Therefore, it must always be emphasized that speaking about something such as the Earth as an organism must be preceded by speaking about imaginative mental images; for only to imaginative mental images—and not to the combining intellect with its analogies—can the Earth be given as a total being.

[ 5 ] But in doing so, one also acquires something else, and this is something I want to mention explicitly here because it has great methodological significance, and because I am particularly mindful that my words are addressed to students. There is, in essence, a great deal of confusion in the current debates concerning the intellectual and other spiritual apprehensions of the world. For example, people speak of observing a crystal—let’s say a cube of salt—and wanting to gain some insight from this cube of salt, say, regarding its relationship to human cognitive faculties or its place within the whole of nature, and so on. Just as one speaks of this salt cube, so one often speaks—indeed, one might even say, almost exclusively today—of, for example, a rose, and in doing so one has the feeling that one may ascribe objective existence to the salt cube in the same way as to the rose. And yet, anyone who, through their understanding, does not seek some formal concept, but rather strives through their understanding to penetrate reality—who truly wishes to grasp reality—must hold the following in mind with complete clarity. They must tell themselves: The salt cube has an existence within its own boundaries. The rose has no meaning within those boundaries in which I see it here as a rose with a stem. For as such a rose, it cannot develop independently—please note the word—to the same degree as the salt cube. It must develop on the rosebush; the rosebush is an integral part of this rose’s development, and it is not a real thing outside the rosebush. Essentially, when I view it as a separate rose, it has a semblance of existence.

[ 6 ] I say this to clarify. The point is simply this: in all the observations we make, we must not theorize about them in any way before we have placed what we have observed within its corresponding totality. Only to the entire rosebush can we ascribe a mode of being of an independent kind in the same sense as we do to the cube of salt. We must not, therefore, speak of the rose in the same way as we do of the cube of salt—whether in an epistemological or any other respect. To seek to experience reality in a certain self-contained way—one acquires a keen sense for this when one advances to a mental image—and, equipped with this sense, one must then also accept what I have just said with regard to the plant world. The earthly plant world as a whole is, in a certain sense, presented to us in accordance with its true nature only when we perceive it as a whole with our consciousness, and when we regard the individual elements that meet our gaze—the genera and species of the plant world—as, so to speak, merely parts of the entire plant organism that covers the earth, or rather, that grows out of the earth.

[ 7 ] Through imaginative mental images, one gains not only an understanding of the sensory world but also of the external plant world. But one also gains significant inner insights. I would like to speak of these inner insights, to begin with, by sharing only the empirical aspects of them with you. As human beings, we are able to look back through our ordinary memory on what took place during our waking lives up to a certain year in our childhood, and through the power of memory we can bring up one event or another from the stream of our experiences in pictorial form. But we are clearly aware that in this process of recalling, we must exert our power of memory; we must bring up individual images from the stream of time as it flows. However, as imaginative contemplation becomes more and more developed, one gradually reaches a point where time, as it were, becomes space. This process unfolds very gradually, and one should not form a mental image of the results of something like imaginative contemplation coming all at once. One need not form a mental image of mastering the imaginative method being any easier than mastering laboratory methods or those used in clinical practice, at the observatory, and so on. Both require years of work—one intellectual work, the other inner, spiritual work. But as an experience of this inner, spiritual work, it then becomes apparent that the individual results coalesce for us, that we see, as it were, how time—which we perceive as passing—when we draw up one memory or another from the stream of our experiences—how this time — at least approximately — becomes like space, that what we have lived through in life from nearly the moment of our birth coalesces as in a meaningful image of memory. Through the effort of the imaginative life, this retrospective—which is now something other than a mere recollection—is presented to our soul in individual moments. In fact, what is initially present is this subjective experience: that we are given a retrospective view of our earthly life thus far. This is, as I said, an empirical result of imaginative mental images.

[ 8 ] What inner experience—or, I should rather say, what kind of inner experience—arises in parallel with this contemplation, this panorama of our experiences? What arises is this: although we have these images of experiences before us as images, we are nevertheless quite clear about the following: the power of our soul, which brings these images of memory to our consciousness, is closely related to the ordinary, bright, and clear power of the intellect. It is not the power of the intellect itself, but it is related to this bright and clear power of the intellect. One can certainly say: What one has strived for—that in all circumstances, during this imaginative mental image, one’s consciousness be illuminated just as it is in mathematical reasoning—remains with one when one arrives at these images of memory. One has images, but one holds onto them just as one otherwise holds onto the contents of the intellect. Through this, however, one gains, in a very specific way, an insight into the workings of the intellect itself; one gains an insight into the significance of these intellectual processes for the human being and his self-knowledge. For one does not merely look back on one’s life; rather, this life, which presents itself to one as if through a mirror image, reveals itself in such a way that one can truly draw a comparison with a mirror. Just as one speaks of a mirror in the sense that the objects reflected in it can be understood through the application of optical laws to this understanding, so too, by arriving at such inner insights, one learns to recognize the workings of that soul force which is experienced there in the same way as the intellect is otherwise experienced. One experiences, so to speak, an enhanced intellect—an intellect that is not only capable of creating abstract images but also brings about these very concrete images of our experiences.

[ 9 ] However, something occurs that at first presents a kind of subjective difficulty, but which simply needs to be understood in order to find one’s way into it properly. By living within these images, one already lives in them as if in complete mathematical clarity; yet the sensation of being free—not of behaving freely, but of being free—as one experiences it in intellectual activity, is no longer present in this kind of imagination. Don’t misunderstand me: the entire process of imagining does indeed proceed in just as arbitrary a manner as ordinary intellectual activity, but the fact remains that in intellectual activity one always has the subjective experience—I say “experience” because it is more than a mere sensation—: You are actually swimming in the image; you are swimming in something that is, in relation to the external world, essentially nothing. Now, one does not have this feeling, this experience, in relation to the content of the imaginative world; rather, one has the distinct experience that what one produces there as imaginations is present at the same time—that one lives within something that exists, that one thus lives and weaves within a reality, albeit a reality that, at first, does not hold one exceptionally—I would say—firmly, but whose hold can nevertheless be distinctly felt.

[ 10 ] And through that which one now, I might say, extracts from reality—that which one brings to mind inwardly by reflecting back from the panorama of life to the inner activity that creates this panorama of life—one comes to know inwardly, in a mathematical way, that which one can now bring into correspondence — just as one can otherwise bring mental images into correspondence with external mineral-physical reality — with that which is contained in the human power of imagination—and also in the power of imagination of other beings, though I will not speak of that now—and in the human power of growth. One forms a mental image of a certain inner kinship between what lives purely in the soul through imagination—for it is a purely soul-based experience—and that which permeates the human being as his power of growth, which causes him to grow from a child into an adult, which causes his limbs to grow larger, and which organizes him internally as a power of growth. In short, this provides an immediate insight into what acts as a real principle of growth within the human being. And one gains this insight initially in a very specific area, namely that of the nervous system. By having this panorama of life—with what one experiences in it as described—one first perceives that which—I will speak of the other later—is the principle of growth in the human nervous system, which, after all, continues the sensory system inward. And one gains a mental image: In your sensory organs, you have something that you can initially perceive to some extent through imagination. But this now also contains the possibility of surveying the entire nervous system as a developing—I would say—synthetic sensory organ, which synthetically encompasses the other sensory organs. One comes to recognize that our senses, at the time of our birth, are not yet fully developed in their growth, though they are somewhat complete in their inner powers—this is evident from the way I have spoken about the relationship of imagination to the sensory world—but that what lives within our nervous system is permeated by the same force as the sensory organs, yet is a process of becoming, a great sensory organ in the making. One gains the mental image—as a real insight—that we possess the individual senses, which open outward and continue inward into the nervous organism, so that throughout our lives, up to a certain age, this nervous organism is organized by the force we have come to know in imagination in the manner described.

[ 11 ] You can see what is actually being sought here. The aim is for that which in human beings themselves actually appears spiritually opaque—for what does a person actually know about themselves, and how do the forces within them work?—to gradually become transparent. That which can be called a spiritual-psychic opacity—something that ordinary cognition cannot grasp—begins to become spiritually and psychically transparent. One gains the ability, through a higher, qualitative mathematics—if I may use that expression—to penetrate first the world of the senses and then the world of our nervous system. And when one comes to these things, one does not become arrogant or immodest; rather, one is only now truly beginning to become genuinely humble, especially with regard to our understanding of the human being. For what I have described to you here in relatively few words is actually acquired over the course of a very long time, and although it occurs earlier for some and later for others—if one truly wishes to apply the method of spiritual research to oneself—one may nevertheless say: Certainly, results that then appear extraordinarily fundamental and important often surprise one only after one has worked on oneself inwardly for years. What comes to light through such inner work, if described with reasonable accuracy, can always appear comprehensible to common sense. But arriving at these results—bringing them up from the depths of the soul’s existence—is something that requires persistent and energetic inner soul work. And above all, one learns to become humble, because one comes to realize how one must work one’s way through, bit by bit, to achieve a relative self-knowledge as a human being. For through what one thus attains in a mental image, one sees quite clearly: You are actually only coming to know the human nervous-sensory organism through this process, and only now can you truly begin to grasp the extent of the darkness that lies before you regarding that which is otherwise integrated into the human organism.

[ 12 ] But then the task is to attain a higher level—the word “higher” is, after all, merely a technical term—of supersensible knowledge, in order to go a step further than mere self-knowledge with regard to the nervous-sensory system. But here I must first point out that—as I will describe in greater detail—the attainment of imaginative knowledge essentially depends on repeatedly presenting the soul with easily comprehensible mental images in a meditation that is not confused but methodically and technically guided, as I have described in my book How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?. It is essential that they be easily comprehensible, not just any memories, reminiscences, and so on—for that would lead one to push the mathematical experience too far into the background—but rather easily comprehensible mental images, preferably symbolic ones, since these are the easiest to grasp. What matters is what we experience psychologically through these mental images. We seek to bring these mental images into our consciousness in such a way that their presence in consciousness is akin to that of a memory image. Thus, self-created mental images are taken into the human soul through a voluntary act in the same way that memory images are otherwise present within it. In a certain sense, one is imitating exactly what happens in the process of remembering. In remembering, certain experiences are permanently fixed in images. One seeks to get to the bottom of this activity of the human soul; I will explain how later. By seeking to understand how memory operates, one will then also be able to voluntarily hold such easily comprehensible mental images in consciousness for a certain period of time—following the very pattern of remembered images—and one becomes increasingly accustomed to extending this time from just a few seconds up to minutes—that is, for a relatively longer period of time. It is not these mental images themselves that matter, but rather that a certain inner spiritual strength develops through the act of visualizing such self-chosen mental images. Just as when I strain the muscles of my arm, those muscles develop through the exertion, so certain powers of the soul are strengthened when they are engaged with such mental images as I have described, which are repeatedly and arbitrarily brought into consciousness. The soul must exert itself to bring about and sustain this process, and it is this effort in the soul’s experience that matters. And as we practice in this way with the mental images we have created ourselves, something arises within us that is the power of imagination—a power that is thus developed along the lines of the power of memory, yet must not be confused with it. For we will yet have to describe how what we perceive in imaginations—we have, in part, already described it—are indeed entirely real external things, not merely our own experiences, as is the case with memories. This is essentially the difference between imaginations and memories: that memories merely reproduce our own experiences in image form, whereas imaginations—even though they initially appear like memories—make it clear through their own content that they do not refer merely to our own experiences, but that they can refer, at least, to facts of the world that are entirely objective in relation to us.

[ 13 ] So you see, by developing our power of memory, we develop the soul’s power of imagination. Now, just as we develop the power of memory, we can develop another power. It will almost seem strange to you when I tell you what this power is. And yet, developing this power is more difficult than developing the power of memory. In everyday life, certain forces ensure that we not only remember—my esteemed fellow students will certainly agree with me on this—but also forget, and at times we do not even need to make a special effort to forget. This changes somewhat when we cultivate our refined power of memory through meditation. For, curiously enough, this power of holding onto certain images leads to those images initially wanting to remain. When they arise in consciousness, they are not easily dispelled; they assert themselves. This is connected to what I described earlier—that we are actually dealing with a state of being within a reality. This reality asserts itself in that it, too, wants to be enduring. Now, once one has managed—but in a manner modeled on mathematical thinking—to develop the imaginative power, then, through a further effort, one can also bring about the expulsion of these mental images from consciousness just as arbitrarily as they were formed. And this power of cultivated forgetting must be nurtured with particular care. The point is certainly this: if these inner powers of insight are to be developed, one must truly do everything necessary to avoid causing harm within the soul. But anyone who would merely point out certain dangers in this process would be like someone who forbids certain experiments in the laboratory simply because this or that might explode at some point. You see, I myself had a chemistry professor at the university who was one-eyed because he had lost one eye during an experiment. Such things are, of course, no objection to the necessity of training in certain methods, and I may well say that if all the precautions I have described in my books regarding this inner training of the soul’s powers are applied, then dangers to the life of the soul can certainly not arise. The danger lies in the fact that, unless one also develops methods for letting go of these mental images, one risks being constrained in a certain way by what one has brought about through one’s meditations. But, first of all, this must not happen; and secondly, if it did happen, it would prevent one from making further progress on the path of supersensible knowledge. For the cultivation of this continued process of forgetting constitutes a further stage in the process.

[ 14 ] Now, there is a certain method one can use to truly achieve this continuation of the power of forgetting. Here I come to something that may seem quite amateurish, especially to those who are immersed in some branch of contemporary epistemology. I am aware of all the objections that can be raised against such things, but I am also obliged to describe the facts as they are. And so I must say that one can aid the development of the power of forgetting by cultivating—through a certain self-discipline, the discipline of one’s own self—that which appears in ordinary life as the capacity for love. One can certainly say: Love is, after all, not a power of cognition. - As we understand cognition today, perhaps it is not. But the point is not to preserve the power of love as it appears in ordinary life for the sake of that ordinary life, but rather to develop this power of love further through a certain kind of self-discipline. And one can achieve this by observing the following:

[ 15 ] Isn’t it true that when one lives one’s life as a human being in this way, one must admit that, in fact, one has become a little different with each passing year? And if one compares who one is at a certain age with who one was, say, ten years ago, you will find—if you approach this self-observation with even a modicum of honesty—that in the substance of your inner life, including not only the more defined content of thoughts, feelings, or even volition, but also what I would call the character, the entire disposition of your inner life, many things have changed over time. One has become a different person inwardly, and if one looks at the factors through which one has become a different person inwardly, one can say to oneself: First, there is what has happened to our physical organism, which is, after all, always changing. In the first half of life, it changes through progressive growth; in the second half, it continues to change through the process of decline and so on. But also our external experiences—that which confronts us first as the world of imagination, and then also as that which deposits pain, suffering, pleasure, and joy upon our soul; that which we have sought to develop and live out as forces of the will—that is precisely what, in the course of life, makes us different again and again. And if one is willing to honestly admit to oneself what is actually happening, one must say: Well, one is actually just drifting along in the stream of life. — Anyone who wants to become a spiritual researcher must, in fact, take charge of this self-development through a certain degree of self-discipline. One must also cultivate within oneself the resolve to transform this or that habit—small habits are sometimes of decisive importance—through one’s own effort within a certain period of time, so that one undergoes a metamorphosis over the course of one’s life. Not only through the flow of life itself, but also through what one consciously does to oneself, one can then, from any point in life—with the aid of the retrospective view of the panorama of one’s life that has already been developed—look back upon what has changed in one’s life as a result of this self-discipline. This then has a remarkable effect on one’s own inner life. This effect does not manifest as an increase in selfishness, but rather, on the contrary, as an increase in a person’s capacity for love. One becomes increasingly capable of embracing the external world with a certain love and of immersing oneself in it. And only those who have made efforts toward such self-discipline can truly judge what this means. Only they can truly gauge what it means to allow the mental concepts one forms about any process or any object to be accompanied by the results of such self-discipline. One penetrates with a much stronger personal involvement into that which our mental images immerse themselves in; one even penetrates the physical-mineral world—which otherwise leaves one indifferent to the results of mathematics—with a certain unfolding of love, and one clearly notices the difference between penetrating with mere pale mental images and penetrating with the developed power of love.

[ 16 ] You will take offense at what I say here about this developed power of love only if, for example, you wish to establish the dogma from the outset: This power of love must not be present when penetrating the external world. — Yes, one can establish such a dogma. One could say that true objective knowledge is only that which is attained through pure mental images. Certainly, one also needs the ability to immerse oneself in the events of the external world through pure, sober reason, to the exclusion of every other power. But this external world does not reveal its entirety to us if we seek to approach it in this way; rather, the world reveals its entirety to us only when we approach it with a power of love that strengthens our mental images. And it is not a matter of us dictating our knowledge, of us saying that nature must reveal itself to us through this or that faculty, of us, so to speak, establishing epistemological dogmas; rather, what matters is to ask: How does nature reveal itself to us? How does it yield to us? — It yields to us only when we allow our powers of imagination to be imbued with the forces of love.

[ 17 ] But for now, I am simply saying that one can try to cultivate the exercises of forgetting with greater strength and greater confidence through the power of love than without it. By simultaneously cultivating this self-discipline—which makes one more capable of love—one comes to experience within oneself the expanded, intensified forgetting with just as strong a sense of volition as the further developed, intensified remembering. And by being able to place something quite specific and positive within one’s inner soul in the place that is otherwise, in essence, the end of our experience—for when we have forgotten something, this forgetting marks the end with regard to a certain sequence of experiences —by substituting, as it were, the positive power of cultivated forgetting for a void, where we actively cultivate something that otherwise proceeds passively—once we have reached this point, it is as if we had crossed an abyss within ourselves, as if we had actually penetrated a region of experience through which a new existence flows to us. And so it is. Up to that point, we have had our imaginations. If we are truly people endowed with a mathematical disposition of mind within these imaginations—and not fools—then we will see clearly: In the imaginative world, we have images. Physiology may dispute whether what is conveyed to us through our senses is presented as images in the sense that is commonly understood—I have described this in my Riddles of Philosophy—whether these are images or a reality. That these are, at first, images—which certainly point to a reality, but are nonetheless images—is something we know, and a healthy experience in such a realm is based precisely on the fact that we know from the outset that we are dealing with images. But the moment a certain result of the intensified power of forgetting sets in, these images are, as it were, filled from the other side of life with what constitutes spiritual reality, and one grows together with spiritual reality. One perceives, so to speak, from the other end of life. Just as one perceives through the senses at one end of life—namely, the physical-sensory end—so one learns to look toward the other side and to recognize how a spiritual reality flows into the images of the imaginative life. This infusion of a spiritual reality—this, I would say, infusion of a spiritual reality at the abyss of soul existence into that which we have well prepared within our powers of cognition—is what I have called “inspiration” in my book How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds? and in other books. One need not take offense at the term; one need only hold fast to what is given as the characteristic of such words. One should not pick up on every instance where this word appears. After all, we must have words for what we wish to convey, and we often have to choose older terms; and for what presents itself as I have just described, I have chosen the word “inspiration.”

[ 18 ] What I have described as the attainment of inspiration is what ultimately leads us to gain an understanding of what I have called the rhythmic system in the human organism, which is connected in a certain way to the world of feeling. And this brings us to the point where we must explicitly emphasize that this method of attaining inspiration, as I have just described it, can actually only be developed by modern human beings. In earlier phases of human development, it was cultivated more instinctively, and we find such a form of cultivation in the Indian yoga system, which cannot be revived. It is ahistorical and, in the sense of Spiritual Science, terribly amateurish to attempt to revive the old yoga system. It operates through certain human forces that were appropriate only to an earlier stage of human development. It operates directly through the development of certain rhythmic processes, through the development of methodically directed breathing processes. By breathing in a specific way, the yogi seeks to develop—more through the physical-bodily realm—that which modern human beings must develop through the soul-spiritual realm, as I have described. Nevertheless, we can say that the instinctive inspiration that pervades Vedanta philosophy and similar traditions was, for an earlier stage of human development, something similar to what we attain again through fully conscious inspiration—which, however, must take the path I have described.

[ 19 ] As modern human beings, we are, so to speak, able to develop within ourselves—from above, through purely spiritual and soul-based exercises—the power that then permeates the human being’s rhythmic organization as a force of inspiration, just as the Indian sought to directly permeate this rhythmic organization through yogic breathing. They started from the physical; we start from the spiritual-psychic. Both aim to grasp the human being in his middle system—the rhythmic system—and we will see how, in fact, what we encounter in imaginative cognition as a grasp of the sensory system and the nervous system can in turn be supplemented to some extent when we penetrate the rhythmic system from the standpoint of inspiration. And at the same time, we will be able to see how ancient, instinctive, more childlike forms of higher knowledge—such as those found in the Indian yoga system—must be revived in the fully conscious, free human being.

[ 20 ] I will take the liberty of speaking next time about this connection between the development of the rhythmic system through the prehistoric yoga philosophy and what emerges today, in particular, through inner psychological and spiritual work leading up to inspiration.