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An Outline of Occult Science by Rudolf Steiner

V. KNOWLEDGE OF THE HIGHER WORLDS

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Nor is there any contradiction in having derived the contents of our ideas from communications made by the occult seer. The ideas are, it is true already there when we devote ourselves to them; yet they cannot be "thought", without in each case being created anew within the soul. The important point is that the occult teacher seeks to awaken in his hearers and readers the kind of thoughts which they must first call forth from within themselves, whereas he who describes some physical object indicates something that the listener or reader may observe within the sense-world.

(The path which leads to sense-free thinking by means of the communications made by occult science is thoroughly safe. But there is also another method even safer and above all things more exact, yet for this very reason more difficult for the majority. This method is set forth in my two books, "_Goethe's Conception of the World_" and "_The __ Philosophy of Spiritual Activity_." These writings set forth what human thought can achieve for itself, if the thinking is not under the influence of the physical sense impressions but relies merely upon itself. Then pure thinking works within man like a living being. At the same time nothing in the above-mentioned writings is derived from communications due to occult science itself, and yet it is shown that pure, self-reliant thinking can obtain information about the world, life and man.

These writings therefore occupy a very important intermediate position between the actual cognition of the sense-world and that of the spiritual world. They present that which thinking can gain when it raises itself above sense-observation and yet does not enter into occult research. Anyone who allows these books to work upon his whole soul, already stands within the spiritual world, but it appears to him as a world of thought. Those who are in a position to allow this intermediate condition to act upon them, will be following a safe and sane path and can thus win for themselves a feeling concerning the higher worlds, which will for all future time ensure for them most abundant results.)

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The object of meditating upon the above described symbolical concepts and feelings is, strictly speaking, the development of the higher organs of cognition within man's astral body. They are in the first place created from the substance of the astral body. These new organs of observation establish a connection with a new world wherein man learns to know himself as a new ego.

These new organs of perception are first of all to be distinguished from those of the physical sense-world by being _active_ organs. Whereas the eye and ear are passive, allowing light and sound to work upon them, it may be said of these perceptive organs of the soul and spirit that, while functioning they are in a perpetual state of activity, and that they seize hold of their objects and facts, as it were, in full consciousness. This gives rise to the feeling that psycho-spiritual cognition is a union with,--a "dwelling within,"--the corresponding facts.

These separately evolving psycho-spiritual organs may be compared to "lotus flowers" corresponding to the appearance which they present to the clairvoyant consciousness, as they are formed from the substance of the astral body.(29)

Very definite kinds of meditation act upon the astral body in such manner that certain psycho-spiritual organs, the so-called "lotus flowers," are developed. Any proper meditation undertaken with the view of attaining to imaginative cognition has its effect upon one or another of these organs.(30)

A regular course of training arranges and orders the separate exercises to be practised by the occult student, so that these organs may either simultaneously or consecutively attain their suitable development, and on this process the student will have to bring much patience and perseverance to bear. Those, indeed, who are possessed of no more than the average amount of patience with which man, under ordinary conditions of life is endowed, will not reach very far. For it takes a long--often a very long time indeed--before these organs have reached a point at which the occult student is able to use them for observing things in the higher worlds. At this point comes what is known as "illumination," in contradistinction to the "preparation," or "purification," which consists in the practices undertaken for the formation of these organs. (The term "purification" is used because in order to reach certain phases of inner life, the pupil cleanses himself through the corresponding exercises, of that which belongs to the world of sense observation.)