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An Outline of Occult Science by Rudolf Steiner

V. KNOWLEDGE OF THE HIGHER WORLDS

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It is the same with the members of the etheric body, the sentient body, and the sentient soul. Man is the outcome of the entire world surrounding him, and every part of his constitution corresponds to some event, to some being in the external world. At a certain stage of his development the occult student comes to a realization of this relation of his own being to the great cosmos, and this stage of development may in the occult sense be termed a becoming aware of the relationship of the little world, the microcosm--that is, man himself--to the great world, the macrocosm. And when the occult student has struggled through to such cognition, he may then go through a new experience; he begins to feel himself united, as it were, with the entire cosmic structure, although he remains fully conscious of his own independence. This sensation is a merging into the whole world, a becoming "at one" with it, yet _without_ losing one's own individual identity. Occult science describes this stage as the "becoming one with the macrocosm." It is important that this union should not be imagined as one in which separate consciousness ceases and in which the human being flowers forth into the universe, for such a thought would only be the expression of an opinion resulting from untutored reasoning.

Following this stage of development something takes place that in occult science is described as "beatitude." It is neither possible nor necessary that this stage be more closely described, for no human words have the power to picture this experience and it may rightly be said that any conception of this state could be acquired only by means of such thought-power as would no longer be dependent upon the instrument of the human brain. The separate stages of higher knowledge, according to the methods of initiation that have been here described, may be enumerated as follows:

1. The study of occult science, in the course of which we first of all make use of the reasoning powers we have acquired in the world of the physical senses.

2. Attainment of imaginative cognition.

3. Reading the secret script (which corresponds to inspiration).

4. Working with the philosopher's stone (corresponding to intuition).

5. Cognition of the relationship between the microcosm and the macrocosm.

6. Being one with the macrocosm.

7. Beatitude.

These stages however need not necessarily be thought of as following one another consecutively, for in the course of training, the occult student, according to his individuality, may have attained a preceding stage only to a certain degree when he has already begun to practice exercises, corresponding to the next higher stage. For instance, it may be that when he has gained only a few reliable imaginative pictures, he will already be doing exercises which lead him on to draw inspiration, intuition, or cognition of the relationship between microcosm and macrocosm into the sphere of his own experiences.

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When the occult student has experienced intuition he comes to know not only the forms of the psycho-spiritual world, not only can he recognize their inter-relationship through the "secret script," but he attains a cognition of these beings themselves through whose co-operation the world, to which he belongs, comes into being. Thus he learns to know himself in the true form which he possesses as a spiritual being in the psycho-spiritual world. He has struggled through to the higher ego, and has learned how he must continue the work in order that he may master his double, the Guardian of the Threshold. But he has also met the "greater guardian of the Threshold" who stands before him perpetually urging him to further labors. It is this greater Guardian of the Threshold who now becomes the ideal he must strive to resemble, and when the student has acquired this feeling he will have risen to that important stage of development in which he will be in a position to recognize who it is that is really standing before him as that "greater Guardian." For henceforth, in the student's consciousness, the Guardian is gradually transformed into the figure of the Christ, whose Being and intervention in the evolution of the earth have been dealt with in a foregoing chapter.