Stages of Higher Knowledge

The Authorized New Translation from the Original German Formerly Translated by the Title 'Gates of Knowledge' A supplement to 'Knowledge of Higher Worlds'

Rudolph Steiner

• Publisher: Light House
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9781406796933
• eBook ISBN: 9781446546475

Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner (1861 – 1925) was an Austrian social reformer, philosopher, economist, architect, esotericist, and economist. He rose to celebrity during the latter part of the twentieth century as a literary critic and author of philosophical works, later founding a spiritual movement called "anthroposophy" which was heavily influenced by German theosophy and idealist philosophy. Originally published in 1930, this volume explains how different stages of material cognition and higher states of knowledge can be achieved through meditation, concentration exercises, and a connection to the spirit world. This fascinating book will appeal to those with an interest in spiritualism, and it is not to be missed by collectors of vintage spiritualist literature. Many vintage books such as this are becoming increasingly scarce and expensive. We are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with the original text and artwork.

Chapter V

INSPIRATION AND INTUITION

THE word “Inspiration” may be applied to spiritual hearing, in the same way as “Imagination” may be called spiritual seeing. But it must, however, be clearly understood that by the expression “hearing” is meant a form of perception much farther removed from sense-hearing in the physical world than “sight” in the imaginative or astral world is from “sight” with the physical eyes. Light and colour phenomena of the astral world may be described as if the luminous surfaces and colours of sense-objects stood out from these objects, and, detached from them, floated freely in space. But this is only an approximate concept, for “space” in the imaginative world is by no means the same as in the physical. It is a mistake to believe that we are seeing imaginative colour-pictures when we are seeing detached floating patches of colour of a certain size in ordinary space. Nevertheless the building of such colour-images is the way to the imaginative life.

Anyone who tries to picture a flower, and then to reject from the image everything that is not colour so that a picture as of the detached colour-surface of the flower floats before his mind, may gradually attain to Imagination. The picture itself is not Imagination; it is a more or less preparatory fantasy-picture. Imagination—that is, genuine astral experience—does not come until colour is completely detached from the sense-impression and three-dimensional space is also quite lost. When this has happened, it can be realized only by a certain kind of feeling and this is best described by saying that one no longer feels “outside” but “inside” the colour-image and has the consciousness of taking part in its origin. If this feeling is absent, if we seem to be looking at the thing as we look at a physical colour-picture, we are not dealing with a genuine Imagination but with something purely fanciful. But it must not be said that such pictures of fancy have no value; they may, for instance, be etheric copies—shadows, as it were, of genuine astral facts—and as such they have value in occult training. They may form a bridge to genuine astral imaginative experiences.

These experiences involve a certain amount of danger, on this borderland between the sensible and the super-sensible, only if the observer fails to apply a healthy human judgment. It is not to be expected that an infallible sign can be given to everyone whereby reality may be distinguished from illusion, hallucination, and fancy in this borderland. Such a rule would be convenient, but convenience is a word the occult student should banish from his dictionary.

One can but say that he who wishes to acquire for this region a clear discrimination must in the first place cultivate discrimination in the ordinary life of the ohysical world. Those who take no pains to think definitely and clearly in ordinary life will fall victims to all manner of illusions upon the ascent to higher worlds. Only consider how many snares beset sound judgment in ordinary life ! How often people fail to see clearly what exists, and see only what they themselves want to see! They believe a thing, not because they recognize it but because they like believing it. Mistakes arise from the forming of hasty judgments by those who will not take the pains to sift things thoroughly. Party feeling, passion, and many other things, play tricks on healthy judgment. In ordinary life all these causes of error, which may be multiplied indefinitely, are disturbing and far-reaching enough in their consequences, but if carried into the super-sensible life they constitute the greatest conceivable danger to sanity. No general rule can be given to the student for his guidance in the higher worlds beyond the injunction to develop a healthy power of discrimination coupled with a free and independent judgment.

When the observer of those worlds once knows what Imagination really is, he very soon gets the feeling that the pictures of the astral world are not merely pictures, but manifestations of spiritual beings. He learns to recognize that the imaginative pictures belong just as much to spiritual or psychic beings as physical colours belong to physical objects or beings. For details he will certainly have much to learn. He will have to discriminate between colour-pictures which are opaque and those which are quite transparent and as if completely illumined within. In fact, he will perceive pictures which to some extent are continuously creating their colour-light anew from within and which, therefore, are not only fully illuminated and transparent but raying forth light in themselves. The opaque pictures he will connect with a lower order of beings, the transparent ones with intermediate beings, and those which radiate light from within in themselves will be for him manifestations of higher spiritual beings.

To reach the truth about the world of Imagination, we must not form too narrow a concept of spiritual sight. For in this world there are not only perceptions of light and colour, which may be compared with the sight-experiences of the physical world, but also impressions of heat and cold, taste and smell, and yet other experiences of imaginative “sense” to which there is nothing similar in the physical world. Impressions of heat and cold are, in the imaginative or astral world, manifestations of the will and purpose of psychic and spiritual entities or beings. Whether such an entity is of good or bad intent is apparent in a certain effect of heat and cold; and one can also “taste” or “smell” an Astral entity.

That which constitutes in a real sense the element of sound, however, is almost entirely lacking in the true imaginative world. In this sense absolute stillness rules. But in its place something quite different is granted to one who is making progress in spiritual observation, something which may be compared with sound and tone, with music and speech, in the world of sense. And this something higher enters only when every sound and tone from the outer physical world is completely hushed; in fact when even the lightest psychic echo of anything in the outer world is silenced also. Then the observer realizes what may be called an understanding of the meaning of imaginative experiences.

To compare what is now experienced with anything in the physical world, it is only possible to suggest as an illustration something which does not exist there. If it were feasible to know the thoughts and feelings of another, without hearing his speech with our physical ears, such a power of perception would be comparable with the direct understanding by the imaginative faculty which, in the spiritual sense, is designated “hearing.” Colour and light impressions, in that world, are speech. As the images grow bright or dull, or change in colour, harmonies or discords are formed which reveal the feelings, concepts and thoughts of psychic and spiritual beings. And just as in physical man sound grows into the spoken word when thought is impressed upon it, so do the harmonies and discords of the spiritual world come into manifestations which are actual living thoughts in themselves. And of course it must “grow dark” in this world if such thoughts are to be directly manifested.

The following experience therefore presents itself. We see the lighter shades of colour—red, yellow and orange—fade away, and the higher world grow darker through green to blue and violet, and at the same time we feel an increase of will-power in ourselves. We experience a perfect freedom with regard to space and time; we feel that we are in movement. We experience certain linear forms and shapes, yet not as though we see them drawn in space but rather as if we ourselves, in continual movement, were following with our ego their every curve and form. We feel, indeed, that the ego is at once the draughtsman and the material with which they are drawn, and that every turn of the line and every change of place is equally an experience of this ego. We learn to recognize that we with our moving ego are bound up with the creative forces of the world. The laws of the world are no longer something outwardly perceived by the ego, but a real web of wonder which we are helping to weave. Occult Science devises for us all kinds of symbolic drawings and pictures. When these really correspond to the facts, and are not merely thought out figures, they then originate in our experiences in higher worlds as seen in the manner just described.

Thus does the world of Inspiration take its place within the Imaginative world. When the Imaginations begin to disclose to the observer their meanings in “silent speech,” the world of Inspiration is arising within the Imaginative world.

The physical world is a manifestation of the world into which the spiritual observer penetrates in this way. That part of the physical world accessible to the senses, and by the understanding which is limited to it, is in fact only the outside of it. To take only one example: a plant, as it is observed by the physical senses and understanding, is not the complete being of the plant. He who knows only the physical plant is like one who sees not a man but only his finger-nail. The nature and construction of the finger-nail can be understood only when explained in connection with the whole human being. So, in reality, the plant can only be understood when its whole make-up and potentialities are known, and these are not to be found in the physical world: in it is something fundamental which can only be revealed by Imagination in the astral world, and something yet further which can only be manifested through Inspiration in the spiritual world. The plant, then, as a physical entity, is the manifestation of a being to be understood by means of Imagination and Inspiration.

We now realize that there is a path opening up be...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• I Stages
• II Sleep
• III Imagination—The Duty of a Guide
• IV Inspiration
• V Inspiration and Intuition