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It is possible to answer this question satisfactorily prior to any training by the unprejudiced
employment of common sense. We are able to understand correctly the way of working of these rules
prior to their practice. But it can be experienced only during training. The experience, however, will
always be accompanied by understanding if we accompany each step with sound judgment, and at the
present time a true spiritual science will only indicate rules for training upon which sound judgment
may be brought to bear. Anyone who is willing to surrender himself to such training only, and who
does not permit himself to be driven to blind faith by prejudice of any kind, will find that all doubts
disappear. Objections to a proper training for a higher state of consciousness will not disturb him.
Even for a person whose inner maturity can lead him sooner or later to self-awakening of the spiritual
organs of perception such training is not superfluous, but on the contrary it is quite especially suited to
him. For there are but few cases in which such a person, prior to self-initiation, is not compelled to
pass through the most varied, crooked and useless byways. Training spares him these deviations. It
leads straight forward. If self-initiation takes place for such a soul, it is caused by its having acquired
the necessary maturity in the course of previous lives. It may easily happen, however, that just such a
soul has a certain dim presentiment of its maturity and through this presentiment is inclined to reject
the proper training.
This presentiment may produce a certain pride that hinders faith in a true spiritual training. It is
possible that a certain stage of soul development may remain concealed up to a certain age in human
life and only then appear, but training may be just the right means of bringing forth this stage. If the
individual pays no heed to such training, it may happen that his ability remains concealed during his
present life and will only reappear in some subsequent life.
In regard to the training for supersensible knowledge described here, it is important to avoid certain
obvious misunderstandings. One of these may arise through thinking that training would transform
man into a different being in regard to his entire life-conduct. It cannot, however, be a question of
giving man general instructions for his conduct of life, but of telling him about soul-exercises which,
properly performed, will give him the possibility of observing the supersensible. These exercises have
no direct influence upon the part of his life-functions that lies outside the observation of the
supersensible.
In addition to these life-functions the human being acquires the gift of supersensible observation. The
function of this observation is as much separated from the ordinary functions of life as the state of
waking is from that of sleeping. The one cannot disturb the other in the least. Whoever, for example,
wishes to permeate the ordinary course of life with impressions of supersensible perception resembles
an invalid whose sleep would be continually interrupted by injurious awakenings. It must be possible
for the free will of the trained person to induce the state in which supersensible reality is observed.
Training, to be sure, is indirectly connected with certain instructions concerning conduct in as far as,
without an ethically determined conduct of life, an insight into the supersensible is impossible or
injurious. Consequently, much of what leads to the perception of the supersensible is at the same time
a means of ennobling the conduct of life. On the other hand, as a result of insight into the supersensible
world, higher moral impulses are recognized that are also valid for the sensory-physical world. Certain
moral necessities are only recognized from out this world. A second misunderstanding would arise
were it believed that any soul function leading to supersensible knowledge might produce changes in
the physical organism.
Such functions have nothing whatsoever to do with anything in the realm of physiology or other
branches of natural science. They are pure soul-spirit processes, entirely devoid of anything physical,
like sound thinking and perception. Nothing happens in the soul through such a function
considering its character that is different from what takes place when it thinks or judges in a healthy
fashion. Just as much or as little as sound thinking has to do with the body, so do the processes of true
training for supersensible cognition have to do with the body.
Anything that has a different relationship to man is not true spiritual training, but its distortion. What
follows is to be taken in the sense of what has been said here. Only because supersensible knowledge
is something that proceeds from the entire soul of man will it appear as if things were required for this
training that would transform man into something else. In truth it is a question of instruction about
functions enabling the soul to bring into its life moments in which the supersensible may be observed.
Part 2
The attainment of a supersensible state of consciousness can only proceed from everyday waking
consciousness. In this consciousness the soul lives before its elevation. Through the training the soul
acquires a means of lifting itself out of everyday consciousness. The training that is under
consideration here offers among the first means those that still may be designated as functions of
everyday consciousness. The most important means are just those that consist of quiet activities of the
soul. They involve the opening of the soul to quite definite thoughts.
These thoughts exercise, by their very nature, an awakening power upon certain hidden faculties of the
human soul. They are to be distinguished from the visualizations of everyday waking life, which have
the task of depicting outer things. The more truly they do this, the truer they are, and it is part of their
nature to be true in this sense. The visualizations, however, to which the soul must open itself for the
purpose of spiritual training have no such task. They are so constructed that they do not depict
anything external but have in themselves the peculiarity of effecting an awakening in the soul. The best
visualizations for this purpose are emblematic or symbolical.
Nevertheless, other visualizations may also be employed, for it is not a question of what they contain,
but solely a question of the soul's directing its powers in such a way that it has nothing else in mind but
the visualized image under consideration. While the powers of everyday soul-life are distributed in
many directions the visualized mental representations changing very rapidly in spiritual training
everything depends upon the concentration of the entire soul-life upon one visualization.
This visualization must, by means of free will, be placed at the center of consciousness. Symbolic
visualized images are, therefore, better than those that represent outer objects or processes, for the
latter have a point of attachment to the outer world, making the soul less dependent upon itself than
when it employs symbolic visualizations that are formed through the soul's own energy. The essential
is not what is visualized; what is essential is the fact that the visualization, through the way it is
visualized, liberates the soul from dependence on the physical.
We understand what it means to immerse ourselves in a visualized image if we consider, first of all,
the concept of memory. If, for instance, we look at a tree and then away from it so that we can no
longer see it, we are then able to re-awaken the visualization of the tree in the soul by recollecting it.
This visualization of the tree, which we have when the eye no longer beholds the latter, is a memory of
the tree.
Now let us imagine that we preserve this memory in the soul; we permit the soul, as it were, to rest
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