Steiner Rudolf The path to self-knowledge of man in eight meditations

Rudolf Steiner The path to human self-knowledge in eight meditations

CONTENTS FIRST MEDITATION 1
The meditator is trying to get a correct idea of ​​the physical body 1
SECOND MEDITATION 6
The meditator tries to get a true idea of ​​the elemental or etheric body 6
THIRD MEDITATION 9
The meditator tries to form ideas about the clairvoyant knowledge of the elemental world 9
FOURTH MEDITATION 13
The meditator tries to form an idea of ​​the "guardian of the threshold" 13
FIFTH MEDITATION 17
The meditator tries to form an idea of ​​the "astral body" 17
SIXTH MEDITATION 20
The meditator is trying to form an idea of ​​the "self-body" or "thought-body" 20
SEVENTH MEDITATION 25
The meditator tries to form ideas about the nature of experience in the supersensible worlds 25
EIGHTH MEDITATION 30
The meditator is trying to get an idea of ​​contemplating the repeated earthly lives of a person 30

FIRST MEDITATION The meditator tries to get a correct idea of ​​the physical body.
When the soul, through the senses and through their representations, surrenders itself to the phenomena of the external world, then it cannot, when the thought is truly turned on itself, say that it perceives these phenomena or that it experiences the things of the external world. For, in reality, at the time of giving herself to the external world, she knows nothing about herself. Sunlight, in a variety of color phenomena spilling from things in space, it essentially outlives itself in the soul. Whether the soul rejoices at some event, in the moment of rejoicing it itself is joy, because it knows about it. Joy lives out itself in it. The soul and its experience of the world is one thing: it does not experience itself as something that rejoices, admires, enjoys or fears. She herself is joy, admiration, pleasure, fear. If the soul could always be aware of this to itself, then the times when it withdraws from the experience of the external world and observes itself would appear to it for the first time in its true light. They would appear to her as a life of a very special kind, and, above all, not at all comparable with the ordinary life of the soul. In this special kind of life, the riddles of psychic existence begin to arise in consciousness. And these riddles are the source of all the other riddles of the world. The outer world and the inner world appear before the spirit of man when the soul for a while ceases to be one with the outer world and withdraws into the loneliness of self-existence.
This departure is not a simple event which, once accomplished, could then be repeated in the same way. It is rather the beginning of a journey into hitherto unknown worlds. Once the journey has been started, each step taken becomes an occasion for further ones. And it is also a preparation for these further ones. It makes the soul capable for the first time of the next steps. And with each step you learn more and more about the answer to the question: what is a person in the true sense of the word? Worlds are opened that are hidden from the usual view of life. And yet only they contain something that can reveal the truth about the outlook on life. Even if no answer is all-encompassing, final, yet the answers that are won by the inner journey of the soul are such that they surpass everything that the external senses and the reason associated with them can give us. And this is what man needs. He notices this when he really turns his thought to himself.
First of all, this journey requires sober, dry reflections. They provide a sure starting point for further progress into the supersensible realms, which are, after all, the goal of the soul. Some souls would like to do without this starting point and immediately penetrate into the supersensible. A healthy soul, even if, out of disgust at such reflection, at first avoided it, afterward it will still give itself up to it. For no matter how much a person learns about the supersensible, starting from a different starting point, solid ground under their feet can only be gained through reflections of this kind, such as the following.
There may come moments in the life of the soul when it says to itself thus: you must be able to withdraw from everything that the outer world can give you, if you do not want to be forced into a confession with which you can no longer live, namely, that you only a self-perpetuating contradiction. What you perceive outside exists without you; it was without you and will be without you. Why do you feel the colors in you, if your feeling may have no meaning for them? Why do the substances and forces of the outside world build your body? It is quickened for your outward appearance. The outer world, composing, forms you. You notice that you need this body. For besides the outward feelings which it alone can create for you, you first of all, he could not experience anything in himself. What are you now, you would be empty without your body. It gives you inner fullness and content. And then all those reflections can arise, without which human existence cannot do if it does not want to enter into an unbearable contradiction with itself in certain times that come for each person. This body lives in such a way that it is now the expression of soul experience. Its processes are of such a kind that the soul lives by it and experiences itself in it. There will come a time when it will be different. In time, what lives in the body will be subject to completely different laws than now, when everything is happening for me, for my spiritual experience. It will be subject to the laws according to which substances and forces circulate in external nature, to orders that no longer have anything to do with me and my life. The body, to which I owe my spiritual experience, will be accepted into the general circulation of the world and will have nothing in common with everything that I experience in myself.
Such reflection can evoke in the inner experience all the horrors of the thought of death. Purely personal feelings, which are usually associated in the soul with this thought, act in such a way that they do not easily establish that calm, unruffled mood, which is necessary for cognitive reflection. It is more than understandable that a person seeks knowledge about death and about some kind of life of the soul, regardless of the decomposition of the body. The position that he occupies in relation to the questions here dealt with is capable, more than anything else in the world, of clouding the objective view and making him accept the answers prompted by desire. But nothing can be acquired in the spiritual realm of true knowledge, unless you, as a completely uninvolved person, accept the "no" as readily as the "yes." And one has only to conscientiously look into oneself to make it completely clear that the consciousness that with the death of the body the spiritual life also dies away, you would not accept with the same calmness as that which speaks of the continuation of the existence of the soul after death. Of course, there are people who quite honestly believe in the annihilation of the soul along with the cessation of bodily life, and who arrange their lives with this thought. However, it can be said about them that in their feelings they are by no means impartial about this thought. Of course, they do not allow the horrors of destruction to captivate them so that desire, which strives for the continuation of life, has overcome in them the arguments of knowledge that is convincing to them. Since the ideas of such people are often more objective than the ideas of those who, unknowingly, fool themselves or allow themselves to be fooled by arguments in favor of the continuation of life, for the reason that the desire for such a continuation burns in the recesses of their soul. However, even among those who deny immortality, the bias is no less significant. She's just a different kind. Among them there are those who create for themselves a certain idea of ​​what is called life and being. This idea leads them to the need to invent certain conditions under which this life is the only possible one. It follows from their view of being that, after the body has fallen away, the necessary conditions for the life of the soul no longer exist. Such people do not notice that they have previously created for themselves a certain idea of ​​how life is the only possible one, and that they cannot believe in its continuation after death only because their idea does not allow the possibility of imagining a being free from the body. They are bound, if not by their desires, then by ideas from which they cannot free themselves. There is still a lot of bias in this area. It is always possible to cite only single examples of all that happens in this kind.
The idea that the body, in the processes of which the soul outlives itself, will once fall under the external world and will follow laws that have nothing to do with inner experience - this thought thus puts before the soul, experience is mortal, that no desire, no personal interest needs mingle with this