causes these events. And when you see yourself in this way, then the conditions of your own destiny, which are already given from birth, seem to the soul connected with your "yourself." Through struggle, you achieve what you say: just as you worked on yourself at a time when your consciousness had already awakened, you worked on yourself in the same way even when your present consciousness had not yet awakened. Soая проработка себя до "существа я" высшего порядка в обычном "я" не только приводит к тому, что можешь себе сказать: я приведен моей мыслью к теоретическому измышлению этого "я" высшего порядка, -- но она приводит к тому, что чувствуешь in yourself: the living action of this "I" in its reality as a kind of force, and you feel the ordinary "I" in yourself as the creation of this other. This feeling is the true beginning of the vision of the spiritual being of the soul. And when it does not lead to anything, it depends only on the fact that the beginning is limited to this. This beginning may be a subtle, vague feeling. Perhaps it will be like this for a long time. But if you persistently and forcefully continue to do what led to this beginning, then you will eventually bring it to the eyes of the soul as a kind of spiritual being. And he who has attained such a vision finds it quite understandable when someone who has no experience in this area says that he who thinks that he sees such a vision has brought himself only by mental contrivances to imagination - self-hypnosis - this higher "I". But he who is armed with such an eye knows that such an objection can only arise from this lack of experience. For whoever strictly goes through what has been described acquires at the same time the ability to distinguish his imaginations from realities. The inner experiences and activities necessary in such a journey of the soul, if it is right, lead to the application of the strictest caution towards oneself in regard to воображения и reality. If it is expedient to strive to experience oneself in the higher "I", as a kind of spiritual being, then the main experience will be seen in what was characterized at the beginning of this meditation, and what was given in the second place, you will recognize as help in this wandering of the soul. SEVENTH MEDITATION The meditator tries to form ideas about the nature of experience in the supersensible worlds.
Experiences which prove necessary for the soul if it wishes to penetrate into the supersensible worlds may seem frightening to others. Soой человек может сказать себе, что он не знает, какие будут для него последствия, если он решится отдаться ходу этих событий, и как он перенесет их. Under the influence of such a feeling, the thought easily arises that it is better not to interfere artificially with the development of the soul, but to calmly surrender to the guidance that is beyond the limits of consciousness and wait to see where it will lead the inner essence of a person in the future. But such a thought will always have to be put aside by the one who is able to really revive in himself another thought: namely, that it is inherent in nature in the human being to move forward himself, and that not to care about the forces waiting in the soul for their disclosure would mean silence them against duty. The forces of self-development are embedded in every human soul; and there cannot be one among them who would not want to hear the voice calling for the revelation of these forces, if she could somehow learn something about it and about its meaning.
No one will also prevent himself from ascending to the higher worlds, if from the very beginning he does not put himself in the wrong attitude towards the events that he has to go through. These events are as they appeared to us in previous meditations. And if they are expressed in words that can only be borrowed from ordinary human life, but only in this way can they be expressed correctly. For the experiences of the supersensible path of cognition become related to the human soul in such a way that they are completely similar to what can mean for the human soul, for example, a very heightened feeling of loneliness, a feeling that you are floating above the bottomless, or the like. In the experience of such sensations, forces are born for the path of cognition. They are the beginnings of the fruits of supersensible knowledge. All these experiences contain to a certain extent something deeply hidden in them. When they are then experienced, this hidden is brought to the fullest tension: something breaks the feeling of loneliness, which is, as it were, a shell of this "oddness" and acts in the mental life as a means of cognition.
But one must take into account that if one has embarked on the right path, then behind each such experience another immediately appears. It happens in such a way that when one is present, the other cannot fail to come. And what needs to be endured is immediately joined by the strength to really endure this event, if only to calmly concentrate on this strength and give yourself time to notice also what you want to reveal in your soul. If something painful presents itself, at the same time a confident feeling lives in the soul that there are forces that will make it possible to endure the torment and with which one can enter into soy?, then you come to the conclusion that the experiences that would be experienced with this experience, you would be your own spectator. This is what makes it possible for people who are on the path to supersensible cognition to experience within themselves the ebb and flow of various feelings, and yet manifest in the life of external senses a complete equanimity of spirit. But there is always a full opportunity for experiences that take place inside to communicate also with the mood of external life in the world of external senses, so that then for the time being you can no longer cope with life and with yourself, as you could manage before in that life that was before the path of knowledge.. Then you have to draw strength from what has already been achieved inside, which helps to straighten out again. And on a correctly traversed path of cognition there can be no such situation in which this would be impossible.
The best path to cognition will always be that which leads to the supersensible world through the strengthening and thickening of soul life through inner immersion through deep thought or sensation. At the same time, the point is not to experience a thought or sensation in such a way, as is done in order to correctly understand the world of external feelings, but to live intensively with a thought or sensation and in a thought or sensation, and in them to collect all one's spiritual forces.. At the time of inner immersion, they alone should fill the consciousness. Let a man think, for example, of a thought that has brought some conviction to the soul; must first disregard the value of the belief, but continue to live with that thought so that you become completely one with it. One does not necessarily need such a thought that would refer to things of a higher world order, although such a thought is especially suitable. For inner immersion, one can also take a thought that reflects an ordinary experience. Fruitful are the sensations that, for example, can be stimuli to deeds of love and which you kindle in yourself, raising them to the most humanely warm and sincere experience. But if it is primarily a question of knowledge, then symbolic representations are effective, which are drawn from life or to which a person gives himself up on the advice of people who have some knowledge of the matter in this area and are familiar with the fruitfulness of the means used by what they themselves received from him.
Through such absorption, which should become a life habit, even a life condition, just as breathing is a condition of bodily life, you will gather together all the spiritual forces and, by gathering, strengthen them. It is only necessary that during the course of inner immersion it should be possible to completely reach such a state that no impressions of the external senses, and also no recollections of them, interfere with the life of the soul. Soже и воспоминания обо всем, что узнал в обыденной жизни, что причиняет душе радость или боль, должны молчать так, чтобы душа была всецело предана тому, относительно чего она сама хочет, чтобы оно было в ней. Powers for supersensible cognition grow in a real way only from what such images manage to achieve through inner immersion, the content and form of which you have brought about by the use of your own spiritual strength. It is not a matter of where the content of the immersion comes from; it can be obtained from some person who is knowledgeable in this field, or from the literature of spiritual science; you only need to make it your own inner experience, and not be guided in immersion only by what arises from your own soul, which you yourself consider the best content of immersion. Soое содержание потому обладает меньшей силой, что душа заранее чувствует себя сродни ему