[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
they occur in the soul without being accompanied by damaging aberrations of fantasy. Without
corresponding thought development the experiences may call forth a profound uncertainty in the soul.
The method stressed here causes the experiences to appear in such a way that the student becomes
completely familiar with them, just as he becomes familiar with the perceptions of the physical world
in a healthy soul state. Through the development of thought life he becomes, as it were, an observer of
what he experiences in himself, while, without this thought life, he stands heedless within the
experience.
In a factual training certain qualities are mentioned that the student who wishes to find his way into the
higher worlds should acquire through practice. These are, above all, control of the soul over its train of
thought, over its will, and its feelings. The way in which this control is to be acquired through practice
has a twofold purpose. On the one hand, the soul is to be imbued with firmness, certainty, and
equilibrium to such a degree that it preserves these qualities, although from its being a second ego is
born. On the other hand, this second ego is to be furnished with strength and inner consistency of
character.
What is necessary for the thinking of man in spiritual training is, above all, objectivity. In the physical-
sensory world, life is the human ego's great teacher of objectivity. Were the soul to let thoughts wander
about aimlessly, it would be immediately compelled to let itself be corrected by life if it did not wish to
come into conflict with it. The soul must think according to the course of the facts of life. If now the
human being turns his attention away from the physical-sensory world, he lacks the compulsory
correction of the latter. If his thinking is then unable to be its own corrective, it must become irrational.
Therefore the thinking of the student of the spiritual must be trained in such a manner that it is able to
give to itself direction and goal.
Thinking must be its own instructor in inner firmness and the capacity to hold the attention strictly to
one object. For this reason, suitable "thought exercises" are not to be undertaken with unfamiliar and
complicated objects, but with those that are simple and familiar. Anyone who is able for months at a
time to concentrate his thoughts daily at least for five minutes upon an ordinary object (for example a
needle, a pencil, or any other simple object), and during this time to exclude all thoughts that have no
bearing on the subject, has achieved a great deal in this regard. (We may contemplate a new object
daily, or the same one for several days.)
Also, the one who considers himself a thinker as a result of scientific training should not disdain to
prepare himself for spiritual training in this manner. For if for a certain length of time we fasten our
thoughts upon an object that is well known to us, we can be sure that we think in conformity with
facts. If we ask ourselves what a pencil is composed of, how its materials are prepared, how they are
brought together afterward, when pencils were invented, and so forth, we then conform our thoughts
more to reality than if we reflect upon the origin of man, or upon the nature of life. Through simple
thought exercises we acquire greater ability for factual thinking concerning the Saturn, Sun, and Moon
evolutions than through complicated and learned ideas.
For in the first place it is not at all a question of thinking about this or that, but of thinking factually by
means of inner force. If we have schooled ourselves in regard to factuality by a physical-sensory
process, easily surveyed, then thought becomes accustomed to function in accordance with facts even
though it does not feel itself controlled by the physical world of the senses and its laws, and we rid
ourselves of the habit of letting our thoughts wander without relation to facts.
The soul must become a ruler in the sphere of the will as it must be in the world of thought. In the
physical-sensory world, it is life itself that appears as the ruler. It emphasizes this or that need of the
human being, and the will feels itself impelled to satisfy these needs. In higher training man must
become accustomed to obey his own commands strictly. He who becomes accustomed to this will be
less and less inclined to desire the non-essential. Dissatisfaction and instability in the life of will rest
upon the desire for things the realization of which we cannot conceive clearly. Such dissatisfaction
may bring the entire mental life into disorder when a higher ego is about to emerge from the soul. It is
a good practice if one gives oneself for months, at a certain time of the day, the following command:
Today, at this definite time, I shall perform this or that action.
One then gradually becomes able to determine the time for this action and the nature of the thing to be
done so as to permit its being carried out with great exactness. Thus one lifts oneself above the
damaging attitude of mind found in, "I should like this, I want that," in which we do not at all consider
the possibility of its accomplishment. A great personality Goethe lets a seeress say, "Him I love
who desires the impossible." [Goethe: Faust 11.]And Goethe himself says, "To live in the idea means
to treat the impossible as though it were possible." [Goethe: Verses in Prose.] Such expressions must
not be used as objections to what is presented here. For the demand of Goethe and his seeress, Manto,
can only be fulfilled by someone who has trained himself to desire what is possible, in order then to be
able, through his strong will, to treat the "impossible" so that it is transformed through his will into the
possible.
In regard to the world of feeling the soul should attain for spiritual training a certain degree of
calmness. It is necessary for that purpose that the soul become ruler over expressions of joy and
sorrow, of pleasure and pain. It is just in regard to the acquiring of this ability that much prejudice may
result. One might imagine that one would become dull and without sympathy in regard to one's
fellowmen if one should not feel joy with the joyful and with the painful, pain. Yet this is not the point
in question.
With the joyful the soul should rejoice, with sadness it should feel pain. But it should acquire the
ability to control the expression of joy and sorrow, of pleasure and pain. If one endeavors to do this,
one will soon notice that one does not become less sensitive, but on the contrary more receptive to all
that is joyous and sorrowful in one's environment than one was previously. To be sure, if one wishes to
acquire the ability with which we are concerned here, one must strictly observe oneself for a long
period of time. One must see to it that one is able fully to sympathize with joy and sorrow without
losing one's self-control so that one gives way to an involuntary expression of one's feelings.
It is not the justified pain that one should suppress, but involuntary weeping; not the horror of an evil
action, but the blind rage of anger; not attention to danger, but fruitless fear, and so forth. Only
through such practice does the student of the spiritual attain the tranquillity of mind that is necessary to
prevent the soul at the birth of the higher ego, and, above all, during its activity, from leading a second,
abnormal life like a sort of Doppelganger soul double along side this higher ego. It is just in
regard to these things that one should not surrender oneself to any sort of self-deception. It may appear
to many a one that he already possesses a certain equanimity in ordinary life and therefore does not
need this exercise. It is just such a person who doubly needs it.
It may be quite possible to be calm when confronting the things of ordinary life, but when one ascends
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]