Becoming Aware of Life
In the Supersensible World







1. To unveil the supersensible domain an altogether different activity of knowledge must be evolved than that which we apply to the science of Nature.





2. On a mystic path man cannot penetrate into the supersensible domain so long as he applies methods of knowledge dependent on the bodily nature which is rooted in the world of sense.







3. In his own supersensible being man is rooted in a supersensible world.







4. In the course of life, man receives into his inner life untold supersensible experiences, the receiving of which he is not fully conscious.







5. Even in the ordinary action of human consciousness there are forces holding sway within the soul, which are not bound to the physical organisation.







6. An activity of Thought unsubjected to the bodily organism is . . . present while man is in the act of Sense-perception. Sense-perception itself depends upon the organism. But the thinking activity, contained in and co-operating with it, is a purely supersensible element in which the bodily organism has no share. In it the human soul rises out of the bodily organism. As soon as man becomes distinctly, separately conscious of this Thinking in the act of Perception, he knows by direct experience that he has himself . . . a living soul, quite independently of the bodily nature.







7. The meditative life thus becomes an intensified activity of Thought, receiving into itself the force that is otherwise spent in Perception. Our Thinking in itself must grow so strong, that it works with the same vivid quality which is otherwise only there in Sense-perception. Without perception by the senses we must call to life a Thinking which, unsupported by memories of the past, experiences in the immediate present a content of its own, such as we otherwise only can derive from Sense-perception.







8. In evolving the meditative life above-described, the human soul rises to the conscious feeling perception of itself, as of a supersensible Being independent of the bodily organisation. This is man's first experience of himself as a supersensible Being; and it leads on to a second stage in supersensible self-knowledge. At the former stage he can only be aware that he is a supersensible Being; at the second he feels this Being filled with real content, even as the 'I' of ordinary waking life is felt by means of the bodily organisation.







9. [We experience] the consciousness that a supersensible, purely spiritual content is entering the feeling and perception of the Self.











10. Mature self-knowledge can, however, raise this Will, with all its peculiar quality, into the conscious life. When this is done, man comes to the perception of a life of Will which has absolutely nothing to do with any processes of a sense-perceptible external world, but is directed solely to the inner evolution of the soul--independent of this world. Once it is known to him, he learns by degrees to enter into the living essence of this Will, just as in the former kind of meditative life he entered into the fusion of the soul's experiences of Thinking and Perception. And the conscious experience in this element of Will expands into the experience of a supersensible external world. Evolved in the way above described, and transplanted now into this element of Will, the supersensible self-consciousness finds itself in a supersensible environment, filled with spiritual Beings and events.











11. While the supersensible Thinking leads to a self-consciousness independent of the power of Memory which is bound to the bodily nature, the supersensible Willing comes to life in such a way as to be permeated through and through by a spiritualised faculty of Love. It is this faculty of Love which enables the supersensible self-consciousness of man to perceive and grasp the supersensible external world.









12. All that the human being experiences and achieves within the field of sense, receives its true illumination--an illumination which the deepest needs of the soul require--through the science of things that are only to be experienced supersensibly.

Rudolph Steiner, Supersensible Knowledge, 1916