The Constitution of the General Anthroposophical Society

GA 260a — 20 April 1924

The School of Spiritual Science IX

The lectures now being given for the general anthroposophical part of the School of Spiritual Science are intended to provide an insight into the experience of the “threshold” between the sensory and supersensory worlds. For those who truly seek knowledge of the human being, it is necessary to understand how everything that “nature” reveals in terms of beauty, grandeur, and sublimity cannot lead to the human being. For the inner human being, who creates in the outer world, has its source not in the natural world, but in the spiritual world. However, neither the senses nor the intellect, which is bound to the brain, can penetrate this world. These must first cease to function if human beings want to face the world of their origin. But where this function ceases, human beings are initially faced with the inability to perceive anything at all. They look at their surroundings, and as if they were “nothing,” darkness appears to them because of their inability to perceive. This inability can only give way to spiritual vision when human beings become aware of higher powers within themselves that form the “senses of the spirit” in the same way that the physical powers of the organism form the senses of the body. This presupposes a complete transformation of the inner human being from one form of existence to another. In this transformation, the human being must not lose one form of existence before gaining the other. The right transformation is the result of the right experience at the “threshold.” Knowledge of the human being in his true essence is only possible from a point of view beyond the threshold. Anyone who wants to accept with common sense the messages of a seer coming from the realm beyond the threshold must also have an idea of what the seer has experienced at the threshold. For only by knowing the conditions under which this supersensible knowledge is gained will he be able to judge the supersensible correctly.

One can only give meaning to the words used to express the results of supersensible perception if one understands what the perceiver has gone through before he has the power to coin such words. If one does not understand this, it seems as if the words mean something sensory rather than supersensible. But this leads to confusion. The words become deceptive; instead of knowledge, illusion sets in.

These hints are intended to characterize the esoteric work of the School of Spiritual Science. External members will receive the content in a suitable form as soon as our work on the Christmas Conference at the Goetheanum has progressed far enough to allow such a step to be taken. What is said here exoterically will be developed esoterically in the school.