The School of Spiritual Science X

The lectures that are now being given for the general anthroposophical part of the Free University are intended to provide an outlook on the experience of the “threshold” between the sensual and the supersensible world. It is necessary for those who are truly seeking knowledge of the human being to see through how everything that “nature” reveals of beauty, greatness and sublimity cannot lead to the human being. For the inner man, who creates in the outer, has his source not in the natural but in the spiritual world. But the senses and the intellect bound to the brain cannot penetrate into the latter. These must first cease to function if the human being is to face the world of his origin. But where this activity ceases, the human being initially faces an inability to perceive anything at all. He looks at his surroundings and, as if they were 'nothing', the darkness that is there because of the inability to perceive appears to him. This inability can only give way to spiritual-vision abilities when the human being becomes aware of higher powers within himself, which train the 'senses of the spirit' in the same way that the physical powers of the organism train the senses of the body. This presupposes a complete transformation of the inner man from one form of existence into another. In this transformation, however, man must not lose one form of existence before he gains the other. The right transformation is the result of the right experience at the “Threshold”. Knowledge of man in his true essence is only possible from a point of view beyond the threshold. If one wishes to accept with common sense the messages of one who has knowledge, coming from the field beyond the threshold, one must also have some conception of what the knower has experienced on the threshold. Only by knowing the conditions under which the knowledge of this supersensible reality is gained can one be in a position to judge it aright.

It will only be possible to give content to the words in which the supersensible result of the vision is expressed when one understands what the seer has gone through before he has the power to coin such words. If one does not understand this, it seems as if the words do not mean something supersensible but something sensible. But this gives rise to confusion. The words become deceptive; instead of knowledge, illusion arises.

These indications are intended to characterize the esoteric work of the Free University. The external members will receive the content in a suitable form as soon as our work, which was occasioned by the Christmas Conference at the Goetheanum, has progressed to the point where such a step is possible. What is said here in exoteric terms will be developed esoterically in the School.

(continued in the next issue).