V. Knowledge of the Higher Worlds—Concerning Initiation

Yet it must also be realized that the world if Inspiration is something different and new, compared to that of Imagination. With Imaginative cognition we perceive events and processes in mutual transformation. With Inspiration we come to know the inner qualities of the beings who are undergoing transformation. With Imagination we see the manifestation of these beings in the realm of soul. With Inspiration we penetrate to their inner spiritual nature; above all, we come to know a multiplicity of beings and learn of the connections between them. In the physical world we also have to do with a multiplicity of beings or entities of various kinds, but in the world of Inspiration this multiplicity is of quite another character. There each single being has its distinctive connections with other beings, connections that are determined, not as in the physical world by some outward impressions that the beings make upon one another, but by their inner character and spiritual nature. When we perceive a being in the world of Inspiration, we are not looking at some external influence that the being is exerting upon another being, comparable with the influence exerted by one physical being upon another; what confronts us there is a relationship between two beings that comes about solely through the inner character both of the one and of the other. There is in the physical world one kind of relationship to which this may bear comparison—such a relationship as obtains between the several sounds or letters of a word. Say we have before us the word “bold.” The word comes about through the sounding together of the sounds b-o-l-d. The sounds b and o, for example, do not collide or react on one another in some external way; they act together and each fulfils it part within the whole by virtue of its inner character. The activity of “observing” in the world of Inspiration can therefore be compared with reading. The beings in that world present themselves to the observer like letters that he must first learn and that will then be revealed to him in their several relationships, forming as it were a spiritual script or supersensible writing. Spiritual science may therefore avail itself of this comparison and call the knowledge acquired through Inspiration: the Reading of the Hidden Script.