V. Knowledge of the Higher Worlds—Concerning Initiation

The exercises for Intuition demand from the pupil that he let disappear from consciousness not only the pictures to which he gave himself up in contemplation in order to arrive at Imaginative cognition, but also that meditating upon his own activity of soul, which he practiced for the attainment of Inspiration. This means that he is now to have in his soul literally nothing of what he has experienced hitherto, whether outwardly or inwardly. If, after discarding all outward and inward experience, nothing whatever is left in his consciousness—that is to say, if consciousness simply slips away from him and he sinks into unconsciousness—then that will tell him that he is not yet ripe to undertake the exercises for Intuition and must continue working with those for Imagination and Inspiration. A time will come however when, after all experiences, inner and outer, have been banished from it, consciousness is not left empty, but something remains in it to which the pupil can now give himself up in deep contemplation even as he formerly gave himself up to what came to him from outer or inner impressions. This “something” is of a very special nature. In relation to all that the pupil has hitherto experienced and learned it is entirely new. When he feels it there in his consciousness, he knows: This is something of which up to now I have had no knowledge at all. It is a clear perception and I perceive it, just as I should perceive a note of music that my ear was hearing; yet it can only enter my consciousness through Intuition, even as the music can only enter there by way of the ear. In Intuition the impressions man receives are stripped bare of the last remnant of connection with the physical senses. The spiritual world now begins to lie open for his cognition in a form that has nothing in common with the properties of the sense-world.