X. The Three Decisions on the Path of Imaginative Cognition: Loneliness, Fear, Dread

In German culture we have the philosopher Leibnitz, an emphatically monadological thinker who did not seek for unity but for the many “Monads” who to him were essences of soul. It was clear to him that in the spiritual world there can be no question of unity but only of multiplicity. There are monists and pluralists. The monists speak only of unity and oppose the pluralists who speak of multiplicity. You see, however, the fact is that both unity and multiplicity are concepts which are of value only in the physical world, so people believe that they must be of value in the spiritual world as well. But that is not so. People must realize that although unity can be glimpsed, it must immediately be superseded for it reveals itself as multiplicity. It is unity and multiplicity at the same time. Nor can ordinary calculation, physical mathematics, be carried into the spiritual world. One of the very strongest and at the same time most subtle of Ahrimanic temptations is the desire to carry into the spiritual world, just as they are, concepts acquired in the physical world. We must approach the threshold without “bag or baggage,” without being weighed down with what we have learned in the physical world; we must be ready to leave all this at the threshold. All concepts—precisely those we have taken the most trouble to acquire—must be left behind and we must be prepared for the fact that in the spiritual world new concepts will be given; we will become aware of something entirely new. This clinging to what the physical world gives is extremely strong in the human being. He would like to take with him into the spiritual world what he has conquered in the physical. He must have the possibility, however, of standing before a completely clean slate, of standing before complete emptiness and of allowing himself to be guided only by the thoughts which then begin to come to life. This entrance into the spiritual world has been called fundamentally the Gate of Death, because it really is a greater death than even physical death. In physical death we are persuaded to lay aside the physical body; but on entering the spiritual world we must resolve to lay aside our concepts, our notions, and our ideas and allow our being to be built up anew.