III. Methods of Imaginative, Inspired and Intuitive Knowledge or Cognition

The inner life of man assumes another form from that of ordinary consciousness when it enters upon imaginative knowledge. His relationship to the world is also changed. This change is brought about by the concentration of all the powers of the soul on a presentation-complex which can easily be seen in its entirety. This last condition is necessary to avoid any kind of unconscious process playing a part in the meditation; for in this everything must come to pass only within the psychic and spiritual spheres. The man who thinks out a mathematical problem can be fairly certain that he is employing only psychic-spiritual forces. Unconscious memories, influenced by feeling or will, will not enter into it. It must be the same with Meditation. If we take for it a thought which is brought up out of memory, we cannot know how much at the same time we introduce into the consciousness from the physical, or instinctive, or unconsciously psychical, and cause it to react in the soul on the presentation during meditation. It is, therefore, best to choose for a subject of meditation something which one knows for certain to be quite new to the soul. If we seek advice on this point from an experienced spiritual investigator, he will lay particular stress on this. He will recommend a subject which is perfectly simple and which quite certainly cannot have occurred to us before. It is of no importance that the subject should even correspond with some known fact taken from the world of the senses. We can take as an idea something pictorial, but not necessarily representing a picture of the outer world, e.g., ‘In Light lives streaming Wisdom’. It depends on the power of reposeful meditation with such an image-presentation. The spiritual and psychic powers are strengthened by such a calm meditation just as the muscles are strengthened by performing a piece of work. The meditation can be short at a time, but it must be repeated over a long period to be successful. With one person success can be attained after a few weeks, with another only after years, according to natural predisposition. The man who wishes to be a true Spiritual Investigator must do such exercises systematically and intensively. The first result of meditation in the way here indicated is that the man who practises it has through his inner life a greater control over the statements of a Spiritual Investigator than the man of ordinary healthy intellect, though the latter, if sufficiently unfettered and unprejudiced, is also quite capable of such control.