10. The Supernatural Human Being III

So one stands — now in the spiritual-soul sphere — when one has brought the soul into the spiritual-soul world in the appropriate way. But at the same time, one knows that the first thing one encounters is a world of images, an imaginative world, and one also knows that this imaginative world has a relationship to reality, just as the mirror image has a relationship to the physical human being walking in flesh and blood. This imaginative knowledge is, in a sense, the first step toward entering the spiritual world. What the soul experiences in imaginative knowledge is a certain intensification of ordinary soul life, an intensification for the reason that in every moment that one lives in imaginative consciousness, one knows that if one ceases one's own activity, if one does not investigate imaginatively, if one somehow interrupts one's consciousness, then at the same time the perception of the imaginative ceases. This gives a special nuance to the inner life of consciousness, the nuance that consciousness feels, as it were, empowered internally and, moreover, feels itself in a continuous activity emanating from itself, an activity that it cannot cease and in relation to which consciousness must not slacken for a moment. Ordinary everyday consciousness is supported in its imagining by external impressions, can surrender to these external impressions, and therefore does not require the soul to work as intensively as it must in imaginative consciousness. In contrast, imaginative consciousness represents something that is not found in ordinary consciousness. This is the first stage reached by the soul seeker who wants to penetrate the spiritual world.