10. The Supernatural Human Being III

A second stage is that the practitioner, who has made himself, as it were, an instrument for experiencing the spiritual world, must now be attentive to what he experiences with his imaginative thinking. They must acquire the ability not only to become aware of the images, but also to become aware of the activity just described, which must never be neglected while engaging in imaginative research. They must, in a sense, develop a heightened, strengthened self-awareness. This, however, brings about something very special. It is only then that one can truly grasp the full meaning of imaginative knowledge. For once one has sufficiently prepared the soul, one knows that imaginative consciousness leads to nothing but images; one has only a world of images before one, no reality at all. One knows that it is a world of images, but only images of reality. However, by going a little further in the spiritual development process, by diverting the soul's attention away from the images and directing it more toward one's own activity, toward the strengthened self-awareness that must develop there, one arrives at something that is even less familiar to ordinary daily consciousness than the imaginative world. Namely, one comes to the point where, as if by drawing on the self-persistence of these powers of holding, the images gradually ebb away and disappear. What one has first brought forth now gradually disappears. But it is not reality that disappears; instead, the images that one first saw spiritually and soulfully are replaced by something that reveals itself from the images, something that “speaks” from them. The images become animated, as it were; they say something to you, just as the colors and sounds of external objects say something. Whereas at first you only had images, now a spiritual-soul reality emerges from the images, and a second stage of supersensible consciousness begins, for which I have not yet found a better word – despite the misunderstandings associated with it – than inspired consciousness. This occurs when the activity of the imagination is held, and held in such a way that, through the forces of holding, the images flow away, so to speak, and what can speak as reality from them really speaks to the human being. Then one notices something extraordinarily significant, and in all these things it is important not to take a single step in spiritual research without developing full consciousness. One must be clear about every step one takes. Anything vaguely mystical, anything dreamlike, cannot grow on the soil of spiritual science. What one becomes aware of is that the whole world of images one had at first was actually only a means of penetrating to reality. The visionary describes his images. The imaginative knower also has images; but he will only describe them in such a way that he believes they are the means of penetrating reality. He will not say that reality is given to him in the images, but at most: something like sense organs is given to him in the images. The sense organs are also something that leads to reality, but one does not look at it oneself by looking at reality. So one does not look at reality by looking at or describing the images, but the images must first ebb away. Just as the eye, if it were not completely transparent, if it were clouded and itself perceptible, could not see an external reality, so too, for the imaginative images, spiritual-soul realities cannot appear before these images have ebbed away, become a means, become spiritual eyes and spiritual ears, albeit in a different sense than the ordinary eyes for seeing and the ordinary ears for hearing. That for which the images are only the means is what already lies behind the images. What now expresses itself through the images is spiritual reality.