14. How Can We Know About Supernatural Worlds?

Rudolf Steiner: One can indeed find this connection, but only maintain it by being clear about how the method described in my book “Christianity as Mystical Fact” has always been followed in the narration of such things. Those who view the world materialistically see the ordinary course of events as a succession of cause and effect; they regard the things that follow one another as equivalent. Those who delve into realities notice that at certain points in the development of the world something special happens, while at other points it continues in such a way that it appears without “deeper points” [impacts]. In such an individuality as Buddha, a very significant being, we see not only the ordinary meaning, but also a completely different one in the context of the world. In the scriptures that know what is important, that is, that do not proceed in the same way as contemporary science, reference is actually made to the deeper forces with which the deeper soul being is connected, so that in the deeper sense — without, of course, denying his earthly mother — [it is so] that he emerged from Maya, the great deception, from a fatherly soul impulse, as it were. The fatherly origin: the active part of his being; Maja: what serves to illuminate his being. Question: Could the speaker perhaps describe some higher experiences that one can attain from natural science, perhaps about Halley's Comet?