5. Ways of Knowing the Eternal Powers of the Human Soul

GA 70b/1916-01-08/p022 ·1916-01-08 · English MediumMedium alignmentSome paragraph re-numbering between this translation and the German original — the locus may slip by a paragraph or two.
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Initially, the success is that if you now try – and you have to try this to complete the exercise – if you now try to suppress the idea that you have brought to the center of your consciousness, that is, if you want to get out of the meditation again – or even earlier – then you will see all kinds of ideas emerging from the depths of your consciousness. Indeed, one is tempted to say that never before has one had so many opportunities to see what a vast number of ideas are constantly striving to rise above the threshold of consciousness and gain power over the soul as through this exercise. If you now continue this exercise, a certain change occurs: you gradually have the feeling that you are moving in nothing but memories of life, in all kinds of memories of the life you have gone through since you started thinking and observing the world in a conscious way. All kinds of memories that have flooded past us, either recently or long ago, arise; and one feels, I might say, enslaved for a time by the emerging inner soul reminiscences, the soul memories.

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Cite: GA 70b/1916-01-08/p022 · edition English