III. The Supersensible Being of Man

This is a shattering experience. And this is why those who knew something about it called it the approach to the gate of death. But now we have actually to follow the path that has been described as leading to this significant experience. Only in following the exercises described in my book Knowledge of Higher Worlds and in the second part of my Occult Science can we understand how these exercises are fashioned out of the experiences of the soul. In addition to this we also proceed along another line of development which runs more or less parallel to the first, and which prevents us from losing ourselves when we approach the gate of death with our consciousness. The scientist of spirit has therefore to undertake something else if he is not to lose himself at this point but rather can take himself with him into this other world. On the one hand we have seen that in order to reach this point we have to develop our thinking, to separate the power and activity of thinking from the power in the thinking that leads to memory, but now on the other it is necessary to develop the activity of our will, again with the help of certain exercises of the soul.