V. Can a method of gaining insight into spheres beyond the sense-perceptible world be given a scientific basis?

GA 73/1918-10-08/p043 ·1918-10-08 · English HighHigh alignmentThis translation's paragraph count matches the German original — the locus maps cleanly to the same paragraph in DE.
Record: unknown. How this text was taken down (shorthand transcript, listeners' notes or manuscript) is not on record here. Unknown is not an assurance of a stenogram: check the edition's own notes before resting an argument on one word.

In choosing to make this transition, our thinking comes from the experience of non-existence to supersensible experience of existence in the spirit. This shows itself first of all in images, or imaginations, because we go down into the will. Because we then truly get to know the world which otherwise remains subconscious, we also penetrate beyond the images. We learn to manage the images in the way in which we otherwise learn to manage our inner life. Living in mere images then opens out into a form of life which I may called inspired insight. The term may meet with objections, because people connect it with all kinds of ideas from earlier times, though, as I have shown in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, it has nothing to do with these. The true nature of the spiritual world begins to speak in the imagination, making itself known in its immediate reality. The imaginations are first of all images; but the human soul penetrates thinking, which was just about to founder in non-existence, with will experience. Ultimately we encounter the will. In the supersensible sphere, our supersensible will comes up against the supersensible will of the spiritual worlds and entities. Inspiration, inspired insight, comes. And the whole progression of imagination and inspiration can then also come to conscious awareness. I call the raising of imagination and inspiration to conscious awareness ‘true intuition'. It is not the nebulous intuition of which people tend to speak in everyday awareness, but true intuition, when one is right inside the world of the spirit.

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Cite: GA 73/1918-10-08/p043 · edition English