6. Agnosticism in Science and Anthroposophy

The emptiness of consciousness, however, which occurs after one has first strengthened this consciousness, is very soon filled by the phenomena of an environment that is now completely different from all that one has previously known. Now one gets to know a world to which our ordinary ideas of space and time can no longer be applied. Now we get to know a world that is a real external world of soul and spirit. It is just as concrete as our real world of the senses. But it can only flow into us if we have emptied our consciousness at a higher level. After one has first come to imagination, by concentrating on a spiritual content and now being able to perceive outside one's body because one has activity within oneself - not the passivity that is present in ordinary consciousness - and by having gone through the appropriate preparations, the spiritual outer world now penetrates through the developed activity of the freed consciousness, just as the appearances of the world of colors or the world of sounds otherwise penetrate through the senses.