The Essence of Anthroposophy

This clearly shows — my dear audience — that it is not a matter of bringing something out of the depths of the human organism in a pathological way, so that what I am describing to you now can by no means lead to hallucinations, visions or the like, but on the contrary, leads precisely to the other pole of human soul life. The ideal is not what can be achieved by some kind of morbid brooding, isolated from external perception, but rather the ideal is, so to speak, that healthy human devotion of soul that one develops when one faces external sensory impressions with full consciousness and with the most absolute control of the will. And by applying this liveliness to that which one places at the center of one's soul life in the manner described, one actually comes to strengthen one's imaginative and thinking life, to make it more powerful, just as one strengthens a muscle when one uses it continually.