The Path of Spiritual Knowledge Three Kinds of Clairvoyance March 27th, 1915 Today I should like to start from something which you have all known fundamentally for a long time: that all spiritual-scientific observation is won by acquiring knowledge, not with the help of the instrument of the physical body, but by liberating the soul and spirit from the physical body, so that, as soul and spirit they enter into direct union with the spiritual worlds. Direct union with the spiritual worlds is broken in ordinary life and knowledge, because we must always employ the instrument of our physical body in the waking state whenever we wish to enter into relationship with the world. Now it is essential that anyone occupying himself with spiritual science should recognize exactly the value of spiritual scientific activity as such, and its relation to the personal strivings, which through meditation and concentration of thought, feeling, and will-impulses, or in any other manner, lead man into the spiritual world. We must be clear about this above all for it is a deep and significant truth: that the unity which surrounds us in the ordinary world, does not exist in the same way in the spiritual world. I have already pointed out that this unity is founded within the whole structure of the psycho-spiritual human being. How most people strive again and again after this, asking: What is the unity of the world? How they only find satisfaction when they can lead everything back to one principle! As a matter of fact, the external world meets us most eminently as a whole, as a unified formation; and those people who to a certain degree are dominated by the craze for unity, arrive at all possible abstractions in thought, while seeking the unitary principle of the world. Such personalities are typical, they are like a gentleman who met me one evening, and told me with the intense pleasure of a discoverer: At last he had found a unitary principle by which he could explain all the phenomena in the world. He was of the opinion that this unitary principle could be uttered in ten to twelve words, and he was so joyful over the matter, that he said: Now I can explain the whole cosmos. He would explain heaven, earth, and hell out of this unitary principle. However, we must first understand what is expressed in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds : that as soon as we cross the threshold of the spiritual world, we are really led into a threefold experience. I have especially emphasized in this book, that the soul is as if split into three, and when the soul crosses the threshold of the spiritual world, nothing is left which makes it possible for one to believe in this all-encompassing unity. 1
Indeed, we feel, as soon as the threshold of the spiritual world is crossed, that we really enter with the whole of our being into three worlds. And we must not lose sight of the fact that after crossing this threshold, we have distinctly the experience of three worlds. In reality, we already belong to three worlds through the whole formation of our physical body. I might say that the co-operation of three worlds, which are relatively strongly independent of one another, is necessary for this wonderful structure man which we encounter in the physical world. And if we consider the formation of our head, the formation of everything that belongs to the head, we must, even if we are merely speaking of the physical head, be clear that the formative forces of our head, and also the beings active and creative in these formative forces, belong to a different world from that of the formative forces of our heart, and the formative forces of everything belonging to our it, including the arms and hands. And again, the organs of the lower body and the legs belong to quite another world than the two other components we have named. Now you can ask: What significance has all this? It has a great significance, for fundamentally speaking, in our present cycle of humanity, one only gets the pure, true and real results from spiritual science if the soul and spirit-nature is raised out of the head. This soul-spiritual part of man is here seen lifted out of the head [reference to unavailable diagram] and is at the same time joined to the forces of the cosmos, as if by a spiritual electric attraction. Thus all the parts of man the ego and astral body down to the etheric body, must be drawn out. This withdrawal is of course connected with the evolution of the so-called Lotus-flowers [Chakras]. But the forces which set the lotus-flowers in motion lie in this part of the spirit-soul nature of man which is, or can be withdrawn. The clairvoyance thus attained is a head-clairvoyance, and this can be a result of spiritual science in our time, for the revelations of head-clairvoyance are of service to humanity. Of a quite other kind is the clairvoyant results attained by raising the spirit-soul nature of the organ of the heart, arms and hands. This raising or uplifting of these organs distinguishes itself inwardly and significantly from what takes place through what I might call head-clairvoyance. The up-lifting of the physical heart-organ is brought about more through meditation which is related to the life of will; it is effected through humble surrender to the march of events, whereas head-clairvoyance is effected more through thoughts, but also through ideas having an pictorial character, tinged with feeling. It is generally the case that with reference to these two kinds of clairvoyance, that heart-clairvoyance develops naturally alongside head-clairvoyance in the degree to which it should. Heart-clairvoyance leads more to the development of the will, to a connection with the actions of spiritual beings of the lower hierarchies, such as those incorporated in the various kingdoms of the earth [elemental beings]; whereas head-clairvoyance leads more to vision, knowledge, perception in those higher worlds, in the sense that knowledge of these higher powers is necessary for the satisfaction of certain needs of knowledge, which must appear ever more and 2
more in present humanity. The more we approach the future of our evolution on earth, the less will humanity be able to live, without their soul-life drying up, if they do not receive into their cognition the results of this head-based clairvoyance. Again a third kind of clairvoyance is that which arises, when the spiritual-psychic part of man is loosened, and thus raised out of the rest of his being which is a stomach-based clairvoyance. Whereas head-clairvoyance, for our cycle of humanity, leads in the most eminent sense to the attainment of results independent of man, stomachclairvoyance leads to results connected especially with what transpires within man himself. That which takes place within man himself must naturally also be an object of investigation. In the sphere of physical investigation, there are also men who occupy themselves with anatomy and physiology. We should not think that this stomach-clairvoyance has not a certain value, in the highest sense of the word. It naturally has a value. But one must realize, that stomach clairvoyance can inform man but little of that which occurs impersonally in cosmic events; but that it informs him essentially about what goes on within him - inside his skin. With reference to what is moral and ethical, head-clairvoyance is relatively the most important. Hence I must ever speak of its opposites. Between the two stands heart-clairvoyance; between that of the head and of the stomach. As regards what is ethical, these two can be inwardly quite well distinguished. People who strive to come to a perception of higher worlds, in an impersonal way, as indicated in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, those who are not daunted at traveling this uncomfortable but secure path, will develop something impersonal in themselves, with reference to their clairvoyance, above all they will develop a high interest for objective world-knowledge, for what occurs in the world of cosmic and of historical events. This head-clairvoyance speaks preferably of man himself, especially in that it draws attention to how he is placed within the process of cosmic and historical development, it notes what man himself is in the entirety of this cosmic process: What arises as head-clairvoyance will always have what I must call a universal scientific character; it will contain information which has importance for all mankind, not merely for one person or another. Stomach-clairvoyance will be permeated especially with all kinds of human egoism, and will very easily mislead the clairvoyant in question to occupy himself much with the occult bases of his own destiny, of his personal worth and character. This results as a self-understood tendency from what is called stomach-clairvoyance. Now a clear distinction has to be made between these two kinds of clairvoyance with reference to their intuitive nature. Whoever strives in the sense of what is given in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds to become free in soul and spirit from the perceptive-apparatus of the head, who can thus to a certain extent loosen the spiritual-psychic part of the head from the physical body, and is able to place himself with this spiritual-psychic head-part in the spiritual world, will initially 3
have extreme difficulty in getting beyond a shadowy-clairvoyant experiences. Such a passing out from the head is at first bound up with experiences which really have not even the color, the substantiality of vivid memories; therefore they seem inwardly to be very colorless, and only after one goes ever further and further in the efforts which lie on this path, does the shadowy character of these experiences disappear, and their colorless, shadowy experiences become tinged with color and sound, for the process carried out is this - that we first move out of our head, and are initially in a world which in we have difficulty perceiving. For while we gradually and slowly acquire the possibility of living outside our head, these inner forces of life grow stronger, and the consequence is, that the forces streaming in from the whole orbit of the cosmos are drawn together. Picture to yourselves that forces must be drawn together from out the whole orbit of the cosmos and when we draw together all the forces from the entirety of the orbit of the cosmos, we get that tinging with color and sound I have mentioned. Think how we might picture this. You have here a surface (a), highly colored, a spherical surface. Now think of this spherical surface as extended over a larger surface. The color will then become paler and if we extend it still further, the color will become ever paler and paler, if we contract this surface, then supposing it to be a pale yellow here at the extremity, it would become a strong, saturated yellow, because the color is then more concentrated. Now head-clairvoyance confronts the entire cosmos. And, spread out over the whole cosmos is that which we must first concentrate and unite by means of our life-forces into what we are as clairvoyant beings; so that only by a laborious process of inner development do we gradually give a tinge of color to the shadowy nature of our experiences. And when for a long, long time we have taken the trouble to achieve that general experience which only gives us the sensation of being outside the body; and when we have been aware of this general experience for a long time, and have gained the feeling of an increasingly intense, though not yet a colored and resounding inner experience, then the regions of the cosmos gradually draw near to this head-clairvoyance of ours. This is a matter for slow, selfless development. It must be especially stated, that a study of spiritual science is indispensable to this development. It must be emphasized again and again that when it is given out, spiritual science can indeed be understood. It cannot be emphasized often enough that one need not be a clairvoyant to understand spiritual science. The understanding of spiritual science must precede personal vision. Here one can say: the opposite path is correct to that which is correct in the physical-sensible world. In the physicalsensible world, we first have correct perceptions, then we pass over to a thoughtful consideration of these, and we then form our scientific judgments. This must be reversed in the ascent to the spiritual world. There, we must first develop ideas we must make every effort to live into spiritual science objectively; otherwise we can never be certain that any observation we make in the spiritual world is interpreted by us in the right sense. Hence knowledge must precede vision, and this is what is so infinitely disagreeable to many; the fact that they have to study spiritual science. It is relatively easy to have perceptions; but to interpret them 4
correctly it is necessary that one enters objectively and selflessly into spiritual science. Now just the opposite is the case in what we have called stomach-clairvoyance. In this, we start from that spiritual-psychic principle which first worked on the bodily, physical nature; for spirit lies at the basis of everything that exists in the world. If we have eaten let us say a piece of cabbage we are mostly vegetarians here and it is then worked over in our organism, one has then not merely to do with the physical-chemical process, carried out by the stomach with its forces and juices, but behind all these the etheric body, astral body, and ego are active. All these processes have spiritual processes behind them. It would be quite false to believe that any material processes exist which have not a spiritual process behind them. Picture this to yourselves: Suppose you lie down after a more or less opulent mid-day meal, and become clairvoyant, but clairvoyant in such a way, that the spiritual-psychic part of the digestive organs rise up especially out of the organs of digestion. Then, while your stomach and the other organs digest correctly, you live with your spiritual-psychic nature in the spiritual-psychic realm. Whereas you usually remain unconscious of the spiritual process carried out in your etheric body, astral body, and ego - this enters your consciousness if you are clairvoyant and then, because you experience yourself in this spiritual-psychic realm, you can see all this working, constructing, and creating of the spiritual-psychic force during digestion; you see it as it projects itself out into the world, and it appears to you reflected in pictures in the external ether. Then you get the most beautiful clairvoyant forms, for instead of having to draw the colors spread out in the cosmos, you have the whole process concentrated within your own skin. So that something wonderful takes place around you in the most glorious most magnificent sequences of color and form, which need be nothing else than the process of digestion or some other bodily process transpiring in the spiritual organs of man. One of the main distinguishing features of stomach-based clairvoyance is that it starts off with the most magnificent grandeur possible, compared to headclairvoyance, which starts from shadow forms, and only laboriously acquires a tinge of color and tone. One can equally well express it as a law: if clairvoyance begins with magnificent forms, especially with colored forms, then it is a clairvoyance that relates to processes which transpire within the personality. I emphasize this, because it can be of value for the investigation of the spiritual world. Just as anatomy and physiology investigate the digestive and other processes, so clairvoyance is also of great value to investigate in this way the spiritual nature standing behind human processes. But it would be bad, if one gave oneself up to any deceptions, if one cherished illusions, and did not interpret things in a right manner. If one believed that such a clairvoyance, appearing without the necessary preparation, could give more than what takes place in man and is projected into the objective world, if one believed that through such a clairvoyance, one could approach the creative world-powers, the dominant spiritual forces, one would greatly err. Just as little as the riddles of the world can be solved by the 5
investigation of human digestion, just so little can the riddles and secrets of the cosmos be approached by developing this stomach-clairvoyance. Thus you see how much belongs necessarily to our gaining a really right orientation to the world we enter through the freeing of our spiritual-psychic powers. No one need have any aversion to stomach-clairvoyance through the observations which have been made. But each one should be quite clear how such clairvoyance is related to what real spiritual clairvoyance can become, and how one should hold oneself far removed from any over-valuation of what is gained through a clairvoyance that can only have a personal content. Only when in things which have a personal content, we look away from what is personal, and observe them in the way the anatomist or physiologist considers, the objects he studies with the help of the microscope, or learns through his investigations, only then have these things a special value. In any case no religious feelings should be connected with these things even in the remotest degree; they should only be connected with the results of head-clairvoyance. Man becomes ever more correct in regard to stomach-clairvoyance, the more he fulfills the demand that it should be dealt with in every case only in an objectively scientific sense, as are the results of anatomy or physiology. Not everything which is found along the path of clairvoyance, is worthy of veneration; but all is worthy of being learnt. That is what we must keep in mind. I have already said: that for our cycle, it is especially important to incorporate the results of head-clairvoyance with the general spiritual civilization of humanity; this is really important. Today, I will mention one side of the matter with reference to this. We are living at a time, in which humanity must prepare gradually to transcend mere philosophical Idealism, and pass on to a true consciousness of the spiritual worlds, of the general spiritual world in which we live just as we live in the physical world. Now let us start from an experience of head-clairvoyance, which we shall easily understand if we have entered but a little into the things said in the Munich Cycle ( Secrets of the Threshold ) held recently and which were dealt with further in my book The Threshold of the Spiritual World. I especially mentioned there, that our thinking undergoes a transformation the moment we make ourselves free; especially when with reference to our thoughts we free ourselves from the physical instrument of the head. I expressed it at the time by saying, if we became free in this manner, our thoughts have no longer the character which they have in ordinary life. In ordinary, everyday life we must have the feeling that we are master of our thought-world, that if we have two thoughts, it is we ourselves who unite or separate these thoughts. When we remember something, we are conscious: we pass over with our inner life from a present experience to a past experience. We always have the feeling; it is we ourselves who stand behind the web and woof of our thoughts. This ceases the moment we make the spiritual psychic principle free in our head, when we develop a thinking freed from the body. On that occasion, I put it as follows, I said: It is as if we put our head in an ant's nest, and a peculiar whirling then arises. 6
This is how thoughts begin to play one into the other. If in ordinary life, we have two thoughts, and unite them, as for example, the thoughts rose and red, we know that we are master in our own thought-world, able to unite the two ideas: the rose is red. This is not the case when we are outside our bodies. Life enters our thoughts, the thought's own life. Each thought becomes a being. One thought runs towards another, the other runs away from it. So the thought-world acquires a life of its own. Why does it acquire a life of its own? What we experience in the ordinary thoughts of the everyday are only images, shadows of thoughts. You can read this in my book Theosophy. As soon as we develop body free thoughts, each thought becomes like a husk, and an elemental being slips into the husk. The thought is no longer in our power; we put it out, like a feeler, it goes forth into the world, and an elemental being slips into it... Our thoughts are filled in this way with elemental beings... and these whirl and struggle in us. So that we can say: If we stretch the spiritual-psychic part of our head into the spiritual world, we no longer experience such thoughts as we experience in the physical world, but we experience the life of beings. We plunge our head just as I have said into an ant's nest We experience the life of beings. This is fundamentally the case right up to the highest hierarchies, and if we wish to experience angel, archangel, or even archai, it must be the same, we must live in our thoughts in the way described and in the beings in them. We send our thoughts out, and a being slips in, and is active in them. If we perceive the beings of Venus, or Saturn, it is as I have said, we let our thoughts slip out, and the Venus, and Saturn beings slip in. We ought not to be the least afraid of having thoughts of the Hierarchies in us, but must accustom ourselves to live with our heads in the higher Hierarchies. We must say to ourselves: Our normal thinking ceases, and our head becomes the stage for the activities of the higher hierarchies. Now, in the philosophy of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel thought has been developed up to the purest thought-clarity. In this philosophy is really contained that to which thought could rise at the beginning of the 19th Century. The task of raising thought to this height was then fulfilled. The next task is however that mankind should go beyond this, and really enter into this whirling, weaving life of thought. We are living at a time when man is called to do this: to perceive the higher Hierarchies. We have to be taken up by the world of the higher Hierarchies, and we must leave behind the fear of thus living and weaving in the higher Hierarchies. 7