[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
already possess, still other aspects of this subject will become clear to us.
As you know, the world bordering upon that known to our ordinary consciousness is the
so-called world of Imagination. The world of Imagination is far more inwardly mobile
and flexible than our physical world with its clear-cut lines of demarcation and its sharply
defined objects. When the veil formed by the physical world is broken through, we enter
an ethereal, fluidic world, and when we experience this first spiritual world, the feeling
arises that we are outside the physical body. In this spiritual world we are at once
conscious of a new and different relationship to the physical body; it is a relationship
such as we otherwise feel to our eyes or ears. The physical body in its totality works as if
it were a kind of organ of perception; but we very soon realize that, properly speaking, it
is not the physical but the ether-body that is the real organ of perception, The physical
body merely provides a kind of scaffolding around the ether-body. We begin, gradually,
to live consciously in the ether-body, to feel it as a sense-organ which perceives a world
of weaving, moving pictures and sounds. And then we are aware of being related to the
ether-body within the physical body just as in ordinary life we are related to our ears or
eyes.
This feeling of being outside the physical body is an experience similar in some respects
to that of sleep. As beings of spirit-and-soul we are outside the physical and etheric
bodies during sleep, but our consciousness is dimmed during the experience, and we
know nothing of what is really happening to us and around us.
You will see from this that there can be a relationship to the physical body quite different
from that to which we are accustomed in ordinary life. This is a fact to which attention
must be called by Spiritual Science and it is an experience which will become more and
more common in human beings as evolution leads on into the future.
I have said repeatedly that the cultivation of Spiritual Science today is not the outcome of
any arbitrary desire, but is a necessity of evolution at the present time. This feeling of
separation from the physical body is an experience that will arise in human beings more
and more frequently in the future, without being understood. A time will come when a
great many people will find themselves asking: "Why is it that I feel as if my being were
divided, as if a second being were standing by my side?" This feeling will arise as
naturally as hunger or thirst or other such experiences and it must be understood by men
of the present and future. It win become intelligible when, through Spiritual Science,
people begin to understand what this experience of division within them really signifies.
In the domain of Education, particularly, attention will have to be paid to it; indeed we
shall all have to learn to pay more heed than hitherto to certain experiences which will
become increasingly common in children as time goes on. It is true that in later life, when
the whole impression made by the physical world is very strong, these feelings and
experiences will not be particularly noticeable in the near future, but as time goes on they
will become more and more intense. They will occur, to begin with, in children, and
grown-up people will hear from children many things which in the ordinary way are
pooh-poohed but which will have to be understood because they ate connected with deep
secrets of evolution.
We shall hear children saying: "I have seen a being who said this or that to me, who told
me what to do." - The materialist, of course, will tell such a child that this is all nonsense,
that no such being exists. But students of Spiritual Science will have to understand the
significance of the phenomenon. If a child says: "I saw someone who came to me, he
went away again but he keeps on coming and I cannot get rid of him" - then anyone who
understands Spiritual Science will realize that a phenomenon which will appear in greater
and greater definition as time goes on,is here revealing itself in the life of the child. What
does this really signify?
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]