Stages of Higher Knowledge. Rudolph Steiner

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      STAGES OF HIGHER KNOWLEDGE

      TRANSLATED WORKS

      OF

      RUDOLF STEINER, PH.D.

      AN OUTLINE OF OCCULT SCIENCE

      THE LORD’S PRAYER

THE GATES OF KNOWLEDGE PHILOSOPHY AND THEOSOPHY

      THREE ESSAYS ON HAECKEL AND ON KARMA

      THE EDUCATION OF CHILDREN

      THE OCCULT SIGNIFICANCE OF BLOOD

      ATLANTIS AND LEMURIA

      THE WAY OF INITIATION

      INITIATION AND ITS RESULTS

      THEOSOPHY

      THE MYSTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE

      CHRISTIANITY AS MYSTICAL FACT

      THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPIRITUAL ACTIVITY

      THE THRESHOLD STATE

      A ROAD TO SELF-KNOWLEDGE AND THE THRESHOLD OF THE SPIRITUAL WORLD

      MYSTERY PLAYS (2 vols.)

      INVESTIGATIONS IN OCCULTISM

      STAGES

      OF

      HIGHER KNOWLEDGE

      The authorized New Translation from the original

      German formerly translated by the title

      “GATES OF KNOWLEDGE”

      a Supplement to

      “KNOWLEDGE OF HIGHER WORLDS”

      By RUDOLF STEINER

      FIRST PUBLISHED NOVEMBER 1930

      STAGES OF HIGHER KNOWLEDGE

      Chapter I

      STAGES

      THE Path to Higher Knowledge has been followed up to the meeting with the two Guardians of the Threshold.^* The connection between the soul and the different worlds, as knowledge by degrees is acquired, will now be described. This may be summarized as the Theory of Spiritual Science.

      Before the Path to Higher Knowledge is entered upon man knows only the first of its four stages, that which in ordinary life belongs strictly to the world of the senses. Even science has not progressed beyond this point, for it only claims to deal with ordinary knowledge in a well ordered and detailed way. The microscope and telescope render man’s senses more effective, since by what they reveal he learns what he could not otherwise perceive, but he is still at the same stage of knowledge whether he sees large objects with the naked eye or minute ones by means of instruments. Also in the application of thought to facts and things science still remains in the field of everyday life. Man merely arranges, classifies and compares objects, notes their variations and so forth. The ablest of naturalists does nothing fundamentally, in this respect, beyond bringing to a fine art the methods of investigating everyday life. His knowledge takes a wider range, becomes more complex and logical, but he does not advance to any higher method of cognition.

      In Spiritual Science this first stage of knowledge is called the Material. It is followed by three higher stages, and there are yet others further on. Beginning with the ordinary method of scientific cognition, of apprehension through the senses, we distinguish the following four stages:

      1. Material Knowledge, or Cognition.

      2. Imaginative Knowledge, or Cognition.

      3. Inspirational Cognition, called also “Knowledge which resembles Will.”

      4. Intuitive Knowledge, or Cognition.

      Before considering the higher stages beyond we must be quite clear as to the different kinds of cognition we are dealing with. In the ordinary “sense knowledge” four elements are to be noticed: (1) The object which makes an impression on the senses; (2) The picture that we make of this object; (3) The concept whereby we come to a spiritual comprehension of the object or event; (4) The “Ego” which forms for itself the picture and concept based upon the impression of the object. Before we can make for ourselves an image, picture or a representation, there must be an object that induces it. For we do not make the object but only perceive it, and it is on the basis of the object that the picture is formed. So long as we are looking at a thing we are dealing with it itself; the moment we turn away we possess only the picture of it. We have left it behind, but the picture remains fixed in our memory. We cannot however stop at the image-making stage—we must go on to concepts, and it now becomes essential to distinguish between an image and a concept. For instance, let us picture to ourselves an object that is circular in form; then turn away and keep an image of the circle in the memory. We have not yet the “concept” of a circle. This we can only arrive at by reminding ourselves that a circle is a figure in which all points are equidistant from its centre. There are innumerable circles—large, small, coloured, and so forth—but there is only one concept “Circle.” This will be dealt with more fully later; for the present only an outline will be given of what is necessary in order to characterize the first four stages of knowledge.

      The fourth element in Material cognition is the “ego.” In this is effected the union of pictures or images and concepts. The ego preserves its images in the memory. If this were not the case there would be no possibility of continuous inner life, for the images of things would remain only so long as the things themselves produced some effect on the soul. The inner life indeed depends upon the linking of one perception with another perception. The ego orientates itself in the world to-day because, with the seeing certain objects, the images come up again of similar ones of yesterday. We must surely realize how impossible the life of the soul would be if we could retain the image of a thing only so long as the thing itself stood before us.

      The ego also serves to unify concepts; combining them and thus making a survey, it arrives at an understanding of the world. It is this linking up of concepts that brings about the formation of a “judgment.” Separate concepts do not help man to find his way; his activity depends upon his capacity to combine them, that is, to form judgments.

      Material cognition consists in receiving through the senses impressions of objects and images of the outer world. We possess the faculty of perceiving, or “sensibility.” The impression received from “outside” is also called “sensation.” Therefore four elements have here to be considered: Sensation, Picture, Concept and Ego. In the next higher stage of knowledge, the impression made upon the physical senses, the “sensation” is absent. There is now no longer any external sense-object, and only three of the factors remain to which man is accustomed in ordinary knowledge: Image, Concept and Ego.

      Ordinary knowledge in a healthy individual creates no image and no concept when there is no object present to the outer senses. The ego is then inactive. To form images of sensible objects which do not actually exist is to live in fantasy. It is this very faculty of forming images which the occult student acquires, even in the absence of an outer object. Something else in him must take the place of external objects; he must be able to call up images when no object affects his senses. Something else must take the place of sensation, and this something is Imagination. At this stage images appear to him exactly as though a sensible object were making an impression upon him; they are as vivid and true as sense-images, yet they come not from the material world but from the world of soul and spirit. The senses then remain wholly inactive.

      It is obvious that this faculty of having comprehensive images without sense-impressions must first be acquired, and it is attained through meditation and the exercises which have been described elsewhere.^* The man restricted to the world of sense lives within the limits of a sphere of images which have gained access to him through the senses, but the “imaginative man” draws his images from a higher source.

      A very careful training is necessary in order to distinguish delusion from reality