Occult Science: An Outline

by Rudolf Steiner

It is by healthy inner experience that one knows a spiritual ‘imagination’ to be no mere subjective picture but the expression of a spiritual reality in picture-form. Just as in sensory perception anyone sound in mind and body can discriminate between mere fancies and the perception of real facts, so a like power of discernment can be attained by spiritual means.

Inner vision

First, that there is behind the visible an invisible world, hidden to begin with from the senses and from the kind of thinking that is fettered to the senses. And secondly, that by the due development of forces slumbering within him it is possible for man to penetrate into this hidden world.

Worlds

The faculty of precise sensory observation, which has evolved so significantly with the rise of natural science, was bound to eclipse the cultivation of those human faculties which lead into the hidden worlds.

Hidden

The physical body disintegrates when it is not held together by the etheric; the etheric body falls into unconsciousness when it is not irradiated by the astral body. In like manner the astral body would ever and again have to let the past sink into oblivion, if the I did not preserve the past and carry it over into the present. Forgetting is for the astral body what death is for the physical body and sleep for the etheric. Or, as we may also express it: life is proper to the etheric body, consciousness to the astral body, and memory to the ego.

4 fold

‘I am an I only to myself; to every other being I am a you, and every other being is a you to me.’ This is the outer expression of a deeply significant truth. The real being of the I is independent of all external things and for this very reason no external thing or person can call it by its name. Hence those religious faiths which have consciously maintained their connection with the supersensible wisdom speak of the I as the Unutterable Name of God. For

I

‘I am an I only to myself; to every other being I am a you, and every other being is a you to me.’ This is the outer expression of a deeply significant truth. The real being of the I is independent of all external things and for this very reason no external thing or person can call it by its name. Hence those religious faiths which have consciously maintained their connection with the supersensible wisdom speak of the I as the Unutterable Name of God. For

I

as the drop is to the ocean, so is the I to the divine. Man can find a divine within himself, because his own and most essential being springs from the divine.

I

Thus occult science sees the soul as consisting of three members: sentient soul, intellectual soul and spiritual soul. Similarly the bodily nature consists of the three members: physical body, etheric body and astral body.

Three

“I” ‘—this is precisely the point. The point is, moreover, that the human being needs this word, with its unique properties, to express what he experiences in relation to the outer world in a different way from an animal. Nothing is ascertained about the nature of the triangle by showing how the word ‘triangle’ evolved. No more can the nature of the I or ego be determined by anything that we may know as to how the use of the word ‘I’ arose from other usages of words in the evolution of language.

I

But if the I is to perceive itself, it can no longer passively devote itself to other things. To become conscious of its own essence and being, it must first call it forth—by dint of inner activity—out of the depths of its own nature. With the perception of ‘I’—with self-contemplation—an inner activity of the I itself begins.

I

What penetrates in this way like a drop into the spiritual soul is what occult science calls the spirit. Thus the spiritual soul is connected with the universal Spirit which is the hidden reality within all things manifest.

Spirit

As man gains mastery over his astral body by penetrating to the hidden forces that underlie it, so in the course of evolution he gains mastery over the etheric body too.

Mastery

Thus in the light of occult science man appears as a being composed of several members. Those of a bodily nature are: physical body, etheric body and astral body. Those of the soul are: sentient soul, intellectual soul and spiritual soul. In the soul the ego sheds its light. Lastly we have the spiritual members: Spirit Self, Life Spirit and Spirit Man.

7

While as a physical being man is a member of the Earth, his astral body belongs to worlds wherein other heavenly bodies are contained besides our planet Earth. The astral body therefore, during sleep, enters a universe to which other worlds than the Earth belong. But this can only be made fully clear in the further course of our explanations.

Sleep

In substance these imaginary pictures are like echoes from the waking life of the daytime, echoes selected at random.

Drem echo

The dream, therefore, creates symbolic pictures; it is in fact a symbolist.

Symbolist

Yet to the soul herself nothing is lost; everything that has ever made an impression on the soul during this life is preserved.

Soul