Theosophy by Steiner Rudolf

Author:Steiner, Rudolf [Steiner, Rudolf]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Global Grey
Published: 2015-02-19T16:00:00+00:00

3. THE SPIRIT LAND

Before the spirit can be observed on its further pilgrimage the land which it enters must first be examined. It is the "World of the Spirit." (In theosophical literature this is called the "mental" world. Here, the expression "World of the Spirit" or "Spirit-land" will be used.) This world is so unlike the physical that all that is said about it will appear fantastic to him who is willing to trust his physical senses only. And what has already been said in regard to the world of the soul holds good here to a still higher degree; that is, that one has to use analogies in order to describe it. For our speech, which for the most part serves only for the realities of the senses, is not richly blessed with expressions for the "Spirit-land." It is therefore especially necessary here to ask the reader to understand much that is said as an indication only. For everything that is described here is so unlike the physical world that it can only in this way be depicted. The author is ever conscious of how little this account can really resemble the experiences of this region owing to the imperfection of our speech, calculated, as it is, to be our medium of expression for the physical world.

It must above all things be emphasized that this world is woven out of the material of which human thought consists. But thought, as it lives in man, is only a shadow picture, a phantom of its true being. As the shadow of an object on the wall is related to the real object which throws this shadow, so is the thought that springs up in man related to the being in the spirit land which corresponds to this thought. Now when the spiritual sense of man is awakened he really perceives this thought-being just as the eye of the senses perceives the table or the chair. He goes about in a region of thought-beings. The corporeal eye perceives the lion, and the corporeal thinking thinks merely the thought "lion" as a phantom, a shadow picture. The spiritual eye sees in Spirit-land the thought "lion" as really and actually as the corporeal eye sees the physical lion. Here we may refer to the analogy already used regarding the soul land. Just as the surroundings of a man born blind and operated upon appear all at once with the new qualities of color and light, so are the surroundings of the person who learns to use his spiritual eye seen to be filled with a new world, the world of living thoughts or spirit beings.

There are to be seen in this world, first, the spiritual archetypes of all things and beings which are present in the physical and in the soul world. Imagine the picture of a painter existing in the mind before it is painted. This gives an analogy to what is meant by the expression archetype. It does not concern us here

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