In the previous videos about anthroposophy, I have tried to explain something about the threefold and fourfold nature of the human being, about karma and reincarnation, and the last time about heart thinking. And today I would like to try to say something about the path of initiation that Rudolf Steiner has shown us.

It is clear that he found – and probably every initiate will find that– that one must first study. And that shows itself in the fact that, in the books about spiritual science, for example the books “Theosophy” and also “An Outline of Esoteric Science”, Rudolf Steiner first gives study material in them, and only at the very end describes the path of initiation. And that has its good reason, for if one wishes to develop toward the spirit, then that means, briefly said, that one wants and indeed also should overcome the ego, the egoism. And if one were to begin with the exercises for one’s own development toward the spirit, then that is actually too strong an egoistic drive. Therefore, one can imagine that it is said: first begin with the study.

If you have done that thoroughly for some time, yes, then it will also be time to try, if you wish, to try yourself perhaps to take a step toward the spirit – or perhaps also many steps. And then there are actually two clearly different paths that Rudolf Steiner has indicated.

The first path we find in the book “How to Know Higher Worlds ?” Rudolf Steiner has always said there is still another path, and that is the path of epistemology. The path that is described in “How to Know Higher Worlds…” is a path that actually more or less transforms the whole human being. One begins with self-education and does all kinds of exercises, above all in the beginning in nature, but later also more inwardly. These exercises should, must, be accompanied by exercises of self-education. That is set forth very clearly in this book.

At the end of the book, in an addition or an expansion, it then says that, when one treads the path and has one’s experiences, actually only those experiences are valuable that are grasped in pure thinking. So everything that is merely feeling or will-mysticism is rejected by Rudolf Steiner to the extent that he says: yes, one actually cannot trust that the results are objective. They must be grasped in pure thinking. And this pure thinking, the development toward it, we find precisely in the other path – and that is the path of self-knowledge in pure thinking.

There it is not so much a matter that one looks at oneself personally as a human being, finds all sorts of imperfections and corrects them. It is then first of all a matter of thinking itself. And it is a matter that we learn to know thoroughly our capacity for cognition, which we have in thinking, and also learn to handle it; that we come so far that we no longer let thinking run more or less automatically, but that we first raise it to a more or less scientific level, and that we then find the strength to be able also to observe this real cognitive thinking while one is doing it – that is, to get to know it – the answer to the question: what am I actually doing when I cognize?

That Rudolf Steiner has presented in his epistemological books, and central there stands, of course, “The Philosophy of Freedom”. There it is not about a view of nature; there it is only about a contemplation of thinking itself. Then later, in the second part, it is a matter that one, out of this pure thinking, where the everyday personality with all its peculiarities actually falls silent, that one, out of this pure thinking, learns to have moral intuitions and then also to bring these into deeds.

So one could say, this development toward pure thinking is actually more or less a preparation for the fact that one can then also with fruit read, understand, and carry out such a book as “How to Know Higher Worlds?” For if there is not a hint of what this pure thinking actually is, how then should one attain that objectivity which the spiritual scientist needs when he really comes to results of his research? And now it is so that this work of epistemology, “The Philosophy of Freedom” and the books around it, actually again cannot be read merely with the ordinary intellectual thinking. Yes, that is of course possible, but what one then gets is that one judges “The Philosophy of Freedom” – or the other books – with one’s ordinary, already acquired conceptions. It must actually be so that, when one begins to read these books, one beforehand resolves really to take in these insights without bias, and then to think along with them so strongly that it becomes possible, when one then puts the book aside and says: good, now I want once more to think about what I have just read – that it then also succeeds, that that which one has so strongly taken into oneself, without rejection, without acceptance, simply letting it be – that one can then also reproduce it.

Those are a lot of words that I am now speaking. And in seminars we have always let these words be followed by exercises together, so that we also learn to carry out in reality that which is said. But that one cannot do with videos.

Videos are in any case quite a difficult medium, because I look into two holes in the recording apparatus, and I do not look into a group of living people, and so I must always imagine that they are nevertheless there. But I do not know where, not how, not what. That is something quite different than during a seminar. But be that as it may, today I wanted to give the difference between “How to Know Higher Worlds…” on the one hand – an integral possibility of development proceeding from perceptions in nature, education of mood and above all also self-education – and on the other hand actually more or less a strict inner discipline in thinking, which one gladly has as a foundation when one then finally does these exercises from “How to Know Higher Worlds…”

For that which is achieved through self-education, that has already been attained for a large part in the work with “The Philosophy of Freedom”. For what do we really do when we learn to think free of sensuality, to think purely? There we must sacrifice the will, which we otherwise unfold in action, entirely to the thinking that no longer contains anything sensual. And that demands such a great effort that one thereby already frees the will to a great extent from the ordinary everyday egoism. Next time further.