Knowing without using the physical body
byMieke Mosmuller
20-11-2019
4 comments
If in my mind I live in conceptions which rest upon the sense-world, then, in my direct experience, I am in position to speak of the reality of what is experienced only so long as I confront with sense-observation a thing or an event. My sense assures me of the reality of what is observed so long as I observe it.
Not so when I unite myself through ideal-spiritual knowledge with beings or events of the spiritual world. Here there enters into the single perception the direct experience of the status of the thing of which I am aware continuing beyond the duration of observation. For instance, if one experiences the human ego as the inner being most fundamentally one's own, then one knows in the perceiving experience that this ego was before the life in the physical body and will be after this. What one experiences thus in the ego reveals this directly, just as the rose reveals its redness in the act of our becoming aware.
In such meditation, practised because of inner spiritual necessity, there was gradually evolved the consciousness of an “inner spiritual man” who, through a more complete release from the physical organism, can live, perceive, and move in the spiritual. This self-sufficing spiritual man entered into my experience under the influence of meditation. The experience of the spiritual thereby underwent an essential deepening. That sense-observation arises by means of the organism can be sufficiently proven by the sort of selfobservation possible in the case of this knowledge. But neither is the ideal-spiritual knowledge yet independent of the organism. Self-comprehension shows the following as to this: For sense-observation the single act of knowing is bound up with the organism. For the ideal-spiritual knowing the single act is entirely independent of the physicalorganism; but the possibility that such knowledge may be unfolded at all by man requires that in general the life within the organism shall be existent. In the case of the third form of knowing the situation is this: it can come into being in the spiritual man only when he can make himself as free from the physicalorganism as if this were not there at all.
Rudolf Steiner, The Story of My Life, GA 28, Chapter XXII.
Comments
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From Kees W @Commentaar , ook in verband met de Blog van 6 november.
R.Steiner schrijft in deze Blog: Beleeft men bijvoorbeeld het ik van de mens als diens meest oereigene innerlijke wezen.
Ik begrijp dus dat we dit in ons zelf beleven en niet buiten onszelf.
Hoe staat het gezegde in verhouding tot de volgende uitspraken die R Steiner deed op 27 december 1918 :
Aber das was wir unser Ich nennen, was wir mit dem Worte bezeichnen, das ist nur ein Spiegelbild. en verderop: Aber gewöhnen werden sie sich müssen, dieses Ich nur in der Außenwelt zu sehen. (in de ander, KW)
En in de voordracht van 28 december 1918
Ich denke , also bin ich nicht, das heißt, meine gedanken sind nur spiegelbilder.
Ik denk ook aan de Bologna voordracht over het gespiegelde IK.…
Is een toelichting hierop mogelijk?
Een mens die zichzelf aanwijst , wijst naar zijn ....hart..
Kees -
From Annelie @There is logic in Kees' remark, indicating the heart as dwelling place of the soul-being.
Which gesture would intuitively indicate the spirit-self? -
From Mieke Mosmuller @Komende woensdag verschijnt een antwoord. Hartelijke groet, Mieke
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From Brigid @wow I found this difficult to understand. I feel so trapped in my physical body and my spirit that serves it. It is challenging to imagine being free from the physical organism and what that would be like. THank you. I am trying to imagine knowing without the physical body. What could I do to practice this.