Many people think that they’re working for the good of mankind

Many people think that they’re working for the good of mankind from morn till eve, but this is questionable. A clairvoyant can see that efforts coming from materialistic thinking have the wrong effect, and it may lie in some people’s karma that they should wait until they can do certain things. Then a higher being can whisper such a task in his ear, so that it’s not induced by outer circumstances. 

Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 266-1 – From the Contents of Esoteric Classes – Lesson 38 – Stuttgart, 9th August 1908

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/19080809e01.html

Art of Carol Herzer

Previously posted on 25 June 2019

Why sometimes just very clear thinkers have such difficulty in reaching clairvoyance? (4 – End)

Let me remind you once again that you were all clairvoyant in earlier times. Why is it that you no longer possess the faculty of clairvoyance? It is because in former times you were not bound to the earth’s existence, because you were remote, in spiritual worlds; you did not bring the spiritual world down into your faculties; your visionary clairvoyance was based upon the condition of being remote from the physical world.

This must be clear to us. We must inscribe these fine shades of thought upon our minds and souls; we must be clear that the task of a real occult science today is to impart those results of spiritual investigation which are permeated with a thinking content, so that one can always clothe the results of spiritual research in such a way as to be comprehensible through thinking to the man who is not clairvoyant. To this end they must first be combined with thought.

Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 117 – The tasks and aims of spiritual science – Stuttgart, 13th November 1909

Translated by D. S. Osmond

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/19091113p01.html

Previously posted on 22 September 2017

Why sometimes just very clear thinkers have such difficulty in reaching clairvoyance? (3 of 4)

No one is born with all the faculties he will possess later; he may have tendencies in certain directions, but the faculties themselves he must first develop. So it is a fact that changes take place in the brain in the course of a man’s life. After a life of thought the instrument of thinking is different from what it was before.

Now the fact is that our etheric body, which for clairvoyant consciousness must be loosened from the physical brain, becomes more closely bound to the brain through the activity of thought. Thinking chains the etheric body firmly to the brain. If through his karma anyone has not yet the forces necessary to loosen it again at the right time, it may be that he cannot get far in clairvoyance in this incarnation; this depends on his karma. Supposing that in a former incarnation his karma had ordained him to be a clear thinker, then at the present time his thinking will not bind his etheric body so strongly to the brain; he will be able to set free his etheric body comparatively easily, and for the very reason that the elements of thought are the best preparation for ascending into the higher worlds — for this very reason he can investigate the secrets of the higher worlds in the most intimate way. Of course he must first set free again the etheric body from the brain. But if with what one may call the fine chiseling of thought the etheric body has become so caught in the physical brain that it is exhausted, then his karma may perhaps make him wait a long time before he can set it free again. When, however, the etheric body does become free, it will mean that he has passed the point of logical thought. Then what he has acquired can never be lost; no one can take it away from him. That is an essential and important fact, because otherwise clairvoyance can often be lost again after it has been acquired.

To be continued

Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 117 – The tasks and aims of spiritual science – Stuttgart, 13th November 1909

Translated by D. S. Osmond

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/19091113p01.html

Previously posted on 21 september 2017

Why sometimes just very clear thinkers have such difficulty in reaching clairvoyance? (2 of 4)

The question is really as follows: How is it that for many a thinker — as experience teaches us — it is so exceedingly difficult to come to the point of being clairvoyant? This is connected with an important fact. What we call power of discrimination, power of judgment in man, in other words the logical thinking of the thinker, brings about a definite change in the whole structure of the human brain. Clear thinking causes a change in the physical instrument of the brain. Scientific research knows little of this, but it is a fact that a physical brain that has been used by a thinker has a different appearance from the brain which belongs to a non-thinker. The fact of being clairvoyant does not change it much. The brain of a non-thinker has very complicated convolutions, but that of a clear thinker is comparatively simple, without any special complications. Thinking actually expresses itself in the simplification of the convolutions of the brain. Present-day research knows nothing of this. Clear thinking is thinking that can survey wide vistas, not the thinking that occupies itself with analysis. Hence the greater simplicity of the brain-convolutions of a clear thinker. Whenever scientific research does condescend in any way to test clear thinking in its connection with material conditions, then it very soon appears that scientific research corroborates the statements of Spiritual Science.

The examination of the brain of Mendeleeff to whom science owes the exposition of the periodic system of the elements confirms what Spiritual Science says. His brain-convolutions were simpler than usual. Within certain limits he had the power of comprehensive thinking, and physical examination bore out absolutely the truth of what I have said. — I do not mention this as being of any very special value but only by the way. — Thus, as I have said, a change comes about in the instrument, and this change must be brought about by the activity of thought itself.

To be continued

Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 117 – The tasks and aims of spiritual science – Stuttgart, 13th November 1909

Translated by D. S. Osmond

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/19091113p01.html

Previously posted on 20 September 2017

Why sometimes just very clear thinkers have such difficulty in reaching clairvoyance? (1 of 4)

There are at the present time very clear thinkers who can understand the anthroposophical view of the world in an intellectual way. How is it that it is sometimes just these people who have such difficulty in reaching clairvoyance? 

Those who are not clear thinkers find it comparatively easy to become clairvoyant, and they are then apt to feel themselves superior to the thinkers, whilst the latter find it difficult to become clairvoyant at all. Here is the point — distant by a hair’s breadth only — where a certain arrogance in disguise begins to assert itself.

There is indeed hardly anything that breeds and fosters pride so much as a clairvoyance which has not been illumined with thought, and that is why it is so dangerous, because the clairvoyant does not as a rule consider himself proud at all, but very humble. He has no notion of the pride that consists in undervaluing the activity of thought and laying the chief emphasis on inspirations. It is a terrible form of pride, a masked pride.

To be continued

Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 117 – The tasks and aims of spiritual science – Stuttgart, 13th November 1909

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/19091113p01.html

Translated by D. S. Osmond
 

Previously posted on 19 September 2017