Man or Matter / Introduction to a Spiritual Understanding of Nature on the Basis of Goethe's Method of Training Observation and Thought

by Ernst Lehrs

this principle.

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The assurance we want will be found in two characteristics of the communications made by Rudolf Steiner from his researches. The content of these communications was acquired by way of a 'reading' which is nothing but a higher metamorphosis of the reading first employed by Goethe; and the acceptance of this content by another mind is itself nothing but another act of reading, save that the direction of the reading gaze differs from the usual one.

In order to understand this we must go back to what we learnt in the course of our optical studies as to the two forms of vision arising from the activity of the eye's inner light - the dream-vision and the seeing of after-images. Of these two, seeing in dream is in a certain sense the purer form of inner seeing in that it arises without any outer stimulus exercised upon the physical organ of sight. On the other hand, it lacks that objective conformity to law characteristic of the after-images which mirror the order of the external world. There is an arbitrary, enigmatic element in dream-pictures, and their logic often seems to run counter to that of waking consciousness. A further characteristic of dream-perception is that we are tied to the level of consciousness prevailing in the dream. While we are dreaming we cannot awaken to the extent of being able to make the pictures the object of conscious observation.

With the after-images it is different. Although to begin with they are present in our consciousness with a clarity no greater than that of the dream-pictures, nevertheless we are able so to enhance our consciousness of them as to bring them under observation like any external phenomenon. As previously shown, it is possible, even while the eye is riveted on an impression from outside, to develop such awareness in the activity of the inner light called forth by this impression, that together with the results of the deeds and sufferings of the light we can perceive something of these deeds and sufferings themselves. Perception of the after-images thus turns into what we may call perception of simultaneous images. (This activity of the eye corresponds with what Goethe, in a different connexion, called an 'alliance of the eyes of spirit with the eyes of the body'.)

These two forms of visual perception - which we may briefly call: (1) perception of post-images, and (2) perception of co-images - represent successive rungs on a 'spiritual ladder' pointing beyond themselves to a further rung. By the logic of succession this may be expected to consist in some sort of seeing of pre-images, with the characteristic of being a still less physical mode of seeing than the two others. This seeing must be based on an activity of the inner light which will be similar to that in dream by its arising without any stimulus from external light-impressions, yet at the same time there must be no arbitrariness in the contents of this perception. Further, our consciousness in this perceptive activity must be such as to allow us to be in full control of it, as we are of ordinary day-waking seeing.

This kind of pure sense-free perception does indeed exist, and it can be aroused by means of a well-ordered training from the dormant state in which it is present in every human being. Anyone who learns to see in this way gains perception of the activity of cosmic light, contacting it directly with his own inner light - that is to say, without mediation of his corporeal eye which is subject to gravity. So this eye-of-the-spirit becomes capable of perceiving the levity-woven archetypes (ur-images), which underlie all that the physical eye discerns in the world of ordinary space.

In respect of the intrinsic character of the world-content thus perceived, Rudolf Steiner called this mode of perception, Imaginative perception, or, simply, Imagination. By so doing he invested this word with its due and rightful meaning.

From what we found in our optical studies concerning the nature of after-images (Chapter XV), it is clear that the acquisition of Imaginative perception rests on a re-awakening in the eye (and thus in the total organism behind the eye) of certain 'infant' forces which have grown dormant in the course of the growing up of the human being. It thus represents a fulfilment of Thomas Reid's philosophic demand. Consequently we find among the descriptions which Traherne gives of the mode of perception peculiar to man when the inner light, brought into this world at birth, is not yet absorbed by the physical eye, many helpful characterizations of the nature of Imaginative perception, some of which may be quoted here.

Consider, in this respect, the following passage from Traherne's poem The Praeparative, quoted earlier. In describing the state of soul at a time when the physical senses are not yet in operation, Traherne says: