y. This method is set forth
in my two books, "_Goethe's Conception of the World_" and "_The __
Philosophy of Spiritual Activity_." These writings set forth what human
thought can achieve for itself, if the thinking is not under the influence
of the physical sense impressions but relies merely upon itself. Then pure
thinking works within man like a living being. At the same time nothing in
the above-mentioned writings is derived from communications due to occult
science itself, and yet it is shown that pure, self-reliant thinking can
obtain information about the world, life and man.

These writings therefore occupy a very important intermediate position
between the actual cognition of the sense-world and that of the spiritual
world. They present that which thinking can gain when it raises itself
above sense-observation and yet does not enter into occult research.
Anyone who allows these books to work upon his whole soul, already stands
within the spiritual world, but it appears to him as a world of thought.
Those who are in a position to allow this intermediate condition to act
upon them, will be following a safe and sane path and can thus win for
themselves a feeling concerning the higher worlds, which will for all
future time ensure for them most abundant results.)

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The object of meditating upon the above described symbolical concepts and
feelings is, strictly speaking, the development of the higher organs of
cognition within man's astral body. They are in the first place created
from the substance of the astral body. These new organs of observation
establish a connection with a new world wherein man learns to know himself
as a new ego.

These new organs of perception are first of all to be distinguished from
those of the physical sense-world by being _active_ organs. Whereas the
eye and ear are passive, allowing light and sound to work upon them, it
may be said of these perceptive organs of the soul and spirit that, while
functioning they are in a perpetual state of activity, and that they seize
hold of their objects and facts, as it were, in full consciousness. This
gives rise to the feeling that psycho-spiritual cognition is a union
with,--a "dwelling within,"--the corresponding facts.

These separately evolving psycho-spiritual organs may be compared to
"lotus flowers" corresponding to the appearance which they present to the
clairvoyant consciousness, as