The quotation from "Theosophy" by Rudolf Steiner
Before the spirit can be observed on its further pilgrimage, the region it enters must first be examined. It is the world of the spirit. This world is so unlike the physical that all that is said about it will appear fantastic to anyone who is only willing to trust his physical senses. What has already been said in regard to the world of the soul — that is, that we have to use analogies to describe it — also holds good here to a still higher degree. Our language, which for the most part serves only for the realities of the senses, is not richly blessed with expressions applicable directly to the spiritland. It is, therefore, especially necessary to ask the reader to understand much that is said as an indication only because everything that is described here is so unlike the physical world that only in this way can it be depicted. The author is ever conscious of how little this account can really resemble the experiences of this region owing to the imperfection of our language, calculated as it is to be our medium of expression for the physical world.
It must above all things be emphasized that this world is woven out of the substance of which human thought consists. The word “substance,†too is here used in a far from strict or accurate sense. Thought, however, as it lives in man, is only a shadow picture, a phantom of its true nature. Just as the shadow of an object on the wall is related to the real object that throws this shadow, so is the thought that makes its appearance through a human brain related to the being in the spiritland that corresponds to this thought. Now, when his spiritual sense is awakened, man really perceives this thought being, just as the eye of the senses perceives a table or a chair. He goes about in a region of thought beings. The corporeal eye perceives the lion, and the thinking directed to the sensibly perceptible thinks merely the thought, “lion†as a shadow, a shadowy picture. The spiritual eye sees in spiritland the thought “lion†as really and actually as the corporeal eye sees the physical lion.Here we may again refer to the analogy already used regarding the land of the soul. Just as the surroundings of a man born blind operated upon appear suddenly with the new qualities of color and light, so do the surroundings of the person who learns to use his spiritual eye appear as a new world, the world of living thoughts or spirit beings. In this world there are to be seen, first, the spiritual archetypes of all things and beings that are present in the physical and soul worlds. Imagine a painter's picture existing in his mind before it is painted. This gives an analogy to what is meant by the expression archetype. It does not concern us here that the painter has perhaps not had such an archetype in his mind before he paints and that it only gradually develops and becomes complete during the execution of the picture. In the real world of spirit there exist such archetypes for all things, and the physical things and beings are copies of these archetypes. It is quite understandable when anyone who only trusts his outer senses denies this archetypal world and holds that archetypes are merely abstractions gained by an intellectual comparison of sense objects. Such a person simply cannot see in this higher world. He knows the thought world only in its shadowy abstraction. He does not know that the person with spiritual vision is as familiar with spirit beings as he himself is with his dog or his cat, and that the archetypal world has a far more intense reality than the world of the physical senses.True, the first look into this spiritland is still more bewildering than the first glimpse into the soul world because the archetypes in their true form are very unlike their sensory reflections. They are, however, just as unlike their shadows, the abstract thoughts.
In the spiritual world all is in perpetual, mobile activity in the process of ceaseless creating. A state of rest, a remaining in one place such as we find in the physical world, does not exist here because the archetypes are creative beings. They are the master builders of all that comes into being in the physical and soul worlds. Their forms change rapidly and in each archetype lies the possibility of assuming myriads of specialized forms. They let the different shapes well up out of them, as it were, and no sooner is one produced than the archetype sets about pouring forth the next one from itself. Moreover, the archetypes stand in more or less intimate relationships to each other. They do not work singly. The one requires the help of the other in its creating Often innumerable archetypes work together in order that this or that being in the soul or physical world may arise.
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The quotation from "Kunst und Kunsterkenntnis" by Rudolf Steiner.
Unser Seelelenleben strebt eigentlich,wenn die Veranlassung zu der Seelenstimmung da ist, viel mehr als man glaubt, fortwaehrend dahin, sich umzugestalten im Sinne der Vision.Das gesunnde Seelenleben besteht nur darin ,dass dieses [Wollen der Vision] beim Streben bleibt,dass die Vision nicht heraufkommt.
Dieses Streben nach der Vision ,das im Grunde genonnmen, in der Seele aller Menschen ist,kann befriedigt werden,wenn wir das,was entstehen will,aber in der gesunden Seele nicht entstehen soll-die krankhafte Vision-der Seele entgegenhalten in einem aeusseren Eindruck,in einer aeusseren Gestaltung, in einem aesseren Bildwerk oder dergleichen.Und es kann dann das aessere Bildwerk,die aessere Gestaltung dasjenige sein, was eintritt,um in gesunder Weise im Untergrunde der Seele zu lassen, was eigentlich Vision sein will.
Wir bieten gewissermassen der Seele von ausssen den Inhalt der Vision.Und wir bieten ihr nur dann ein wirklich Kuenstlerisches,wenn wir imstande sind, aus berechtigten visionnaeren Strebungen heraus zu erraten, welche Gestaltung ,welchen Bildeindruck
wir der Seele bieten muessen,damit ihr Drang nach dem Visionaeren ausgeglichen ist.
Der andere Ursprung liegt darin, dass innerhalb der Natur selber Geheimnisse verzaubert sind, die nur gefunden werden koennen ,wenn man sich darauf einlaesst, nicht wissenschaftlich vorauszusetzen-das braucht man dabei nicht-,aber zu empfinden, welches die tieferen Geheimnisse der sich um uns ausbreitenden Natur eigentlich sind.
Befriedigunng zu schaffen fuer das ,was eigentlich Vision werden will,aber in der gesunden Menschennatur nicht Vision werden darf,das wird immer mehr oder weniger zur expressionistischen Kunstform werden,wenn man auch auf das Schlagwort nicht viel zu geben braucht.Und dasjenige ,was geschaffen werden soll,um wiederum das zusammenzufassen,was man in seine sinnlich-uebersinnlichen Bestandteile in irgendwelcher Form aufgeloest hat,oder aus dem man das unmittelbar sinnliche Leben ertoetet hat, um selbst ihm einzuhauchen uebersinnliches Leben, wird zur impressionnistischen Kunstform fuehren.
Diese beide Beduerfnisse der menschlichen Seelen sind immer die Quelle der Kunst gewesen,nur dass durch die allgemeine Menschheitwickelung in der unmittelbaren Vergangenheit,,ich moechte sagen, das erste expressionistisch, das zweite impressionistisch verfolgt wird. Es wird sich wahrscheinlich ,der Zukunft zueilend,in ganz besonderem Masse ausgestalten. Man wird fuer Zukunft kuenstlerisch dann empfinden,wenn man immer mehr und mehr nicht das Verstandesbewusstsein,aber das Empfinden erwaitert.
The activities of our soul essentially strive continually with a sense of the Vision, much more so than people believe, while the tendency of the soul would be encouraged. The healthy soul is made up just by continuing to struggle to keep the“ Will of Vision†in check. And then it doesn't come up.
This strife against the Vision is what all people essentially have to satisfy in their souls, however in a healthy soul it doesn’t have to be raised, that is “the morbidity Vision.†It stands out in a separate formation such as a sculpture and so on. It could be expressed through formative art which makes a healthier way in the underground soul where we actually want to realize the Vision.
We certainly offer the heart of the Vision to the soul from the outside. We offer artistic reality only when we are able to validate the visionary effort to guess which form or which image must be given to the soul and our desire to keep the Vision balanced.
And another source in such a magicked secret within nature, is capable of being found when people work on, not academic assumption,(without any such habits) but feeling their way to the deeper secrets of the true nature surrounding us.
To satisfy our subconscious drive for that which will become Vision originally, but in healthy human nature it is not to be allowed, it will always be more or less an expressionistic art style. Needless to say with long words.
And the creation of something which should be reunified with the sensible-supersensible element in some form, or the direct sensible life repressed by itself, to inscribe in supersensible life, will be steered to the impressionistic art style.
Both these desires have always been the source of human Art. And what I may say owning to the lately general human-development is, to begin with, the expressionistic. Secondly, the impressionistic will be searched.
Both of them will possibly be shaped in the near future in a quite special level. People will go for the future artistically and feel it, if they always feel more and more, not by intellectually, but by extensions of feelings.
