Esoteric or inner knowledge is no different from other kinds of human knowledge and ability. It is a mystery for the average person only to the extent that writing is a mystery for those who have not yet learned to write.
It is not possible to educate the will and the healthy soul that underlies it unless we develop insights that awaken energetic impulses in the soul and will.
The true teachers and educators are not those who have learned pedagogy as the science of dealing with children, but those in whom pedagogy has awakened through understanding the human being.
A philosophy of freedom must set out from the experience of thinking, for it is through this experience of thinking that a human being discovers his own self, finds his bearings as an independent personality.
In order to find our bearings in the spiritual worlds and see truly what is there for us to see, we need a further inner trait in our character, a quality I should like to term 'presence of mind.' In ordinary life, this is the trait we need when faced with a situation that requires us to make an immediate decision without hesitation.
When children draw or do rudimentary painting, the whole human being develops an interest in what is being done. This is why we should allow writing to develop from drawing.
What is of the nature of spirit and soul must be gleaned from facts belonging to the spirit and soul; we shall then know that in the living thinking which is liberated from the will, a life-germ has been discerned which passes through the gate of death, goes through the spiritual world after death, and afterwards returns again to earthly life.
May my soul bloom in love for all existence.
In order for the students' development and the outer development of civilization to coincide, we need a faculty whose interest is not limited to specialized educational practices. Rather, this faculty must be fully involved in the broader aspects of life.
You must always be open to new experiences; by this means, your physical and etheric bodies will be brought into a condition which may be compared with the contented mood of a brooding hen.
The capacities by which we can gain insights into higher worlds lie dormant within each one of us.
You can go from object to object, from plant to plant, from animal to animal and regard them as symbols for the spiritual. In this way, you make your imaginative capacities fluid and release them from the sharp contours of sense perception.
All things which have a directing force here in the physical world cease to exist when one arrives in the imaginative world. If, on the physical plane, you imagine yourself to have done something you actually have not done, you will soon be persuaded by the facts of the physical world that this is not so. This is not the case in astral space.
If a motive affects me, and I am compelled to act on it because it proves to be the 'strongest' of its kind, then the thought of freedom ceases to have any meaning. How should it matter to me whether I can do a thing or not, if I am forced by the motive to do it?
Learning certain things purely through memory is related to the developmental forces that are present between the sixth or seventh year and the fourteenth year of life. This quality of human nature is what mathematical instruction should be based on.
The main difference in the effectiveness of teaching comes from the thoughts the teacher has had during the entire time of his or her existence and brings into the classroom. A teacher concerned with developing humans affects the students quite differently from a teacher who never thinks about such things.
In the life of our organism, we are continually dealing with a development of force followed by a state of equilibrium. Of course, the human being has no conscious knowledge of what is really going on within him, but what takes place is so infinitely wise that the cleverness of the human ego is nothing by comparison.
If I meet other people and criticize their weaknesses, I rob myself of higher cognitive power. But if I try to enter deeply and lovingly into another person's good qualities, I gather in that force.
We know even from ordinary life that we have to achieve a sufficient degree of attentiveness if we want to concentrate on an inner picture or an object of some kind; we must also have it in our power, though, to turn our soul away from something we have been concentrating on.
We have to push aside what generally concerns us most in our thought life, namely, the content of our thoughts, and learn instead to make conscious use of the element of will in our thinking.
