lso see
that not just any percept whatsoever, taken at random, is productive of
this result, but only those of the kind before-mentioned.

The path here indicated leads in the first place to what is called
imaginative knowledge, and this is the first step toward the higher
knowledge. Knowledge, dependent upon sense-perceptions and upon the
working up of such perceptions by reason, which is sense-bound, is, to use
the occult term, known as "objective cognition." Beyond this are higher
degrees of knowledge, the imaginative stage being, as we have said, the
first. Now the term "imaginative" can cause confusion in the minds of
some, to whom "imagination" stands only for "imaginings"--that is concepts
that lack reality. In occult science, however, "imaginative" cognition
must be understood to be that kind of cognition which results from a
supersensible state of consciousness of the soul. The things perceived in
this state of consciousness are spiritual facts, and spiritual beings, to
which the senses have no access, and--since this condition of the soul is
caused by meditating upon symbols, or "imaginations"--the sphere to which
this condition of higher consciousness belongs may be termed the
imaginative world, and the knowledge relating to it, imaginative
knowledge. "Imaginative" stands, therefore, in this sense, for that which
is "actual" in a higher sense than are the facts and beings of physical
sense-perception.

A very natural objection to the use of the symbolic pictures here
characterized is that they arise from a dreamy thinking and an arbitrary
imagination, and might therefore have doubtful consequences. But any such
doubts are unjustified in regard to the symbols given by true occult
schools. For these symbols are chosen in such a way that they can be
looked at quite apart from their connection with outer sense reality, and
their value is to be found exclusively in the power with which they work
upon the soul when it turns its attention wholly away from the outer
world, when it suppresses all sense-impressions and shuts out every
thought to which it might be stimulated from without. The process of
meditations is best demonstrated by comparison with sleep. In one respect
it is like the state of sleep; in another, the exact opposite of it. It is
a sleep which when compared to the day-consciousness, represents a higher
state of being. The point is that by concentration on the given conception
or image, the soul is o