quite possible without training to understand everything which
investigators communicate about those regions. Should anyone ask, "How can
I accept on trust what the occultist tells me, being myself as yet unable
to see it?"--such an objection would be groundless, for it is perfectly
possible to arrive through mere reflective thinking at the sure conviction
that the matters thus communicated are true.

If a man is unable, through reflecting, to arrive at such a conviction,
the reason is not that he cannot possibly "believe" something he cannot
see, but simply because he has not as yet applied his powers of reflective
thinking in a sufficiently unbiased, comprehensive and profound manner.

In order to be clear on this point, it must be borne in mind that human
thought, if it arouses itself to energetic activity, can understand more
than it usually imagines possible. For in thought there is an inner
essence which is in connection with the supersensible world. The soul is
not usually conscious of this connection, because it is wont to train its
faculty of thought only through the world of sense. On this account it
thinks incomprehensible what is imparted to it from the supersensible
world. What is thus communicated is, however, not only intelligible to
thought which has been spiritually trained, but to any thinking which is
fully conscious of its power and is willing to make use of it.

By the persevering assimilation of what occult teachers are able to impart
to us we habituate ourselves to a line of thought that is not derived from
sense-observation, and we learn to recognize how, within the soul, one
thought is allied to another, and how one thought calls forth another,
even when the connection of ideas is not occasioned by any power of
sense-observation. The essential point is that by this method we become
aware of the fact that the world of thought possesses an inner life, and
that while we are engaged in thought we are, indeed, in the realm of a
supersensible living power. Thus we may say to ourselves: "There is
something within me that develops an organism of thought; nevertheless, I
am one with this something." And thus in yielding to this sense-free
thinking, we experience something like a being, which flows into our inner
life, just as the qualities of the things of the senses flow into us
through our physical organs when used for sense-observation.

"Out there in space," says the observer of the sense-world, "i