s a rose: it
is not unfamiliar to me, for both scent and colour proclaim its presence."
And in like manner, when sense-free thought is working within us, we need
only be sufficiently unbiased in order to be able to say: "Something real
proclaims its presence to me, linking thought to thought and constituting
a thought-organism"--only there is a difference to be noted between the
communication coming to the observer from the outer world of the senses,
and that which actually reaches the sense-free thinker. The former feels
that he is standing without--in front of the rose--whereas he who has given
himself up to thinking which is untrammelled by the senses will feel
_within himself_ whatever thus proclaims its presence to him; he will feel
himself one with it.

Those who, more or less, unconsciously consider as beings only that which
they can perceive as external objects, will, it is true, be unable to
entertain the feeling that whatever has the nature of a being, can also
manifest itself within man by his becoming one with it. In order to judge
correctly one must be able to have the following inner experiences: one
must learn to distinguish between the thought combinations created through
one's own volition, and those experienced without any voluntary exercise
of the will. In the latter case, we may then say: I remain quite still
within myself; I produce no trains of thought; I yield to that which
"thinks within me." Then we are fully justified in saying: Within me a
being is acting, just as we are justified in saying that the rose acts
upon us when we see a certain red, when we perceive a certain odor.

Nor is there any contradiction in having derived the contents of our ideas
from communications made by the occult seer. The ideas are, it is true
already there when we devote ourselves to them; yet they cannot be
"thought", without in each case being created anew within the soul. The
important point is that the occult teacher seeks to awaken in his hearers
and readers the kind of thoughts which they must first call forth from
within themselves, whereas he who describes some physical object indicates
something that the listener or reader may observe within the sense-world.

(The path which leads to sense-free thinking by means of the
communications made by occult science is thoroughly safe. But there is
also another method even safer and above all things more exact, yet for
this very reason more difficult for the majorit