of transmutation, but he
would be unable to interpret the meaning of these processes of change. He
would not be in a position to find his way about in this newly attained
world. For the imaginative world is a realm of unrest--there is naught in
it but movement and change; nowhere are there stationary points. Such
points of rest are reached only by the person who, having transcended the
stage of imaginative knowledge, has attained to that grade of development
known to occult science as "understanding through inspiration."

It is not necessary for one seeking knowledge of the supersensible world
to develop his capacities so that the imaginative cognition should have
been acquired in full measure, before moving on to the stage of
"inspiration." His exercises may, indeed, be so regulated that two
processes may go on simultaneously, one leading to imagination and the
other to inspiration. The student will then in due time enter a higher
world, in which he not only perceives, but where he can also find his way
about, as it were, and which he becomes able to interpret. Progress, as a
rule, consists in the occult student perceiving some apparitions of the
imaginative world and becoming conscious, after a while, that he is
beginning to get his bearings.

Yet the world of inspiration is something quite new compared with the
purely imaginative realm. By means of the latter we learn to know the
transformation of one process into another; while through the former we
come to recognize the inner qualities of ever changing beings. Imagination
shows us the soul-expression of such beings; through inspiration we
penetrate into their spiritual core. Above all, we become aware of a
multiplicity of spiritual beings and of their relation to one another. In
the physical sense-world we have also, of course, to do with a
multiplicity of different beings, yet in the world of inspiration this
multiplicity is of a different character. In that world each being
sustains quite definite relations to all the other beings, not, however,
as in the physical world through outer influence upon them, but through
their essential inner nature.

When we become aware of a being in the world of inspiration, no external
impression made upon another is apparent, such as might be compared with
the influence of one physical being upon another; a relation nevertheless
exists which is purely the result of the inner constitution of the two
beings. This relationship may