INSPIRATION AND INTUITION<br>JUST AS IMAGINATION may be called a spiritual seeing, so may Inspiration be called a spiritual hearing. Of course, it must be quite clear that by the expression “hearing” is meant a perception still further removed from sensory-hearing in the physical world than “sight” in the imaginative (astral) world is removed from seeing with the physical eyes. It can be said of the imaginative world's light and color phenomena that the radiant surfaces and colours of sensory-objects are as if lifted from these objects and released from them to float free in space. But this gives only an approximate idea, for “space” in the imaginative world is in no way like it is in the physical. Whoever fancies that he has before him imaginative color-pictures when he is seeing freely floating coloured particles in ordinary space dimension is in error. — But the forming of such color representations is, nevertheless, the way to the imaginative life. Whoever tries to put a flower before his mind's eye, and then separates off from his picture everything that does not represent color, so that an image of the coloured surface, separate from the flower, is suspended before his soul, can gradually through such exercises arrive at an Imagination. This picture itself is not yet such Imagination, but is more or less preliminary fantasy suggestion. Imagination, that is, the real astral experience first exists when not only the color is wholly lifted apart from the sense impression, but when also the three-dimensional space has fully lost itself. That this is the case can be confirmed only by a certain feeling. This feeling is described by saying that one no longer feels oneself “outside” but “inside” the color-picture and has the consciousness of partaking of its coming into being. If this feeling is not there, if one remains standing before the thing as before a sense-bound color-picture, then one has to do, not yet with real Imagination, but with something of
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