Contemplation spreads like a quiet pond in the soul and draws into the quiet innermost soul1 that attentively and patiently awaits.
Alone, one cannot produce anything. Trust is the sure footing on the way through this world. Our way through this world is a grasping through many veils. We surmise the next steps on our path without knowing what the world will look like once we have taken them, and we sense our way along the path. Cautiously, we remove the next veil that lies before us, stepping behind a curtain, as if we were slowly diving through water. We push aside its thin cloth like a diver pushing aside water in order to continue moving onward.
Underwater, many things are hidden from the diver. They do not see as clearly or hear as distinctly as in the open air. They dive, dive, and surmise their way forward through semi-transparent water. So do we sense our way forward through this world. We see as the diver sees—we do not see the whole path upon which we are walking, as the diver can only partly see through the water.
The diver grabs a rope and pulls themselves through the water until they reach an anchor to which it is tied. Beyond the anchor, they can yet only surmise; onward, they get caught in a stream that carries them along. They turn, look up and down as the stream carries them on. It flows into deep, dark water, and the diver swims slowly forward, pushing water aside and leaving it behind them until they see sand beneath, getting closer and closer, as the water becomes shallower. Only knee-deep, they sense their way forward and reach through the last veil, through the water’s surface—they have reached a beach.
The waves crash behind them; the diver is wet and breaths as if newly born. All their life, they’ve only known water and grasping through water. Their path has suddenly changed shape—the diver has become a hiker. They walk for the first time, grasping through the veil of air; every step is new; they step on solid ground, on sand, on earth. The veil of the wind is thin; the hiker’s arms reach almost imperceptibly through as it gently caresses the skin between their fingers like a light cloth.
The hiker moves in the wind, surmising their way forward, faster than when they were still diving through water. They lift the veils of wind and air that hang from the sky and through which the hiker must surmise; they lift them in their own way, as they can be lifted in so many ways. They hike through the veils of the wind, and the winds settle upon the world again once the hiker has passed. After many premonitions and directions, an unknown place spreads out before them. They surmise that their steps will soon have run out, surmise with the waving of the wind that they will not be a hiker much longer, only a few steps remain before the ground stops and goes over into air. Across the cliff, they go with their last step—it begins on the ground and goes on into the air. The hiker senses they have ceased to be a hiker and surmises a new shape rising up within them. They see a path in the great widths of light and patiently spread out their arms, which become white feathers. Invisible wings carry them forth, far over all the mountains, clouds, and stars. Home.
Andreas Blaser, M.A. researched contemplation as part of a scholarship from the Anthroposophical Society of Germany. This has resulted in texts that are themselves contemplative. We will be publishing contributions from his collection from time to time over the next six months. His text “View of Humankind” was published on June 21, 2024. He currently lives and works in Basel.
Translation Joshua Kelberman
Image Cornelia Friedrich, Begegnung mit dem Licht [Encounter with the light], 2012
Footnotes
- The German word is Gemüt, a word without a direct correlate in English. Sometimes translated as “mind,” “higher soul,” “inner moral tenor,” or descriptively, in one sense, as the faculty of the soul where the unity of soul activity and transcendence of the soul are simultaneously experienced. I have chosen “innermost soul” here to allow the style and tone of the writing to carry through as much as the meaning—Trans. note.
