The Stages of Accurate Epistemology from Steiner's Truth and Science

Chapters 4-6:
1. Reach the given without predicates: set aside all pre-existing knowledge. (This must be accomplished quite faithfully. That is, neither subject nor object, nor any concept can be present as one meets the chaos or {unknown continuum} of the given).

2. Find the starting point to cognition: that place where what is at hand is not passively received but actively produced. This is intellectual intuition or direction perception of thinking activity.

3. The act of cognition is where the ideas and concepts enter the field of the given. But there is creativity taking place in this region.

4. The bare synthesizing activity of the acts of cognition do not themselves produce the content of knowledge. The synthesis only brings two aspects of the given together.  The synthesis allows the laws to unfold in the field where intuition can perceive and weave with their self-unfolding.

5. Concepts that are not merely empty categories, but essential and living, moving components of the world-content, are joined to the passively received given to produce determinate knowledge. (Laws are supersensible latent prototypes; facts are where the laws produce growth out of their supersensible seeds directly, in time; intuitive self-reflective observation is the field in which the progress from latency to development can be perceived and conceptualized).

6. This knowledge process reunites the thought aspect of reality with the passively received (given) aspect of reality. The wholeness of nature-knowledge and human science is a singular flux of sensible-supersensible unfoldings of latency and self-expression - in time and out of time.  The human I is given its power, but it actualizes it in creative self-unfoldment. 

7. However, the system of thought, ideas, and knowledge ITSELF is not created by the acts of cognition, but progresses from latency to actuality through the activity of cognition. The system of knowledge is an essential and genuine part of the whole world content. (The mind creates out of the life of the formless spirit, but the invisible latency is woven with the starting point of all knowledge intuitively experienced in understanding).

8. It is only through self-reflective consciousness that the idea of the activity of knowledge itself can arise.  Intuition is the local window or lab in which the narrowed field of observed laws can reveal their essence. Will moves intuition's light to the place where experimental connection can unfold from latency to lawful connection.

9. The I produces through its activity the idea of knowledge itself. The I postulates not only its own existence, but also the activity of cognition.

10. Uniting the given with the conceptual content cultivated through the process of cognition can only be a free act, therefore the activity of the I is a free one.

(edited April 2020) Video Demonstration of This

Heimdall and the Troll Machines - A Scene

Once upon a time as Heimdall, the guardian of the rainbow bridge, was drinking his mead in his great castle, Himinbjörg or the Cliff of Heaven, he heard a strange clattering coming up the narrow path of colored light. He immediately rose and took up his place before the gate of Asgard, the home of the godly Spirits, so that he might question the noisy stranger.

Heimdall was surprised to see a man and a woman happily walking toward him up Bifröst, the shimmering path of light.

Heimdall: Who are you that wish to cross from Midgard, the middle earth, into the Home of the Gods?

The man and woman answer together: We are human beings from the land below that have purified ourselves through sacrifice and trial, and taking on the mantle of Love, Will, and Wisdom, wish to enter into the Eternal Light.

Heimdall: Do you not know that the eye of Heimdall can see a fly crawling on Jotunheim, the Mountain of the Ice Giants, and his ear can hear the wool growing on the backs of lambs? Nothing evades my gaze.

The man and woman together: What does this have to do with us, O mighty guardian?

Heimdall: For I see before me no true son and daughter of Man, but instead two trolls riding on the back of a fantastic machine, built by Loki and the Ice Giants. I heard the clattering of its creaking gears from far away. You cannot enter here.

The man and the woman together: We beg to differ, O mighty guardian, for we know in our clearest thought, founded on the strength of human knowledge, that we are indeed a son and daughter of Man.

Heimdall: Then look! (Heimdall lifts up his shield, which is as clear and as bright as a mirror, and they gaze onto its surface)

The man and woman together: O what horror! The guardian of the bridge speaks the truth! This gruesome machine is part of us, and our faces are those of monstrous trolls, licking their lips with vile intent. Every thought coughed out from our brains is churned in the icy cogs of this device. We swear O guardian that we never knew this truth until now!

Heimdall: That may be, but the trolls and their machine cannot enter the Land of Spirits.

The man and the woman together: But we are the trolls, we are the machine. If we left them behind, then we would be nothing.

Heimdall: You speak truly, for you must know that behind this gate the rainbow bridge is broken, and the first step into Asgard must be through the great Abyss. (Heimdall bids them come and look, and then opens the great gate and they look down to see that there is an infinite chasm of darkness yawning behind it. On the other side, they see the lights of Asgard.)

The man and the woman together: But we are so afraid. We cannot become nothing. All we have ever known are the trolls and their machine.

Heimdall: Then you must turn back.

The man and the woman: But, there must be some hope. Because we have seen the trolls and their machine from the outside that must mean that there is something in us that is more than their vile form, their evil intent! There is a small light burning in us, that can choose to leave the troll-machine, and plunge its little flame into the great darkness on the yonder side of that gate. In that simple choice, we are free!

Heimdall: That is the only way. You must become nothing before Vidar, the son of Odin, can take your hand on the yonder side of the Abyss.

Two little flames, like will o wisps, flutter out of the troll-machine, and with great struggle, slowly fly through the gate behind Heimdall. They disappear into the darkness. On the other side, Vidar waits, dipping a great cup into a lake of silver mead.