Esoteric Development
GA 214
IV. The Attainment of Supersensible Knowledge
20 August 1922, Oxford
Translator Unknown, revised
I should like to respond to the kind invitation to lecture this evening by telling you how, by means of direct investigation, it is possible to acquire the spiritual knowledge which we are proposing to study here in its application to education. I shall be dealing today with the methods whereby super-sensible worlds may be investigated and on another occasion it may be possible to deal with some of the actual results of super-sensible research. But apart from this, let me add by way of introduction that everything I propose to say will refer to the investigation of spiritual worlds, not to the understanding of the facts yielded by super-sensible knowledge. These facts have been investigated and communicated, and they can be grasped by healthy human intelligence, if this healthy intelligence will be unprejudiced enough not to base its conclusions wholly on what goes by the name of proof, logical deduction, and the like, in regard to the outer sense world. On account of these hindrances it is frequently stated that unless one is able oneself to investigate super-sensible worlds, one cannot understand the results of super-sensible research.
We are dealing here with what may be called initiation-knowledge—that knowledge which in ancient periods of human evolution was cultivated in a somewhat different form from that which must be fostered in our present age. Our aim, as I have already said in other lectures, is to set out along the path of research leading to super-sensible worlds by means of the thinking and perception proper to our own epoch—not to revive what is old. And precisely in initiation-knowledge, everything depends upon one being able to bring about a fundamental reorientation of the whole human life of soul.
Those who have acquired initiation-knowledge differ from those who have knowledge in the modern sense of the word, and not only by reason of the fact that initiation-knowledge is a higher stage of ordinary knowledge. It is, of course, acquired on the basis of ordinary knowledge, and this basis must be there. Intellectual thinking must be fully developed if one wishes to reach initiation-knowledge. But then a fundamental reorientation is necessary; for he who possesses initiation-knowledge must look at the world from an entirely different point of view from one without initiation-knowledge. I can express in a simple formula how initiation-knowledge principally differs from ordinary knowledge. In ordinary knowledge, we are conscious of our thinking, and of all those inner experiences whereby we acquire knowledge, as the subjects of this knowledge. We think, for example, and we believe that we are understanding something through our thoughts. When we conceive of ourselves as thinking beings, we are the subject. We seek for objects, in that we observe nature and human life, and in that we make experiments. We seek always for objects. Objects must press against us. Objects must yield themselves to us so that we may grasp them with our thoughts and apply our thinking to them. We are the subject; that which comes to us is the object.
An entirely different orientation is brought about in a man who is reaching out for initiation-knowledge. He has to realize that, as man, he is the object, and he must seek for the subject to this human object. Therefore the complete reverse must begin. In ordinary knowledge we feel ourselves to be the subject and we seek the objects that are outside us. In initiation-knowledge we ourselves are the object and we seek for the subject—or rather in actual initiation-knowledge the subject appears of itself. But that is then a matter of a later stage of knowledge.
So you see, even this rather theoretical definition indicates that in initiation-knowledge we must really take flight from ourselves, that we must become like the plants, the stones, the lightning and thunder which, to us, are objects. In initiation-knowledge we slip out of ourselves, as it were, and become the object which seeks for its subject. If I may use a somewhat paradoxical expression—in this particular connection in reference to thinking—in ordinary knowledge we think about things; in initiation-knowledge we must discover how our being is “thought” in the cosmos. These are nothing but abstract principles, but these abstract principles you will now find pursued everywhere in the concrete data of the initiation method.
Now firstly—for today we are dealing only with the form of initiation-knowledge that is right and proper for the modern age—initiation-knowledge takes its start from thinking. The life of thought must be fully developed if one wishes to attain initiation-knowledge today. And a good training for this life of thought is to give deep study to the growth and development of natural science in recent centuries, especially in the nineteenth century. Human beings proceed in different ways when they embark upon the quest for scientific knowledge. Some of them absorb the teachings of science with a kind of naiveté, hearing how organic beings are supposed to have evolved from the simplest, most primitive forms, up to man. They formulate ideas about this evolution but pay little heed to their own being, to the fact that they themselves have ideas and in their very perception of outer processes are themselves unfolding a life of thought.
But there are some who cannot accept the whole body of scientific knowledge without turning a critical eye upon themselves, and they will certainly come to the point of asking: “What am I myself really doing when I follow the progress of beings from the imperfect to the perfect stage?” Or again, they must ask themselves: “When I am working at mathematics I evolve thoughts purely out of myself. Mathematics in the real sense is a web which I spin out of my own being. I then bring this web to bear upon things in the outer world and it fits them.” Here we come to what I must say is the great and tragic question that faces the thinker: “How do matters stand regarding thinking itself—this thinking that I apply with all knowledge?”
Not for all our contemplation shall we discover how matters really stand regarding thought itself, for the simple reason that thinking there remains at the same level. All that we do is to revolve around the axle which we have already formed for ourselves. We must perform something with thinking, by means of what I have described as meditation in my book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment.
One should not have any “mystical” ideas in connection with meditation, nor indeed imagine that it is an easy thing. Meditation must be something completely clear, in the modern sense. Patience and inner energy of soul are necessary for it, and, above all, it is connected with an act that no man can do for another, namely, to make an inner resolve and then hold to it. When he begins to meditate, man is performing the only completely free act there is in human life. Within us we have always the tendency to freedom and we have, moreover, achieved a large measure of freedom. But if we think about it, we shall find that we are dependent for one upon heredity, for another upon education, and for a third upon our life. And ask yourself where we would be if we were suddenly to abandon everything that has been given us by heredity, education, and life in general. If we abandoned all this suddenly, we would be faced with a void. But suppose we undertake to meditate regularly, in the morning and evening, in order to learn by degrees to look into the super-sensible world. That is something which we can, if we like, leave undone any day; nothing would prevent that. And, as a matter of fact, experience teaches that the greater number of those who enter upon the life of meditation with splendid resolutions abandon it again very soon. We have complete freedom in this, for meditation is in its very essence a free act. But if we can remain true to ourselves, if we make an inner promise—not to another, but to ourselves—to remain steadfast in our resolve to meditate, then this in itself will become a mighty force in the soul.
Having said this, I want to speak of meditation in its simplest forms. Today I can deal only with principles.
We must place at the center of our consciousness an idea or combination of ideas. The particular content of the idea or ideas is not the point, but in any case, it must be something that does not represent any actual reminiscences or memories. That is why it is well not to take the substance of a meditation from our own store of memories but to let another, one who is experienced in such things, give the meditation. Not, of course, because he has any desire to exercise “suggestion,” but because in this way we may be sure that the substance of the meditation is something entirely new for us. It is equally good to take some ancient work which we know we have never read before, and seek in it some passage for meditation. The point is that we not draw the passage from the subconscious or unconscious realms of our own being which are so apt to influence us. We cannot be sure about anything from these realms because it will be colored by all kinds of remains from our past life of perception and feeling. The substance of a meditation must be as clear and pure as a mathematical formula.
We will take this sentence as a simple example: “Wisdom lives in the light.” At the outset, one cannot set about testing the truth of this. It is a picture. But we are not to concern ourselves with the intellectual content of the words—we must contemplate them inwardly, in the soul, we must repose in them with our consciousness. At the beginning, we shall be able to bring to this content only a short period of repose, but the time will become longer and longer.
What is the next stage? We must gather together the whole human life of soul in order to concentrate all the forces of thinking and perception within us upon the content of the meditation. Just as the muscles of the arm grow strong if we use them for work, so are the forces of the soul strengthened by being constantly directed to the same content, which should be the subject of meditation for many months, perhaps even years. The forces of the soul must be strengthened and invigorated before real investigation in the super-sensible world can be undertaken.
If one continues to practice in this way, there comes a day, I would like to call it the great day, when one makes a certain observation. One observes an activity of soul that is entirely independent of the body. One realizes too that whereas one's thinking and sentient life were formerly dependent on the body—thinking on the nerve-sense system, feelings on the circulatory system, and so on—one is now involved in an activity of soul and spirit that is absolutely free from any bodily influence. And gradually one notices that one can make something vibrate in the head—something which remained before totally unconscious. One now makes the remarkable discovery of where the difference lies between the sleeping and waking states. This difference lies in the fact that when one is awake, something vibrates in the whole human organism, with the single exception of the head. That which is in movement in the other parts of the organism is at rest in the head.
You will understand this better if I call your attention to the fact that as human beings we are not, as we are accustomed to think, made up merely of this robust, solid body. We are really made up of approximately ninety per cent fluid, and the proportion of solid constituents immersed and swimming in these fluids is only about ten per cent. Nothing absolutely definite can be said about the amount of solid constituents in man. We are composed of approximately ninety per cent water—if I may call it that—and through a certain portion of this water pulsates air and warmth.
If you thus picture man as being to a lesser extent solid body and to a greater extent water, air, and the vibrating warmth, you will not find it so very unlikely that there is something still finer within him—something which I will now call the etheric body. This etheric body is finer than the air—so fine and ethereal indeed that it permeates our being without our knowing anything of it in ordinary life. It is this etheric body which in man's waking life is full of inner movement, of regulated movement in the whole of the human organism, with the exception of the head. The etheric body in the head is inwardly at rest.
In sleep it is different. Sleep commences and then continues in such a way that the etheric body begins to be in movement also in the head. In sleep, then, the whole of our being—the head as well as the other parts of the organism—is permeated by an inwardly moving etheric body. And when we dream, perhaps just before waking, we become aware of the last movements in the etheric body. They present themselves to us as dreams. When we wake up in a natural way we are still aware of these last movements of the etheric body in the head. But, of course, when there is a very sudden waking, it cannot be so.
One who continues for a long time in the method of meditation which I have indicated is gradually able to form pictures in the tranquil etheric body of the head. In the book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment, I have called these pictures Imaginations. And these Imaginations, which are experienced in the etheric body independently of the physical body, are the first super-sensible impressions that we can have. They enable us, apart altogether from our physical body, to behold, as in a picture, the actions and course of our life back to the time of birth. A phenomenon that has often been described by people who have been at the point of drowning, namely that they see their life backwards in a series of moving pictures, can be deliberately and systematically cultivated so that one can see all the events of the present earthly life.
The first thing that initiation-knowledge gives is the view of one's own life of soul, and it proves to be altogether different from what one generally supposes. One usually supposes in the abstract that this life of soul is something woven of ideas. If one discovers it in its true form, one finds that it is something creative, that it is that which, at the same time, was working in our childhood, forming and molding the brain, and is permeating our whole organism and producing in it a plastic, form-building activity, kindling each day our waking consciousness and even our digestive processes.
We see this inwardly active principle in the organism of man as the etheric body. It is not a spatial body but a time-body. Therefore you cannot describe the etheric body as a form in space if you realize your doing so would be the same thing as painting a flash of lightning. If you paint lightning, you are, of course, painting an instant—you are holding an instant fast. The same principle applies to the etheric body of man. In truth, we have a physical space-body and a time-body, an etheric body which is always in motion. We cannot speak intelligently of the etheric body until we have discovered in actual experience that it is a time-body which comes before us in an instant as a continuous tableau of events stretching back to birth. This is what we can first discover in the way of the super-sensible abilities in ourselves.
The effect of these inner processes upon the evolution of the soul, which I have described, manifests itself above all in the complete change of mood and disposition of soul in the man who is reaching out for initiation-knowledge. Please do not misunderstand me. I do not mean that he who is approaching initiation suddenly becomes an entirely transformed person. On the contrary, modern initiation-knowledge must leave a man wholly in the world, capable of continuing his life as when he began. But in the hours and moments dedicated to super-sensible investigation, man becomes, through initiation-knowledge, completely different from what he is in ordinary life.
Above all, I would like now to emphasize an important moment which distinguishes initiation-knowledge. The more a man presses forward in his experience of the super-sensible world, the more he feels that the influences from his own corporeality are disappearing, that is to say regarding those things in which this corporeality takes part in ordinary life. Let us ask ourselves, for a moment, how our judgments occur in life. We develop as children, and grow up. Sympathy and antipathy take firm root in our life: sympathy and antipathy with appearances in nature, and, above all, with other human beings. Our body takes part in all this. Sympathy and antipathy—which to a large extent have their basis actually in physical processes—enter quite naturally into all these things. The moment he who is approaching initiation rises into the super-sensible world, he passes into a realm where sympathy and antipathy connected with his bodily nature become more and more foreign to him. He is removed from that with which his corporeality connects him. And when he wishes again to take up ordinary life he must, as it were, deliberately invest in his ordinary sympathies and antipathies, which otherwise occurs quite as a matter of course. When one wakes in the morning, one lives within one's body, one develops the same love for things and human beings, the same sympathy or antipathy which one had before. If one has tarried in the super-sensible world and wishes to return to one's sympathies and antipathies, then one must do it with a struggle, one must, as it were, immerse oneself in one's own corporeality. This removal from one's own corporeality is one of the signs that one has actually made headway. Wide-hearted sympathies and antipathies gradually begin to unfold in one who is treading the path to initiation.
In one direction, spiritual development shows itself very strongly, namely in the working of the memory and the power of remembering during initiation-knowledge. We experience ourselves in ordinary life. Our memory, our recollection, is sometimes a little better, sometimes a little worse, but we earn these memories. We have experiences, and we remember them later. This is not so with what we experience in the super-sensible worlds. This we can experience in greatness, in beauty, and in significance—it is experienced, then it is gone. And it must be experienced again if it is again to stand before the soul. It does not impress itself in the memory in the ordinary sense. It impresses itself only if one can first, with all effort, bring what one sees in the super-sensible world into concepts, if one can transfer one's understanding to the super-sensible world. This is very difficult. One must be able to think there, but without the help of the body. Therefore one's concepts must be well grounded in advance, one must have developed before a logical, orderly mind and not always be forgetting one's logic when looking into the super-sensible world. People possessed of primitive clairvoyant faculties are able to see many things; but they forget logic when they are there. And so it is precisely when one has to communicate super-sensible truths to others that one becomes aware of this transformation in the memory in reference to spiritual truths. This shows us how much our physical body is involved in the practice of memory, not of thought but of memory, which indeed always plays over into the super-sensible.
If I were to say something personal, it would be this: when I give a lecture, it is different from when others give lectures. In others, what is said is usually drawn from the memory; what one learns, what one thinks, is usually developed out of the memory. But he who is really unfolding super-sensible truths must at that very moment bring them to birth. I can give the same lecture thirty, forty, or fifty times, and for me it is never the same. Of course this may happen in other cases too; but at all events the power to be independent of ordinary memory is very greatly enhanced when this inner stage of development is reached.
What I have now related to you concerns the ability to bring form into the etheric body in the head. This then makes it possible for a man to see the time-body, the etheric body, stretching back to his birth, bringing about a very particular frame of mind vis-à-vis the cosmos. One loses one's own corporeality, so to speak, but one gradually becomes accustomed to the cosmos. The consciousness expands, as it were, into the wide spaces of the ether. One no longer contemplates a plant without plunging into its growing. One follows it from root to blossom; one lives in its saps, in its flowering, in its fruiting. One can steep oneself in the life of animals as revealed by their forms, but above all in the life of other human beings. The slightest trait perceived in other human beings will lead one into the whole life of the soul, so that during these super-sensible perceptions one feels not within but outside oneself.
But one must always be able to return. This is essential, for otherwise one is an inactive, nebulous mystic, a dreamer—not a knower of the super-sensible worlds. One must be able to live in these higher worlds, but at the same time be able to bring oneself back again, so as to stand firmly on one's own two feet. That is why in speaking of these things I state emphatically that for me as for a good philosopher a knowledge of how shoes and coats are sewn is almost more important than logic. A true philosopher should be a practical human being. One must not be thinking about life if one does not stand within it as a really practical human being. And in the case of one who is seeking super-sensible knowledge this is still more necessary. Knowers of the super-sensible cannot be dreamers or fanatics—people who do not stand firmly on their own two feet. Otherwise one loses oneself because one must really come out of oneself. But this coming-out-of-oneself must not lead to losing oneself. The book, Occult Science, an Outline, was written from such a knowledge as I have described.
Then the question is whether one can carry this super-sensible knowledge further. This occurs through further cultivating one's meditation. To begin with, one rests with the meditation upon certain definite ideas or a combination of ideas and thereby strengthens one's life of soul. But this is not enough to enter the super-sensible world fully. Another exercise is necessary. Not only is it necessary to rest with definite ideas, concentrating one's whole soul upon them, but one must be able, at will, to drive these ideas out of one's consciousness again. Just as in material life one can look at some object and then away from it, so in super-sensible development one must learn to concentrate on some idea and then to drive it entirely away.
Even in ordinary life this is far from easy. Think how little a man has under his control, to be always impelled by his thoughts. They will often haunt him day in and day out, especially if they are unpleasant. He cannot get rid of them. This is a still more difficult thing to do when we have accustomed ourselves to concentrate upon a particular thought. A thought content upon which we have concentrated begins finally to hold us fast and we must exert every effort to drive it away. But after long practice we shall be able to throw the whole retrospective tableau of life back to birth, this whole etheric body, which I have called the time-body, entirely out of our consciousness.
This, of course, is a stage of development towards which we must bring ourselves. We must first mature. By the sweeping away of ideas upon which we have meditated, we must acquire the power to rid ourselves of this colossus, this giant in the soul. This terrible specter of our life between the present moment and birth stands there before us—and we must do away with it. If we eliminate it, a “more wakeful consciousness”—if I may so express it—will arise in us. Consciousness is fully awake but is empty. And then it begins to be filled. Just as the air streams into the lungs when they need it, so there streams into this empty consciousness, in the way I have described, the true spiritual world.
This is Inspiration. It is an in-streaming not of some finer substance but of something that is related to substance as negative is to positive. That which is the reverse of substance now pours into a human nature which has become free from the ether. It is important that we can become aware that spirit is not a finer, more ethereal substance. If we speak of substance as positive (we might also speak of it as negative, but that is not the point; these things are relative)—then we speak of spirit as being the negative to the positive. Let me put it thus: suppose I have the large sum of five shillings in my possession. I give one shilling away and then have four shillings left. I give another away—three shillings left, and so on until I have no more. But then I can make debts. If I have a debt of a shilling, then I have less than no shilling!
If, through the methods that I have described, I have eliminated the etheric body, I do not enter into a still finer ether, but into something that is the reverse of the ether, as debts are the reverse of assets. Only now I know through experience what spirit is. The spirit pours into us through Inspiration; the first thing that we now experience is what was with our soul and with our spirit in a spiritual world before birth, or rather before conception. This is the pre-existent life of our soul-spirit. Before reaching this point we saw in the ether back to our birth. Now we look beyond conception and birth, out into the world of soul and spirit, and behold ourselves as we were before we came down from spiritual worlds and acquired a physical body from the line of heredity.
In initiation-knowledge these things are not philosophical truths that one thinks out: they are experiences, but experiences which have to be earned by means of the preparations I have now indicated. The first truth that comes to us when we have entered the spiritual world is that of the pre-existence of the human soul and the human spirit respectively, and we learn now to behold the eternal directly.
For many centuries European humanity has had eyes for only one aspect of eternity—namely, the aspect of immortality. Men have asked only this: what becomes of the soul when it leaves the body at death? This question is the egotistical privilege of men, for men take an interest in what follows death from an egotistical basis. We shall presently see that we can speak of immortality too, but at all events men usually speak of it from an egotistical basis. They are less interested in what preceded birth. They say to themselves: “We are here now. What went before has only worth in knowledge.” But one will not win true worth in knowledge unless one also directs one's attention to existence as it was before birth, or rather, before conception.
We need a word in modern parlance with which to complete the idea of eternity. For we should not speak only of immortality; we should speak also of Ungeborenheit—Unborn-ness—a word difficult to translate. Eternity has these two aspects: immortality and unborn-ness. And initiation-knowledge discovers unborn-ness before immortality.
A further stage along the path to the super-sensible world can be reached if we now try to make our activity of soul and spirit still freer of the support from the body. To this end we now gradually guide the exercises in meditation and concentration to become exercises for the will.
As a concrete example, let me lead you to a simple exercise for strengthening the will. It will help you to be able to study the principle here involved. In ordinary life we are accustomed to think with the course of the world. We let things come to us as they happen. That which comes to us earlier, we think of first, and that which comes to us later, we think of later. And even if we do not think with the course of time in more logical thought, there is always in the background the tendency to keep to the outward, actual course of events. Now in order to exercise our forces of spirit and soul we must get free of the outer cause of things. A good exercise—and one which is at the same time an exercise for the will—is to try to think back over our day's experiences, not as they occurred from morning to evening, but backwards, from evening to morning, entering as much as possible into details.
Suppose in this backward review we come to the moment when, during the day, we walked up a staircase. We think of ourselves at the top step, then at the one before the top, and so on, down to the bottom. We go down that staircase backwards in thought. To begin with we will only be in the position to visualize episodes of the day in this backward order, say from six o'clock to three o'clock, or from twelve to nine, and so on to the moment of waking. But gradually we shall acquire a kind of technique by means of which, in the evening or the next morning, we are actually in a position to let a retrospective tableau of the experiences of the day or the day before pass before our soul in pictures. If we are in the position—and we will arrive at it—to free ourselves completely from the kind of thought which follows three-dimensional reality, we will see what a tremendous power our will becomes. We will reach this also if we can arrive at the position where we can experience the notes of a melody backwards, or visualize a drama in five acts, beginning with the fifth, then the fourth, and so on, to the first act. Through all such exercises we strengthen the power of will, for we invigorate it inwardly and free it from its bondage to events in the material world.
Here again, exercises I have indicated in previous lectures can be appropriate if we take stock of ourselves and realize that we have acquired this or that habit. We now take ourselves firmly in hand and apply an iron will in order within two years or so to have changed this particular habit into a different one. To take only a simple example: something of a man's character is contained in his handwriting. If we strain ourselves to acquire a handwriting bearing no resemblance to what it was before, this takes a strong inner force. Now this second handwriting must become quite as much a habit, just as fluent as the first. That is only a trivial matter but there are many things whereby the fundamental direction of our will may be changed through our own efforts. Gradually we bring it to the point where not only is the spiritual world received in us as Inspiration, but actually our spirit, freed from the body, is submerged in other spiritual beings outside of us. For true spiritual knowledge is a submerging in spiritual beings who are spiritually all around us when we look back at physical phenomena. If we would know the spiritual, we must first, as it were, get outside ourselves. I have already described this. But then we must also acquire the ability to sink ourselves into things, namely into spiritual things and spiritual beings.
We can do this only after we also practice such initiation exercises as I have described, bringing us to the point where our own body is no longer a disturbing element but where we can submerge ourselves in the spirituality of things, where the colors of the plants no longer merely appear to us, but where we plunge into the colors themselves; where we do not only color the plants, but see them color themselves. Not only do we know that the chicory blossom growing by the wayside is blue, when we contemplate it; but we can submerge ourselves inwardly in the blossom itself, in the process whereby it becomes blue. And from that point we can extend our spiritual knowledge more and more.
Various symptoms will indicate that these exercises have really been the means of progress. I will mention two, but there are many. The first lies in the fact that we receive a way of viewing the moral world completely different from before. For pure intellectualism, the moral world has something unreal about it. Of course, if a man has abided by the laws of decent behavior in the age of materialism, he will feel it incumbent upon him to do what is right according to well-worn tradition. But even if he does not admit it, he thinks to himself: when I do what is right, there is not so much taking place as when lightning strikes through space or when thunder rolls across the sky. He does not think it real in the same sense. But when one lives within the spiritual world one becomes aware that the moral world-order not only has the reality of the physical world, but has a higher reality. Gradually one learns to understand that this whole age with its physical constituents and processes may perish, may disintegrate, but that the moral influences which flow out of us strongly endure. The reality of the moral world dawns upon us. The physical and the moral world, “being” and “becoming,” become one. We actually experience that the world has moral laws as objective laws.
This increases responsibility in relation to the world. It gives us a totally different consciousness—a consciousness of which present-day humanity stands in sore need. For modern mankind looks back to the earth's beginning, where the earth is supposed to have been formed out of a primeval mist. Life is thought to have arisen out of the same mist, then man himself, and from man—as a Fata Morgana—the world of ideas. Mankind looks ahead to a death of warmth, to a time when all that mankind lives within must become submerged in a great tomb, and they need a knowledge of the moral world-order which can only be received fundamentally through fully obtaining spiritual knowledge. This I can only indicate.
But the other aspect is that one cannot reach this Intuitive knowledge, this submerging in outer things, without passing through intense suffering, much more intense than the pain of which I had to speak when I characterized Imaginative knowledge, when I said that through one's own efforts one must find the way back into one's sympathies and antipathies—and that inevitably means pain. But now pain becomes a cosmic experiencing of all suffering that rests upon the ground of existence.
One can easily ask why the Gods or God created suffering. Suffering must be there if the world is to arise in its beauty. That we have eyes—I will use popular language here—is simply due to the fact that to begin with, in a still undifferentiated organism, the organic forces were excavated which lead to sight and which, in their final metamorphosis, become the eye. If we were still aware today of the minute processes which go on in the retina in the act of sight, we should realize that even this is fundamentally the existence of a latent pain. All beauty is grounded in suffering. Beauty can only be developed from pain. And one must be able to feel this pain, this suffering. Only through this can we really find our way into the super-sensible world, by going through this pain. To a lesser degree, and at a lower stage of knowledge, this can already be said. He who has acquired even a little knowledge will admit to you: for the good fortune and happiness I had in life, I have my destiny to thank; but only through pain and suffering have I been able to acquire my knowledge.
If one realizes this already at the beginning of a more elementary knowledge, it can become a much higher experience when one becomes master of oneself, when one reaches out through the pain that is experienced as cosmic pain to the stage of “neutral” experience in the spiritual world. One must work through to a point where one lives with the coming-into-existence and the essential nature of all things. This is Intuitive knowledge. But then one is also completely within an experience of knowledge that is no longer bound to the body; thus one can return freely to the body, to the material world, to live until death, but now fully knowing what it means to be real, to be truly real in soul and spirit, outside the body.
If one has understood this, then one has a picture of what happens when the physical body is abandoned at death, and what it means to pass through the gate of death. Having risen to Intuitive knowledge, one has foreknowledge, which is also experience, of the reality that the soul and spirit pass into a world of soul and spirit when the body is abandoned at death. One knows what it is to function in a world where no support comes from the body. Then, when this knowledge has been embodied in concepts, one can return again to the body. But the essential thing is that one learns to live altogether independently of the body, and thereby acquires knowledge of what happens when the body can no longer be used, when one lays it aside at death and passes over into a world of soul and spirit.
And again, what results from initiation-knowledge on the subject of immortality is not a philosophical speculation but an experience—or rather a pre-experience—if I may so express myself. One knows what one will then be. One experiences, not the full reality, but a picture of reality, which in a certain way corresponds with the full reality of death. One experiences immortality. Here too, you see, experience is drawn into and becomes part of knowledge.
I have tried now to describe to you how one rises through Imagination to Inspiration and Intuition, and how one finally through this becomes acquainted with one's full reality. In the body one learns to perceive oneself, so long as one remains within that body. The soul and spirit must be freed from the body, for then one becomes for the first time a whole man. Through what we perceive through the body and its senses, through the ordinary thinking which, arising from the sense-experiences, is bound up with the body, especially with the nerve-sense system, one becomes acquainted with only a limb of man. We cannot know the whole, full man unless we have the will to rise to the modes of knowledge which come out of initiation-science.
Once again I would like to emphasize: if these things are investigated, everyone who approaches the results with an unprejudiced mind can understand them with ordinary, healthy human reason—just as he can understand what astronomers or biologists have to say about the world. The results can be tested, and indeed one will find that this testing is the first stage of initiation-knowledge. For initiation-knowledge, one must first have an inclination towards truth, because truth, not untruth and error, is one's object. Then one who follows this path will be able, if destiny makes it possible, to penetrate further and further into the spiritual world during this earthly life. In our day, and in a higher way, the call inscribed over the portal of a Greek temple must be fulfilled: “Man, know thyself!” Those words were not a call to man to retreat into his inner life but a demand to investigate into the being of man: into the being of immortality = body; into the being of unborn-ness = immortal spirit; and into the mediator between the earth, the temporal, and the spirit = soul. For the genuine, the true man consists of body, soul, and spirit. The body can know only the body; the soul can know only the soul; the spirit can know only the spirit. Thus we must seek to find active spirit within us in order to be able to perceive the spirit also in the world.
Achter Vortrag
[ 1 ] Der so freundlichen Einladung, heute abend hier zu sprechen, will ich dadurch nachkommen, daß ich einiges davon mitteile, wie man durch unmittelbare Forschung zu jener spirituellen Erkenntnis kommt, von der ja hier die erzieherischen Konsequenzen auseinandergesetzt werden sollen. Ich bemerke von vornherein, daß ich heute vorzugsweise zu sprechen haben werde von der Methode, forschend in übersinnliche Welten hineinzukommen; vielleicht wird sich bei einer anderen Gelegenheit noch die Möglichkeit bieten, etwas von übersinnlichen Forschungsresultaten mitzuteilen. Aber außerdem muß ich einleitend sagen, daß alles das, was ich heute zu sagen habe, sich im strengen Sinne auf die Erforschung der spirituellen, der übersinnlichen Welten bezieht, nicht auf das Verstehen der übersinnlichen Erkenntnisse. Die übersinnlichen Erkenntnisse, die erforscht sind und mitgeteilt werden, können mit dem gewöhnlichen gesunden Menschenverstand eingesehen werden, wenn sich dieser gesunde Menschenverstand nur nicht die Unbefangenheit nimmt dadurch, daß er von dem ausgeht, was man für die äußere sinnliche Welt Beweise, logische Ableitungen und dergleichen nennt. Nur wegen dieser Hindernisse wird sehr häufig gesagt, daß man die übersinnlichen Forschungsresultate nicht verstehen könne, wenn man nicht selber ein übersinnlicher Forscher werden kann.
[ 2 ] Was hier mitgeteilt werden soll, ist ja Gegenstand der sogenannten Initiationserkenntnis, derjenigen Erkenntnis, die in älteren Zeiten der Menschheitsentwickelung in einer etwas anderen Form gepflegt worden ist, als wir sie heute in unserem Zeitalter pflegen müssen. Nicht Altes - ich habe das schon in den anderen Vorträgen bemerkt - soll wieder heraufgeholt werden, sondern im Sinne des Denkens und Empfindens unseres Zeitalters soll der Forschungsweg in die übersinnlichen Welten angetreten werden. Und da kommt es vor allen Dingen gerade mit Bezug auf die Initiationserkenntnis darauf an, daß man imstande ist, eine prinzipielle Umorientierung mit der ganzen menschlichen Seelenverfassung zu vollziehen.
[ 3 ] Derjenige, der Initiationserkenntnis hat, unterscheidet sich von dem, der andere Erkenntnis im heutigen Sinne des Wortes hat, nicht etwa nur dadurch, daß seine Initiationserkenntnis eine höhere Stufe der gewöhnlichen Erkenntnis ist. Sie wird allerdings auf der Grundlage der gewöhnlichen Erkenntnis erreicht; diese Grundlage muß da sein; das intellektuelle Denken muß voll entwickelt sein, wenn man zur Initiationserkenntnis kommen will. Dann aber ist eine prinzipielle Umorientierung notwendig, so daß der Besitzer von Initiationserkenntnissen überhaupt von einem ganz anderen Gesichtspunkte aus die Welt anschauen muß, als sie angeschaut wird ohne diese Initiationserkenntnis. Ich kann in einer einfachen Formel ausdrücken, wodurch sich prinzipiell die Initiationserkenntnis unterscheidet von der gewöhnlichen Erkenntnis: In der gewöhnlichen Erkenntnis sind wir uns bewußt unseres Denkens, überhaupt unserer inneren Seelenerlebnisse, durch die wir uns Erkenntnisse erwerben, als Subjekt der Erkenntnis. Wir denken zum Beispiel und glauben, durch die Gedanken etwas zu erkennen. Da sind wir, wenn wir uns als denkende Menschen auffassen, das Subjekt. Wir suchen die Objekte, indem wir die Natur beobachten, indem wir das Menschenleben beobachten, indem wir experimentieren. Wir suchen immer die Objekte. Die Objekte sollen an uns herandringen. Die Objekte sollen sich uns ergeben, so daß wir sie mit unseren Gedanken umfassen können, daß wir unser Denken auf sie anwenden können. Wir sind das Subjekt; das, was an uns herantritt, sind die Objekte. Bei demjenigen Menschen, der Initiationserkenntnis anstrebt, tritt eine völlig andere Orientierung ein. Er muß gewahr werden, daß er als Mensch Objekt ist, und er muß zu diesem Objekte Mensch das Subjekt suchen. Also das völlig Entgegengesetzte muß eintreten. In der gewöhnlichen Erkenntnis fühlen wir uns als Subjekt, suchen die Objekte, die außer uns sind. In der Initiationserkenntnis sind wir selber das Objekt und suchen dazu das Subjekt; beziehungsweise in der wirklichen Initiationserkenntnis ergeben sich dann die Subjekte. Aber das ist dann erst Gegenstand einer späteren Erkenntnis.
[ 4 ] Sie sehen also, es ist gerade so, wie wenn wir schon durch die bloßen Begriffsdefinitionen einsehen müßten, daß wir eigentlich in der Initiationserkenntnis aus uns herausflüchten müssen, daß wir so werden müssen wie die Pflanzen, die Steine, wie der Blitz und der Donner, die für uns Objekte werden. Wir selber schlüpfen gewissermaßen aus uns heraus in der Initiationserkenntnis und werden zum Objekt, und suchen die Subjekte dazu. Wenn ich mich etwas paradox ausdrücken darf, so möchte ich sagen, indem wir gerade auf das Denken abzielen: In der gewöhnlichen Erkenntnis denken wir über die Dinge nach. In der Initiationserkenntnis müssen wir suchen, wie wir gedacht werden im Kosmos.
[ 5 ] Das sind ja nichts anderes als abstrakte Richtlinien, aber diese abstrakten Richtlinien werden Sie nun in den konkreten Tatsachen der Initiationsmethode überall verfolgt finden.
[ 6 ] Zunächst geht, wenn wir eben heute nur von der modernen, von der heute gültigen Initiationserkenntnis Mitteilungen empfangen wollen, diese Initiationserkenntnis vom Denken aus. Das Gedankenleben muß voll entwickelt sein, wenn man heute zur Initiationserkenntnis kommen will. Dieses Gedankenleben kann ja besonders herangeschult werden, wenn man sich in die naturwissenschaftliche Entwickelung der letzten Jahrhunderte, insbesondere des 19. Jahrhunderts, vertieft. Mit diesem naturwissenschaftlichen Erkennen geht es ja den Menschen in verschiedener Weise. Die einen nehmen die naturwissenschaftlichen Erkenntnisse auf, hören selbst mit einer gewissen, ich möchte sagen, Naivität, wie sich die organischen Wesen von den einfachsten, primitivsten heraufentwickelt haben sollen bis zum Menschen. Sie bilden sich über diese Entwickelung Ideen aus, und sie sehen wenig zurück auf sich selber, daß sie da nun eine Idee haben, daß sie da in sich selber etwas in der Anschauung der äußeren Vorgänge entwickeln, was Gedankenleben ist.
[ 7 ] Derjenige aber, der nicht die naturwissenschaftlichen Erkenntnisse entgegennehmen kann, ohne auf sich selbst kritisch zu sehen, der muß sich allerdings fragen: Was bedeutet das, was ich da selber tue, indem ich Wesen für Wesen vom Unvollkommenen zum Vollkommenen verfolge? Oder aber, er muß sich fragen: Indem ich mathematisiere, indem ich die Mathematik ausbilde, da bilde ich ja Gedanken rein aus mir heraus. Die Mathematik ist im richtigen Sinne ein Gespinst, das ich aus mir selber heraushole. Ich wende dann dieses Gespinst auf die äußeren Dinge an, und es paßt. Da kommen wir zu der großen, zu der, ich möchte sagen, für den Denker geradezu tragischen Frage: Wie steht es mit dem, was ich bei aller Erkenntnis anwende, mit dem Denken selber?
[ 8 ] Nun kann man nicht finden, wie es mit diesem Denken steht, wenn man noch so lange nachdenkt; denn da bleibt das Denken nur immer auf demselben Flecke stehen, da dreht man sich sozusagen nur immer um die Achse, die man sich schon gebildet hat. Man muß mit dem Denken etwas vollziehen. Man muß dasjenige mit dem Denken ausführen, was ich in meiner Schrift: «Wie erlangt man Erkenntnisse der höheren Welten?» — «The Way of Initiation» im Englischen -, beschrieben habe als Meditation.
[ 9 ] Über die Meditation soll man nicht «mystisch» denken, aber man soll auch nicht leicht über sie denken. Die Meditation muß etwas völlig Klares sein in unserem heutigen Sinne. Aber sie ist zugleich etwas, zu dem Geduld und innere Seelenenergie gehört. Und vor allen Dingen gehört etwas dazu, was niemand einem anderen Menschen geben kann: daß man sich selber etwas versprechen und es dann halten kann. Wenn der Mensch einmal beginnt, Meditationen zu machen, so vollzieht er damit die einzige wirklich völlig freie Handlung in diesem menschlichen Leben. Wir haben in uns immer die Tendenz zur Freiheit, haben auch ein gut Teil der Freiheit verwirklicht. Aber wenn wir nachdenken, werden wir finden: Wir sind mit dem einen abhängig von unserer Vererbung, mit dem anderen von unserer Erziehung, mit dem dritten von unserem Leben. Und fragen Sie sich, inwiefern wir imstande sind, das, was wir durch Vererbung, durch Erziehung und durch das Leben uns angeeignet haben, plötzlich zu lassen. Wir wären ziemlich dem Nichts gegenübergestellt, wenn wir das plötzlich lassen wollten. Wenn wir uns aber vornehmen, abends und morgens eine Meditation zu machen, damit wir allmählich lernen, in die übersinnliche Welt hineinzuschauen, dann können wir das jeden Tag tun oder lassen. Nichts steht dem entgegen. Und die Erfahrung lehrt auch, daß die meisten, die mit großen Vorsätzen an das meditative Leben herangehen, es sehr bald wiederum lassen. Wir sind darin vollständig frei. Es ist dieses Meditieren eine urfreie Handlung.
[ 10 ] Können wir uns trotzdem treu bleiben, versprechen wir uns — nicht einem anderen, sondern nur uns selber einmal — daß wir diesem Meditieren treu bleiben, dann ist das an sich eine ungeheure Kraft im Seelischen.
[ 11 ] Nun, nachdem ich das auseinandergesetzt habe, möchte ich aufmerksam machen darauf, wie die Meditation selber in ihren einfachsten Formen vollzogen wird. Ich kann mich ja heute nur mit dem Prinzipiellen beschäftigen.
[ 12 ] Es handelt sich darum, daß wir irgendeine Vorstellung oder einen Vorstellungskomplex in den Mittelpunkt unseres Bewußtseins rücken; es kommt gar nicht darauf an, welches der Gehalt dieses Vorstellungskomplexes ist; aber er soll unmittelbar sein, so daß er keine Reminiszenzen aus der Erinnerung oder dergleichen vorstellt. Daher ist es gut, wenn wir ihn nicht aus unserem Erinnerungsschatze heraufholen, sondern uns von einem anderen, der erfahren ist in solchen Dingen, die Meditation geben lassen, nicht, weil der auf uns irgendeine Suggestion ausüben will, sondern weil wir sicher sein können, daß dasjenige, was wir dann meditieren, etwas Neues für uns ist. Wir könnten ebensogut irgendein altes Werk, das wir ganz sicher noch nicht gelesen haben, nehmen, und uns einen Meditationssatz daraus suchen. Es handelt sich darum, daß wir uns nicht aus dem Unterbewußten und Unbewußten einen Satz heraufholen, der uns überwältigt. Das ist nicht überschaubar, weil sich alle möglichen Empfindungsreste und Gefühlsreste hineinmischen. Es handelt sich darum, daß es so überschaubar sein soll, wie ein Mathematiksatz überschaubar ist.
[ 13 ] Nehmen wir etwas ganz Einfaches, den Satz «Im Lichte lebt die Weisheit». Das ist zunächst gar nicht darauf zu prüfen, ob es wahr ist. Es ist ein Bild. Aber es kommt nicht darauf an, daß wir irgendwie mit dem Inhalte als solchem uns anders beschäftigen, als daß wir ihn innerlich seelisch überschauen, daß wir darauf ruhen mit dem Bewußtsein. Wir werden es anfangs nur zu einem sehr kurzen Ruhen mit dem Bewußtsein auf einem solchen Inhalte bringen. Immer länger und länger wird die Zeit werden.
[ 14 ] Worauf kommt es denn an? Es kommt darauf an, daß wir den ganzen seelischen Menschen zusammennehmen, um all das, was in uns Denkkraft, Empfindungskraft ist, auf den einen Inhalt zu konzentrieren. Geradeso wie die Muskeln des Armes stark werden, wenn wir mit ihnen arbeiten, so verstärken sich die seelischen Kräfte dadurch, daß sie immer wieder und wieder auf einen Inhalt gerichtet werden. Möglichst sollte dieser eine Inhalt durch Monate, vielleicht durch Jahre derselbe bleiben. Denn die seelischen Kräfte müssen zur wirklichen übersinnlichen Forschung erst gestärkt, erkraftet werden.
[ 15 ] Wenn man in dieser Weise fortübt, dann kommt der Tag, ich möchte sagen, der große Tag, an dem man eine ganz bestimmte Beobachtung macht. Die Beobachtung macht man, daß man allmählich in einer seelischen Tätigkeit ist, die ganz unabhängig ist vom Leibe. Und man merkt auch: Vorher war man mit allem Denken und Empfinden vom Leibe abhängig, mit dem Vorstellen vom Sinnes-Nervensystem, mit dem Fühlen vom Zirkulationssystem und so weiter; jetzt fühlt man sich in einer geistig-seelischen Tätigkeit, die völlig unabhängig von jeder Leibestätigkeit ist. Und das merkt man daran, daß man nunmehr in die Lage kommt, etwas im Kopfe selber in Vibration zu versetzen, das vorher ganz unbewußt geblieben ist. Man macht jetzt die merkwürdige Entdeckung, worin der Unterschied des Schlafens vom Wachen besteht. Dieser Unterschied besteht nämlich darin, daß, wenn man wacht, etwas in dem ganzen menschlichen Organismus vibriert, nur nicht im Haupte: da ist dasselbe, was sonst im übrigen menschlichen Organismus in Bewegung ist, in Ruhe.
[ 16 ] Um was es sich da handelt, werden wir besser einsehen, wenn ich Sie darauf aufmerksam mache, daß wir ja als Menschen nicht diese robusten, festen Körper sind, die wir gewöhnlich zu sein glauben. Wir bestehen nämlich zu neunzig Prozent ungefähr aus Flüssigkeit, und die festen Bestandteile sind nur zu etwa zehn Prozent in diese Flüssigkeit eingetaucht, schwimmen da drinnen. So daß wir vom Festen im Menschen nicht anders als in einem unbestimmten Sinne sprechen können. Zu neunzig Prozent sind wir, wenn ich so sagen darf, Wasser. Und zu einem gewissen Teile pulsiert in diesem Wasser Luft, und dann wiederum Wärme.
[ 17 ] Wenn Sie sich so vorstellen, daß der Mensch, der zum geringen Teile ein fester Leib ist, zum großen Teile Wasser, Luft und die darinnen vibrierende Wärme, so werden Sie es auch nicht mehr so sehr unglaubhaft finden, daß da etwas noch Feineres in uns ist. Und dieses Feinere will ich jetzt den Ätherleib nennen. Dieser Ätherleib, der ist feiner als die Luft. Er ist so fein, daß er uns durchzieht, ohne daß wir im gewöhnlichen Leben etwas davon wissen. Dieser Ätherleib, der ist es, welcher im Wachen in innerlicher Bewegung ist, in einer regelmäßigen Bewegung im ganzen übrigen menschlichen Leib, nur nicht im Kopfe. Im Kopfe ist der Ätherleib innerlich ruhig.
[ 18 ] Im Schlafe ist das anders. Das Schlafen beginnt damit und dauert dann in der Art und Weise an, daß der Ätherleib auch im Kopfe anfängt in Bewegung zu sein. So daß wir im Schlafe als ganzer Mensch, nach Kopf und übrigem Menschen, einen innerlich bewegten Ätherleib haben. Und wenn wir träumen, sagen wir, beim Aufwachen, dann ist es so, daß wir die letzten Bewegungen des Ätherleibes gerade im Aufwachen noch wahrnehmen. Die stellen sich uns als die Träume dar. Die letzten Kopf-Ätherbewegungen nehmen wir beim Aufwachen noch wahr; beim schnellen Aufwachen kann das nicht der Fall sein.
[ 19 ] Wer lange in der Weise, wie ich es angedeutet habe, meditiert, der kommt aber in die Lage, in den ruhigen Ätherleib des Kopfes allmählich Bilder hineinzuformen. Das nenne ich in dem Buche, das ich angeführt habe, Imaginationen. Und diese Imaginationen, die unabhängig vom physischen Leibe im Ätherleib erlebt werden, sind der erste übersinnliche Eindruck, den wir haben können. Der bringt uns dann in die Lage, ganz abzusehen von unserem physischen Leibe, und unser Leben bis zu der Geburt hin in seinem Handeln, in seiner Bewegung wie in einem Bilde anzuschauen. Was oftmals von den Leuten beschrieben wird, die im Wasser untergesunken, am Ertrinken waren: daß sie ihr Leben rückwärtsschauend in bewegten Bildern gesehen haben — das kann hier systematisch ausgebildet werden, so daß man alle Ergebnisse unseres gegenwärtigen Erdenlebens darinnen sehen kann.
[ 20 ] Das erste, was die Initiationserkenntnis gibt, ist die Anschauung des eigenen seelischen Lebens. Das ist allerdings anders, als man es gewöhnlich vermutet. Gewöhnlich vermutet man in der Abstraktion dieses seelische Leben als etwas, das aus Vorstellungen gewoben ist. Wenn man es in seiner wahren Gestalt entdeckt, da ist es etwas Schöpferisches, da ist es zugleich dasjenige, was in unserer Kindheit gewirkt hat, was unser Gehirn plastisch gebildet hat, was den übrigen Leib durchdringt und in ihm eine plastische, bildsame Tätigkeit bewirkt, indem es unser Wachen, sogar unsere Verdauungstätigkeit jeden Tag bewirkt.
[ 21 ] Wir sehen dieses innerlich Tätige im Organismus als den ÄÄtherleib des Menschen. Das ist kein räumlicher Leib, das ist ein zeitlicher Leib. Daher können Sie auch als Raumesform den Ätherleib nur beschreiben, wenn Sie sich bewußt sind, Sie tun dabei dasselbe, wie wenn Sie einen Blitz abmalen. Wenn Sie den Blitz abmalen, malen Sie natürlich einen Augenblick; Sie halten den Augenblick fest. Den menschlichen Ätherleib kann man auch nur so räumlich festhalten, daß das ein Augenblick ist. In Wirklichkeit haben wir einen physischen Raumesleib und einen Zeitleib, einen Ätherleib, der immer in Bewegung ist. Und es bekommt nur einen Sinn, von dem Ätherleib zu sprechen, wenn wir von diesem als Zeitleib sprechen, den wir als Einheit überschauen bis zu unserer Geburt hin, von dem Augenblick ab, wo wir in die Lage kommen, diese Entdeckung zu machen. Das ist das erste, was wir an übersinnlichen Anlagen in uns selbst zunächst entdecken können.
[ 22 ] Was in der Entwickelung der Seele bewirkt wird durch solche Seelenvorgänge, wie ich sie geschildert habe, das zeigt sich vor allen Dingen an der ganzen Veränderung der Seelenstimmung, der Seelenverfassung desjenigen Menschen, der nach der Initiationserkenntnis hinstrebt. Ich bitte, mich nicht mißzuverstehen. Ich meine nicht, daß der zur Initiation Kommende nun plötzlich ein vollständig ausgewechselter, anderer Mensch wird. Im Gegenteil, die moderne Initiationserkenntnis muß den Menschen voll in der Welt drinnen stehen lassen, so daß er auch, wenn er zu ihr kommt, sein Leben so fortzusetzen vermag, wie er es einmal begonnen hat. Aber für diejenigen Stunden und Augenblicke, in denen übersinnliche Forschung getrieben wird, ist der Mensch allerdings durch die Initiationserkenntnis ein anderer geworden, als er im gewöhnlichen Leben ist.
[ 23 ] Vor allen Dingen möchte ich ein wichtiges Moment hervorheben, das die Initiationserkenntnis auszeichnet. Das ist dies, daß der Mensch immer mehr und mehr fühlt, je weiter er vordringt in dem Erleben des
[ 24 ] A Übersinnlichen, wie ihm seine eigene Leiblichkeit entschwindet, das heißt mit Bezug auf das, woran diese Leiblichkeit im gewöhnlichen Leben beteiligt ist. Fragen wir uns einmal, wie unsere Urteile im Leben zustande kommen. Wir wachsen auf, entwickeln uns als Kind. Es setzt sich in unserem Leben Sympathie und Antipathie fest. Sympathie und Antipathie mit Naturerscheinungen, Sympathie und Antipathie vor allen Dingen mit anderen Menschen. An alledem ist unser Körper beteiligt. Wir legen selbstverständlich da hinein diese Sympathie und Antipathie, die zum großen Teil sogar in physischen Vorgängen unseres Leibes ihren Grund haben. In dem Augenblicke, in dem der zu Initiierende in die übersinnliche Welt aufsteigt, lebt er sich in eine Welt ein, worin ihm diese Sympathie und Antipathie, die mit der Körperlichkeit zusammenhängen, für das Verweilen im Übersinnlichen immer fremder und fremder werden. Er ist demjenigen entrückt, womit er durch seine Leiblichkeit zusammenhängt. Er muß, wenn er wiederum das gewöhnliche Leben aufnehmen will, sich gewissermaßen erst wieder hineinstecken in seine gewöhnlichen Sympathien und Antipathien, was sonst ja selbstverständlich geschieht. Wenn man des Morgens aufwacht, steckt man in seinem Leibe darinnen, entwickelt dieselbe Liebe zu den Dingen und Menschen, dieselbe Sympathie oder Antipathie, die man vorher gehabt hat. Das geschieht von selbst. Wenn man nun im Übersinnlichen verweilt und wiederum zu seinen Sympathien und Antipathien zurück will, dann muß man das mit Anstrengung tun, muß man gewissermaßen untertauchen in seine eigene Leiblichkeit. Dieses Entrücktwerden der eigenen Leiblichkeit, das ist eine der Erscheinungen, die zeigt, daß man wirklich etwas vorwärtsgekommen ist. Überhaupt ist das Auftreten von weitherzigen Sympathien und Antipathien das, was dem Initiierten allmählich sich einverleibt.
[ 25 ] In einem zeigt sich die Entwickelung zur Initiation hin ganz besonders stark, das ist in der Wirkung des Gedächtnisses, der Erinnerung während der Initiationserkenntnis. Wir erleben uns im gewöhnlichen Leben. Unsere Erinnerung, unser Gedächtnis ist manchmal ein bißchen besser, manchmal ein bißchen schlechter; aber wir erwerben uns das Gedächtnis. Wir haben Erlebnisse, wir erinnern uns später an sie. Mit dem, was wir in den übersinnlichen Welten erleben, ist es nicht so. Das können wir erleben in Größe, in Schönheit, in Bedeutsamkeit; wenn es erlebt worden ist, ist es vorbei. Und es muß wieder erlebt werden, wenn es wiederum vor der Seele stehen soll. Es prägt sich nicht im gewöhnlichen Sinne der Erinnerung ein. Es prägt sich ihr nur dann ein, wenn man erst mit aller Mühe das, was man im Übersinnlichen schaut, in Begriffe bringt, wenn man seinen Verstand mit hinüberschickt in die übersinnliche Welt. Das ist ganz schwierig. Man muß drüben nämlich geradeso denken, ohne daß einem der Leib bei diesem Denken hilft. Daher muß man vorher seine Begriffe gefestigt haben, muß vorher ein ordentlicher Logiker geworden sein, damit man diese Logik nicht immer vergißt, wenn man hineinsieht. Gerade die primitiven Hellseher können manches schauen, aber sie vergessen die Logik, wenn sie drüben sind. Und so ist es, daß gerade dann, wenn man übersinnliche Wahrheiten jemand anderem mitzuteilen hat, man diese Veränderung des Gedächtnisses in bezug auf übersinnliche Wahrheiten merkt. Und man sieht daran, wie unser physischer Leib daran beteiligt ist bei der Ausübung des Gedächtnisses, nicht beim Denken, aber bei der Ausübung des Gedächtnisses, das ja ins Übersinnliche immer hineinspielt.
[ 26 ] Wenn ich etwas Persönliches sagen darf, so ist es das: Wenn ich selbst Vorträge halte, so ist es anders, als man sonst Vorträge hält. Da wird aus der Erinnerung oftmals gesprochen; was man gelernt hat, was man gedacht hat, wird aus der Erinnerung oftmals entwickelt. Derjenige, der wirklich übersinnliche Wahrheiten entwickelt, muß sie eigentlich immer in dem Momente, wo er sie entwickelt, erzeugen. So daß ich selber dreißig-, vierzig-, fünfzigmal denselben Vortrag halten kann, und er ist für mich nie derselbe. Das ist auch natürlich schon sonst so; aber in erhöhtem Maße ist es der Fall, dieses Unabhängigsein vom Gedächtnis, dieses Hineintragen in ein inneres Leben, wenn eine innere Stufe des Gedächtnisses erreicht ist.
[ 27 ] Was ich Ihnen jetzt erzählt habe von der Fähigkeit, in den Ätherleib seines Hauptes die Formen hineinzubringen, die einem dann möglich machen, den Zeitleib, den Ätherleib bis zu seiner Geburt hin zu durchschauen, das bringt schon überhaupt in eine ganz besondere Stimmung gegenüber dem Kosmos. Man verliert sozusagen seine eigene Leiblichkeit, aber man fühlt sich hineinlebend in den Kosmos. Das Bewußtsein dehnt sich gewissermaßen in der Weite des Äthers aus. Man schaut keine Pflanze mehr an, ohne daß man untertaucht in ihr Wachstum. Man verfolgt sie von der Wurzel bis zur Blüte. Man lebt in ihren Säften, in ihrem Blühen, in ihrem Fruchten. Man kann sich vertiefen in das Leben der Tiere nach ihrer Form, insbesondere aber in das Leben des anderen Menschen. Der leiseste Zug, der einem entgegentritt am anderen Menschen, führt einen sozusagen hinein in das ganze Seelenleben, so daß man fühlt, man ist jetzt nicht in sich, sondern man ist, während dieses übersinnlichen Erkennens, außer sich.
[ 28 ] Aber man muß immer wieder — das ist notwendig — zurückkehren können, sonst ist man ein träger, nebuloser Mystiker, ein Schwärmer und kein Erkenner der übersinnlichen Welten. Man muß zu gleicher Zeit in den übersinnlichen Welten leben können und zu gleicher Zeit sich wiederum zurückversetzen können, so daß man fest auf seinen beiden Beinen stehen kann. Daher muß ich schon, wenn ich solche Dinge über die übersinnlichen Welten auseinandersetze, betonen, daß für mich eigentlich zu einem guten Philosophen, noch mehr als die Logik, dies gehört, daß man weiß, wie ein Schuh oder ein Rock genäht wird, daß man praktisch im Leben wirklich drinnensteht. Man sollte eigentlich nicht über das Leben denken, wenn man nicht praktisch im Leben wirklich drinnensteht. Das aber ist in einem noch erhöhten Maße der Fall für denjenigen, der übersinnliche Erkenntnisse sucht. Übersinnliche Erkenner können keine Träumer, keine Schwärmer werden, keine Menschen, die nicht auf beiden Beinen dastehen. Sonst verliert man sich, weil man ja tatsächlich außer sich kommen muß. Aber dieses Außersich-Kommen darf nicht dazu führen, daß man sich verliert. Aus einer solchen Erkenntnis, wie ich sie geschildert habe, ist das Buch geschrieben das im Deutschen heißt: «Geheimwissenschaft im Umriß» und im Englischen: «Occult Science — An Outline».
[ 29 ] Dann aber handelt es sich darum, daß man in dieser übersinnlichen Erkenntnis weiterdringen kann. Das geschieht dadurch, daß man die Meditation jetzt weiter ausbildet. Man ruht zunächst mit der Meditation auf bestimmten Vorstellungen oder Vorstellungskomplexen und verstärkt dadurch das Seelenleben. Das genügt noch nicht, um völlig in die übersinnliche Welt hineinzukommen, sondern dazu ist notwendig, daß man sich auch noch darin übt, nicht nur auf Vorstellungen zu ruhen, nicht nur gewissermaßen die ganze Seele hin zu konzentrieren auf diese Vorstellungen, sondern sie immer nach Willkür auch aus dem Bewußtsein hinauswerfen zu können. So wie im sinnlichen Leben man auf irgend etwas hin- und wieder wegschauen kann, so muß man lernen, in der übersinnlichen Entwickelung sich auf einen Seeleninhalt scharf zu konzentrieren und ihn wiederum aus der Seele hinauswerfen zu können.
[ 30 ] Das ist manchmal schon im gewöhnlichen Leben nicht leicht. Denken Sie, wie wenig der Mensch es in der Hand hat, seine Gedanken immer wieder wegzutreiben. Manchmal verfolgen Gedanken, namentlich wenn sie unangenehm sind, den Menschen tagelang. Er kann sie nicht wegwerfen. Es wird das aber noch viel schwieriger, wenn wir uns erst daran gewöhnt haben, uns auf den Gedanken zu konzentrieren. Ein Gedankeninhalt, auf den wir uns konzentriert haben, der beginnt uns zuletzt festzuhalten, und wir müssen alle Mühe aufwenden, ihn wieder wegzuschaffen. Wenn wir uns darin lange geübt haben, dann bringen wir uns dahin, diesen ganzen Rückblick auf das Leben bis zur Geburt hin, diesen ganzen Ätherleib, wie ich ihn nenne, diesen Zeitleib, auch wegzuschaffen, hinauszuwerfen aus unserem Bewußtsein.
[ 31 ] Das ist natürlich eine Entwickelungsstufe, zu der wir es bringen müssen. Wir müssen erst reif werden; durch Wegschaffen von meditierten Vorstellungen müssen wir uns die Kraft aneignen, diesen seelischen Koloß, diesen seelischen Riesen wegzuschaffen; der ganze furchtbare Haifisch unseres bisherigen Lebens zwischen unserem jetzigen Augenblick und der Geburt steht vor uns — den müssen wir wegschaffen. Schaffen wir ihn weg, dann tritt für uns etwas ein, was ich nennen möchte «wacheres Bewußtsein». Dann sind wir bloß wach, ohne daß in dem wachen Bewußtsein etwas darinnen ist. Aber das füllt sich jetzt. Geradeso wie einströmt in die Lunge die Luft, deren sie bedürftig ist, so strömt jetzt in das leere Bewußtsein, das auf die Weise, wie ich es geschildert habe, entstanden ist, die wirklich geistige Welt ein.
[ 32 ] Das ist die Inspiration. Da strömt jetzt etwas ein, was nicht etwa ein feinerer Stoff ist, sondern was sich zum Stoffe verhält, wie sich zu dem Positiven das Negative verhält. Was das Entgegengesetzte des Stoffes ist, das strömt jetzt in die vom Äther frei gewordene Menschlichkeit herein. Das ist das Wichtige, daß wir gewahr werden können: Geist ist nicht nur ein noch feinerer, ein noch ätherischer gewordener Stoff; das ist nicht wahr. Wenn wir den Stoff das Positive nennen — wir könnten ja auch den Stoff das Negative nennen, darauf kommt es nicht an, die Dinge sind relativ —, dann müssen wir den Geist in bezug auf das Positive das Negative nennen. Es ist so, wie wenn ich, sagen wir, das große Vermögen von fünf Shilling im Portemonnaie habe. Ich gebe einen heraus, dann habe ich noch vier Shilling; ich gebe noch einen heraus, habe noch drei und so weiter, bis ich keinen mehr habe. Dann kann ich Schulden machen. Wenn ich einen Shilling Schulden habe, habe ich weniger als keinen Shilling.
[ 33 ] Wenn ich durch die Methode, die ich ausgebildet habe, den Ätherleib weggeschafft habe, komme ich nicht in einen noch feineren Äther hinein, sondern in etwas, was dem Äther entgegengesetzt ist, wie die Schulden dem Vermögen. Und jetzt weiß ich erst aus Erfahrung, was Geist ist. Der Geist kommt durch Inspiration in einen herein, und das erste, was wir jetzt erleben, das ist dasjenige, was vor der Geburt beziehungsweise vor der Empfängnis mit unserer Seele und mit unserem Geiste in einer geistigen Welt war. Das ist das präexistente Leben unseres Seelisch-Geistigen. Vorher haben wir es im Äther geschaut bis zu unserer Geburt hin. Jetzt schauen wir über die Geburt beziehungsweise Empfängnis hinaus in die geistig-seelische Welt und kommen dazu, uns wahrzunehmen, wie wir waren, bevor wir heruntergestiegen sind aus geistigen Welten und einen physischen Leib durch die Vererbungslinie angenommen haben.
[ 34 ] Diese Dinge sind für die Initiationserkenntnis nicht philosophische Wahrheiten, die man erdenkt, sie sind Erfahrungen, aber Erfahrungen, die erst erworben werden müssen, indem man sich so für sie vorbereitet, wie ich es jetzt angedeutet habe. Und so ist das erste, was uns wird, indem wir in die geistige Welt eintreten, die Wahrheit von der Präexistenz der Menschenseele beziehungsweise des Menschengeistes, und wir lernen jetzt das Ewige unmittelbar anschauen.
[ 35 ] Seit vielen Jahrhunderten hat die europäische Menschheit die Ewigkeit immer nur nach der einen Seite angesehen, nach der Seite der Unsterblichkeit. Sie hat immer nur gefragt: Was wird aus der Seele, wenn sie den Leib verläßt mit dem Tode? Es ist das ja das egoistische Recht der Menschen, denn die Menschen interessieren sich dafür, was dann folgt, wenn der Tod eingetreten ist, aus egoistischen Gründen. Wir werden gleich nachher sehen, daß wir auch über die Unsterblichkeit sprechen können, aber zumeist wird über die Unsterblichkeit aus egoistischen Gründen gesprochen. Das, was vor der Geburt war, dafür interessieren sich die Menschen weniger. Sie sagen sich: Wir sind ja da. Was vorhergegangen ist, hat nur einen Erkenntniswert. —- Aber einen wahren Erkenntniswert gewinnt man nicht, wenn man nicht seine Erkenntnisse auf das richtet, was unser Dasein vor der Geburt beziehungsweise vor der Konzeption enthält.
[ 36 ] Wir brauchen in den modernen Sprachen ein Wort, wodurch das Ewige erst vollständig wird. Wir sollten nicht nur von Unsterblichkeit reden, wir sollten auch — das wird etwas schwer zu übersetzen sein — von Ungeborenheit sprechen; denn die Ewigkeit besteht aus Unsterblichkeit und Ungeborenheit. Und die Ungeborenheit entdeckt die Initiationserkenntnis vor der Unsterblichkeit.
[ 37 ] Eine weitere Stufe der Entwickelung nach der übersinnlichen Welt hin kann dadurch erreicht werden, daß wir in unserer geistig-seelischen Betätigung noch weiter loszukommen suchen von der leiblichen Stütze. Das kann dadurch geschehen, daß wir nun die Übungen der Meditation und Konzentration mehr hinüberlenken nach Willensübungen.
[ 38 ] Nun möchte ich Ihnen eine einfache Willensübung als konkretes Beispiel vor die Seele führen, an der Sie das Prinzip, das hier in Betracht kommt, studieren können. Wir sind im gewöhnlichen Leben daran gewöhnt, mit dem Verlauf der Welt zu denken. Wir lassen die Dinge, wie sie geschehen, an uns herantreten. Das, was früher an uns herantrat, denken wir früher, was später an uns herantrat, denken wir später. Und selbst wenn wir in dem mehr logischen Denken nicht mit dem zeitlichen Verlauf mitdenken, so ist doch im Hintergrunde die Bemühung vorhanden, uns an den äußeren, wirklichen Verlauf der Tatsachen zu halten. Um uns im geistig-seelischen Kräfteverhältnis zu üben, müssen wir loskommen von dem äußerlichen Verlauf der Dinge. Und da ist eine gute Übung, die zugleich eine Willensübung ist, diese, wenn wir versuchen, unsere Tageserlebnisse, wie wir sie vom Morgen bis zum Abend erleben, eben nicht vom Morgen bis zum Abend, sondern vom Abend zum Morgen hin rückwärts durchzudenken und dabei möglichst auf die Einzelheiten einzugehen.
[ 39 ] Nehmen wir an, wir kommen bei einer solchen Rückschau auf das Tagesleben dazu: Wir gingen eine Treppe hinan. Wir stellen uns vor, wir sind zuerst oben, dann auf der letzten, vorletzten Stufe und so weiter. Wir gehen umgekehrt herunter. — Wir werden anfangs nur in der Lage sein, uns Episoden vom Tagesleben auf diese Weise rückwärts vorzustellen, etwa von sechs bis drei, von zwölf bis neun Uhr und so weiter, bis zum Momente des Aufwachens. Aber wir werden uns allmählich eine Art Technik aneignen, durch die wir in der Tat wie in einem rückwärtsgewendeten Tableau am Abend oder am nächsten Morgen in der Lage sind, das Tagesleben oder das vorherige Tagesleben vor unserer Seele in Bildern nach rückwärts vorüberziehen zu lassen. Wenn wir in der Lage sind — und darauf kommt es an -, mit unserem Denken ganz loszukommen von der Art, wie die Wirklichkeit verläuft, dreidimensional, dann werden wir sehen, wie eine ganz ungeheure Verstärkung unseres Willens eintritt. Wir werden das auch erreichen, wenn wir in die Lage kommen, eine Melodie umgekehrt zu empfinden, oder wenn wir uns vorstellen ein Drama von fünf Akten, rückwärts verlaufend vom fünften, vierten Akt und so weiter zum ersten. Durch alle diese Mittel stärken wir den Willen, indem wir ihn innerlich erkraften und äußerlich losreißen von seinem sinnlichen Gebundensein an die Ereignisse.
[ 40 ] Dazu können solche Übungen treten, wie ich sie schon in vorigen Vorträgen angedeutet habe, daß wir uns anschauen, wie wir die eine oder die andere Gewohnheit haben. Wir nehmen uns fest vor und wenden eisernen Willen an, um dann in ein paar Jahren in dieser Richtung eine andere Gewohnheit angenommen zu haben. Ich erwähne zum Beispiel nur, daß jeder Mensch in der Schrift etwas hat, was man den Charakter derselben nennt. Wenn wir uns anstrengen, eine andere Schrift zu bekommen, die gar nicht mehr der früheren ähnlich ist, so gehört dazu eine innere starke Kraft. Nur muß uns dann die zweite Schrift ebenso habituell, ebenso geläufig werden wie die erste. Das ist nur eine Kleinigkeit. So gibt es vieles, wodurch wir die ganze Grundrichtung unseres Willens durch unsere eigene Energie ändern können. Dadurch bringen wir es allmählich dahin, nun nicht nur die geistige Welt als Inspiration in uns hereinzubekommen, sondern wirklich mit unserem vom Leibe frei gewordenen Geiste in die anderen geistigen Wesen, die außer uns sind, unterzutauchen. Denn wirklich geistiges Erkennen ist ein Untertauchen in die Wesenheiten, die geistig um uns sind, wenn wir physische Dinge anschauen. Wenn wir Geistiges erkennen wollen, müssen wir erstens aus uns heraus. Das habe ich geschildert. Dann aber müssen wir uns auch die Fähigkeit aneignen, uns wiederum in die Dinge, nämlich in die geistigen Dinge und Wesenheiten hinein zu versenken.
[ 41 ] Das können wir nur, nachdem wir auch solche Initiationsübungen gemacht haben, wie ich sie eben jetzt beschrieben habe, wo wir in der Tat gar nicht mehr gestört werden durch unseren eigenen Körper, sondern wo wir in das Geistige der Dinge untertauchen können; wo uns auch nicht mehr die Farben der Pflanzen erscheinen, sondern wo wir in die Farben selber hineintauchen, wo wir nicht mehr die Pflanzen gefärbt, sondern sich färben sehen. Indem wir wissen, daß die Zichorie, die am Wege wächst, nicht nur blau ist, wenn wir sie anschauen, sondern daß wir in die Blüte innerlich untertauchen können und das Blauwerden mitmachen, stehen wir intuitiv in diesem Prozesse drinnen, und dann können wir, von da ausgehend, unsere geistige Erkenntnis immer mehr und mehr ausdehnen.
[ 42 ] Daß wir wirklich vorwärts gekommen sind mit solchen Übungen, können wir dann an einzelnen Symptomen sehen. Ich möchte zwei anführen, aber es gibt viele. Das erste besteht darin, daß wir über die moralische Welt ganz andere Anschauungen bekommen als vorher. Die moralische Welt hat für den reinen Intellektualismus etwas Unreales. Gewiß, der Mensch fühlt sich verpflichtet, wenn er noch anständig.geblieben ist innerhalb der materialistischen Zeit, das, was althergebrachtes Gutes ist, pflichtgemäß zu tun; aber er denkt doch, wenn er es sich auch nicht gesteht: damit, daß man das Gute getan hat, ist nicht so etwas geschehen, wie wenn ein Blitz durch den Raum fährt, oder ein Donner durch den Raum rollt. An Reales in solchem Sinne denkt er nicht. Wenn man sich in die geistige Welt hineinlebt, wird man gewahr, daß die moralische Weltordnung nicht nur eine solche Realität hat wie die physische, sondern daß sie eine höhere Realität hat. Man lernt allmählich verstehen, daß diese ganze Zeit mit ihren physischen Ingredienzen und Vorgängen zugrunde gehen kann, sich auflösen kann; aber das, was moralisch aus uns fließt, besteht fort in seinen Wirkungen. Die Realität der moralischen Welt geht uns auf. Und physische und moralische Welt, Sein und Werden, das wird Eines. Wir erleben wirklich, daß die Welt auch moralische Gesetze als objektive Gesetze hat.
[ 43 ] Das steigert die Verantwortlichkeit gegenüber der Welt. Das gibt uns überhaupt ein ganz anderes Bewußtsein, ein Bewußtsein, das die moderne Mezischheit gar sehr braucht. Diese moderne Menschheit, die hinschaut auf den Erdenanfang, wie die Erde sich herausgebildet hat aus einem Urnebel, wie da aufgestiegen ist aus diesem Urnebel das Leben, der Mensch, und aus diesem heraus wie eine Fata Morgana die Ideenwelt. Diese Menschheit, die hinschaut auf den Wärmetod, so daß alles, worin die Menschheit lebt, wiederum untergetaucht wird in ein großes Gräberfeld desjenigen, worin die Menschheit lebt, diese Menschheit braucht die Erkenntnis von der moralischen Weltordnung. Sie wird im Grunde genommen durch spirituelle Erkenntnis voll errungen. Das kann ich nur andeuten.
[ 44 ] Das andere aber ist, daß man nicht zu diesem intuitiven Erkennen, zu diesem Untertauchen in die äußeren Dinge kommen kann, ohne daß man durch ein gesteigertes Leiden durchgegangen ist, gesteigert gegenüber demjenigen Schmerz, den ich schon früher bei der imaginativen Erkenntnis charakterisieren mußte, indem ich sagte, daß man sich ja mit Mühe erst wiederum hineinfinden muß in seine Sympathien und Antipathien, was eigentlich immer, wenn es geschehen muß, schmerzt. Jetzt wird der Schmerz zu einem kosmischen Miterleben alles Leidens, das auf dem Grunde des Daseins liegt.
[ 45 ] Man kann leicht fragen, warum die Götter oder Gott das Leiden schaffen. Das Leiden muß da sein, wenn sich die Welt in ihrer Schönheit erheben soll. Daß wir Augen haben — ich will mich populär ausdrücken -, das rührt nur davon her, daß zuerst in einem noch undifferenzierten Organismus gewissermaßen ausgegraben worden ist dasjenige an Organischem, was zur Sehkraft und dann umgewandelt zum Auge geführt hat. Würden wir heute noch die kleinen, unbedeutendsten Prozesse wahrnehmen, die in unserer Netzhaut beim Sehen vor sich gehen, so würden wir wahrnehmen, daß selbst das ein auf dem Grunde des Daseins ruhender Schmerz ist. Auf dem Grunde des Leidens ruht alle Schönheit. Schönheit kann sich nur aus dem Schmerz heraus entwickeln. Diesen Schmerz, dieses Leiden, man muß sie fühlen können. Nur dadurch kann man sich wirklich hineinfinden in die übersinnliche Welt, daß man durch Schmerz hindurchgeht. Das kann man schon in einem minderen Grade auf einer niederen Stufe der Erkenntnis sagen. Jeder, der sich ein wenig Erkenntnis erworben hat, wird Ihnen ein Geständnis machen können; er wird Ihnen sagen: Für das, was ich Glückliches, Erfreuliches im Leben gehabt habe, bin ich meinem Schicksal dankbar, meine Erkenntnisse aber habe ich nur durch meine Schmerzen, nur durch meine Leiden errungen.
[ 46 ] Fühlt man das schon im Anfange niederer Erkenntnis gegenüber, so kann man es durchleben, indem man sich überwindet, indem man sich durch den Schmerz, der als kosmischer Schmerz gefühlt wird, hindurchwindet zum neutralen Erleben im geistigen Kosmos. Man muß sich zum Miterleben des Geschehens und Wesens aller Dinge hindurcharbeiten, dann ist die intuitive Erkenntnis da. Dann ist man aber auch vollständig in einem erkennenden Erleben drinnen, das nicht mehr an den Leib gebunden ist, das frei zurückkehren kann zum Leibe, um wiederum in der sinnlichen Welt zu sein bis zum Tode, das aber jetzt voll weiß, was es heißt, real sein, geistig-seelisch wirklich sein außerhalb des Leibes.
[ 47 ] Hat man das begriffen, dann hat man ein Erkenntnisbild desjenigen, was geschieht, wenn man im wirklichen Tode den physischen Leib verläßt, dann weiß man, was es heißt, durch die Pforte des Todes zu gehen. Die Realität, die einem entgegentritt, daß das GeistigSeelische in eine geistig-seelische Welt übertritt, indem es den Leib zurückläßt, das erlebt man erkennend vor, wenn man bis zur intuitiven Erkenntnis aufgestiegen ist, das heißt, wenn man weiß, wie es ist in der Welt, wenn man keinen Leib hat, der zur Stütze dient. Man kehrt dann mit dieser Erkenntnis, wenn man sie zum Begriffe gebracht hat, wiederum in den Leib zurück. Aber das Wesentliche ist, daß man auch ohne den Leib leben lernt, und damit sich auch eine Erkenntnis erwirbt, wie es ist, wenn man einmal den Leib nicht mehr brauchen kann, wenn man ihn ablegt mit dem Tode und übertritt in eine geistigseelische Welt.
[ 48 ] Wieder ist es nicht eine philosophische Spekulation, die von der Initiationserkenntnis über die Unsterblichkeit gegeben wird, sondern eine Erfahrung, die, ich möchte sagen, eine Vorerfahrung, ein Vorerlebnis ist. Man weiß, wie es dann sein wird. Man erlebt nicht die volle Realität, aber man erlebt ein reales Bild, das sich in einer gewissen Weise deckt mit der vollen Realität des Sterbens. Man erlebt die Unsterblichkeit. Es ist also auch in dieser Beziehung ein Erlebnis, das hereingeholt wird in die Erkenntnis.
[ 49 ] Nun, ich habe versucht, Ihnen zu schildern, wie man aufsteigt durch Imagination zur Inspiration und Intuition, und wie man dadurch zunächst sich selbst als Menschen in seiner vollen Realität kennenlernt. Im Leibe lernt man sich erkennen, solange man eben im Leibe ist. Mit dem Geistig-Seelischen frei werden muß man vom Leibe, dann löst man erst den ganzen Menschen. Denn, was man erkennt durch den Leib, durch seine Sinne, durch das, was sich anschließt an die Sinneserfahrungen als Denken, und was für das gewöhnliche Denken doch an den Leib, nämlich an das Sinnes-Nervensystem gebunden ist: mit dem lernt man nur ein Glied des Menschen kennen. Den ganzen vollen Menschen lernt man nur erkennen, wenn man den Willen hat, aufzusteigen zu denjenigen Erkenntnissen, die eben aus der Initiationswissenschaft kommen.
[ 50 ] Noch einmal möchte ich betonen: Sind die Dinge erforscht, dann kann jeder, wenn er mit unbefangenem Sinn an sie herangeht, sie mit dem gewöhnlichen gesunden Menschenverstand einsehen, ebenso wie man das, was die Astronomen, was die Biologen über die Welt sagen, mit dem gesunden Menschenverstand nachprüfen kann. Und man wird dann finden, daß dieses Nachprüfen die erste Stufe der Initiationserkenntnis ist. Man muß zuerst, weil der Mensch nicht auf Unwahrheit und Irrtum, sondern auf Wahrheit angelegt ist, einen Wahrheitseindruck haben von der Initiationserkenntnis; dann wird man, soweit es das Schicksal möglich macht, schon in diesem Erdenleben immer weiter in die geistige Welt eindringen können. Es muß sich auch in der neueren Zeit, und zwar in einer höheren Weise erfüllen, was über dem griechischen Tempel als Aufforderung stand: «Mensch, erkenne dich selbst!» Damit war gewiß nicht gemeint ein Hineintreten in das menschliche Innere, sondern eine Aufforderung, zu forschen nach der menschlichen Wesenheit: nach dem Wesen der Unsterblichkeit = Leib, nach dem Wesen der Ungeborenheit = unsterblicher Geist, und nach der Vermittlung zwischen der Erde, dem Zeitlichen und dem Geiste = Seelisches. Denn der wahre, der wirkliche Mensch besteht aus Leib, Seele und Geist. Den Leib kann der Leib, die Seele kann die Seele, den Geist kann nur der Geist erkennen. Daher muß versucht werden, selber den Geist in sich als tätig zu finden, damit der Geist auch in der Welt erkannt werden kann.
Eighth Lecture
[ 1 ] I would like to accept the kind invitation to speak here this evening by sharing some of my insights into how one can arrive at the spiritual knowledge that is to be discussed here in terms of its educational implications through direct research. I would like to note at the outset that today I will speak primarily about the method of entering the supersensible worlds through research; perhaps another opportunity will arise to share some of the results of supersensible research. But I must also say at the outset that everything I have to say today relates strictly to the investigation of the spiritual, supersensible worlds, not to the understanding of supersensible knowledge. The supersensible insights that have been researched and communicated can be understood with ordinary common sense, provided that this common sense does not allow itself to be biased by what is considered to be evidence, logical deductions, and the like in the external sensory world. It is only because of these obstacles that it is very often said that one cannot understand the results of supernatural research unless one becomes a supernatural researcher oneself.
[ 2 ] What is to be communicated here is, of course, the subject of so-called initiatory knowledge, the knowledge that was cultivated in earlier times of human development in a somewhat different form than we must cultivate it today in our age. Not the old — I have already mentioned this in other lectures — is to be brought back, but rather the path of research into the supersensible worlds is to be taken in accordance with the thinking and feeling of our age. And here, especially with regard to initiatory knowledge, it is important that one is able to carry out a fundamental reorientation of the entire human soul constitution.
[ 3 ] Those who have initiatory knowledge differ from those who have other kinds of knowledge in the modern sense of the word, not only in that their initiatory knowledge is a higher stage of ordinary knowledge. It is, however, attained on the basis of ordinary knowledge; this basis must be there; intellectual thinking must be fully developed if one wants to attain initiatory knowledge. But then a fundamental reorientation is necessary, so that the possessor of initiatory knowledge must view the world from a completely different perspective than it is viewed without this initiatory knowledge. I can express in a simple formula how initiatory knowledge differs in principle from ordinary knowledge: In ordinary knowledge, we are conscious of our thinking, of our inner soul experiences through which we acquire knowledge, as the subject of knowledge. For example, we think and believe that we recognize something through our thoughts. When we see ourselves as thinking human beings, we are the subject. We search for objects by observing nature, by observing human life, by experimenting. We are always searching for objects. The objects must come to us. The objects should reveal themselves to us so that we can grasp them with our thoughts, so that we can apply our thinking to them. We are the subject; what approaches us are the objects. In the person who strives for initiatory knowledge, a completely different orientation arises. He must become aware that he, as a human being, is an object, and he must seek the subject for this object, the human being. So the complete opposite must occur. In ordinary knowledge, we feel ourselves to be the subject and seek the objects that are outside us. In initiatory knowledge, we ourselves are the object and seek the subject; or rather, in true initiatory knowledge, the subjects then surrender themselves. But that is only the subject of a later knowledge.
[ 4 ] You see, it is just as if we had to realize through the mere definitions of terms that in initiation knowledge we must flee out of ourselves, that we must become like plants, stones, lightning, and thunder, which become objects for us. We ourselves slip out of ourselves, as it were, in the knowledge of initiation and become objects, and seek the subjects to go with them. If I may express myself somewhat paradoxically, I would like to say that by aiming precisely at thinking: in ordinary knowledge, we think about things. In the knowledge of initiation, we must seek how we are thought in the cosmos.
[ 5 ] These are nothing more than abstract guidelines, but you will now find these abstract guidelines pursued everywhere in the concrete facts of the initiation method.
[ 6 ] First of all, if we want to receive messages today from modern, currently valid initiatory knowledge, this initiatory knowledge proceeds from thinking. The life of thought must be fully developed if one wants to attain initiation knowledge today. This life of thought can be trained in a special way by immersing oneself in the scientific development of the last centuries, especially the 19th century. People deal with this scientific knowledge in different ways. Some people take in scientific knowledge and listen with a certain, I would say, naivety to how organic beings are supposed to have developed from the simplest, most primitive forms up to human beings. They form ideas about this development and look little back on themselves, on the fact that they now have an idea, that they are developing something within themselves in their perception of external processes, which is thought life.
[ 7 ] But those who cannot accept scientific knowledge without looking critically at themselves must ask themselves: What does it mean when I pursue beings from the imperfect to the perfect? Or he must ask himself: By mathematizing, by developing mathematics, I am forming thoughts purely out of myself. Mathematics is, in the proper sense, a web that I draw out of myself. I then apply this web to external things, and it fits. This brings us to the great, I would say, for the thinker, downright tragic question: What about what I apply in all my knowledge, about thinking itself?
[ 8 ] Now, no matter how long one thinks about it, one cannot find out what the situation is with this thinking; for thinking always remains in the same place, turning, as it were, only around the axis that one has already formed. One must accomplish something with thinking. One must carry out with thinking what I have described in my book “How to Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds” — “The Way of Initiation” in English — as meditation.
[ 9 ] One should not think of meditation in a “mystical” way, but neither should one think lightly of it. Meditation must be something completely clear in our present sense. But at the same time, it is something that requires patience and inner soul energy. And above all, it requires something that no one can give to another human being: that one can promise oneself something and then keep it. Once a person begins to meditate, they are performing the only truly free act in this human life. We always have a tendency toward freedom within us, and we have also realized a good part of our freedom. But if we think about it, we will find that we are dependent on our heredity, on our upbringing, and on our life. And ask yourself to what extent we are able to suddenly let go of what we have acquired through heredity, upbringing, and life. We would be faced with nothingness if we suddenly wanted to let go of it. But if we decide to meditate in the evening and in the morning so that we gradually learn to look into the supernatural world, then we can do it every day or not. Nothing stands in the way of that. And experience also teaches us that most people who approach the meditative life with great intentions soon give it up again. We are completely free in this. Meditation is a fundamentally free act.
[ 10 ] If we can nevertheless remain true to ourselves, if we promise ourselves — not to anyone else, but only to ourselves — that we will remain faithful to this meditation, then that in itself is an enormous spiritual force.
[ 11 ] Now that I have explained this, I would like to draw your attention to how meditation itself is practiced in its simplest forms. Today I can only deal with the principles.
[ 12 ] The point is that we bring some idea or complex of ideas to the center of our consciousness; it does not matter what the content of this complex of ideas is, but it should be immediate, so that it does not represent any reminiscences from memory or the like. Therefore, it is good if we do not retrieve it from our store of memories, but rather ask someone else who is experienced in such matters to give us something to meditate on, not because they want to exert any suggestion on us, but because we can be sure that what we then meditate on is something new for us. We might just as well take any old work that we are sure we have not read before and look for a meditation sentence in it. The point is that we should not retrieve a sentence from the subconscious and unconscious that overwhelms us. This is not manageable because all kinds of residual sensations and feelings get mixed in. The point is that it should be as manageable as a mathematical theorem is manageable.
[ 13 ] Let us take something very simple, the sentence “Wisdom lives in the light.” At first, it is not necessary to examine whether this is true. It is an image. But it does not matter that we deal with the content as such in any other way than by surveying it inwardly, spiritually, by resting on it with our consciousness. At first, we will only be able to rest our consciousness on such content for a very short time. The time will become longer and longer.
[ 14 ] What is important? It is important that we gather the whole soul of the human being together in order to concentrate all that is thinking power and feeling power within us on one content. Just as the muscles of the arm become strong when we work with them, so the soul forces are strengthened by being directed again and again to one content. If possible, this one content should remain the same for months, perhaps years. For the soul forces must first be strengthened and empowered before they can engage in real supersensible research.
[ 15 ] If one continues to practice in this way, then the day will come, I would say the great day, when one makes a very definite observation. You observe that you are gradually engaged in a spiritual activity that is completely independent of the body. And you also notice that previously you were dependent on the body for all your thinking and feeling, on the sensory nervous system for your imagination, on the circulatory system for your feelings, and so on; now you feel yourself engaged in a spiritual-soul activity that is completely independent of any bodily activity. And you notice this because you are now able to set something in your head vibrating that previously remained completely unconscious. One now makes the remarkable discovery of what constitutes the difference between sleeping and waking. This difference consists in the fact that when one is awake, something vibrates throughout the entire human organism, except in the head: there, what is otherwise in motion in the rest of the human organism is at rest.
[ 16 ] We will understand better what this means when I point out that we humans are not the robust, solid bodies we usually believe ourselves to be. We consist of approximately ninety percent fluid, and the solid components are only about ten percent immersed in this fluid, floating inside it. So we can only speak of the solid in humans in an indefinite sense. Ninety percent of us are, if I may say so, water. And to a certain extent, air pulsates in this water, and then heat in turn.
[ 17 ] If you imagine that human beings are only a small part solid body and mostly water, air, and the heat vibrating within them, then you will no longer find it so incredible that there is something even finer within us. And this finer thing I will now call the etheric body. This etheric body is finer than air. It is so fine that it permeates us without our being aware of it in ordinary life. It is this etheric body that is in inner motion when we are awake, in a regular motion throughout the rest of the human body, except in the head. In the head, the etheric body is internally calm.
[ 18 ] In sleep it is different. Sleep begins with the etheric body also beginning to move in the head, and then continues in such a way that we as a whole human being, including the head and the rest of the human body, have an etheric body that is in inner motion. And when we dream, say, upon waking, it is so that we still perceive the last movements of the etheric body just as we are waking up. These present themselves to us as dreams. We still perceive the last movements of the head ether when we wake up; this cannot be the case when we wake up quickly.
[ 19 ] However, anyone who meditates for a long time in the manner I have indicated will gradually be able to form images in the calm etheric body of the head. In the book I mentioned, I call these imaginations. And these imaginations, which are experienced independently of the physical body in the etheric body, are the first supersensible impressions we can have. They then enable us to detach ourselves completely from our physical body and view our life up to the moment of birth in its actions and movements as if in a picture. What is often described by people who have sunk under water and were drowning, that they saw their lives in moving pictures looking backward, can be systematically developed here so that one can see all the results of our present earthly life in them.
[ 20 ] The first thing that initiation knowledge gives us is the perception of our own soul life. This is, however, different from what is usually assumed. Usually, in abstraction, this soul life is assumed to be something woven from ideas. When we discover it in its true form, it is something creative; it is at the same time that which worked in our childhood, that which formed our brain in a plastic way, that which permeates the rest of the body and causes a plastic, malleable activity in it, bringing about our waking life and even our digestive activity every day.
[ 21 ] We see this inner activity in the organism as the etheric body of the human being. This is not a spatial body, it is a temporal body. Therefore, you can only describe the etheric body as a spatial form if you are aware that you are doing the same thing as when you paint a flash of lightning. When you paint a flash of lightning, you naturally paint a moment; you capture that moment. The human etheric body can only be captured spatially in this way, as a moment. In reality, we have a physical spatial body and a temporal body, an etheric body that is always in motion. And it only makes sense to speak of the etheric body when we speak of it as a time body, which we can see as a unity up to our birth, from the moment we are in a position to make this discovery. This is the first thing we can discover in ourselves in terms of supersensible faculties.
[ 22 ] What is brought about in the development of the soul by such soul processes as I have described is revealed above all in the complete change in the mood of the soul, in the state of mind of the person who strives for initiatory knowledge. Please do not misunderstand me. I do not mean that those who come to initiation suddenly become completely changed, different people. On the contrary, modern initiatory knowledge must allow the human being to remain fully within the world, so that even when he comes to it, he can continue his life as he once began it. But for those hours and moments in which supersensible research is carried out, the human being has indeed become a different person through initiatory knowledge than he is in ordinary life.
[ 23 ] Above all, I would like to emphasize an important aspect that distinguishes initiation knowledge. This is that the further a person advances in the experience of the
[ 24 ] the supersensible, the more his own physicality disappears, that is, in relation to what this physicality participates in during ordinary life. Let us ask ourselves how our judgments in life come about. We grow up, develop as children. Sympathy and antipathy become established in our lives. Sympathy and antipathy toward natural phenomena, sympathy and antipathy above all toward other people. Our bodies are involved in all of this. We naturally invest this sympathy and antipathy in them, which to a large extent even have their roots in physical processes in our bodies. The moment the initiate ascends into the supersensible world, he enters a world in which these sympathies and antipathies connected with physicality become increasingly foreign to him as he dwells in the supersensible realm. He is detached from everything connected with his physicality. If they want to resume their ordinary life, they must first, in a sense, reinsert themselves into their ordinary sympathies and antipathies, which otherwise happens automatically. When you wake up in the morning, you are inside your body, developing the same love for things and people, the same sympathy or antipathy that you had before. This happens automatically. If one now dwells in the supersensible and wants to return to one's sympathies and antipathies, one must do so with effort, one must, so to speak, submerge oneself in one's own physicality. This detachment from one's own physicality is one of the phenomena that shows that one has really made progress. In general, the emergence of broad-minded sympathies and antipathies is what gradually becomes part of the initiate.
[ 25 ] The development toward initiation is particularly evident in the effect of memory, of recollection during the initiation knowledge. We experience ourselves in ordinary life. Our memory is sometimes a little better, sometimes a little worse, but we acquire memory. We have experiences, and we remember them later. It is not the same with what we experience in the supersensible worlds. We can experience these things in their greatness, beauty, and significance; but once they have been experienced, they are over. And it must be experienced again if it is to appear before the soul. It is not imprinted in the ordinary sense of memory. It is only imprinted when one first makes a great effort to put into words what one sees in the supersensible world, when one sends one's intellect over into the supersensible world. That is very difficult. For one must think in the same way over there, without the body helping one in this thinking. Therefore, one must have established one's concepts beforehand, must have become a proper logician beforehand, so that one does not always forget this logic when one looks in. Primitive clairvoyants in particular can see many things, but they forget the logic when they are over there. And so it is that precisely when one has to communicate supernatural truths to someone else, one notices this change in memory with regard to supernatural truths. And one sees how our physical body is involved in the exercise of memory, not in thinking, but in the exercise of memory, which always plays into the supernatural.
[ 26 ] If I may say something personal, it is this: When I give lectures myself, it is different from how lectures are usually given. One often speaks from memory; what one has learned, what one has thought, is often developed from memory. Those who truly develop supersensible truths must actually always produce them at the moment they develop them. So that I myself can give the same lecture thirty, forty, fifty times, and it is never the same for me. This is of course already the case in other situations, but it is even more so when one has reached an inner level of memory, when one is independent of memory and can draw on an inner life.
[ 27 ] What I have just told you about the ability to bring into the etheric body of one's head the forms that then make it possible to see through the time body, the etheric body, back to its birth, already puts one in a very special mood toward the cosmos. One loses, so to speak, one's own physicality, but one feels oneself living in the cosmos. Consciousness expands, as it were, into the vastness of the ether. One no longer looks at a plant without being immersed in its growth. One follows it from the root to the blossom. One lives in its sap, in its blossoming, in its fruiting. One can immerse oneself in the life of animals according to their form, but especially in the life of other human beings. The slightest movement that one encounters in another human being leads one, so to speak, into their entire soul life, so that one feels that one is no longer within oneself, but rather, during this supersensible recognition, outside oneself.
[ 28 ] But one must always be able to return — this is necessary — otherwise one is a sluggish, nebulous mystic, a dreamer and not a knower of the supersensible worlds. One must be able to live in the supersensible worlds and at the same time be able to return, so that one can stand firmly on both feet. Therefore, when I discuss such things about the supersensible worlds, I must emphasize that, for me, a good philosopher needs to know how a shoe or a skirt is sewn, that one is truly grounded in practical life, even more than logic. One should not really think about life if one is not really involved in practical life. But this is even more true for those who seek supersensible knowledge. Supersensible knowers cannot become dreamers, enthusiasts, or people who do not stand with both feet on the ground. Otherwise, one loses oneself, because one must actually step outside oneself. But this stepping outside oneself must not lead to losing oneself. The book entitled “Geheimwissenschaft im Umriß” (Outline of Occult Science) in German and “Occult Science — An Outline” in English was written from the insight I have described.
[ 29 ] But then it is a matter of being able to penetrate further into this supersensible knowledge. This happens by further developing meditation. First, one rests with meditation on certain ideas or complexes of ideas, thereby strengthening the soul life. This is not enough to enter completely into the supersensible world. It is also necessary to practice not only resting on ideas, not only concentrating the whole soul on these ideas, but also being able to throw them out of consciousness at will. Just as in sensory life one can look at something and then look away, so in supersensible development one must learn to concentrate sharply on a soul content and then be able to cast it out of the soul again.
[ 30 ] This is sometimes not easy even in ordinary life. Think how little control people have over driving their thoughts away. Sometimes thoughts, especially unpleasant ones, pursue people for days. They cannot throw them away. But this becomes even more difficult when we have become accustomed to concentrating on our thoughts. A thought we have concentrated on begins to hold us fast, and we have to make every effort to get rid of it again. If we have practiced this for a long time, we will be able to get rid of this whole review of our life up to our birth, this whole etheric body, as I call it, this time body, and throw it out of our consciousness.
[ 31 ] This is, of course, a stage of development that we must reach. We must first become mature; by removing meditated ideas, we must acquire the strength to remove this spiritual colossus, this spiritual giant; the whole terrible shark of our previous life stands before us between our present moment and our birth — we must remove it. If we remove it, then something enters into us which I would call “waker consciousness.” Then we are merely awake, without anything in our waking consciousness. But now it fills up. Just as the air that is needed flows into the lungs, so now the truly spiritual world flows into the empty consciousness that has arisen in the way I have described.
[ 32 ] This is inspiration. Something now flows in that is not a finer substance, but something that relates to substance as the negative relates to the positive. What is the opposite of substance now flows into the humanity that has been freed from the ether. This is the important thing we need to realize: spirit is not just a finer, more ethereal substance; that is not true. If we call substance the positive — we could just as well call it the negative, it doesn't matter, things are relative — then we must call spirit the negative in relation to the positive. It is like when I have, say, five shillings in my wallet. I spend one, then I have four shillings left; I spend another, then I have three, and so on until I have none left. Then I can go into debt. If I owe one shilling, I have less than no shillings.
[ 33 ] If, through the method I have developed, I have removed the etheric body, I do not enter into an even finer ether, but into something that is the opposite of ether, like debt is the opposite of wealth. And now I know from experience what spirit is. Spirit enters us through inspiration, and the first thing we experience is what was with our soul and spirit in a spiritual world before birth or conception. This is the pre-existing life of our soul and spirit. Before that, we saw it in the ether until our birth. Now we look beyond birth or conception into the spiritual-soul world and come to perceive ourselves as we were before we descended from spiritual worlds and took on a physical body through the line of inheritance.
[ 34 ] For initiatory knowledge, these things are not philosophical truths that one thinks up; they are experiences, but experiences that must first be acquired by preparing oneself for them in the way I have just indicated. And so the first thing that becomes clear to us when we enter the spiritual world is the truth of the pre-existence of the human soul or spirit, and we now learn to see the eternal directly.
[ 35 ] For many centuries, European humanity has always viewed eternity from only one side, from the side of immortality. It has always asked: What becomes of the soul when it leaves the body at death? This is the selfish right of human beings, because they are interested in what follows after death for selfish reasons. We will see shortly that we can also talk about immortality, but most of the time immortality is discussed for selfish reasons. People are less interested in what came before birth. They say to themselves: We are here now. What came before has only cognitive value. — But true cognitive value cannot be gained unless one directs one's knowledge toward what our existence contained before birth or before conception.
[ 36 ] In modern languages, we need a word that makes the eternal complete. We should not only talk about immortality, we should also — and this will be somewhat difficult to translate — talk about unbornness; for eternity consists of immortality and unbornness. And unbornness discovers the knowledge of initiation before immortality.
[ 37 ] A further stage of development toward the supersensible world can be reached by seeking to detach ourselves even more from our physical support in our spiritual-soul activity. This can be achieved by directing the exercises of meditation and concentration more toward exercises of the will.
[ 38 ] Now I would like to give you a simple exercise of will as a concrete example, which you can use to study the principle under consideration here. In ordinary life, we are accustomed to thinking in terms of the course of the world. We let things come to us as they happen. We think about what came to us earlier earlier, and what came to us later later. And even if we do not think along with the temporal sequence in more logical thinking, there is still an effort in the background to stick to the external, real sequence of events. In order to practice the balance of mental and spiritual forces, we must detach ourselves from the external course of events. There is a good exercise, which is also an exercise of will, in which we try to think through our daily experiences, as we experience them from morning to evening, not from morning to evening, but backwards from evening to morning, going into as much detail as possible.
[ 39 ] Let us suppose that in such a review of our day we come to the point where we went up a staircase. We imagine that we are first at the top, then on the last step, the second to last, and so on. We go down in reverse. — At first, we will only be able to imagine episodes from our day in reverse in this way, for example from six to three, from twelve to nine, and so on, until the moment we wake up. But we will gradually acquire a kind of technique whereby we will actually be able, as if in a tableau turned backwards in the evening or the next morning, to let the day's life or the previous day's life pass before our mind in pictures in reverse. If we are able—and this is what matters—to completely detach our thinking from the way reality unfolds in three dimensions, then we will see how our will is greatly strengthened. We will also achieve this when we are able to perceive a melody in reverse, or when we imagine a drama in five acts, running backwards from the fifth act to the fourth and so on to the first. Through all these means we strengthen the will by strengthening it internally and tearing it away externally from its sensual bondage to events.
[ 40 ] This can be accompanied by exercises such as those I have already mentioned in previous lectures, in which we observe how we have one habit or another. We make a firm resolution and apply iron willpower so that in a few years we will have adopted a different habit in this area. I mention, for example, that every person has something in their handwriting that is called their character. If we make an effort to acquire a different handwriting that is no longer similar to the old one, this requires a strong inner force. But then the second handwriting must become just as habitual and familiar to us as the first. That is only a small thing. There are many things by which we can change the whole basic direction of our will through our own energy. In this way we gradually bring ourselves to not only allow the spiritual world to enter us as inspiration, but to really immerse ourselves with our spirit, freed from the body, into the other spiritual beings that are outside of us. For true spiritual knowledge is an immersion into the beings that are spiritually around us when we look at physical things. If we want to know the spiritual, we must first step out of ourselves. I have described this. But then we must also acquire the ability to immerse ourselves again into things, namely into spiritual things and beings.
[ 41 ] We can only do this after we have done the initiation exercises I have just described, where we are no longer disturbed by our own bodies, but can immerse ourselves in the spiritual nature of things; where we no longer see the colors of plants, but dive into the colors themselves, where we no longer see the plants colored, but see them coloring themselves. By knowing that the chicory growing by the wayside is not only blue when we look at it, but that we can immerse ourselves inwardly in the flower and participate in its turning blue, we intuitively stand within this process, and then, starting from there, we can expand our spiritual knowledge more and more.
[ 42 ] We can see from individual symptoms that we have really made progress with such exercises. I would like to mention two, but there are many. The first is that we gain a completely different view of the moral world than before. For pure intellectualism, the moral world has something unreal about it. Certainly, if people have remained decent in this materialistic age, they feel obliged to do what is traditionally good out of a sense of duty; but even if they do not admit it to themselves, they think that doing good does not have the same effect as a flash of lightning or a roll of thunder. They do not think of anything real in this sense. When one lives one's way into the spiritual world, one becomes aware that the moral world order has not only a reality like the physical world, but that it has a higher reality. One gradually learns to understand that all this time, with its physical ingredients and processes, can perish, can dissolve; but what flows out of us morally continues to exist in its effects. The reality of the moral world dawns upon us. And the physical and moral worlds, being and becoming, become one. We truly experience that the world also has moral laws as objective laws.
[ 43 ] This increases our responsibility toward the world. This gives us a completely different consciousness, a consciousness that modern humanity greatly needs. This modern humanity, which looks back to the beginning of the earth, to how the earth emerged from a primordial nebula, how life arose from this primordial nebula, how human beings arose, and how the world of ideas arose from this like a mirage. This humanity, which looks at the heat death, so that everything in which humanity lives is once again submerged in a great graveyard of that in which humanity lives, this humanity needs the knowledge of the moral world order. It is basically achieved through spiritual knowledge. I can only hint at this.
[ 44 ] But the other thing is that one cannot arrive at this intuitive knowledge, this immersion in external things, without having gone through increased suffering, increased in comparison to the pain I had to characterize earlier in relation to imaginative knowledge, when I said that one must first struggle to find one's way back into one's sympathies and antipathies, which is always painful when it has to be done. Now the pain becomes a cosmic experience of all suffering that lies at the bottom of existence.
[ 45 ] One may easily ask why the gods or God create suffering. Suffering must exist if the world is to rise up in its beauty. The fact that we have eyes—to put it in popular terms—stems solely from the fact that, in an as yet undifferentiated organism, that part of the organic substance which leads to sight was first excavated, so to speak, and then transformed into the eye. If we were still able to perceive the tiny, insignificant processes that take place in our retinas when we see, we would realize that even this is a pain that lies at the bottom of existence. All beauty rests on the bottom of suffering. Beauty can only develop out of pain. One must be able to feel this pain, this suffering. Only by going through pain can one truly find one's way into the supersensible world. This can already be said to a lesser degree at a lower level of knowledge. Anyone who has acquired a little knowledge will be able to confess this to you; they will tell you: I am grateful to my fate for the happy and joyful things I have had in life, but I have gained my knowledge only through my pain, only through my suffering.
[ 46 ] If one feels this already at the beginning of lower knowledge, one can live through it by overcoming oneself, by winding one's way through the pain that is felt as cosmic pain to a neutral experience in the spiritual cosmos. One must work one's way through to experiencing the happening and essence of all things, then intuitive knowledge is there. But then one is also completely immersed in a knowing experience that is no longer bound to the body, that can freely return to the body in order to be in the sensory world again until death, but now fully aware of what it means to be real, to be truly spiritual and soulful outside the body.
[ 47 ] Once you have understood this, you have a cognitive picture of what happens when you leave the physical body in real death, and then you know what it means to pass through the gate of death. The reality that confronts one, that the spiritual-soul passes into a spiritual-soul world by leaving the body behind, is experienced cognitively when one has risen to intuitive knowledge, that is, when one knows what it is like in the world when one has no body to support oneself. Once you have grasped this knowledge, you return to the body. But the essential thing is that you learn to live without the body and thus gain knowledge of what it is like when you no longer need the body, when you lay it down at death and pass into a spiritual-soul world.
[ 48 ] Again, it is not a philosophical speculation that is given by the initiation knowledge about immortality, but an experience that is, I would say, a preliminary experience, a foretaste. One knows what it will be like then. One does not experience the full reality, but one experiences a real image that in a certain way corresponds to the full reality of dying. One experiences immortality. So in this respect, too, it is an experience that is brought into the realm of knowledge.
[ 49 ] Now, I have tried to describe to you how one ascends through imagination to inspiration and intuition, and how one thereby first comes to know oneself as a human being in one's full reality. One learns to recognize oneself in the body as long as one is in the body. One must become free from the body with the spiritual-soul, only then does one liberate the whole human being. For what one recognizes through the body, through the senses, through what follows the sensory experiences as thinking, and what is bound to the body, namely to the sensory-nervous system, in ordinary thinking: with this one only gets to know one limb of the human being. You can only come to know the whole human being when you have the will to ascend to those insights that come from the science of initiation.
[ 50 ] Once again, I would like to emphasize: Once things have been researched, anyone who approaches them with an open mind can understand them with ordinary common sense, just as one can verify with common sense what astronomers and biologists say about the world. And one will then find that this verification is the first stage of initiatory knowledge. Because human beings are not inclined toward untruth and error but toward truth, one must first have an impression of truth from initiatory knowledge; then, as far as fate allows, one will be able to penetrate further and further into the spiritual world already in this earthly life. What was written above the Greek temple as an exhortation must also be fulfilled in a higher way in more recent times: “Man, know thyself!” This certainly did not mean entering into the human interior, but rather an invitation to investigate the human essence: the essence of immortality = the body, the essence of unbornness = the immortal spirit, and the mediation between the earth, the temporal, and the spirit = the soul. For the true, real human being consists of body, soul, and spirit. The body can be recognized by the body, the soul by the soul, and the spirit only by the spirit. Therefore, one must try to find the spirit within oneself as active, so that the spirit can also be recognized in the world.