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The Mystery of the Trinity
Part 2: The Mission of the Spirit
GA 214

20 August 1922, Oxford

I. Meditation: The Path to Higher Knowledge

I would like to respond to your kind invitation to speak here this evening by telling you something about how, through unmediated research, one can come to spiritual knowledge, and I would like to explain the educational consequences of that knowledge. At the outset today I would also like to say that I will be speaking primarily about the method for entering and researching super-sensible worlds; perhaps on another occasion it will be possible to impart some of the results of super-sensible research. Everything I have to say today will refer to the researching of spiritual, super-sensible worlds, not to the understanding of super-sensible knowledge. Supersensible knowledge that has been researched and communicated can be understood by ordinary healthy human understanding if this ordinary understanding has not lost its unbiased perspective. A biased view is present when the understanding takes as its starting point the proof or logical deduction appropriate for dealing with the outer world of sense. Because of this hindrance alone it is often said that the results of super-sensible research cannot be understood by anyone who is not a researcher of the super-sensible.

What will be imparted here today is the object of what is known as initiation knowledge. In previous ages of humanity's development this knowledge was cultivated in a form different from the form appropriate for today. As I have already said in other lectures, the things of the past are not to be brought forward again; rather the path of research into super-sensible worlds is to be entered upon in a way appropriate to the thinking and feeling of our age. When it comes to initiation knowledge, everything depends on the individual's ability to undergo a fundamental reorientation or revisioning of his entire soul configuration.

An individual possessing initiation knowledge is distinguished from those who have knowledge in the present-day sense of the word, not merely because his initiation knowledge is a step above ordinary knowledge. Of course, it is achieved on the foundation of ordinary knowledge; this foundation must be present; intellectual thinking must be fully developed if one wants to acquire initiation knowledge. However, a fundamental reorientation is then necessary. The possessor of initiation knowledge must come to see the world from a point of view altogether different from the way it was seen without initiation knowledge.

I can express the fundamental difference between initiate and ordinary knowledge in a simple formula: In ordinary knowledge we are aware of our thinking; indeed, we are altogether aware of the inner soul experience through which we, as the subject of knowing, acquire knowledge. For example, when we think and believe that we know something through thought we think of ourselves as thinking human beings, as subjects. We are looking for objects when we observe nature or human life or perform experiments. We always look for objects. Objects are supposed to present themselves to us. Objects should surrender themselves to us so we can encompass them with our thoughts, so we can apply our thinking to them. We are the subject and that which comes to us is the object.

With a man who strives for initiation knowledge an entirely different orientation comes into play. He must become aware that as a human being, he is the object; then, for this object, this human being, he must seek the subject. A situation exactly the opposite of ordinary knowing must occur. In ordinary knowledge we experience ourselves as subject and look for the object outside of us. In initiation knowledge we ourselves are the object, and we seek the corresponding subject; in other words, genuine initiation knowledge leads us to find subjects. But that would be the object of a later knowledge.

It is as though the mere definitional concepts already force us here to see that in initiation knowledge, we must actually flee from ourselves; we must become like the plants and stones, like thunder and lightning, which are, for us, objects. In initiation knowledge we slip out of ourselves, so to speak, and become objects that seek the corresponding subjects. If I may express myself somewhat paradoxically, I would like to say that from the point of view of thinking the difference is as follows: In ordinary knowing we think about the things; in initiation knowledge we seek to discover how we are being thought by the cosmos.

This is nothing more than an abstract guiding principle. But you will find that this abstract guiding principle is followed everywhere in the concrete methods of initiation. To begin with, if we want to receive initiation knowledge appropriate for today we must proceed from thinking. The life of thought must be fully developed if we want to come to initiation knowledge today. This life of thought can be especially well schooled through an immersion in the natural scientific development of the last centuries, the nineteenth century in particular.

People react in different ways to natural scientific knowledge. Some listen to the pronouncements of science with what I would like to call a certain naïveté. They hear, for example, how organic beings have developed from the simplest, most primitive forms up to the human being. They think about this development but have little regard for their own involvement in these ideas. They do not stop to consider the fact that they themselves unfold something in the seeing of external processes, something which belongs to the life of thought.

But someone who receives natural scientific knowledge with critical consideration of his own involvement must ask himself: What does it mean that I myself can follow the development of beings from the imperfect to the perfect? Or he could say to himself: When I do mathematics I create thoughts purely out of myself. Properly understood, mathematics is a web spun out of myself. I then apply this web to the outer world and it fits. Here we come to the great question, I would like to say the really tragic question: How do things stand with respect to thinking itself—this thinking that is involved every time I know something?

No matter how long we think about it we cannot find out how things stand with thinking; for thinking remains always stuck in the same place. We merely spin, so to speak, around the axis we have already built for ourselves. We must accomplish something with our thinking. With our thinking we must carry out what I described as meditation in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment.30Rudolf Steiner, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment, vol. 10 in the Collected Works, repr. (Spring Valley, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1983).

We should not think mystically about meditation but then neither should we think of it lightly. It must be completely clear what meditation is in the modern sense. It also requires patience and inner energy of soul. Above all there is something else that belongs to meditation, something that no one can ever give to another human being: the ability to promise oneself something and then keep that promise. When we begin to meditate we begin to perform the only really fully free act in human life. We always have the tendency toward freedom within us. We have also attained a good measure of freedom. However, if we stop to think about it, we will find we are dependent upon our heredity, our education, and our present life situation.

To what extent are we in a position to suddenly leave behind all we have acquired through heredity, education, and life? We would be confronted with nothingness were we to suddenly leave that all behind.

Although we may have decided to meditate mornings and evenings in order gradually to learn to see into the spiritual world, we can, in fact, on any given day, leave this undone. There is nothing to prohibit this. And experience teaches us that most people who approach the meditative life, even those with the best intentions, soon leave it again. In this we are completely free. Meditation is an essentially free act.

If we are able to remain true to ourselves despite this freedom, if we promise ourselves, not another but ourselves, that we will remain faithful to this meditation, then that is, of itself, an enormous power in the soul.

Having said that, I would like to draw your attention to how, in its simplest form, meditation is done. I can only deal with the basic principles today. This is what we are dealing with: An idea or image, or a combination thereof, is moved into the center of our consciousness. Although the content of this thought complex does not matter, it should be immediate and not represent anything from our memory. For this reason it is good if the thought complex is not retrieved from our memory but rather given to us by someone experienced in such things. It is good for it to be given to us, not because the one who gives the meditation wants to exercise any suggestion but because we then can be certain that what we meditate is, for us, something entirely new.

We could just as well find a passage for meditation in any old book that we know we have not read. What is important is that we not pull a sentence out of our subconscious or unconscious, which would then overwhelm us. We could never be absolutely certain about a sentence like that. All kinds of things left over from past feelings and sensations would be mixed in. It is essential that the meditation be as transparent as a mathematical equation.

Let us take something very simple, the sentence: “Wisdom lives in the light.” To begin with, the truth of this sentence cannot be tested. It is a picture. But it is not important for us to concern ourselves with the content in any other way than to see through and understand it. We are to dwell upon it with our consciousness. In the beginning we will only be able to dwell in full consciousness upon such a content for a very short period of time. But this period of time will get longer and longer.

What then is essential? Everything depends upon our gathering together our whole life of soul in order to concentrate all our powers of thinking and feeling upon the content of the meditation. Just as the muscles of the arm become strong as we work with them, so too soul forces are strengthened by focusing them on a meditative content again and again. If possible the content of meditation should remain the same for months, perhaps for years. For genuine super-sensible research the forces of the soul must first be strengthened, empowered.

If we continue practicing in this way, the day will come, I would like to say, the big day, on which we make a very special observation. Gradually we observe that we are in a soul activity entirely independent of the body. We notice that whereas previously we were dependent upon the body for all our thinking and feeling—for our thinking upon the nervous system, for our feeling upon the circulatory system, and so on—now we feel ourselves in a spiritual-soul activity that is fully independent of any bodily activity. And we notice this because we are now in a position to cause something in our head to vibrate, something that had remained entirely unconscious previously. We now discover the strange difference between sleeping and waking. The difference consists in this: when man is awake there is something vibrating throughout his entire organism—except in his head. What is otherwise in movement in all the rest of the human organism is, in the head, at rest.

We will better understand what we are dealing with here if I draw your attention to the fact that, as human beings, we are not these robust solid bodies that we usually believe ourselves to be. We are actually made up of approximately 90 percent fluids; and the 10 per cent solid constituents are immersed in the fluids, they swim around in the fluids. We can only speak of the solid part of the human being in an uncertain way. We are, if I may put it this way, approximately 90 per cent water; and to a certain extent, air and warmth pulsate through this water.

If you can imagine the human being this way—to the least extent solid body and to a greater extent water and air with warmth vibrating therein—then you will not find it so difficult to believe that there is something even finer and more rarefied within us. This finer element I will call the etheric body. This etheric body is more rarefied than air. It is so fine that it permeates us without our being aware of the fact—at least in ordinary life. This etheric body is what is in inner movement when we are awake—in a regular movement throughout the entire human body, except in the head. In the head the etheric body is inwardly at rest.

In sleep it is otherwise. Sleep begins and then continues when the etheric body also begins to be in movement in the head. So that in sleep the whole human being—the head as well as the rest of the human being—has an etheric body that is in inner movement. When we are dreaming, for example, just upon awakening, we are then still just able to perceive the last movements of the etheric body. They present themselves to us as dreams. We are still able to perceive the last etheric movements in the head; however, when we awaken quickly that cannot happen.

Someone who meditates for a long time in the fashion I have indicated arrives at a stage where he can form pictures into the etheric body which permeates the head when it is at rest. In the book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment. I have called these pictures Imaginations. These Imaginations, which can be experienced in the etheric body independently of the physical body, are the first super-sensible impressions we can have. They bring us to the place where, entirely without regard for our physical body, we can behold, as in one picture, our life in its movement and its actions. What has often been described by people who were submerged in water and about to drown—that they have seen their lives backward in a series of moving pictures—that vision can be developed here systematically so that everything that has happened in our present earth life can be seen.

The first result of initiation knowledge is a view of our own soul life. This turns out to be entirely different from what one usually expects. We usually abstractly suppose this soul life to be woven from ideas and mental images. When we discover it in its true form we find that it is something creative and, at the same time, that it is what was working in our childhood, what shaped and molded our brain, what permeates the rest of the body and brings about a plastic form-building activity within the body as it enkindles and supports our waking consciousness, even our digestive activity. We see this inner activity in the organism as the etheric body of the human being. This is not a spatial body but a time body. For this reason you can describe the etheric body as a form in space only if you realize that what you are doing is the same as painting a bolt of lightning. When you paint a picture of a lightning flash you are, of course, painting only a moment of its existence. You are holding the moment in place. The human etheric body also can only be captured as a spatial form for a moment. In reality we have a physical body in space and an etheric body in time, a time body, which is always in movement. And it is only meaningful to speak of the etheric body if we speak of it as a body of time which we can behold. From the moment we are in a position to make this discovery we see it extending backward all the way back to our birth. This is, to begin with, the first super-sensible ability we can discover in ourselves.

The development of the soul, brought about through processes such as I have described, shows itself above all in a change of the entire soul mood and disposition of those people who strive for initiation knowledge. Please do not misunderstand me. I do not mean that someone who arrives at initiation knowledge suddenly becomes an entirely transformed and different human being. On the contrary, modern initiation knowledge must leave a man standing fully in the world so that he is able to continue his life, when he returns to it, just as he once began it. But when super-sensible research is carried out man has become, through initiation knowledge, for those hours and moments someone different than he is in ordinary life.

Above all I would like to emphasize an important moment that characterizes initiation knowledge. As a person penetrates further into experience of the super-sensible he feels more and more how his own bodily nature disappears. That is, it disappears for him with respect to those activities in which this bodily nature plays a part in ordinary life.

Let us consider for a moment how our judgments in life come about. We grow up and develop as children. Sympathy and antipathy become solidly set in our lives—sympathy and antipathy for the things that appear to us in nature and for other people. Our body is involved in all of this. Of course, this sympathy and antipathy that, to a large extent, actually have their foundation in the physical processes in our body, are then placed and located in the body. In the moment when people about to be initiated rise into the super-sensible world, they live into a world in which, for the duration of the time spent in the super-sensible, the sympathies and antipathies connected with their bodily nature become increasingly foreign to them. They are lifted above that with which their bodily nature is connected. When they wish to take up ordinary life again they must again fit themselves, so to speak, into their usual sympathies and antipathies—something which otherwise occurs by itself.

When we awaken in the morning we fit into our bodies, develop the same love for things and people, the same sympathy and antipathy we had before. This happens by itself. But when we stay for a while in the super-sensible and then wish to return to our sympathies and antipathies, then we must exert an effort to submerge ourselves into our bodily nature. This condition of separation from our own bodily nature is a phenomenon that shows that we are really making progress. The appearance of wide-hearted sympathies and antipathies is, altogether, something that an initiate gradually makes a part of his being.

There is one thing that shows the development toward initiation in a particularly strong way: the working of the memory during initiation knowledge. We experience ourselves in ordinary life. Our memory is sometimes a little better, sometimes a little worse; but we acquire a memory. We have experiences and later remember them. This is not the case with what we experience in super-sensible worlds. We can experience greatness, beauty, and meaning, but after it has been experienced it is gone. And it must be experienced again if it is to stand before the soul again. It is not imprinted in the memory in the usual sense. It is imprinted only if we bring into concepts what we have seen in the super-sensible, only if we can also bring our understanding along with us into the super-sensible world. This is very difficult. We must be able to think just as well on the other side but without the body helping with this thinking. For this reason our concepts must be strengthened beforehand; we must have become proper logicians before, so that we do not always forget when we look into the super-sensible world. It is just the primitive clairvoyants who, although they can see quite a bit, forget their logic when they are over there. It is just when we want to share super-sensible truths with someone else that we notice this change in our memory with respect to these truths. From this we can see 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 super-sensible.

If I may be permitted to say something personal, it is this: When I myself hold lectures it is different from the way lectures are usually held. People often speak from memory, they often develop from memory what they have learned, what they have thought. Anyone who really presents super-sensible truths actually must always produce them in the moment when he presents them. I can hold the same lecture thirty, forty, fifty times, and for me it is never the same. Of course, that would be so in any case, but it is even more so with this independence from memory that comes into play when a higher stage of memory is reached.

I have already told you about the ability to bring forms into the etheric body of the head. This then makes it possible to see through the time-body, the etheric body, all the way back to birth. It also brings the soul to a very special mood with respect to the cosmos. One loses one's own bodily nature, so to speak, but feels oneself living into the cosmos. Consciousness expands, as it were, into the widths of the ether. One can no longer look at a plant without becoming immersed in its growth. One follows it from the root to the blossom. One lives in its juices, in its blossoms, in its fruits. One can steep oneself in the life of animals according to their forms, but especially in the life of other human beings. The slightest gesture encountered in another human being leads one, so to speak, into the entire soul life of the other person. One feels as though one is no longer in oneself, but is out of oneself during this super-sensible knowing.

But it is necessary that we be able to return again and again, otherwise we are lazy, nebulous mystics, dreamers, and not knowers of super-sensible worlds. We must be able to live in super-sensible worlds while simultaneously being able to return at any time to stand firmly on our two feet. For this reason, whenever I explain such things about super-sensible worlds, I must stress that it is far more important for a philosopher to know how a shoe or a coat is made than it is to know logic, that he must really stand in life in a practical way. Actually no one should think about life unless he really stands in it in a practical way. This is even more so the case for someone seeking super-sensible knowledge. Knowers of the super-sensible cannot be dreamers or fanatics or people who cannot stand on their two feet; otherwise they would lose themselves, for one must, as a matter of fact, get outside of oneself. But this “getting outside of oneself” must not lead to the loss of one's self. The book Occult Science—an Outline was written out of knowledge such as I have described here.

Then it is important that we penetrate further into this super-sensible knowledge. This happens when we further develop our meditations. With our meditations we rest upon certain ideas or mental pictures or a combination thereof, thereby strengthening the soul life. But this is not enough to bring us fully into the spiritual world. It is also necessary that we practice the following: Beyond dwelling with our meditations upon ideas, beyond concentrating our entire soul upon these ideas, we must be able, at will, to cast them out of our consciousness. Just as, in the life of the senses, we can look at something and then away from it whenever we want, so too, in the development of super-sensible knowledge we must learn to concentrate on a content of soul and then be able to cast it out of the soul again.

Even in ordinary life this is not easy. Just think how little we have it in our power to drive our thoughts away at will. Sometimes they will pursue us for days, especially if they are unpleasant. We cannot get rid of them. This becomes much harder after we have become accustomed to concentrating on the thoughts. A thought content we have concentrated upon eventually begins to get a firm grip on us; then we really have to work hard to remove it. When we have practiced for a long time we can manage the following: We can remove, we can cast out of our consciousness, this entire retrospect of our life from birth onward, this entire etheric body, as I have called it, this time body.

This is, of course, a stage to which we must develop ourselves. We must first become mature for this step by ridding ourselves of this colossus, this giant being in our soul. The whole terrible specter that embodies life between the present moment and our birth is standing there before us. This is what we must do away with. If we can get rid of it then something will appear for us that I would like to call a more wakeful consciousness. Then we are merely awake without anything in the waking consciousness. Then it begins to fill. Just as air streams into lungs that need it, so too the real spiritual world now streams into the consciousness that has been emptied in the way described.

This is Inspiration. Now something streams in that is not a finer, more rarefied matter. It is related to matter as negative is related to positive. The opposite of matter now streams into the human being who has become free of the ether. This is the most important thing we can become aware of. It is not true that spirit is merely an even finer, more etherealized form of matter. If we call matter the positive (it really does not matter if we call it positive or negative; these things are relative), then in terms of the positive we must call spirit negative. It is as if I had the vast fortune of five dollars in my wallet. If I give one away then I will have four left. But say, alternatively, that I accumulate debts. If I owe one dollar then I have less than no dollars.

If through the methods described I have removed the etheric body then I come, not into a still finer ether, but into something that is the opposite of ether, in the same way debts are the opposite of assets. Now I know from my own experience what spirit is. Through inspiration the spirit comes into us and the first thing we experience is what surrounded our soul and spirit before our birth, that is before conception, in the spiritual world. That is, the preexistent life of our soul and spirit. Previously we had seen into the etheric realm back to our birth. Now we look back beyond birth, that is conception, into a world of soul and spirit and reach the point where we can perceive how we were before we descended from spiritual worlds into a physical body taking on a line of heredity.

For inspiration knowledge these things are not thought-out philosophical truth. They are experiences, but experiences which must only be acquired after a preparation such as I have indicated. So the first thing that comes to us when we enter the spiritual world is the truth of the preexistence of the human soul, that is, of the human spirit. We learn now to see the eternal directly.

For many centuries now European humanity has considered eternity from one side only, from the point of view of immortality. Europeans have asked only: What becomes of the soul after it leaves the body at death? Of course, it is the egotistical right of human beings to ask such a question. They are interested in what will follow after death for egotistical reasons. We will presently see that we too can speak about immortality, but immortality is usually discussed for egotistical reasons. People are less interested in what happened before their birth. They say: We are here now. What went on before has value only as history. But knowledge of history that has any value is only possible if we seek knowledge of our existence before birth, that is, before conception.

We need a word in modern languages that makes the eternal complete. We should speak not only of immortality but also of unborn-ness. For eternity consists of both immortality and unborn-ness; furthermore, initiation knowledge discovers unborn-ness before it discovers immortality.

A further stage of development in the direction of the spiritual world can be reached if we strive to free our soul and spiritual activities still further from the support given by the body. We can achieve this freeing by guiding our exercises, meditations, and concentration more in the direction of will-exercises. As a concrete example I would like to describe a simple will exercise that will allow you to study the principle under consideration. In ordinary life we are accustomed to think along with the flow of the world. We let the things come to us as they happen to come. What comes to us first we think first, what comes to us later we think later. And even if in more logical thinking we are not thinking along with the flow of time, still in the background there is the effort to stick with the external, “real,” flow of events and facts. In order to exercise our soul and spiritual forces we must get free from the external flow of events. And a good will exercise is this: We try to think back through the experiences of the day, not as they occurred, from the morning to evening, but backward, from evening to morning, paying attention to the details as much as possible.

Suppose we come to the following in this backward review: We walked up a set of stairs. First we picture ourselves on the top step, then at the one before the top, and so on down to the bottom. We descend the stairs backward. In the beginning we will only be able to visualize backward the episodes of the day's experiences in this way, say from six o'clock to three o'clock, or from twelve to nine, and so on, back to the moment of waking. But gradually we will acquire a kind of technique by means of which, as a matter of fact, in the evening or the next morning we will be able to let a tableau of the day's events, or the events of the day before, pass before our soul in reverse order.

When we are in a position (and everything depends on our achieving this position) to free ourselves entirely from the three dimensional flow of reality, then we will see how a powerful strengthening of our will occurs. The same effect can be achieved if we are able to hear a melody backward or if we can picture a drama of five acts running backward from the fifth, fourth, and so forth back to the first. We strengthen our will inwardly with all of these means, and outwardly we tear it free from its bondage to events in the world of the senses. Other exercises that I have mentioned in previous lectures can be added. We can take stock of ourselves and our habits. We can take ourselves in hand, apply iron will in order, in a few years, to acquire another habit in place of the old. As an example, I mention the fact that in his handwriting everyone has something that reveals his character. Making the effort to acquire another handwriting, one which is not at all similar to the former, requires a powerful, inner strength. Of course, the second handwriting must become just as habitual as the first. That is a small thing. There are many such things through which we can alter the fundamental direction of our will through our own energetic efforts.

In this way gradually we are able to do more than just bring the spiritual world as inspiration into us. With our spirit freed from the body we are really able to immerse ourselves in the other spiritual beings outside us. Genuine spiritual knowing means that we enter into spiritual beings around us when we behold physical things. If we want to know spiritual things we must first get out of ourselves. I have described this freeing of ourselves from the physical. But then we must also acquire the ability to sink ourselves again into spiritual things and beings.

We can only do this after practicing the kinds of exercises just described; then, as a matter of fact, we are no longer disturbed by our own bodies but can immerse ourselves in the spiritual side of things; then the plants no longer merely appear to us, but we are able to dive down into the color itself. We live in the process whereby the plant colors itself. By not only knowing that the chicory growing alongside the road is blue, but by being able to enter into the blossom inwardly and participate in the blue we dwell intuitively in this process. From this point we can extend our knowledge more and more.

From certain symptoms we can tell we have really made progress with such exercises. I would like to mention two, but there are really many. The first symptom consists in this, that we acquire entirely different views concerning the world of morality than we had before. For the pure intellect the moral world is something unreal. Certainly, if he has remained a decent person during the age of materialism, a man feels himself obligated to do what the old traditions prescribe. Yet even if he does not admit it, he thinks to himself that doing the good does not make something happen that is as real as what happens when lightning flashes or when thunder rolls through space. He is not thinking of reality in this sense when he thinks of morality. But when he lives into the spiritual world he becomes aware that the moral order of the world has not only a reality such as is found in the physical world, but actually a higher reality. He gradually comes to understand that this entire age, with its physical ingredients and processes, can decay and be dissolved; but the morality that flows forth from our actions continues to exist in its effects. He becomes aware of the reality of the moral world. The physical and moral worlds, being and becoming are then one. He really experiences the truth that moral laws are also objective laws of the world.

This experience intensifies our sense of responsibility with respect to the world. It gives us an altogether different consciousness, a consciousness much needed by modern humanity. Modern humanity looks at the beginning of the earth, how it was formed from a primal plasma in space, how life, man, and—much like a fata morgana—the world of ideas arose out of this primal matter. Our present-day humanity looks at the cold grave of the universe that entropy will bring us to. According to this materialistic idea, everything in which human beings live will again sink into a great graveyard. Humanity needs knowledge of the moral order in the world, the knowledge that can be achieved through super-sensible sources. This I can only touch on in this lecture.

Another symptom of our progress must be mentioned: the intensified suffering that we experience. We cannot come to intuitive knowledge, to this submerging of ourselves in things external to ourselves, without having gone through an intensified suffering. This suffering is intensified compared with the pain involved in imaginative knowledge, the pain that always arises when we must find our way again into our sympathies and antipathies. The great effort required to find our way back always hurts. The pain now becomes a cosmic co-experiencing of all the suffering that rests upon the ground of existence.

It is easy to ask why the gods, or God, created suffering. Suffering must exist if the world is to arise in its beauty. We have eyes because, to begin with, in a still undifferentiated organism something organic was, so to speak, “dug out” and transformed into the power to see and, then, into the eye. If we were still able today to perceive the tiny, insignificant processes that go on in the retina when we see, then we could perceive that even those processes represent a pain that rests upon the ground of existence. All beauty rests on the foundation of suffering. Beauty can only be developed out of pain. We should be able to feel this pain, this suffering. We can only really find our way into the spiritual by going through pain. To a lesser degree this can already be said for a lower stage of knowledge. Anyone who has acquired even a little knowledge will admit to the following: I am grateful to my destiny for the happiness and joys life has brought me, but my knowledge has only been achieved through my pains, through my suffering.

If this is felt with respect to more elementary knowledge, it can then become an even greater experience when we overcome ourselves, when we find our way through the pain that is felt as cosmic pain to a neutral experience in the spiritual cosmos. We must struggle through to a co-experiencing of the events and essential nature of all things; then intuitive knowledge is present. We are fully within an experience of knowledge that is no longer bound to the body. We can then return to and live again in the sensible world until death but with full knowledge of what it means to be real, to be real in the soul-spiritual outside the body.

If we grasp this experience of intuitive knowledge, then, in a picture, we have knowledge of what happens when we leave the physical body at death, then we know what it means to go through the gate of death. The reality we encounter, that the soul and spirit go over into a world of soul and spirit when they leave the body behind—we experience this reality beforehand when we have ascended to intuitive knowledge. That is, we know what it is like in a world where there is no body to provide support. When we have then brought this knowledge into concepts, we return to the body. But the essential thing is that we learn how to live without a body and acquire thereby the knowledge of what it will be like when we can no longer use our body, when we lay it aside at death and step over into a world of soul and spirit. Once again, this is not a question of philosophical speculation concerning immortality based upon initiation knowledge. It is, I would like to say, an experience, a pre-experience of what is to come. We know what it will be like. We do not experience the full reality of dying, but we experience immortality. This experience also becomes a part of our knowledge.

I have attempted to describe how you can rise through Imagination, Inspiration, and Intuition and how, through this development, you can learn to know yourself in your full reality as a human being. In the body we learn to know ourselves for as long as we are in the body. But we must free our soul and spirit from the body, for only then can the whole human being be free. What we know through the body, through our senses, through thinking based on sense experience and bound up with the body's nervous system—with all this we can know only one part of us. We only learn to know the whole human being if we have the will to ascend to the knowledge that comes from initiation science.

Once again, I would like to stress that once the research has been done, then the results can be understood—just as what astronomers and biologists say about the world can be understood and tested—by anyone approaching them with an unprejudiced mind, with ordinary, healthy human understanding. Then you will find that this testing is the first step of initiation knowledge. Because man does not seek untruth and error but truth, we must first get an impression of the truth in initiation knowledge. Then, as much as destiny makes it possible for us, we will be able to penetrate further and further into the spiritual world.

In our day, and in a higher sense, the words which stood inscribed above the Greek temple as a challenge must be fulfilled: “Man, know thyself.”

Those words certainly did not mean that we should retreat into our inner life. They were, rather, a challenge to search for our being: to search for the essence of immortality, which is found in the body, to search for the essence of unborn-ness, which is found in the immortal spirit, and to search for the mediator between earth, time, and spirit which is the soul. For the true human being consists of body, soul, and spirit. The body can only know the body, the soul can only know the soul, and the spirit can only know the spirit. Therefore, we must try to find the spirit active within us so that the spirit can also be recognized 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.