The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The Supernatural Life of the Eternal in the Human Soul from the Perspective of Spiritual Science (Anthroposophy)

[ 1 ] Dear attendees! When someone, based on the mental images and feelings that arise from our time, hears about the existence of Spiritual Science as it is meant here, as it is to be the basis of this lecture, and even that this Spiritual Science or — as it can also be called — is now building its own, as one might think, peculiarly designed house here nearby — in Dornach — for its cultivation, they may understandably feel a kind of annoyance and hostility. For it is so obvious to believe that this Spiritual Science or anthroposophy itself appears to be opposed to legitimate cultural needs and achievements that are deeply rooted in the human soul. And such opposition, such annoyance, is understandable, because in order to truly understand the true nature of this Spiritual Science or anthroposophy, it is necessary to delve into it a little, because it is less a different worldview — such as those that exist or are present in the present — from the outside, from concepts foreign to it.

[ 2 ] At first, one may indeed regard anthroposophy or Spiritual Science, with all that is connected with it, as something unnecessary, something superfluous. Through its own essence, one will become convinced that from it must spring the view that it must be placed as a necessity precisely in our present time, in our present age. Only those who really take a close look at the present, in which human beings live with their longings and needs, can form a judgment about this, because the present is very, very different from past times. And just as every age produces its own special achievements in other areas of life, so too in the spiritual realm.

[ 3 ] One need only consider what people in centuries not so long ago knew about nature and its essence, or rather, how they had to think differently about nature and its essence than we do today. One need only consider the great achievements, the tremendous progress that has been made in the scientific field in particular. And one need not even consider that these achievements, this progress, are not merely the property, the possession of a small number of learned people — they only appear to be —, that what has truly been achieved for humanity in this way can be seen today in our entire lives, that it lives everywhere, that not only the educated, but also the simplest person is placed in a world order, in a historical becoming that is completely permeated by that what science has brought to humanity over the last three to four centuries.

[ 4 ] And with this introduction of completely different lines of thought, other questions have arisen and continue to arise in the soul than those of earlier ages. Modern spiritual science or anthroposophy are initially addressed by modern Spiritual Science or anthroposophy. It does not contradict the advances of science in any way, but in laboratories, in clinics, everywhere where life is observed in the modern way, questions arise that the deeper meaning of the human soul must ask itself, and which can only be answered by modern Spiritual Science. Thus, it is the newer development itself that poses these questions to this Science.

[ 5 ] And likewise, one can say that the entire social life of human beings, the entire way in which people relate to one another today, has changed compared to previous centuries. And as human beings progress in historical development, they must continually give birth to ideas from their own soul life in a different way, ideas that regulate and make social life possible. Whereas in earlier times the nature of this social coexistence was much more instinctive, it must now, precisely because of everything is flowing into modern times, it must become more and more conscious. And this will be the signature of the development of humanity that is now beginning, that the instinctive way in which people still often indulge today with regard to the ideas they have about human coexistence, about education and other aspects of human coexistence, that these ideas must spring from a much more conscious foundation. In this ground will in turn be illuminated by Spiritual Science.

[ 6 ] Thus it is born out of science, out of social life, in short, from the life of modern times in general, and it seeks to answer not questions that it arbitrarily invents, but questions that are posed to it as a matter of course and that are there if one only wants to see them, if one only does not want to close one's mind to them. It is only too understandable that opposition to such activities arises from various quarters, from scientific, religious, and other quarters. The fact that Spiritual Science itself is not so predisposed that this opposition is justified will be part of the content of the lecture I will give the day after tomorrow, which I will take the liberty of giving here.

[ 7 ] Today I would like to go into more detail about the foundations of Spiritual Science itself, about what Spiritual Science or anthroposophy has to say about what we can grasp in the temporary life of human beings as its deeper foundation, as the eternal, supersensible life of the human soul. And in particular, I would like to talk about the sources from which Spiritual Science draws; because it is precisely these sources that are the subject of the most diverse misconceptions. So today I would like to speak about Spiritual Science or anthroposophy purely from its own perspective and touch on its relationship to other cultural currents the day after tomorrow.

[ 8 ] First, I would like to show how Spiritual Science seeks to approach what can be called the supersensible life in the human soul. The sources from which Spiritual Science draws are not something arbitrarily conceived, not something drawn from, one might say, unknown, fantastical depths. Rather, they open up through intimate inner processes of human soul life. And what Spiritual Science really strives for is not a knowledge that is easily acquired, that is based, so to speak, on what one has come to have every day, what one can have if one only directs one's gaze to what is already at hand. Spiritual Science or anthroposophy is something that, as such, as a real science, wants to be worked out through work that is no less arduous, even if it is thoroughly inner work, than working in the laboratory, than working in the clinic, than working at the observatory or in other scientific institutions through which one penetrate the secrets of nature and its becoming. Only the work of Spiritual Science is entirely supersensible.

[ 9 ] But how does one even come to want Spiritual Science? That must be the first question. Is there anything in the ordinary, natural, normal course of human life — I am always speaking of people today — that has led to a striving for Spiritual Science? There are two insights that can be gained from ordinary life, even if not everyone gains them today; but they live much more in the longings of today's souls than one might think. Everything pushes toward these insights, even if they are only expressed in isolated cases.

[ 10 ] In everyday life and also in science, we speak of our ego, of what is our actual self; we also speak of our thinking, we speak of our feeling, we speak of our impulses of will. If one now approaches what lies behind these words “I” or “self” or “thinking, feeling, willing,” the further we want to think, the further we move away from ordinary everyday life and from what lies behind these words; we do not come closer to it, but move further and further away from what lies behind these words. A consciousness arises in the soul that was not present in older times to the degree that it is present today, precisely because of the flourishing of science and modern life. This flourishing of science and modern life makes the inner life of the soul more veiled, more obscure, when one wants to investigate its nature, rather than enlightening one in any way . Occasionally, I said, voices arise that recognize this, but they are becoming more and more numerous; and what has only occurred in individual philosophical minds until now is increasingly becoming a feeling, a sensation, a meaning of life for the widest circles. When we hear what Hume says — the philosopher Hume — who inspired Kant so much, when we hear what he says about the human ego:

No matter how deeply I look into my soul, I cannot really discover what I call the self, what people call the self. When I look inside myself, I find mental images that I have gained from perceptions in the outside world, I find pleasure and displeasure, pain and joy that I have developed in relation to the outside world; I find certain aspirations, but I find no self anywhere.

And he goes on to say:

If one were to really believe that one could find this self so easily in one's thoughts, then it would actually have to be present during sleep as well; for it is impossible that the self is not present from the moment one falls asleep until the moment one wakes up. And yet we know nothing about this self, not even anything about its mental images, feelings, and desires. So it must be something completely different from what can be found in ordinary mental life.

[ 11 ] This is what an isolated thinker said in Hume's time, which is now long behind us. But these thinkers have become more and more numerous, even though they are even less taken into account by humanity today. The deeper one delves into everything that natural science, for example, can tell us about human beings themselves, the less and less one finds the self, and this will become clearer and clearer.

[ 12 ] One can now try to think about why this is so. If one tries to think about why this is so, one finds that the I during daytime life is in fact nothing other than what it is during nighttime life. As paradoxical and strange as this may sound, the I, of which we know nothing when we sleep, is exactly the same and just as effective in us as the I that we believe we know during our waking daytime existence. And if we continue to think about our mental images, even about what we know in our mental images about our feelings and our will, then we come to the conclusion, purely through intimate inner soul processes, through comparisons, through serious, sharp thinking, that that during our waking daily life we have nothing else in our mental images but such images as we have when dreams arise from sleep. Once again, I am saying something extremely paradoxical. But a thorough investigation, a truly thorough reflection on the life of the soul, shows us that what we have of the ego and of mental images in our waking consciousness is comparable to a mirror image that is only there as long as we stand in front of the mirror and is no longer there when we are not standing in front of the mirror. In our mental images and also in our ego consciousness, we have images that are very similar to the images of dream life. As I said, this is paradoxical. But for those who learn true self-observation, who learns true self-observation, who gradually seeks an answer from inner experience that satisfies the real need to question the difference between dreaming and the waking, bright consciousness with which we act in the world.

[ 13 ] When we acquire the ability to look properly at our mental images and our will, we find that when we awaken from sleep or from a dream, the character of our mental images does not essentially change, but that waking differs from sleeping in that during waking we integrate ourselves into life with our will—which now controls our body, which carries our body into the world—with our will. What actually rests from the life of the soul during sleep is the will. We do not need our eyes, because the will is paralyzed during sleep; and the same is true of the other senses. It really only takes intimate inner soul experiences to realize that when we wake up, the will strikes like lightning into what otherwise only appears to us in chaotic dream images, and that through this striking of the will, which initially comes up from unfathomable depths , we are able to no longer simply let the mental images of our imagination run their course as they please, but to control them in such a way that they become images of the outer world with which we have been connected since waking up through the will with which we place ourselves in this world. . Thus, what rests in the soul during sleep is seized by the will upon awakening. And only then is the life of imagination, the I, consciously placed into the external world.

[ 14 ] For this reason — we will be able to talk more about this the day after tomorrow — Schopenhauer felt the way he did about the will and about the actual reality of the will, and for this reason he felt the way he did about the dreamlike nature of the life of imagination. Everything connected with the experiences of waking up, all of this results when one gradually educates oneself — and we will talk about this education today — gradually educates oneself to really look inwardly at what otherwise actually only flashes by unconsciously in life, as I would say, such as waking up and falling asleep.

[ 15 ] Spiritual Science or anthroposophy now leads us to recognize the possibility that, out of ordinary daily life, a further awakening, similar to the awakening from sleep that I have described. And just as a person knows, when they experience their dream images as they rise from sleep, that they are caught up in a world — or rather, they know, when they wake up from a dream, that they are enclosed in a world in which they can only be enclosed because their body is at rest and because they are completely alone with what is happening in their body during the dream and why they experience this or that in sleep, just as people with common sense know that only what they know from waking life can shed light on their sleep and dream life. and why he experiences this or that in his sleep, just as a person with a sound mind knows that only what he knows from waking life can shed light on the life of sleep and dreams, so anthroposophy or Spiritual Science leads us to recognize a further awakening from ordinary life in external physical reality, and to further recognize that what we see and experience in ordinary physical reality can be explained from another spiritual reality, just as dream life can be explained from ordinary waking reality. That is why Spiritual Science speaks of a difference between ordinary reality and the consciousness that the soul has of this reality, and another consciousness that looks into the spiritual world. Just as everyday consciousness must speak to human beings of a difference between the fantastic dream images and what is experienced as reality by the human soul in connection, in the connection of will, with reality, just as dream consciousness is replaced upon awakening by thinking consciousness, by consciousness permeated by the will, which transforms the inner images that arise into images of the outer world, so thinking consciousness relates to what I would now like to call, in the sense of Spiritual Science or anthroposophy, contemplative consciousness. This thinking consciousness relates to seeing consciousness in the same way that dream reality relates to waking reality.

[ 16 ] Now the further question arises: What helps us to recognize such a special, seeing consciousness, to which we can awaken from ordinary consciousness? Dear attendees! When the questions of external reality, as they underlie science, become serious questions of the soul in a deeper sense than they are in ordinary science, then many soul experiences arise that illuminate the otherwise unfathomable depths of the human soul. Our entire relationship to the outside world thus becomes a question.

[ 17 ] Science explores this relationship to the outside world. It seeks to recognize the laws of this outside world. But it must recognize that our entire relationship to the outside world is mediated by our sensory perception. This sensory perception, which at first appears to be something so natural to human beings, becomes a great mystery, a serious problem for those who learn to think about what this perception actually is, and it becomes a serious question in the following way. How does this perception come about? We, who know everything we know from external nature, from external life — how does it come about? It comes about only because external nature, as it were, pushes something of its own essence into us, sends something of its own essence into us. You, dear audience, can best create a mental image of this inflow of external reality into our inner being — first into our physical organization, which is, however, only the expression of our soul life — you can create this mental image when you look at the eye. Look at this eye, how it is embedded in the muscle and bone system, look at it, how it is in a certain sense a world unto itself, this eye, how processes take place inside this eye that are very similar to processes in the external world. The physicist approaches this eye and finds components in it that remind him of some components he also has in his physical laboratory. He finds that these components cause the light that enters through the eye to causes certain processes that are similar to external processes. Thus, something happens within our organism that underlies our vision. And actually, we live first and foremost with what is happening in our organism. Without nature, as it were, [continued], processes that take place within itself and also within us, without which we could know nothing about nature through perception.

[ 18 ] And just as it is with the eye, so it is — albeit perhaps in a somewhat more complicated way — with all our senses. Nature lives its way into us, and so when we observe nature, as natural science does, we first experience what nature does within ourselves, how nature continues within us. This confuses those who want to understand how he, as a human being, is actually connected to the outside world; for he realizes that he initially experiences only what nature allows to flow into him, that nature must not act upon him, but must act within him, so that he can know something about it. Man must first generate processes within himself in order to perceive something of nature. But this shows that all our perceptions are something we ourselves have first brought about, and that behind these perceptions lies true nature, behind all kinds of perceptions lies true nature, the true essence of being, and that what we ourselves form during our perceptions is like a blanket that stretches over true nature.

[ 19 ] What I am developing before you has become the so-called epistemological question for many, many thinkers of recent times, and has led to a veritable labyrinth. However, the full meaning of what has been said can only be experienced if one experiences it sensitively, if one really feels how the external world of perception is something that hides the true nature of the world around us. Perception is a blanket that we spread out, woven from what must go on within us in order for us to perceive the external world at all. So we weave a blanket, and external reality is hidden from us.

[ 20 ] What about inner reality? It is precisely inner experience that leads us to recognize that inner reality does not appear to our soul as it really is. If our perception obscures the outer world, then one could say that the inner world is hidden from our mental images, from our ordinary soul life. And that is the first experience that makes anthroposophy necessary: the recognition that the outer nature of the world is obscured by perception, that the inner nature of our own soul life is hidden and only emerges, as I I have indicated, in images that are only there as long as they appear, like mirror images. Just as the mirror image is not true reality, but only points to true reality, yet still points to it, so what appears in our ego, in our thinking and feeling, in short, in our entire mental image, is only an image, only an indication of what lives in our soul, for what lives in our soul also lives during our waking daily life in a certain way, sleeping within us or at least dreaming within us. It lives dreaming because we can never fully bring up in this ordinary consciousness what actually drives us in ordinary life as dominated by the will.

[ 21 ] We get up, we go about our daily work, we do this or that — all expressions of will. But this will never appears in isolation in ordinary consciousness; it appears in the movement of the hand, in the movement of the feet; it appears in our actions; it is connected with our organism. And only by perceiving how this will expresses itself in the mobility, in the actions of our organism, do we gain images of what we actually are, of what actually moves when we walk, when we move our hands, and when we do everything else, including speaking, for example; in images of what actually lives in the moving, acting human being, we experience ourselves. Image is our I, image in the sense of a dream life permeated by the will.

[ 22 ] But it is precisely that which is in harmony with this flow of will in reality, in external reality, that is our ordinary thinking, mental images, and judging. So we can say: In ordinary life, there is a contrast between the inkling of an external world that is covered by our perception and the inkling of a deep life within us that is hidden, because it cannot appear to us in its original form, but only as it appears in ordinary consciousness, like a reflection in a mirror, pointing only to the one who stands before it. In the same way, ordinary mental images in the life of the soul can be experienced as pointing to something that they depict, but not as existing in this depicted being itself. At first, they are like a double, unknown life. The seeing consciousness that can arise through awakening from ordinary daily life first clarifies the connection between the unknown within us and the unknown outside, between the hidden external reality and the concealed inner reality.

[ 23 ] How, then, is this consciousness awakened? It is based, dear audience, on intimate as well as I would say uncomfortable inner soul processes, just as what we have to investigate in the laboratory or in the clinic or at the observatory about the secrets of outer nature is based on often unknown manipulations. There are two things about which one must first gain a completely different mental image, a completely different inner experience, if one wants to look into the two unknown regions described, than one has in ordinary life. The first is thinking. I have often referred to these things, including here in public lectures. Today I want to refer to these things again from a different point of view than in previous lectures.

[ 24 ] If one wants to conduct research in Spiritual Science, one must gain a different view and different inner rules of conduct than one has in ordinary consciousness about the thought as it first lives in us, about this whole web of ideas within us. In ordinary consciousness, thought is the mental image that arises from perception, from experiences of the world; and when we have sensed the perceptions, the experiences of the world through a thought, when we have brought them to mind through a thought, we have initially achieved for our outer daily consciousness what is necessary for the maintenance of outer life and also for outer scientific knowledge.

[ 25 ] But one must gain a completely different view of this thought and the whole life of imagination in order to penetrate the world of Spiritual Science. Thought becomes method, not experience, but prerequisite, inner means of education. In external life, thought is the effect that external nature has on us, that the whole of life has on us. In order to arrive at Spiritual Science, thought must become a real inner cause. One must learn to live with thought, not looking first at how thought reflects the external world, but at how thought is experienced internally, how one can live with thought, with a mental image. One must acquire such peace of mind, such inner calmness of the soul, that one learns to live with the thought.

[ 26 ] One could easily believe that such an experience with thoughts, as I have described in my book, “How to Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds,” is born out of some kind of arbitrariness, out of some kind of fantasy. I just want to say: truly, none of this is born out of arbitrariness! You can find more detailed instructions on how to achieve what I am about to describe in my book “How to Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds” or in my “Occult Science.” I would now like to point out more what the soul goes through in these inner activities described there in order to enter the spiritual world. What is meant here is certainly not based on unhealthy assumptions. Spiritual Science, as it is meant here in these lectures, does not proceed from anything fantastical, opposed to science, hypothetical, or otherwise fantastical in the world, nor does it proceed, as one might easily believe, from anything similar to spiritualism, nor does it proceed from a merely subjective mysticism. For those who grasp the characteristic points of this modern soul life, as it has developed in full harmony with external reality, precisely for those who grasp this modern soul life where it has expressed itself in its healthiest points, it is precisely for them that these methods of Spiritual Science will enter the realm of knowledge.

[ 27 ] And so, although there is much that could be pointed out, I would like to point out a starting point from which you, dear audience, can see how the pursuit of Spiritual Science arises from the healthiest spiritual life. I would like to point to something that can be found in its beginnings in Goethe. But one must have the courage to admit to oneself, even to Goethe, that what appears in him are beginnings that must be developed further and further.

[ 28 ] One of the interesting things about Goethe is that he did not pursue physics — where he did engage with it in his " Theory of Colors" — he did not pursue physics in the usual way, dealing only with what is separate from human inner experience. Rather, what is significant about Goethe is that he brought physics up to the level of the immediate spiritual experience of the human being. External physics seeks to investigate: How does the red color emerge from certain things, how does the blue color emerge? I do not want to go into that here today, because the discussions that can be held within modern physics have not yet been deepened. They will lead to a completely different recognition of Goethe's theory of colors and Goethe's physics than is currently the case; but I do not want to go into that, even though I have been engaged in defending Goethe's physics for decades. However, I would like to point out how the path that Goethe took also leads us today, with regard to external physical perceptions, to seek the spiritual life, how it works and lives, while we perceive externally. After Goethe endeavored to investigate how red and blue arise in external physical existence, he ascended to the spiritual experience of seeing the color red or the color blue. And it is interesting to read in the last chapter of Goethe's Theory of Colors what he calls “The Sensual-Moral Effect of Color.” I will cite just two examples from this. Goethe says about blue:

Blue gives us a feeling of coldness, just as it reminds us of shadows. We know that it is derived from black.

Rooms that are wallpapered in pure blue appear spacious, but actually empty and cold. Blue glass shows objects in a sad light.

[ 29 ] Goethe thus penetrates so deeply that he does not merely look at the color as it presents itself as an external perception, but rather how the soul lives with the color, how the soul experiences what it otherwise only experiences internally among many other complex things: sadness, joy, coldness. Goethe penetrates to the point of truly connecting the soul with external perception. And so he says:

The effect of this color

— the color red —

is as unique as its nature. It gives an impression of both seriousness and dignity as well as grace and charm.

— You see how the soul pours itself into external perception —;

— it does so in its dark, condensed state, the latter in its light, diluted state

— namely the color red.

[ 30 ] This is a beginning, an endeavor to engage more with the soul life in external perception, in this veil of external reality, than is possible in ordinary daily life — a beginning to a development of the soul life that human beings can truly undertake. When human beings explore what they can experience in external perception, and then gains the strength, the inner strength, to disregard the external experience, the external impression, and to live solely in what lives in the soul while the external impression is active, solely in that — when they acquire such inner security that they can truly see one thing in the other, and also without the other, then the beginning of a soul life is given, which must be carried on further and further in order to finally awaken this inner soul life, which otherwise slumbers, just as the soul slumbers in relation to ordinary everyday consciousness in the life of sleep, this ordinary soul life.

[ 31 ] What Goethe did in writing “The Sensual-Moral Effect of Color” is nothing less than the beginning of the awakening of the soul life into a spiritual world. But the methods described by Goethe as a beginning must be developed further and further. Then, if the soul has patience and perseverance, with all that it is, to develop itself as can be experienced in perceptions, not through perceptions — then an inner, intense experience penetrates the soul, then thoughts and mental images lose the character they otherwise have; then an inner experience penetrates this world of thoughts, which is as strong and intense as grief and joy, as suffering and pain and pleasure. Then something is awakened in the life of the soul that otherwise slumbers in ordinary daily life. As paradoxical as it may seem, little by little one can experience that all thinking is permeated by inner life, as if it were shot through with inner life.

[ 32 ] Let me say something quite paradoxical, but which really is the result of inner experience: we add, we subtract, we calculate in this way. In ordinary daily life, adding, subtracting, adding, and subtracting are things with which little feeling is associated. If the soul life is developed as I have suggested, then one feels intensely within oneself — as I said, as paradoxical as it may sound, I must say it because it points to certain secrets of the inner soul life — then addition permeates you like a revival, like something becoming fruitful; and subtraction permeates you with a feeling like the extinguishing of a light, like the withering away of something. Addition becomes a feeling of creation, subtraction becomes a feeling of passing away. It sounds paradoxical, but it is precisely in such paradoxes that one can see how, by becoming accustomed to meditating on what can be experienced internally in one's thoughts — the details, as I said, can be found in the books mentioned — how, through this inner experience, life penetrates, permeating what would otherwise be dead, abstract thought. It is as if something dead were permeated by an inner life springing forth, so it is when one enlivens thinking in this way. And it can be enlivened in this way.

[ 33 ] But then, when one enlivens thinking in this way, this thinking, as something alive, truly penetrates what I earlier referred to as the ceiling. Only the senses create this ceiling; they alone shut us off. And since ordinary abstract thinking, ordinary mental images, only provide images of the outside world, only reflect on what the senses provide — since ordinary thinking does not stimulate inner life — it cannot penetrate the ceiling. Thinking penetrates the ceiling only when it is enlivened, when it is made stronger, more intense, when it becomes as soulful as the things we experience in life, the facts that approach us. Thinking thereby gains inner reality. As such, it naturally also requires more effort on our part. It fills us with an inner life that we would otherwise be empty of. And it is precisely this emptiness that conditions our outer consciousness for daily life. But in order to gain insight, it is necessary that we take in this experience of thinking.

[ 34 ] If one tries in this way — by resting on certain thoughts, by repeatedly bringing certain thoughts into consciousness, or by quietly surrendering to thoughts and watching what the thought does in one — if you practice this, then you come to a completely different point of view toward all thinking; then you come to view your inner life of thought, your life of imagination, in such a way that something gradually develops. This comes about, this develops, just as a child grows from small to large. In meditation, in which the inner life of thought is developed, what I am about to describe comes about by itself. Something like a feeling of abandonment develops in relation to the inner life of imagination, a feeling that the thought has been freed internally, that it can destroy something and allow something else to arise, whereas otherwise one lives in thought in such a way that one says: one thing is right, the other is wrong. when one develops life in thought, one develops such an inner experience that one knows of certain thoughts: these are fruitful, they contain reality, one allows oneself these. Other thoughts are not only logically incorrect, but one feels them with pain; one knows they are unfruitful, they are deadening. And you enter into a life of thought in which fruitful, enlivening, and deadening thoughts play together. You see how life enters into this life of thought, which is otherwise a pictorial life of imagination.

[ 35 ] Something then fills our inner being in relation to the life of thought, which we otherwise only accept in our outer consciousness in morality, in ethics. As in morality, in ethics, we feel responsible for what we do or do not do. And this feeling of responsibility, which is rooted in the conscience, is something special in our soul life. Under its influence, we do good and evil; we do one thing and refrain from doing another. Under the influence of those inner soul exercises I have discussed, this feeling carries itself into our inner life of thought. We do not allow ourselves certain thoughts, we allow ourselves others; in short, we carry morality and ethics — not as it is in outer life, but in yet another sense — into our life of thought.

[ 36 ] In this way we gradually come to know the life of thought in general, for this life of thought only reveals itself in awakened, contemplative consciousness. It is not exactly easy to get to know this life of thought. For when we truly live through the thought in such a way that we live with it, that we make it concrete and alive in our consciousness, we notice something that ordinary consciousness does not need at all, but which is necessary for contemplative consciousness, for truly knowing consciousness. Just as we have the thought when we grasp it for the outer world as a result of what we perceive, we cannot really use it to approach the true life of the soul. The thought, once we have grasped it, grasped it inwardly, so to speak, in the eye of the soul, and then let it go again, is at first of no use for exploring the life of the soul; from this we cannot recognize the life of the soul. One believes this in ordinary consciousness, but one cannot recognize the life of the soul from this thought. This thought must first undergo a certain process in our soul; it must be lowered into the unconscious and must — for one thought for a certain length of time, for another thought for a different length of time — rest for a certain time in the life of the soul; in a sense: it must be forgotten, it must be removed from consciousness and later brought back into consciousness, then it appears like a newly born thought. And a large part of the intimate inner processes, the inner processes that are supposed to lead to Spiritual Science, is based on learning to observe this strange thing that happens to the thought as a change when the thought first sinks into the unconscious and rises again, that one learns to observe this, that one learns to experience it, learns to experience the difference between a thought grasped in the present and a thought that has, so to speak, traveled the path into the soul's underworld and rises again from this soul's underworld; and then, when one thinks in the present and allows past thoughts to rise alongside present thinking — one acquires this ability. And if, in addition — which would take us too far afield today — past thinking occurs for every kind of thinking before a certain time, then the spiritual world is revealed between thought and thought; between the present thought and the past thought that has made the way I have spoken of, the individual thought never reveals a true reality; it remains an image.

[ 37 ] Only when it encounters in the present thought the thought that has been processed by the soul life, that has been enlivened by the soul life for a certain time, and confronts it, the present thought, then the vision into the reality of the soul is kindled between the present thought and the thought revived from the past. One gradually acquires the ability — just as a certain amount of time is necessary for one thought to rest, as it were, in the depths of the soul life — one acquires this ability for other thoughts. All this must be experienced inwardly, all this must be truly lived through inwardly just as the chemist must first learn what he needs to know in order to carry out his chemical experiments in the laboratory. I would say that there is a complexity underlying those processes that turn the human being into an apparatus, a spiritual-soul apparatus, in order to perceive spiritual-soul real life. Thus, the thought must, in a sense, be divided in two, and the present must be perceived together with the past; then, as if by positive and negative electricity, that which is able to shine into the spiritual world is ignited between the two.

[ 38 ] One must undertake the same inner development with the will as with the mind, with that will which is otherwise bound to physicality in ordinary everyday consciousness, only appearing because physicality is, in a sense, its tool. That is why the purest, highest expression of ordinary will — freedom — is so difficult to explore, the idea of freedom, the reality of the freedom of the will is so difficult to explore because we never have the will in our mental image in its pure form, but always bound to something else. And just as we cannot perceive hydrogen when it is in water unless we separate it, so we cannot explore the will when it appears in ordinary consciousness, bound to our physicality, appearing together with this physicality alone. Just as one must enliven thinking, must, as it were, flash through it, must flow through it with the lightning of life, so the will must be detached from physicality; it must, in a sense, be spiritualized, the will. This, in turn, is achieved through certain exercises, is achieved through exercises that lead back to certain beginnings.

[ 39 ] And here I would like to point out some thoroughly healthy beginnings in modern spiritual life, in order to create a mental image of the fact that spiritual research methods do not arise from pathological foundations, but rather from the healthiest ones. And if I may make a personal remark, just as an aside, let me say this, dear audience: I myself regard what I present as Spiritual Science as the result of what has emerged from my decades of inner experience with Goethe's worldview. And it is from this Goethean worldview, not from any fantasy or subjective mysticism, that I seek what I have presented as Spiritual Science. But as I said, this is only an interwoven remark, which is also intended to point out that what is meant by Spiritual Science or anthroposophy is based on thoroughly sound and natural foundations. For this modern soul life, as we must seek it, naturally flowed first through personalities such as Goethe, as long as it had to flow instinctively through genius, not through [training].

[ 40 ] Now, as we have seen, Goethe brought physical perception to the experience of the soul. But he also carried the experience of the soul out into external reality as something temporal. This happened in his idea of metamorphosis, which I will only hint at here, in that idea of metamorphosis which showed for the first time what every natural scientist, every true natural scientist, now recognizes about the plant world, showed how in the petals of plants, and also in every organ of plants, there is nothing else at work than transformed green leaves, how the whole life of the plant is based on the metamorphosis of what appears in the green leaf is transformed into the colored petal or also into the pistil and the like. Goethe could only achieve this by seeing, as it were, in the plant what lives in it, related to what lives in man as will. Goethe did not do this in a philosophical way, like Schopenhauer, who did not get very far afterwards; Goethe did it imbued with healthy, vibrant insights. Thus, he did not simply anthropomorphically transfer the will to plants, but calmly and objectively observed what changes in the plant, what transforms from one thing into another; thus, the flower became for him the transformed leaf.

[ 41 ] So too can we regard this, like the other that has been mentioned with reference to external perception, as the beginning that can now be further developed spiritually and mentally. And again, I have tried in the books mentioned to give more precise, more intimate instructions on how the will can be developed internally so that it takes on a different form, a form that relates to the will we know in ordinary consciousness, like a flower that unfolds and spiritualizes certain components into color relationships — but I use this word only comparatively — from the leaf, we can detach the will so that it is no longer bound to its physical instrument, but pours itself into the inner soul life. Precisely through I have already mentioned, that sense of responsibility in the life of the soul, that inner moralization of the life of the soul, we will change the logic that only distinguishes between true and false, so that we feel committed to one thought because it is fruitful; we do not feel committed to the other thought, but on the contrary, we will drop it, because it is deadly, because it is destructive. When we permeate our inner life with a sense of responsibility, with a kind of innermost spiritualization, then the will breaks free from its physical instrument, and just as thought gains life through the inner processes described above, so the will gains consciousness. A consciousness of an infinitely stronger kind develops, the consciousness that is now needed to achieve what has already been described, for one thing always leads to another. When thought is divided, consciousness needs, when present mental images are to be contrasted with previous mental images, it needs a different, deeper consciousness than ordinary everyday consciousness. So when the will is permeated by what I have described today in a suggestive way — more precisely in my books — then one acquires the ability to truly awaken inwardly from everyday consciousness to a seeing consciousness, just as one awakens from dream consciousness to reality in ordinary waking. With seeing consciousness, one awakens to another, spiritual reality. But the whole thing rests on a thoroughly healthy foundation; for one need only remember how — albeit in a different expression and more instinctively than may be the case today, more than a hundred years after Goethe — Goethe, reading and studying Kant, pointed to this contemplative consciousness. It is well known how Kant, attempting to answer the question from ordinary consciousness: How does one penetrate the spiritual world? Kant actually answered that one cannot penetrate it, that only a consciousness that is actually a contemplative power of judgment can penetrate it, not the ordinary thinking power of judgment of human beings. But Kant calls the striving for such a contemplative power of judgment an “adventure of reason.”

[ 42 ] Goethe, however, says: If one experiences what one can experience in relation to the moral activities of human beings, what one can experience in relation to the idea of freedom, in relation to other moral ideas, in relation to what Kant calls the “categorical imperative,” then one can further experience that what Kant — he ironically calls him the “Old Man of Königsberg” — what Kant calls an “adventure of reason” on his critical tripod, that one can courageously endure it. Goethe thus speaks of the fact that this vision can be achieved; it is not an adventure of reason. And what is a beginning with Goethe can be developed further and further.

[ 43 ] Only one must, in a sense — and now only for the recognition of the spiritual world, not for ordinary everyday life — one must, in a sense, take a different attitude toward thought and toward will, namely toward the expression of will, which is called judgment, than is the case in ordinary consciousness. In ordinary consciousness, we judge, and this will also lives in our judgment; but this judgment becomes something completely different for higher knowledge, for spiritual knowledge. When the soul develops intimately as described, one gradually, I would say more and more, develops an inner reserve toward judgment, an inner reserve. In life, we are quick to judge; we have to be quick [to make a decision; for the reality] of spiritual life, precisely the opposite soul mood is necessary. Therefore, those who wish to gradually immerse themselves in this soul mood, which is necessary for spiritual experience, would do best to continue this spiritual life, not merely the external experience [unclear passage]. The two must not be mixed together, [just as] dreams and waking reality must not be mixed together. [Gap]

[ 44 ] Those who want to gain true knowledge of the spiritual world try to suspend judgment and decision-making as much as possible; they gradually become interested in how people can relate to the things of the world in different ways depending on their circumstances. I will take an example from the field of knowledge itself:

[ 45 ] There is a person who is materialistic in life; he explains the whole world in materialistic terms. Anyone who is able to respond lovingly to what a materialist can say about the world from his point of view will find much that is good in it. But if one engages with the opposite case, the idealistic-spiritual case that someone may have based on their assumptions, then one will find what they can find there. And then one can settle in, not as one is compelled to judge, but as one judges from this or that point of view. In a sense, one can educate oneself not to judge, but to expect judgment from the world. And more and more, one comes to decide as little as possible from one's present consciousness, but to ask oneself everywhere: What in the realm of long-past experiences can be compared to what is now being experienced? More and more, one comes to want not to make theories or hypotheses, but to place what is experienced objectively back into the experience.

[ 46 ] Goethe speaks very beautifully in his physics not of natural laws, but of primordial phenomena, of primordial appearances. He does not want to link what is physically experienced and seen to abstract laws at all, but to understand it by comparing it with the simplest phenomena that can be experienced again. In this way, one wants experience to pour out, the experience to pour out over what is being experienced, and that as little as possible is judged on the basis of inner initiative. In this way, one gradually acquires the ability, I would say, to listen more to life than to speak into it, because with ordinary judgment in everyday life, one speaks into life; one names things, so to speak. One gradually learns to say as little as possible on one's own initiative and to listen to life, which is, figuratively speaking, to hear life.

[ 47 ] In this way, one gains the ability to detach the will from its ordinary contexts and spiritualize it, so that it develops its own consciousness, which now contains something quite different from the mental image of ordinary consciousness. As one progresses further and further along the path I have only hinted at, one feels more and more filled with inner spirituality. And now one experiences that the one can unite with the other, that the consciousness of the ordinary day is truly extinguished, just as the dream disappears in comparison to daytime consciousness, and that that which what comes to life in the will as a different consciousness is able to look at what arises in thought when thought ignites thought, as I have described. There one looks in. That is, one is no longer oneself with one's ordinary ego, but one is with the developed consciousness for the spiritual, with the developed seeing consciousness.

[ 48 ] Then one looks into the eternal powers of the human soul by developing more and more what I have described, by continuing on the path. The only thing that matters is that one patiently continues as one has begun. If one continues in this way, then one gradually acquires the ability not only to live with one's present soul — I have shown how one can let one's thoughts sink down into the depths, as it were, into the underworld of soul life — but one gradually comes to illuminate these depths of soul life with the soul itself, and you come to know something within yourself that you would never experience in ordinary everyday consciousness; you come to let something within yourself come to life that you have forgotten in this ordinary everyday consciousness in all normal cases.

[ 49 ] You know, dear audience, that we have forgotten for ordinary daytime consciousness what took place in the very earliest times of our physical life. We can only remember back to a certain point in time; what lies before that can only be told to us, because we do not look back on the soul life that preceded this moment. This soul life is shrouded in soul darkness, just as sleep is shrouded in soul darkness. The child therefore also sleeps in its first period of life, leading its life in a similar way to how sleep leads life. The soul, however, lives; but it lives differently than it does later, when it fully uses its will, when it consciously uses its will . The soul lives in the first years asleep, so that the organism first prepares what will later be needed to perceive the world and to intervene in the world itself. And when the soul works on the body, when the forces — whether you call them spiritual or whatever — that underlie human beings work on human beings, then they cannot be perceived at the same time, then they cannot achieve anything at the same time. . Therefore, during sleep, when our organism is working, we at least replace what has been consumed during the day — [what must be replaced] — therefore we have no consciousness there. But in the recollection — if I may use this expression — which is brought about by the thought being pursued into the depths of the soul's nature, as I have described, the ability gradually emerges to grasp the soul where it cannot be grasped in ordinary consciousness, to grasp it in that being that was still active in the organism, so active that it could give nothing to conscious outer life, that one cannot remember it with ordinary consciousness.

[ 50 ] Just as in outer space, when we want to see something that we cannot see from a distance, we have to go closer, so we have to grasp the soul, looking through time at what we have learned — looking through time to a point in time other than the present. All the mental images that we remember in ordinary consciousness live in another point in time; we must look back to the time before the soul, so to speak, was born. But at that moment, when we arrive, as it were, with our gaze on the soul life that underlies our still unconscious childhood, at that moment we learn to recognize what this soul life was.

[ 51 ] It is a shocking sight. It is a sight, a spiritual sight, that truly presents something to ordinary consciousness, just as ordinary consciousness presents something to the chaotic, pictorial life of dreams. For just as one knows in ordinary consciousness that external reality is covered up, as soon as one arrives at that childhood soul, as I have just characterized it, with a contemplative gaze, one knows that this gaze is now directed and can be directed at everything that is already beginning in the organism at the moment when the organism begins to intervene in the outside world with its will. Where the human being does not become so conscious that he can remember the experiences, everything that later brings death begins at the same time — regardless of what kind of death, whether it is death in earlier years or natural death later —, which brings death into our lives. Due to time constraints, I cannot explain today the difference between death caused by misfortune and early or old age death; but what I am saying applies to all of these. Everything that brings about death is given to this soul's gaze, which has returned to the stage of childhood that has been spoken of. And just as the external world of perception is dead in relation to external nature and its spiritual means and essence, so the life that unfolds is, in a sense, a river that separates us from what is hidden in death.

[ 52 ] Only when one has gone through this development of the soul life does one become accustomed to feel and sense within oneself what is aspiring life. One must have felt and sensed this in daily consciousness, otherwise life in the outer world would not be able to unfold properly for us. Outer science, too, always seeks the ascending processes. But now the gaze is directed toward that which is currently in decline in life, ultimately bringing about death. We stand, as it were, with this immersion in childhood on one shore, looking across to the other shore, where death is, but separated by physical life. We see how we used to go through life and what we are newly predisposed to through the past, through death, through dissolution, through decay. We see how, as the body breaks down — as much as it breaks down — new eternal soul forces are always developing, passing through the gate of death. We see that which is born with death, we see that which is separated by life, separated by physical life from that which was brought in through our birth. We look — as we look, in a sense, from the beginning of our soul life to its end, now separated from the end in the same way by physical life, as otherwise the outer perception of the outer world — we look at that which lives and weaves, so that it passes through the gate of death, so that, by working on the outer dissolution of our body, it is spiritually born, entering into the spiritual world.

[ 53 ] Arduous inner thought experiences stand at the beginning of the path of spiritual research; the recognition of the supersensible life, of the eternal in the human soul, the recognition of that which passes through birth and death, stands in the further course. And through this we then stand in the midst of that which can be detached, grasped, and understood from physicality. And through this — what can be torn away from physicality through such contemplative consciousness — human beings come into contact with a spiritual world that is just as real as the physical world; the physical world is permeated by a spiritual world. And we now know that we belong to this spiritual world with the supersensible, eternal powers of our soul. And inwardly, what Goethe merely wanted to see in the outer world is now experienced — in the simple example of his world of metamorphoses.

[ 54 ] Just as he wanted to see in the green plant leaf the flower that transforms from it, and just as he was able to do so because he made his thinking mobile within himself so that it could weave from one thing to another, so thinking comes, so inner soul life comes — full inner soul life, not abstract soul life — so this comes to know in the present life: That which in this present life develops like the bud in the flower into a new plant, that which in the present life develops into a subsequent earthly life as its fruit, that is supersensible experience. And just as one knows in outer life that today will be followed by tomorrow, so one learns to know that in this one earthly life, through the eternal, supersensible forces always at work in it, subsequent earthly lives are woven; just as — once one has learned to look back on what was there before this consciousness — one learns to look back on previous earthly lives, as from today on yesterday, on the days before. All this becomes inner experience. And in this way a spiritual world joins the sensory world, and in this spiritual world we learn to recognize the true, eternal nature of the human soul.

[ 55 ] Not through hypotheses, not through theories, but solely through the awakening of inner experience, so that an awakening occurs in relation to ordinary consciousness, can the eternal life of the human soul be explored. But one should not believe that what has been said in this way, as for example in the course of today's lecture, that this spiritual experience of the human being can only have value for those who can now participate in this spiritual experience themselves. Just as what the chemist produces through his science is not only of value to the chemist, but also to the non-chemist, to those who do not know the processes by which it was produced, so too can that which is explored through spiritual research be communicated. And although today everyone — you can read about this again in my book How to Know Higher Worlds and in my other books — how today everyone can become a spiritual researcher to a certain degree — the powers necessary for this lie dormant in the soul in our present time — it is not yet necessary; but what is brought out of Spiritual Science carries its own verification within itself, if one only receives it impartially enough, without prejudice, from the communication.

[ 56 ] Those who want to keep people away from Spiritual Science, who describe it as inaccessible, often say: Yes, Spiritual Science is a science, and it is only for those who have acquired the prerequisites for this science or scientific prerequisites in general. A single science, dear friends, certainly requires certain prerequisites. But what Spiritual Science brings out of the spiritual worlds, if it is correctly formed — of course, much of it can only be imperfectly formed today, because we are at the beginning of the Spiritual Science — but when it is correctly formed, it is so immediately obvious through its own content that it can be said: Nothing else is necessary for understanding and penetrating the Spiritual Science than a healthy mind, a healthy human sense; and that person will not only want to live in the world as instinctively dictated by the circumstances of the world, but will want to stand within the phenomena of the world with understanding. Healthy use of the intellect and the will to stand with understanding in the world are the only prerequisites for grasping Spiritual Science or anthroposophy. And anyone who engages with Spiritual Science with this healthy use of reason and with the will described above will see that, however far removed they may otherwise be from all scientific endeavors, they are equal to this Spiritual Science, and that it can also become an important, essential content for life, that it can fill their life with a power that they have within themselves — after everything that has happened in the course of human history, as described at the beginning of my lecture today.

[ 57 ] And if those of you here today in whom the urge for such spiritual knowledge — as offered by anthroposophy — lives as a dark longing, if you were fully aware of these dark urges of yours today, then Spiritual Science would be in a completely different position in relation to the world. But for the time being, what leads to Spiritual Science often lives in people as a dark urge and expresses itself in ways that are often not understood, as this or that anxiety in life, as this or that uncertainty in life, all that which makes life unbearable and painful in one way or another, which makes one unstable in life, which leads one to have all kinds of thoughts about all kinds of thoughts about life that cannot be realized in the practice of life. Once people fully grasp what is at work today in countless souls as a dark impulse, which manifests itself through such uncertainty or as such instinctive groping in life, once people become become aware of this longing, this urge for Spiritual Science, then Spiritual Science will be able to have a fruitful effect on life, for it will become apparent that it can be precisely what all other sciences are seeking.

[ 58 ] When we today — and the day after tomorrow we shall talk more about these things — when we today immerse ourselves in the achievements of other sciences, they do not provide us with answers, but with questions, questions that can only be answered in Spiritual Science. And so it is with life. Today's life gives rise to needs that can only be met by those forces that come into us when we are able to receive the messages from the spiritual worlds that the spiritual researcher can draw from them. Life is by no means influenced by what people often think today, so that one feels that the ideas of human beings, even the ideas the reformers of the present day want to have, are actually so practical; when one approaches life with these ideas, one notices how life then recoils everywhere, how life is infinitely richer than the ideas one wants to form from the old impulses.

[ 59 ] Spiritual Science is easily considered fantastical; it is the most non-fantastical thing there is. It is that which many of the ideas that people today consider very practical like dreamy ideas. For the ideas that emerge for life from Spiritual Science are taken from true reality and will therefore be able to pour into life as truly practical ideas. Practical life will flow in a completely different sense from what human beings gain through Spiritual Science than can flow today for practical life, for the practical life of modern times from the ideas derived from knowledge and will that have not yet been fertilized by Spiritual Science.

[ 60 ] The day after tomorrow, dear friends, we will see that there are many reasons in the present to reject Spiritual Science. Today, in conclusion, we should only point out that there are many things in Spiritual Science itself that must be overcome, but that they must be overcome — and can be overcome — through the inner development I have described. On the one hand, there is a danger for those who want to develop themselves in spiritual research, namely the danger of falling into fantasy. But it is only a danger. The danger can never become reality if the path of Spiritual Science is followed in the right way. Everything fantastical, visionary, everything that is a sick soul life, is eradicated precisely by the proper, normal course of spiritual research. Those who have experienced in this course of spiritual research how thinking works when it develops as described will notice that in this development there are certain moments when one thinks and thinks, but knows: Now you must stop thinking, you must not go any further; because now you have reached the point where you must send your thinking down into the depths, so to speak — into the subconscious — of the soul, so that it can reemerge in a different form. You learn the limits of living thinking and stop thinking at the moment when you would fall into fantasy. This is an achievement that you acquire. The moment when the vision, indeed when only the fantastical, when the imagination begins, the moment when what you are acquiring as a strong inner living force through spiritual research methods ceases.

[ 61 ] And on the other hand, there is a danger, because one must detach one's inner life of will from one's physical life, there is a danger — it is a real danger, but it does not materialize, it does not become reality if the path is followed in the appropriate manner, if the path that has been indicated today as a healthy one is followed — this other danger is that people will fall more and more into a stronger egoism than the egoism of ordinary life already is. As paradoxical as it sounds, it must be said, because it is so. Spiritual research can lead to a refined form of egoism. As the life of the will is strengthened, empowered, and deepened, the inner consciousness, the inclination to live with one's inner self, becomes stronger and stronger. However, if it is developed with full consciousness, if consciousness truly awakens in the right way — through the paths mentioned, the paths described — then at the very moment when egoism would begin, an experience begins that properly dispels egoism: the experience of desolate loneliness and desolation begins. As if on an island of life, without the possibility of leaving this island, that is how one would feel if one wanted to let egoism grow. Therefore, all development toward spiritual research is accompanied by inner discipline, which at the same time overcomes this egoism and ensures that we are not cast onto a lonely island of the soul, where we would have to perish in desolation and feelings of desolation, but that we connect what we develop in connection with the world, just as when we wake up we connect our will with external physical reality.

[ 62 ] Whatever dangers Spiritual Science might create, it overcomes at the same time when it develops in the right way. But attention must be drawn to this so that those who only learn a little and do not learn the whole do not confuse this evil fruit of Spiritual Science with Spiritual Science itself, with true spiritual science or anthroposophy itself.

[ 63 ] As I said, we will talk about the relationship of Spiritual Science to other worldviews and to its opponents the day after tomorrow. These opponents are only too understandable. But those who do not immerse themselves in spiritual research, but only in the communications of spiritual research, and applies these communications to life and sees how they can be lived with, knows that Spiritual Science or anthroposophy is not something that is arbitrarily introduced into contemporary culture, but something that is demanded by this culture itself. For they know — let me conclude with this — they know that what surrounds human beings, what they must live in, the spiritual, social, and technical aspects of life, indeed all the spiritual, ideal, and practical aspects of life, are always different in different historical epochs. He knows what face modern life has been given by natural science and the achievements of natural science, what face modern life has been given by the newly awakened social instincts and needs that did not exist in earlier centuries, and he learns to recognize that this modern life without Spiritual Science is like a book we have before us, whose characters are written in a language we cannot read, but from whose outward appearance or from other contexts we know that it contains something extraordinarily life-determining. Just as we want to learn to read, want to learn to understand the language of this book, if we have an inkling of its importance, then we want to learn to read the book of the world that modern life has placed before us. And the need to learn to read this book of life, which has been laid before us by the development of life, which did not exist in earlier centuries and therefore was not longed for in its meaning — the need to learn to read this book of life as it is today, as it will increasingly be in the future for human beings and their needs — this need to read this book this need is the spiritual-scientific need in relation to modern life. And it is only this natural, self-evident need that Spiritual Science, that anthroposophy, wants to meet. There is nothing arbitrary about it; it recognizes a necessity in modern life that belongs to it and wants to satisfy this necessity. Spiritual Science or anthroposophy wants to be the answer to everything that other science and the rest of life must demand of modern human beings.