The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The Human Soul and Human Destiny in Relation to World Development from the Perspective of Spiritual Science (Anthroposophy)

[ 1 ] Dear attendees, after taking the liberty of referring in the lectures I was allowed to give here this fall to the basic principles and goals of Spiritual Science or anthroposophy, as it is understood here — after endeavoring in those lectures to show how this branch of Spiritual Science is essentially characterized by a scientific endeavor and a scientific foundation, a scientific foundation that also allows it to be in harmony with the true results of modern natural science — I would like to take the liberty today, dear attendees, of pointing out some of the results of this Spiritual Science research. Although anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science, as is understandable — as has been said here many times — is subject to attacks from various quarters, often quite passionate ones, I would nevertheless like to refrain, at least in the main part of my lecture, from referring to the usual objections, especially today, and limit myself to presenting a few things, I would say in a purely narrative form. In doing so, I will, of course, expose myself to the danger that misunderstandings may arise all the more easily; but since the two lectures this fall have laid the groundwork and demonstrated the thoroughly scientific basis, it may be permissible, in order not to repeat myself too much for those listeners who are here more often, to speak first in such a narrative form about the experiences of the spiritual researcher himself.

[ 2 ] Ladies and gentlemen, it is precisely the type of research referred to here as Spiritual Science that is most contested, and this is because it is still very far removed from current human mental images, habits of thought, and habits of feeling to appeal to this type of research. But it is only this unfamiliarity, and once this unfamiliarity has been overcome in the near or distant future, it will become apparent that at least a large number of people will already find that Spiritual Science is in complete harmony with the scientific way of thinking.

[ 3 ] First of all, one point should be made in relation to this objection, namely that recent developments in natural science have — as I have often emphasized here — in recent years to great and significant insights into the world context. And Spiritual Science is as far removed as possible from not wanting to acknowledge the great advances of natural science. However, one thing repeatedly emerges for many people from the worldview they believe they have formed on the basis of well-established natural science. These people come to what they call the “limits of knowledge,” about which they say: As far as the experience of the senses reaches, as far as thinking that deals with the experience of the senses reaches, to grasp certain connections in nature and also connections between natural existence and human existence itself; but then there are certain limits that humans cannot go beyond, and beyond these limits lies everything that relates to the mysteries of human soul life, including those connections in the world that can be summed up with the simple, but for human life extraordinarily meaningful word “fate.”

[ 4 ] Now, in one respect, anthroposophical Spiritual Science, as I mean it here, is in complete agreement with this attitude of natural science when it is said that that which is present in ordinary life as the human capacity for knowledge, that which human beings acquire in terms of cognitive abilities without, so to speak, taking control of their own soul life through self-discipline, leads to the limits of knowledge. And it is precisely by adhering to these limits of knowledge, by the sharp focus of these limits, has natural science been able to follow such secure paths in recent decades, indeed centuries. On the paths that are walked within these limits, it is now impossible to advance to insights into the nature of the soul in human beings; within these paths, Spiritual Science is completely in harmony with natural science. But Spiritual Science shows that it is possible to describe cognitive abilities that arise not through ordinary — without human intervention in the course of life development — but with cognitive abilities that lie dormant in the depths of the soul in ordinary life and can be brought out of these depths of the soul through a certain self-discipline. And it is precisely what arises in connection with such cognitive powers, which are unknown to ordinary life and which can be brought out of the depths of the soul, , I would like to speak today.

[ 5 ] There is a first cognitive faculty, which I have taken the liberty of calling imaginative cognition in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds” and in my “Occult Science.” It is, so to speak, the first stage of knowledge that goes beyond ordinary scientific knowledge. As I said, in order not to repeat myself too much for those esteemed listeners who often sit here in these lectures, I would like to refrain from repeating what has been said in earlier lectures and, above all, not speak in detail today about the self-discipline that the soul must practice in order to attain such knowledge, that is, imaginative knowledge. I would like to refer to the books just mentioned, in which you will find the intimate way in which the soul must take control of itself in order to arrive, in the course of elevations that are made, with self-denial, but also with inner courage and inner energy and inner strength, at the point where, just as as in the course of our natural life in childhood, the natural powers of cognition gradually emerge, that other powers — which, however, can only emerge when the soul takes control of itself — that other powers emerge.

[ 6 ] Nevertheless, I would like to mention, I would like to mention, from the point of view of the spiritual researcher's own experience, how the soul advances to this imaginative knowledge. I will not repeat the individual exercises here today, but I would like to point out that one essential thing — there are many exercises that can be done — but one essential thing, and indeed one essential thing that most reliably leads to imaginative knowledge, one essential thing can be achieved for the spiritual researcher by taking, I would say in an inner, practical way, very seriously that what in ordinary life is called the limits of knowledge. In order to take this seriously, one must first have really tried to arrive at such thinking with an inwardly sharply concentrated life of thought, with the directing of one's thoughts toward a task, with the gathering of all the soul forces; one must first have come to the point of not only hypothetically accepting the ordinary limits of knowledge, not only philosophically speculating about them in some way , but to experience them. One must have reached the point of having driven one's thinking to such sharpness that one says to oneself: What you can achieve with this thinking reaches this far; but now, now you really stand at such a boundary that you know: With what you can achieve through your personal powers, which you can develop through thinking, you cannot go any further.

[ 7 ] And then one feels that natural science is not so wrong when it links this ordinary, everyday thinking is linked to the physical instrument of the brain or the nervous system in general. For when one pursues concentrated thinking far enough, one feels that it is precisely the physical limits, the physical, I would say, incapacities, that now prevent one from going any further. The instrument will yield nothing more. Then one must have the resignation to stop now, not to try to solve any world problem, any spiritual question by force through thinking or through ordinary mental images, as one is accustomed to doing in the natural sciences; one must have the resignation to be able to stop now, to experience how, in a sense, one's thinking has reached a limit.

[ 8 ] This is a meaningful experience. For to develop a full, serious belief, dear attendees, that one cannot reach something, cannot reach it purely inwardly, that one wants to reach, requires a strong inner courage of thought. But then, when one has really reached such a limit through concentration of thought, that is, intensified, internally intensified thinking, one reaches such a limit, then one realizes: the thinking that one has previously felt intimately connected with oneself becomes independent, emancipates itself from the personality in which one is trapped. And while one was previously a thinker — in a sense, understanding everything spiritual and soul-related internally — you become, in a sense, an inner spiritual-soul spectator of how that which you yourself have hitherto guided as a thought process continues. And it becomes an experience. And it is important that this becomes an experience for the spiritual researcher himself. The transition becomes an experience, that inner experience which one otherwise expresses with the words “I think,” that it transitions into “it thinks in one.” Thought grasps itself, thought imbued with a life of its own.

[ 9 ] Then, by watching how that which was previously connected to you detaches itself and how thoughts continue to operate on the detached waves, you can gain a living experience of what what the astute and profound Swiss researcher Troxler, mentioned recently in the lecture, called in the first half of the nineteenth century: a supersensible body in the human being — “Schema pneumatikon,” said Troxler. Here, in these lectures, it has often been called the “etheric body in man.” One can feel how one otherwise faces external objects, looking at them through one's senses, how one now faces one's own body as an external object and has passed with one's whole being into something much more spiritual, into something independently spiritual. But in this spiritual realm, one has special experiences.

[ 10 ] And now, dear audience, it is necessary to keep one thing in mind so that Spiritual Science, as it is meant here, is not misunderstood: When the spiritual researcher acquires the necessary calm in relation to all that I have already described with regard to his inner experiences, and now truly remains in this state of being an observer of the thinking that has emancipated itself from him, then he notices how this thinking is transformed into a pictorial experience of a completely new world, a truly pictorial experience. But this pictorial experience is not called imaginative knowledge because it is an imagination, but because it proceeds in images, yet is experienced by the person in this state in the same way as sensual realities are otherwise experienced through the outer senses. Only something else is experienced, something of which one has no idea when observing the world solely with the senses. But just as as there is a colorful, sounding, perceptible world for the senses around us, so there is a world that appears in surging, weaving images — but images that are permeated by forces — the result of what I have described.

[ 11 ] And after a while, one discovers how that which, in a sense, grows out of thinking as such an imaginative world, contains certain forces that flow through our entire life between birth and death, but are not perceived in ordinary life. In ordinary life, we experience in the waking state — that is, with alert consciousness — that we can perceive through light and other external elements. From moment to moment, we experience what we call our world. But then, when we have entered the imaginative world, we experience what lives within us as the formative forces, as the forces that guide us from birth to death, so that they are the formative forces within us, which we carry from one moment of life to the next; and from this point on we know: although human beings are unaware of this in their ordinary consciousness, they live in such an inner world — and only because they themselves are part of this imaginative world — so that what he carries with him as his outer physical body is not easy to perceive at every moment. For if the forces that can only be perceived in images, in imaginative images, were to leave the human being — and in death they do leave him — then the human being immediately becomes a corpse; that is to say, from that moment on, his physical body is subject to the physical and chemical laws of the outer sensory world. What has now come into being is a perception quite different from that which was within us up to the point at which we have arrived. It is, as I said, a weaving, surging world of images, but of images that draw us along on the waves of the forces of existence that encompass us.

And now I must draw attention to what needs to be clearly understood so that misunderstandings about Spiritual Science do not arise again and again.

[ 12 ] Human beings reach a boundary, as I have described. From this boundary onwards, they must, in a sense, surrender themselves to the thinking process that has come to life, which transforms itself into images that show us, in connection with the whole universe, which appears in images, in spiritual images, in “sensual-supersensual images” — we could say, using [this expression] Goethe's expression —; but in this whole process, as far as it is relevant to spiritual research, dear attendees, human beings are fully conscious, just as they are always fully conscious in the waking state. At that moment, such an inner experience, such an inner event, no longer belongs to the methods of spiritual research as we mean it here, if there is any dulling of consciousness, anything that represents a lesser — a dreamlike state of consciousness — than the normal waking state. On the contrary, in order for the human being to follow this process that I have described here, his consciousness must become more intense, stronger, more powerful.

[ 13 ] Therefore, dear audience, it would be extremely amateurish to confuse what lives in the spiritual researcher with something that is already very well known in external science today, with some hypnotic or mediumistic state. All these states, through which ordinary consciousness is lowered, all these states push people down to a lower level of consciousness or even to unconsciousness. What I have described leads people up to a more active state of consciousness. It is therefore merely amateurish to believe that the spiritual researcher appeals to some soul forces or soul states of the human being that lie in the subconscious.

[ 14 ] If you read my book “How to Gain Knowledge of Higher Worlds,” you will see how the self-discipline I have referred to brings about the states I mean, and how this self-discipline excludes any possibility of somehow not seeing what can only enter the soul unconsciously or from the subconscious. You will also see from the information there how everything that comes about through mediumistic means is strictly excluded from what is described here as a method of spiritual research.

[ 15 ] In this way, I said, we arrive at a vivid understanding of the formative forces of the human organism. And these formative forces contain everything that that really underlies human thinking and mental images. It may now contribute something to the understanding of what is actually meant when I now compare, with reference to these formative forces in the human being, the part of the formative forces, the living formative forces of the whole universe, which constitute his so-called etheric body or — as Troxler says — “schema pneumatikon” — when I add a few words about the relationship between these formative forces in human beings and the formative forces in animals.

[ 16 ] What human beings carry within themselves as their etheric body can also be found in animals, but it is contained in animals in a completely different way. If we observe animals with this imaginative knowledge, through which the etheric body of the animal can also become visible, if we look at animals with this knowledge, then we find that in animals the sum of these formative forces has progressed to such an extent that these formative forces have poured themselves completely into the form, into the shape of the individual organs. Animals are, in a sense, a complete reflection of what lies in these formative forces, so that we cannot find anything in animals that stands out strongly as a special etheric body beyond what is in the physical body. Everything that constitutes the physical organs, the tools of the animal, has come into being through the power of these formative forces.

[ 17 ] These formative forces have, I would say, crystallized in these organs — this is only a comparison, but it shows what is meant — crystallized, just as water crystallizes in ice, crystallized in such a way that it can be compared to the fact that when a quantum of water turns completely into ice, nothing more than water remains. It is different in humans; humans too — as is clear from the explanations I have given — are, in relation to what their physical body is, a reflection of these formative forces. They have, so to speak, poured into the organs; they have crystallized like water into ice. But what is peculiar to human beings is that special formative forces remain that do not enter into the physical organs, so that one can compare this to a quantity of water that crystallizes partly into ice, but some of the water remains. And what remains is the free human etheric body, which is what makes it possible for humans not to develop into a life that is completely determined internally, as animals do, but to remain capable of development in a certain sense throughout their entire life between birth and death. So humans have within them something capable of development, a sum of formative forces capable of development of formative forces. This shows that what humans can bring to consciousness through imaginative knowledge already reveals their elevation above the animal world.

[ 18 ] When human beings advance to this imaginative knowledge, that is, when they attain self-knowledge of those forces that accompany them throughout their lives, that keep them alive, that prevent their physical body from becoming a corpse, when they rise to the perception of these forces, then they also come to know everything in their environment through such formative forces. His imaginative knowledge can expand more and more. He learns to recognize what lives in the plant kingdom as etheric physicality, which also prevents the plant body from becoming a corpse at every moment; he learns to recognize the etheric nature the nature of the formative forces in the animal world; but he also learns to recognize that there is a spiritual world around him that extends beyond the merely sensory-physical. And above all, the human being learns to recognize that what he himself is consists of certain members. He casts off the first member in death as his physical corpse; with that, the human being passes through the gate of death.

[ 19 ] For those who develop imaginative knowledge, the physical body is now surrendered to the physical and chemical forces of the earth, but the human being is, in a sense, in a second, supersensible body that can be perceived through imaginative knowledge. And the human being carries this body with them for days. After days, they lay it down like a second, supersensible corpse, so that ordinary knowledge, the perception of a human being as a soul, expands into imaginative knowledge, though not far beyond death at first, but for a few days beyond death, in that it is noticed that the human being now lives in a kind of supersensible, ethereal physicality, which they lay aside like their second corpse. This second corpse is handed over to the formative forces of the universe, just as the physical corpse is handed over to the chemical and physical forces of the earth. Then human beings learn to recognize everything in the imaginative world, other beings live in such a supersensible physicality, not in a physical body like humans themselves or like animals.

[ 20 ] Now, as you can see, this merely imaginative perception does not lead to very deep insights into the mystery of death. But if a person continues with those exercises, which I have only hinted at today and which I have only characterized somewhat by reaching the limits of thought, if a person continues with those exercises, if they have the strength and intensity and, above all, the necessary calm to continue them, then they will reach the point where, in the mental images and perceptions they gain — which can be described as the scope of imaginative knowledge — that, I would say, forces similar to the will flow in from all sides, just as the forces of the will flow into the human being when he passes from a mental image to the movement of the hand, to some external action, just as the forces of the will pour into the human being; so forces penetrate into those image perceptions — which form the content of imaginative knowledge — into these image perceptions, forces penetrate that are like the electrical and magnetic forces in the world, which are not there for ordinary consciousness because they only pour into those perceptions that are imaginative.

[ 21 ] And from that moment on, the human being knows: not only is there a world around them that is reflected in images, but these images are revelations the expression of real spiritual beings. The soul feels itself to be a citizen of a spiritual world, just as it feels itself to be a citizen of a world of sensory beings here in the sensory world. The spiritual beings in question can speak to the soul only through imaginations that must be perceived inwardly and spiritually. That is why the spiritual researcher — as I have often mentioned here — cannot speak in a vague, pantheistic way about a spiritual world in general, about a spirit in general; to the spiritual researcher, this pantheistic talk of a spirit in general is like talking about the sensory world in terms of general planthood, and being interested only in plants, the “pan” in plants, and not in tulips, the lily, the rose, and so on. Spiritual researchers do not face a generally vague, pantheistic spiritual world, but rather individual spiritual beings that differ from sensory beings only in that they do not descend to a sensory embodiment, but remain within the spiritual weaving and surging.

[ 22 ] When we enter this world, however, we find the human soul in the state it enters when, after a few days, it sheds the second supersensible body, which, as I have said, can be perceived through imaginative knowledge. When the human being, after having passed through the full gate of death, has also shed the second, supersensible corpse, he has now become a spiritual being, a spiritual being who lives through a life — we will explain things further in a moment — that takes place between death and a new birth, a new earthly existence, in which, however, the human being weaves and lives in a real, actual world that now does not seek to gain a sensual, physical expression through anything that can only be achieved through imaginative knowledge, but which expresses itself only through a will in imaginations.

[ 23 ] You see, dear attendees, communication with such a spiritual world, that is, with the real spiritual world, must be mediated through what human beings develop within themselves; it can only be reached by this indirect route. Therefore, Spiritual Science, in its true form as meant here, must repeatedly point out that it is basically only a materialistic prejudice of our time to want to establish a connection with the spiritual world by by proceeding in a certain sense as experimentally as one proceeds in an external physical or chemical laboratory, by means of what one arranges before the senses, one wants to establish a connection with the spiritual world. When one sees how a preference for such a sensory mediation , it is necessary to point out that Spiritual Science must not be confused with these sensual references to a spiritual world. What sins have not been committed in this regard by respected, great, eminent scholars — I will not say by ordinary spiritualists — in this field?

[ 24 ] Right now, there are reports of a book written by one of the most respected scholars of our time about human life after death, in which he points out how he wants to achieve a connection with the spiritual world through mediums, that is, through personalities whose consciousness is not elevated but clouded, transported into the dreamlike, the subdued. How are such connections achieved? They are achieved through the fact that the mediations are to take place through those conditions which the human being acquires here in the sensory world through his sensory organism. Writing — we learn it only because we have a physical body connected to our soul nature — the art of writing is something that is entirely dependent on the physical body that we shed at death. Similarly, even what is expressed in ordinary speech is dependent on the physical organism of the larynx and everything connected with it; what is expressed in ordinary speech is entirely bound to the physical body that we shed at death. Whether words come out because someone writes automatically with a dulled consciousness or because they tap on a table — it is always based on the error that what comes from the spiritual world comes from the real spiritual world and can express itself by means that actually only have meaning within the development of our physical body, which are bound to the development of our physical body.

[ 25 ] Therefore, Spiritual Science must point out that in this way some of what the human being discards as a second corpse, as a supersensible corpse, just a few days after death, can come through; for in this supersensible corpse, which in a sense has produced the physical organs of the human being itself as formative forces, there is something in it that remains as a reminiscence after death. For this body does not dissolve immediately into the spiritual world of living beings, but dissolves very slowly, remaining in existence for a long time, and a connection can be established through such subordinate forces as are now being referred to. But one actually only establishes a connection, I would say, with a second corpse of the human being, with a second remnant, while after a few days the real human being has already lost this remnant.

[ 26 ] This real human being, however, has become a citizen of the spiritual world and, just as we communicate with others through our physical body — by writing or speaking — everything that is bound to a physical body, the real soul-spiritual human being, who now passes through the life between death and a new birth, can communicate through that, so that the communication reaches the consciousness of the other, if the other is able to to receive imaginings and inspirations in the same way that we here in the physical world are able to receive what is read or spoken. For when the human soul comes to perceive such a being as the human being after leaving its second body, then this level of knowledge may be called “inspired knowledge,” in contrast to merely imaginative knowledge.

[ 27 ] I ask you not to think of the word “inspired knowledge” in the traditional sense of inspiration, but only in the sense I have just indicated. It is necessary to use words that are already familiar; but it is also necessary, in the case of a form of knowledge that is still in its infancy — similar to the state of natural science at the time of Galileo or Copernicus — to become accustomed to thinking of what is meant by these words in the context of this advanced form of knowledge. Now, ladies and gentlemen, this inspirational knowledge provides us with an essential part of our self-knowledge. For our self-knowledge, imaginative knowledge provides us with the certainty that [in our lives] between birth and death carry within us formative forces that guide us from moment to moment. Inspirational knowledge provides us with more; inspiration shows us that a stream flows into our lives, which runs [out] beyond our birth and has carried us from our last earthly life to the birth through which we entered this earthly life. There we were purely spiritual-soul beings; there we were beings whose revelations can only be lived out in imaginations or inspirations.

[ 28 ] But while the spiritual researcher brings to consciousness what emerges in inspirational knowledge, what the human being is, between death and birth lives the sum of spiritual-soul forces referred to here. It lives through its effects into our ordinary earthly life. In this ordinary earthly life between birth and death, we are not only dependent on the physical and chemical forces that live within us in relation to our organism, nor are we solely dependent on the formative forces that live in the manner described above, which are shed a few days after death. Rather, we are dependent on the soul-spiritual forces that develop over centuries between death and a new birth in a purely spiritual world, and which, in a sense, connect with what we receive from our father and mother, from our ancestors, and from the forces of nature. spiritual forces that develop over centuries between death and a new birth in a purely spiritual world, and which, in a sense, connect with what is given to us by our father and mother, by our ancestors, in physical form. Just as we receive our physical body from our ancestors, so this purely spiritual-soul aspect, which can come to consciousness through inspirational knowledge, connects with this physical body and has an effect — just as the physical forces have an effect in the physical body — an effect from our spiritual-soul past.

[ 29 ] In order to make what is meant here a little clearer, I would like to point out that precisely what is meant here sheds light, in a Spiritual Science sense, on what is called the question of heredity in relation to human beings. This question of heredity is, as we know, treated in many ways very astutely by modern science — as we know — in many ways, and it is understandable when natural scientists today look at various explanations from Spiritual Science and say: "Do you spiritual researchers have no feeling for the strictly scientific method, for the ascetic method that natural science uses to find out what makes a person this way or that way, develops these and those aptitudes in life gradually from childhood to later age, do you have no sense of how natural science tries to show how what occurs in the son, what occurs in the daughter, is inherited from the mother, from the father, grandmother, grandfather, and so on, what complicated problems are involved here?

[ 30 ] Well, dear attendees, the spiritual researcher has a sense of all this and he only responds to natural science by saying that he fully acknowledges, within its limits, what natural science brings to light in this field, that he does not deny anything; for that is the eternal misunderstanding, that one believes that the spiritual researcher denies anything of what the natural scientist brings out through his resigned , self-denying research. The spiritual researcher must only add all sorts of other things; we will immediately consider something that I have already mentioned several times in these lectures. Today, it is said that what a person brings into the world in terms of characteristics, inner temperaments, dispositions, impulses of will, at least the nature of their impulses of will, the configuration of their thinking, what is lived out in their development, can be traced back to what has been inherited from their ancestors.

[ 31 ] Books are written with reference to individual people, in which this question of heredity is dealt with in particular. Such books can be extremely interesting. For example, a book has been written about Goethe in which the entire line of Goethe's ancestors is traced as far back as possible. It shows that Goethe developed certain characteristics to the point of genius, but if one looks at his ancestors, they always had at least one trait related to these characteristics, and one could, as it were, regard Goethe as a combination of all the characteristics that occur in his ancestors. This is quite interesting; but nevertheless, even though it is very correct within its limits, there is no real logic in it, and least of all should those who only ever want to consult external experience refer to it when they want to solve such problems. For when could one be sure of solving such a problem, of showing that heredity really does transmit spiritual and mental characteristics from ancestors to descendants? That a descendant, even if he is a brilliant descendant, displays certain characteristics of his ancestors is not surprising, I would even say it is something that goes without saying, as I have often said, no more surprising than when someone who has fallen into water is pulled out wet; they simply take on that which they have gone through. Their hereditary powers have passed through those of their ancestors, and they take on that which they have gone through. One could only demonstrate that spiritual and mental characteristics are truly passed on to descendants if one took a specific ancestor with specific spiritual and mental characteristics, for example, a specific genius, and show how these characteristics are passed on to the descendants. We will leave that alone, because it would lead to very curious results. Referring only to Goethe's line of ancestors leads nowhere, but referring only to his descendants also leads nowhere. We can see that there is no real factual logic in this matter. But what is it all about?

[ 32 ] Well, I said: Inspirational knowledge reveals what takes place between death and new birth. We enter into existence as the child of a particular family, as a member of a particular nation, surrounded by particular living conditions; inspirational knowledge shows us that what physically propagates down from our ancestors to us as a stream of heredity, a spiritual-soul element is connected with it that lives in the purely spiritual world before our birth, or let us say before our conception. Ladies and gentlemen, we can only truly create a mental image of this spiritual world if we know that this spiritual-soul element we are talking about is not somewhere in a spiritual cloud cuckoo land, but where we ourselves are, where we live, that is where the spiritual-soul element is. This spiritual-soul element does not differ from the physical in terms of location, but in terms of the way it manifests itself.

[ 33 ] We are always surrounded by the spiritual-soul realm, and this spiritual-soul world is also always connected with the physical world. The physical world is always a revelation of the spiritual-soul world. Just as we, when we stand here in our physical bodies between birth and death, carry the soul within us in all that we are and do, are an expression of this soul, so the spiritual-soul world, which is otherwise in the spiritual-soul world spiritual-soul world, is also connected with the physical. And in particular, the entire line of ancestors up through our mother, our father, our grandfather, our grandmother, and so on, up through many generations, back to the time when we entered the spiritual world through an earlier death, stands in connection with what is happening here under the constant influence of the spiritual world in which our spiritual-soul is, so that our spiritual-soul also works down and cooperates in the time between death and a new birth. What happens here is under the constant influence of the spiritual world, in which our spiritual-soul life is located, so that our spiritual-soul life also has an effect and plays a part in the time between death and a new birth—of course, there are many factors involved in this—but it plays a part in the entire ancestral line.

[ 34 ] Everything that happens in the ancestral line: the coming together of this and that pair of parents, the coming together of these and those circumstances, which ultimately lead to a certain pair of parents having the physical constitution to give the body to the particular soul that is to be here, all this is co-created by our spiritual-soul nature before our birth, or let us say before our conception. We are already present in our ancestral line, that is, in what permeates our ancestral line as forces. already present within it. It is therefore not a question of Goethe bringing his spiritual and soul characteristics into existence by receiving them solely as physical hereditary material from his ancestors, but rather that what his physical ancestors developed over generations influenced Goethe's soul, which worked into it until it entered the physical body after birth. That is why we bring our spiritual and mental qualities, which are independent of the physical body, into physical existence through our birth from the spiritual world, because we are able to have a decisive influence on the development of the physical and sensory qualities that run through the ancestral line.

[ 35 ] As paradoxical as such a truth may still seem today, dear audience, just as other scientific truths have become incorporated into human knowledge as self-evident truths over the past few centuries, and especially during the nineteenth century, this knowledge will become incorporated into humanity, that between death and birth we develop everything we can develop through the experiences we receive from the spiritual world, that we send down the powers we draw from the spiritual world like a stream into the way in which ancestor after ancestor develops, and finally what comes into being is what for us is a proper physical constitution. This spiritual-soul view of existence will become self-evident once we have moved beyond certain purely materialistic prejudices.

[ 36 ] I know very well that there are still many people who say: Well, what such a person claims, who says that human beings are accessible to inspirational knowledge, is all very nicely thought out, but it has no basis in reality; I know many people today who say: That may all be nicely thought out, but it lacks a basis in reality. To the spiritual researcher, saying that it lacks a basis in reality is as if one had said, when the truth was first established, that the earth does not rest firmly on something solid, but moves freely in space, that this cannot be, because there is no basis for it. People cannot transfer what they have become accustomed to through centuries of logical judgment for one sphere of life to another sphere of life. If they could, we would not hear objections such as: the ground is missing. There is no need for ground when a realization is self-supporting. And inspirational realization reaches into those worlds from which we come, entering sensory existence through birth or conception, and in which we work with the forces that prepare our inner qualities through the generations, those qualities that are decisive for what we achieve in life through the permeation of temperament, through the permeation of will, through the configuration of thinking.

[ 37 ] This, ladies and gentlemen, is precisely an area where natural science will already meet Spiritual Science, just as one can drill into a tunnel from two sides; if one does this in the right way with the appropriate instruments, one will meet in the middle. Thus, natural science, working from one side, will meet Spiritual Science, which in reality enters from the other side. And it is precisely in this area that life, including life as understood by natural science, will bring human beings the full confirmation of what can now only be accepted as an assertion by those who proceed from the standpoint of inspirational knowledge.

[ 38 ] But there are already some reasonably minded natural scientists today who can point to the facts that come into consideration, but not yet to what must lie behind these facts in the manner described as supersensible forces. If one speaks of mere physical heredity, then one should be able to find an explanation for the fact that different offspring of the same parents have completely different characteristics. Certainly, one can find all kinds of sophistical explanations; but these sophistical explanations will be of no use to anyone who is a true observer of life. The children of the same parents do indeed show certain basic similarities, but within these basic similarities there are differences which clearly indicate that something other than mere physical heredity is at play. For this mere physical heredity gives, I would say, only a certain general direction, and one sees how something special, something specific, which comes only from the spiritual-soul, then fits into this general direction.

[ 39 ] Today, natural scientists already observe that two sons of the same parents exhibit certain basic characteristics of their character. One could say that in a certain way of grasping thoughts, in the speed of their thoughts, in jumping from one thought to another, in being pulsed by will on certain occasions, the two are similar. As I said, natural scientists are already pointing out such things. But as these two sons develop in life, one becomes a capable businessman. What he has inherited—I can only hint at this briefly, but if one elaborates on it, it becomes clearer and clearer—what he has inherited in terms of his education, in terms of the way he translates his will into action, into reality, makes him a capable businessman. In the other, the same characteristic, dear attendees — I am speaking of one example, but it could be multiplied a hundredfold — leads to imposture! Where does this come from? Very simple: it is through physical heredity that man is pushed in a certain direction — in both cases equally, but the individual, the special, the one who, in a sense, takes the same qualities in hand and individualizes them into a capable businessman, the other time individualizes them into an impostor, that is the spiritual-soul aspect that intrudes into heredity, and which must be sought only in its origin in the spiritual world.

[ 40 ] A third kind of knowledge, dear attendees, is what I have taken the liberty of calling intuitive knowledge in the books mentioned. However, this does not refer to the intuition of certain vague mystics or other people who want to go beyond ordinary knowledge but who only manage to achieve an instinctive grasp of a general being, a general reality, which they call intuition. Rather, it refers to that which results from ever-increasing inner self-discipline, in which the will first penetrates the imagination and, as I have explained, expresses itself, so to speak, as the revelation of particular spiritual beings of the spiritual world. As this knowledge advances, one not only reaches the revelation of the will of the spirits in the world around us, but one also comes to recognize the nature of spiritual beings, just as one knows physical and sensory beings in the physical and sensory world through sensory perception. And then, when this intuitive knowledge occurs, not only does what I have now explained come to pass, that one truly becomes a full fellow citizen of the spiritual beings around one, especially those spiritual beings that we ourselves are between death and a new birth, but one also becomes a fellow citizen of those spiritual beings who never descend into the physical world.

[ 41 ] But also: one becomes aware of what has carried over from a previous earthly life that one has experienced, and to which the development between death and a new birth has been connected. For, as I have explained, the forces that we have absorbed between death and a new birth have an effect on our inner being, on our nature, on our temperament, on our character, on the configuration of our thinking, just as the forces that we have absorbed between death and a new birth have an effect on our ordinary life between birth and death. In the same way, the forces that carry over from our previous earthly life have an effect on our earthly life.

[ 42 ] For nothing, dear attendees, remains without effect in human life. But I would say that it is more difficult to see through that which separates us from a previous earthly life than that which lives in us and around us between death and a new birth, but always works through forces that are only perceptible to intuitive knowledge, [one] earthly life or into a previous earthly life or further previous ones into the following earthly lives. Between birth and death, there are always forces within us that are unconscious and imperceptible to external life, which are the effects of what caused them in previous earthly lives. Nothing we go through remains without effect. What we experience with the outside world, with various beings of the outside world, with the inanimate objects of the outside world, connects with our soul and spirit and carries over, being absorbed and permeated by what we go through between death and new birth, carrying over into subsequent earthly lives.

[ 43 ] But what has this effect — what becomes visible, so to speak — in the past as previous earthly lives, can only be brought to consciousness through intuitive knowledge. But what is it, dear audience, that is brought to consciousness? It is what we summarize in the weighty words: “human destiny.” For this human destiny is first shaped internally — as I have shown — by the predispositions we inherit, which are essentially dependent on our life between death and a new birth. But this destiny is also shaped by what carries over from previous earthly lives. There are forces present within us which, I would say, continue in lines, in timelines, back to our previous earthly lives. These are remarkable forces, forces which — forgive the expression, but it is difficult to find words for such things, which are unusual for ordinary thinking — could be compared to spiritual suction forces.

[ 44 ] The fact that a previous earthly life carries over into the present earthly life creates, in a sense, a void in the soul. That force of destiny is not a fullness in the soul, it is a kind of emptiness, like when we pump the air out of a room, where the outside air then as soon as a hole is made, immediately flows in of its own accord, so we carry, in a sense, empty spaces from previous earthly lives — which is comparative, but meant literally — we carry empty spaces within us, and these empty spaces suck in what is external life, and through this we are driven by forces that remain unconscious to our ordinary consciousness toward what then affects us in such a way that we call it our destiny in context. Connected with our destiny is that which forms our life between birth and death; it weaves every single event into our soul through the way we subconsciously relate to it, a force that then acts like a suction force in the next life, so that an event occurs to which we ourselves are drawn.

[ 45 ] Just imagine: we are drawn to a person, we meet them in life, and very special circumstances develop with them. This stems from the fact that we were somehow already together with this human soul in previous earthly incarnations. Through what developed between us and him at that time, completely without our awareness, perhaps precisely without our awareness, such soul-attracting forces developed, the result of which is what we bring to fruition in our present life with him. One might say: But the circumstances of our destiny are so manifold that it is difficult to create a mental image of how they affect the other world. Unfortunately, however, there is only time today to point out a few individual cases.

[ 46 ] But I want to point out one example. Consider a human destiny. Perhaps in the midst of a hopeful life, an elemental event occurs; the person is driven to a place where, through external circumstances, he meets his death. Through external circumstances, his life is cut short. An accident occurs, or illness tears them from a hopeful life in relatively early youth. One could say that what develops in a normal life before death could be imagined as having the same mental image as the seed that develops into a plant, and which provides the basis for the next plant, that is, what develops in the slow earthly life between birth and death is carried over into the next earthly life like a spiritual-soul seed.

[ 47 ] But what happens when this life is suddenly extinguished? Intuition shows that what happens through such an elemental death, whereby the soul is suddenly caused to view the whole of this life from the other side, so to speak, is that through such a sudden occurrence or such a premature occurrence of death in a short time, in a moment, everything is experienced that one could otherwise have experienced in an earthly life lasting years or perhaps even decades. Such things must not, of course, be brought about, because they must be brought about by fate. But when they are brought about, they appear to Spiritual Science in such a way that a train accident that kills a person has as much effect on the soul as would otherwise have been the case over decades — and that such forces emanate from this train accident that they now carry over into another earthly life — that decades of effects emanate from this one moment.

[ 48 ] You see, dear friends, here are opening up areas of spiritual life which Spiritual Science is only just beginning to research; but these are areas of spiritual life which are intimately connected with what human beings must always feel and experience. And starting from the point we have now reached, Spiritual Science will pour out upon human life a knowledge of the great questions of destiny in existence, such as how human beings can only [solve] the problem of freedom through inspired knowledge, by expressing those forces that manifest themselves in their free activity in the effects of free will, by seeing this in what arises spiritually and soulfully from life between death and new birth, that which we must regard as destiny arises for intuitive knowledge through the transfer and overflowing of those forces that are formed in earlier earthly lives.

[ 49 ] Now, dear audience, in conclusion, I would just like to point out how the types of knowledge I have spoken about, which are extensions of the ordinary powers of knowledge, not only enlighten us about human beings, not only about a spiritual world that surrounds us and in which those who have gone before us through the gate of death reside, but also lead us to recognize world development and its connection with individual human development. In an earlier lecture, I pointed out how certain scientific hypotheses about the development of the earth have led to views that are bleak for many people. I pointed out how Herman Grimm — who, as an art researcher, developed a keen sensitivity for these things and attacked them unreservedly — came to certain conclusions regarding the mental images that develop from these scientific hypotheses about the origin of earthly existence. I communicated the relevant passage in my last book on the “The Mystery of Man,” and I would like to quote it again, even though I already presented it last time, because it shows how people who are not influenced by suggestion think about such things:

Long ago, in his

— Goethe's —

[ 50 ] youth, the great Laplace-Kant fantasy about the origin and eventual demise of the globe had already taken hold. From the rotating nebula — children already learn this in school — forms the central gastropause, from which the Earth is subsequently formed, and, as a solidifying sphere, goes through all phases, including the episode of habitation by the human race, in inconceivable periods of time, finally falling back into the Sun as burnt-out slag: a long process, but one that is completely comprehensible to the [present-day] audience, for the realization of which no external intervention [is needed] other than the effort of some outside force to maintain the sun at the same heating temperature.

[ 51 ] No more fruitless prospect for the future can be imagined than the one that is being imposed on us today as scientifically necessary. A carcass bone

— forgive me, but Herman Grimm says so —,

[ 52 ] a carcass around which a hungry dog made a detour would be a refreshing, appetizing morsel in comparison to this last excrement of creation, as which our earth would ultimately fall back to the sun, and it is the thirst for knowledge with which our generation accepts such things and believes them to be a sign of a sick imagination, which scholars of future epochs will once again apply their acumen to explain as a historical phenomenon of the times.

[ 53 ] Well, dear audience, Spiritual Science arrives at insights into what the earth was like in the past in a different way than through mere scientific speculation.

[ 54 ] Precisely when human beings advance to imaginative knowledge, when they recognize themselves in the forces that are supersensible life forces, formative forces, then they learn in a completely different way that they are a member of the entire living — I say living Earth, not the Earth that mere geology or mineralogy has long known — the entire living Earth, they learn to know themselves as a member of the living Earth, and they learn to know something in this Earth, in which they themselves are now, that is within them, just as within their own inner being there is a memory of a long-past event. Just as that which happened within us long ago is revived within us, so imaginative knowledge, when it surveys the connection of the human being with the forces of the earth, with the formative forces of the earth, can, within that which is today the earth, have before it, like memories, that which the earth was in the past.

[ 55 ] Just as we gain our own experiences through what we have gone through in such a memory-knowledge drawn up from the depths, so through inspired knowledge of the earth we gain a mental image of what the earth was before it passed into the solid mineral state in which it is today. One comes to the conclusion that the earth went through a state in which everything that is contained in today's mineral solidification was not yet there, in which the earth was in a much finer material state. Man was already with the earth in this previous state of the earth. Just as the individual human being goes through repeated earthly lives, so our Earth planet has, in a sense, developed from earlier earthly lives, from earlier planetary stages of development.

[ 56 ] If we now consider human beings in connection with what the Earth was like, we come to the conclusion, as I said in my inner vision, that human beings have indeed undergone a development; but this development did not proceed in the way — I pointed this out from a completely different point of view in the previous lecture — not in the way that materialistically oriented Darwinism has in its mental image, but rather that human beings on this planetary predecessor of our Earth were indeed, in a certain sense, animal-like beings, but this animal-like being was not an animal like those that develop on our Earth under the conditions that the Earth first assumed after it had transformed from its earlier state. Rather, human beings were indeed as instinctive in their state of consciousness as animals are today; but they went through this existence in a much more spiritual state of development, at a much higher stage of development. They descended into their existence in order to develop outwardly and physically into a more perfect existence on Earth. But they went through the animal state by being more spiritual than today's animals, by also being more involved in the spiritual world.

[ 57 ] We do not arrive at what Herman Grimm calls something as unappetizing as a “carcass around which a hungry dog makes a detour,” but rather, on the contrary, we arrive at a predecessor in which our Earth is more spiritual. And the previous states of our Earth would be increasingly spiritual; and we would come to recognize what we are now experiencing as emerging from the spiritual, and also come to know the future of the earth as a purely spiritual state. If someone were to believe that everything that develops in human beings always goes through repeated earthly lives, they would be mistaken; this is only the case during the earthly state, but in the development of that planetary body which I have just outlined, there were not yet repeated earthly lives, but a different kind of existence. You can read about this in my “Secret Science.” And again, the repeated earthly lives will come to an end. Only during the development of the earth itself does the human being go through repeated earthly lives. But this means that Spiritual Science does not only point to what is directly related to the human being — forgive me for only being able to sketch the latter very briefly, but time is pressing — but Spiritual Science also points to the relationship of human beings to the entire development of the world. In this way, however, Spiritual Science rises to a real knowledge of the spiritual world, to which human beings belong as soul-spiritual beings, just as they belong to the sensory world as physical beings.

[ 58 ] In the course of this lecture, however, I have had to develop a series of concepts and ideas that sound extremely paradoxical compared to the usual mental images of the present day. Because they sound so paradoxical, it is understandable that many people fall into a kind of passionate aversion when they hear about this anthroposophical Spiritual Science. But the strange thing is that this passion actually arises in certain people—that is the strange thing—without them feeling the need to really get to know the Spiritual Science. Instead, they create some kind of distorted image, some kind of caricature, something they themselves want to imagine under the Spiritual Science, and then they criticize the mental image they create. They then mislead the audience, who also do not know Spiritual Science itself, into believing that Spiritual Science is being attacked, when in fact it is only the caricatures presented by individual people that are being attacked.

[ 59 ] In this regard, however, one can experience some very strange things, dear audience. For example, it was possible that this May, here in Switzerland, a lecture was given by someone who also referred to our anthroposophical Spiritual Science. This lecture contains some very strange things, for example, the Spiritual Science is lumped together with ancient Gnosticism, which is like someone lumping modern chemistry together with ancient alchemy because they cannot distinguish between alchemy and chemistry. But he also lumped this Spiritual Science together with all kinds of obscure mysticism. And then, dear audience, after the speaker lumped this Spiritual Science together with all kinds of obscure mysticism, he said, for example, the following sentence from his point of view, which, as he says, must reject this Spiritual Science or anthroposophy:

But we could never

—he says—

agree with the abandonment and contempt of human thinking and reasoning, as this mysticism demands.

[ 60 ] Well, dear audience, from today's lecture and from everything I have said here, no one will have noticed that contempt for thinking has somehow taken hold among those who have become closer to anthroposophy; on the contrary, I believe that some may even find the efforts and demands made on thinking quite questionable.

[ 61 ] But the entire lecture of the person in question is presented in a very peculiar way. And I would like to point this out at the end. For example, he refers to certain remarks that a pastor in Switzerland once made about Spiritual Science. I then refuted all the individual points myself in Liestal, not in a way that I corrected Spiritual Science — that is something that can be discussed and will continue to be discussed for a long time — that was not the point at all. The point was that the speaker in question had allowed himself to be told all sorts of things, had heard all sorts of things that were not in accordance with what Spiritual Science really says. That is a different kind of correction than when one argues against someone's opinion. The gentleman in question, who gave his lecture on “Modern Mysticism and Free Christianity” in Switzerland in May, manages to treat both lectures — that of the pastor in question and mine — as if they complemented each other, whereas the first of the two is as I have described it.

[ 62 ] Dear attendees, this kind of opposition to Spiritual Science—even if much of it is unconscious and taken for granted—is something other than Christian honesty in the strict sense of the term; and the speaker gave his lecture on “Free Christianity and Modern Mysticism.” One does not need to find this kind of thing in Christianity. But in addition, the gentleman in question refers to various books of mine.

We

—he says in connection with these books—

[ 63 ] We are only grateful to Dr. Steiner for showing us how much suggestion and anesthesia are used in modern mysticism, but we must assume that anyone who has once surrendered to this suggestive influence of vision will hardly be accessible to rational arguments anymore and will have completely lost their religious sensibility.

[ 64 ] Well, dear attendees, anyone who has actually read the books mentioned, which the gentleman in question even quotes, knows how all means are sought to exclude precisely anesthesia, that is, what approaches from the unconsciousness of memory, what is actually seemingly forgotten, and suggestion, how attempts are made to exclude precisely all of this, how everything is placed in the light of consciousness. It may be that the gentleman in question does not consciously want to say anything incorrect, but this cannot be dismissed as a mere misunderstanding. Rather, it must be said that a distorted picture is being painted here, the opposite of which is true, and that this distorted picture is then being criticized. Of course, one can criticize Spiritual Science to the ground, but you don't hit it at all. This is done in many places.

[ 65 ] That is why I would like to briefly highlight one example at the end of today's lecture. But the matter becomes particularly interesting at a point where this gentleman, with his genuine Christian spirit, which he dictates to himself, where this gentleman, with his genuine Christian spirit, says how little Spiritual Science can contribute to developing Christian and religious feelings in people.

[ 66 ] Well, dear audience, in my last lecture I pointed out how certain worldviews, which believe themselves to be based on the spiritual ground of natural science, have in recent times led people away from religious feelings Christian sentiments; but I also pointed out that the path by which man enters the spiritual world through Spiritual Science makes the connection with a spiritual world so alive in him that religious sentiment, a real religious sense of belonging to humanity, can only be strengthened as a result.

[ 67 ] If natural science has led people away from religious life in a one-sided way, Spiritual Science will lead them back, and in particular lead them to grasp the greatest event that has ever taken place in the history of the earth, the event of Golgotha. And anyone who takes even a brief look at what I have been writing for decades now will know that the Spiritual Science I represent has nothing to do with that nebulous mysticism that says: that human beings must develop Christ within themselves and must be content when they develop Christ within themselves. That megalomaniacal Christology has nothing to do with what I represent as a view of Spiritual Science. Already in my [professorship] “Christianity as a Mystical Fact,” I sought to show how Spiritual Science leads to a true understanding of the mystery of Golgotha, to an understanding of how it could only have happened once, how Christ, precisely as a historical phenomenon, as a real, supersensible event, [how] this mystery must be understood, how one has to deal with an external fact that has nothing, nothing in common with a mere inner mystical experience. I always attached great importance to making the reality of Christ's death and resurrection scientifically understandable. Then one must experience that the following can be said:

[ 68 ] We now also recognize in what sense Dr. Steiner in particular can come to the conclusion that we are not against Christianity, we are in fact the true Christians.

[ 69 ] He means those who profess anthroposophy.

[ 70 ] In the eyes of anthroposophists, Christ was someone who beheld the higher powers; Dr. Steiner, the teacher, will also believe that he sees these powers and participates in them. But each of us should also be able to participate in these powers if we practice seeing with sufficient perseverance. This brings us back to the same demand that the aforementioned Russian mystic Soloviev made, that we could and should all be Christs, a demand, incidentally, that every mystic who was kind enough to take Christianity into consideration has already made.

[ 71 ] This may be an unconscious lie, but it is a lie, a real objective lie. When you fight Spiritual Science or anthroposophy in this way, you can certainly make an impression, even in nice “family circles,” but one does not hit the target one is aiming at with the appearance of these words; rather, one avoids seeking the truth in order to be able to campaign against a distorted image of the truth, that such a distorted image cannot be based on the right motives, which should actually be self-evident in wide circles.

[ 72 ] For Switzerland, this gentleman, who gave his lecture in Aarau this May — I mention him not as one of the most witty opponents of Spiritual Science, but as a characteristic one — for Switzerland, he has tailored something very special for himself, arguing, like other mystical movements, that anthroposophy is something that has been introduced as a foreign plant. Not even this is true, but what is true is that this gentleman does not know that there was once a great teacher of a deeply philosophical worldview, Troxler, whom I mentioned to you last time, who pointed to anthroposophy in a wonderful way in Basel and Bern, and indeed pointed to anthroposophy in such a way that precisely what was then — could not yet be there — but that it is hinted at by Troxler, what now appears as anthroposophy. For example, Troxler says:

[ 73 ] Here it is also worth mentioning the way in which mysticism usually loses sight of the human being in God, just as philosophy loses sight of God in the human being, this primordial relationship of human nature.

[ 74 ] — Troxler calls this relationship the “primordial relationship,” which today is brought to life in the advanced field of Spiritual Science in imaginative, intuitive, and inspirational knowledge. Troxler calls this the primordial relationship —

[ 75 ] this primordial relationship of human nature, which anthroposophically speaking, human beings should be content to explore, has been transferred to God himself in theosophical speculations.

[ 76 ] Thus we see how, from a nebulous mysticism, Troxler points here precisely to the transition that must be made to anthroposophy. Troxler goes on to say, for example:

[ 77 ] Theosophy in general is accused of failing to establish itself on anthroposophical grounds.

He goes on to say:

[ 78 ] All true physiology and [physiurgy], and by this we mean all human knowledge and being, ability and action, have their basis in [human nature] and its philosophy, or in anthroposophy.

[ 79 ] This means that what the gentleman in Aarau said is not true, but it is true that here on Swiss soil, Troxler was the first to intuitively coin the word anthroposophy and the concept of anthroposophy, even within our cultural community. what the gentleman in Aarau said, but rather that the word anthroposophy and the concept of anthroposophy were first coined here on Swiss soil by Troxler, even within our cultural community. Anthroposophy does not bring something foreign, but rather precisely what has been longed for and hoped for here, albeit by other people, precisely by people like Troxler, by people other than those who today fight against anthroposophy and, in a sense, want to grab hold of local patriotism by pointing out: This is not Swiss. But one arrives at that inner spiritual life, which manifests itself in imagination, inspiration, and intuition, in a different way than the paths of knowledge taken by such opponents of anthroposophy; one arrives at an experience that I have characterized as energetic, in such a way that inner peace, intensity, and concentration of the whole inner soul life must occur. And Troxler says very beautifully:

[ 80 ] For a long time I pursued understanding and reason, because I believed that together they produced wisdom, and I also sought wisdom in the light of day and in the dark of night, in the world, in life, in holy and unholy books, among animals and plants as well as among humans; I have asked for it from the stars and from the stones, from nature and from myself, from heaven and earth, and I have found understanding in everything, but no wisdom that would stand before God and the world and could teach me where I came from, what I am here for and what I am destined to become. For this was what was always deepest in my mind and closest to my heart everywhere.

[ 81 ] And as I pondered and delved deeper into my search, I felt that anguish of the soul boiling intensely and fervently within me, and that wheel of nature's fear rolling and rattling, like Böhme and others, sometimes like Schrack in doubt, sometimes like lightning in my thoughts, sometimes like glass in my faith; but everything ran around and mixed up in the wheel, and the fear gave birth to the most unspeakable anxiety in me, with spiritual fever chills, to the most terrible mental distress.

[ 82 ] The one who had sensed theosophy at that time went through these experiences.

[ 83 ] Experiences that may not sound pleasant to some people must be gone through if the soul wants to find its connection with the spiritual world through contemplation. But then the soul brings back the content of Spiritual Science from this spiritual world. And this must be said — let me express it in a few words — this must be said: Not everyone needs to go down this path, just as not everyone needs to conduct a chemical experiment, which may even be dangerous, in order to understand some chemical truth. Those who do it once do it for many. Not everyone needs to go down the path that the spiritual researcher must go down; but he must go down it in order to bring down knowledge from the spiritual world. If he then succeeds in making the insights understandable in ideas and concepts, if one approaches them with an unbiased mind — not clouded by the prejudices to which one is usually bound — if he has brought them down, the insights, then they also serve those who cannot walk the path themselves. Just as one does not need to be a shoemaker to wear boots — forgive the trivial comparison — just as one does not need to be a carpenter to use a table, so one does not need to be a spiritual researcher to understand what is brought down from the spiritual world by the spiritual researcher.

[ 84 ] When what the spiritual researcher finds is brought down and appears as Spiritual Science, then this can be the key to opening up the spiritual world for everyone. Just as little as one needs to have gone through the experiences that Goethe went through and had to go through for sixty years in order to write “Faust,” , just as little as one needs to go through them in order to understand Faust, so little does one need to go through all the experiences that the spiritual researcher must go through in order to understand what Spiritual Science is. For Spiritual Science resonates with a side of the human soul that is present in every human being and is understandable to everyone, provided they are sufficiently open-minded in the manner described. That is why spiritual scientific literature is different from other literature. In scientific or other literature, results are communicated that are to be absorbed. What the spiritual researcher conveys is meant differently. It is meant to be an instrument that anyone can use. The spiritual researcher does not deliver results, but rather, in what he conveys as concepts and ideas, he delivers the instrument.

[ 85 ] The concepts and ideas found in Spiritual Science literature, when applied in the true sense, enliven and strengthen the soul, enabling it to find its connection with the spiritual world. Today, it is possible to become a spiritual researcher to a certain extent; anyone can become one, as is evident from the books mentioned, and with the help of these books, one can become one, so that one can convince oneself of the truth of what has been presented today. But one does not need to become one, because common sense leads one of its own accord to see through to the truth of what the spiritual researcher presents, if [this] still does not happen today, even though there are still opponents who fight against Spiritual Science. One must indeed respect those who truly fight against it. But when opponents appear who allow themselves to create such a distorted picture, they cannot strike at Spiritual Science, but only at their own distorted picture.

[ 86 ] So we must say: just as other truths that have gradually entered into humanity and its development have found their way into human souls, so it will be with Spiritual Science; for nothing can suppress what is true. But the truth that is most important to human beings, that can become their destiny, not only to fathom destiny, as I have described today, but that can become their destiny by becoming an experience of destiny, binding them in an essential way to the spiritual world, this truth does not need the basis of external experience, as is often claimed when people say that Spiritual Science has no basis or foundation, but rather it needs the basis that lives within the human being in true, real human self-knowledge.

[ 87 ] Once it is recognized that such a truth arises from the same scientific attitude as modern natural science, once it is seen that there is no contradiction between natural science and Spiritual Science, and that, on the other hand, this Spiritual Science is also a proper basis for religious experience, then people will cease to fighting it in the manner described and perhaps in other ways; Instead, people will find in it the nourishment that the human soul longs for, something that must connect with the human soul because this human soul needs it like an elixir of life that carries it through the turmoil, through the work, through the tasks of life.

[ 88 ] For the truth, dear friends, which truly guides human beings through life, cannot simply flow in from nature; it cannot simply be imposed on the soul, as it were, by an external dogma of nature, based merely on a photograph of nature. Rather, it must itself be something living, something that connects as a living thing with the living thing that is the human soul. And when human beings realize that the living truth of Spiritual Science is itself a treasure of life, then the apparent contradiction between Spiritual Science, natural science, and religion will cease, and Spiritual Science itself will be accepted as something that can enrich, clarify, and illuminate every human destiny. clarifying, and illuminating factor in every human destiny—will no longer encounter the strange opponents it has encountered in the past. It will be recognized as a piece of truth that human beings must seek on their path, on the path that leads them not only into the outer sensory world, but into complete reality. And this includes above all the spiritual world, because human beings themselves are spirit from the spirit, soul from the soul universe.