The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Anthroposophy and the Mysteries of Human Life

[ 1 ] Dear friends! Tonight I would like to speak to you about a topic from a perspective that must touch every single person in the most intense way, and from a perspective that, in our present day, still encounters not only benevolence but, one might say, quite hostile opposition and animosity in the widest circles. One could say that these challenges stem mainly from the fact that the path Spiritual Science or anthroposophy, as it is meant here, takes to the mysteries of human life is still quite unfamiliar to many people today — but no longer unfamiliar to those who look deeper than newer ways of thinking have always been compared to older ones. On the other hand, this opposition is also mainly due to the fact that this Spiritual Science or anthroposophy must make it clear that questions such as the one we want to discuss today, the question of the eternal nature of that what lives in us as the soul, cannot be explored with the ordinary abilities that are rightly recognized as suitable for everyday life and for ordinary science; but that this Spiritual Science or anthroposophy must appeal to the development of abilities of cognition that are essentially different from those that give ordinary life its strength and power, and which are also considered suitable and recognized in ordinary science.

[ 2 ] However, when people are made aware of insights that must be drawn from other abilities, they initially feel quite uncomfortable acknowledging such research; for in our time, we readily accept that the eye is armed with all kinds of tools to find things that the ordinary eye cannot find or see; we have become accustomed to that. But the idea that certain things can only be researched with means that require abilities developed from the depths of human nature, which in a certain way require that people should acquire these abilities through a kind of self-education and self-discipline, is not readily accepted today in the widest circles, especially in the widest scholarly circles.

[ 3 ] And so, opposition stemming from such sources has been particularly vehement since it became apparent that, even now, such a large number of people are interested in the Spiritual Science or anthroposophy that the building in Dornach near Basel, which is intended to serve the cultivation of this Spiritual Science, can be erected here on Swiss soil. It has been seen that it is precisely this visible sign of anthroposophy that has stirred up the opposition even more.

[ 4 ] Well, dear audience, in previous lectures in this city I have already had the opportunity to speak about the special kind of abilities that lie hidden in every human nature and can be developed from it, the kind of abilities that Spiritual Science or anthroposophy, as it is meant here, appeals to. In previous lectures I have also explained something about how human beings acquire such abilities.

[ 5 ] In order to be able to cover the current topic at least to some extent, I cannot go into detail about the development of these abilities and repeat what I have said before, including what I have said here, but I must point out that the exact description of how to acquire such abilities can be found in my books, for example, “How to Know Higher Worlds” and in my “An Outline of Esoteric Science” or in other books. I would just like to say a few words in principle about the special nature and characteristics of such abilities, through which, among other facts of the spiritual worlds, the eternal nature of the human soul can be explored. Just to point out these abilities in a comparative way, I would like to resort to a comparison that will prove to be more than a comparison in the later course of the lecture.

[ 6 ] Ladies and gentlemen, in our ordinary lives we experience two states of existence, which we spend in our physical bodies. And everyone knows these two states all too well from daily life — the states of sleeping and waking. Now I want to refer less to the state of sleep than to the state that can occur during sleep and is also well known to everyone: the state of dreaming, that state in which images, often chaotic, but also appearing more or less orderly, arise in ordinary sleep, and which we can then remember more or less when we are awake.

[ 7 ] We contrast this state of dreaming with the one that occurs when we awaken and pass from the state of rest into the state of ordinary everyday life. It would take us too far afield to describe in detail what actually happens when a person passes from one state to the other; but a few words will suffice, without going into greater detail.

[ 8 ] One need only engage in a little self-reflection, and I would say: calmly develop this self-contemplation, and one will notice that the most essential difference between the state of dreaming and waking, the waking state, is that during the dream we have before us, completely involuntarily, without exerting our will — although this may not be indefinite —, we have the sequence of images before us. We cannot intervene in this world of dream images with our will.

[ 9 ] And this self-reflection also teaches us that at the moment of awakening, it is as if the dream [wants to spring forth] from the depths of our soul and take hold of our ability to imagine mental images. And in the waking state, we attach one mental image, which is also an image, to another mental image, and we know that we do this out of our will, which is often permeated by attention. Yes, upon closer examination, we realize that this will, which enters into relationship with the outside world, is precisely the essential force that distinguishes the dream state from the waking state, that in dreaming the will is excluded, which enters into relationship with our limbs and otherwise with the image of the outside world; so that we do not allow insubstantial images to rise and fall, but rather form images which have reality, like external reality.

[ 10 ] This is based on the fact that, I would say, with awakening, the will strikes like lightning into the course of our mental images. And this impact of the will is the basis in the physical body—despite all the objections that can be made, and which I could very well mention here if there were time—this impact of the will is the basis for the difference between the waking state and the sleeping state.

[ 11 ] Now, dear friends, just as one can awaken from the ordinary chaotic or symbolically shaped dream life to the ordinary waking life of the day, so one can come to a higher, more spiritual awakening, state of wakefulness. And this awakening to a higher, spiritual state of wakefulness leads to the unfolding of those powers through which one can explore the eternal nature of the human soul and other spiritual realities.

[ 12 ] Anyone who truly wants to explore the spiritual worlds must come to such an awakening — that is, from everyday experience to a higher experience, as I called it in my last book on the mystery of the human being: to a seeing consciousness.

[ 13 ] After this comparison, in order to gradually move on to the description of this seeing consciousness, I would like to characterize a little what actually distinguishes the ordinary waking state from the dream state. The fact that so little can be said about this scientifically today is due to the fact that the infinitely interesting world of dreams has been neglected outside the circles of Spiritual Science or anthroposophy. I need only recall Volkelt's interesting work on “Die Traum-Phantasie” (Dream Fantasy); others could also be mentioned. Although there is interesting research on the world of dreams, only Spiritual Science or anthroposophy leads to the results I want to mention here — namely, the relationship between the dream world and the ordinary waking state. What actually happens to us when we sink into sleep and dreams arise from sleep?

[ 14 ] In the ordinary waking state, from which we transition into the state of sleep, it is well known how our life, this ordinary human life devoted to knowledge and work, proceeds spiritually in imagination, in thinking, in feeling, and in willing. With a little self-reflection, every human being knows how their waking life consists of the continuous ascent and descent of mental images that relate to an external reality and are related to it through their will; and they know how their actions flow from impulses that arise within.

[ 15 ] How do our actions, which are based on our will, arise from within us? And there are many things that depend on this, because an action is actually linked to every recognition of the external world, to every perception. When we perceive something through our eyes, it is not only the eye that is involved in this perception, but — as anyone can easily convince themselves from physiology — there are muscles that are based on such movement impulses, as play a role in external actions. And everything that underlies our actions, that actually underlies our entire daily life, is permeated — again, this results in a more accurate self-observation — it is permeated by what we can call the impulses of sympathy and antipathy. Basically, everything we do and experience is influenced by the fact that we find one thing sympathetic and are driven by sympathy to do this or that — that we find other things unsympathetic, and that this antipathy causes us to refrain from doing this or that.

[ 16 ] Sympathy and antipathy truly permeate our entire waking daily life. And from sympathy and antipathy spring forth, carried now by the right sympathy and antipathy, which we summarize under the moral concept of conscience, our actions — just as our ordinary thinking and mental images in the waking state spring forth from what our senses perceive: Our impulses of will arise from within us, out of sympathy and antipathy. The mental images that are born out of our perception push their way into our inner being.

[ 17 ] If we now explore the world of dreams, this dream world that is of little significance for our outer daily and working life, but which nevertheless holds so many mysterious, seemingly unsolvable riddles for our understanding, then we can answer the question — if this question takes the right path — we can answer the question: What actually happens to our soul life when we dream?

[ 18 ] It becomes apparent that what is otherwise connected in our waking life through inner connections — our mental images, our will, and our feelings — would be torn apart, and our soul life would be disturbed. What is intimately connected, dear audience, becomes apparent when we dream, separated. And we have noticed this separation only to a limited extent because we have not yet thoroughly explored these things. Our mental images, our thinking, takes a completely different path in sleep than our impulses of will and feeling. During sleep, our mental images, our thinking, actually sinks into our sensory organs.

[ 19 ] It would take a long time to show the individual interesting paths through which we can already recognize today that dream images arise during sleep solely from the immersion of the world of mental images and thought into the world that is otherwise surrounded by the sensory organs. And these dream images have a completely different character than other dream images that also arise, and which arise in a different way, arising from the fact that our impulses of will, which are saturated with sympathy and antipathy, sink into the rest of our organism.

[ 20 ] Thus, in sleep we live in such a way that what is otherwise present as the unfolding of the will in waking life sinks down into our remaining organism, and that what is a mental image and thinking enters, as it were, into the senses, into the sensory world. Therefore, upon closer examination of the dream world, one can clearly notice the difference between two kinds of dream experiences: those that present images, reminiscences of the outside world, or transformations of faint sensory impressions, symbolically before our soul, as for example when we hear a clock ticking in quiet sleep, and the dream symbolically transforms this by conjuring up the sound of horses' hooves for us to hear. On this side lies a whole large category of dream experiences.

[ 21 ] On the other hand, there are those dream experiences which, when explored, reveal themselves to us as symbolic transformations of our own inner life, such as when we dream of a boiling stove, we wake up and our heart is beating faster than usual, or we have somehow become hot, and the dream is the result of this.

[ 22 ] One type of dream stems from the fact that our mental image, our thinking, is submerged in what what we otherwise have as sensory experiences. The other kind of dreams stems from our impulses of will being submerged in the rest of our organism. So, as we transition from sleep to wakefulness, we retrieve our thinking and mental images from our senses; and we retrieve our will from the rest of our organism and reunite it. And in this connection of what is now more in the organism , consists our everyday soul life.

[ 23 ] Just as we move up — and what I have said should only serve to clarify, not for anything else — just as we advance from the life of sleep through awakening to the ordinary waking state, lifting our mental images and thinking out of the senses and our will out of the rest of our organism, so we can bring forth something that lies deeper than ordinary, everyday mental images and thinking and than the will that is under the influence of sympathy and antipathy, we can bring such a deeper part of ourselves out of the ordinary mental images and thinking as we develop it when we rise to things and work within them, and on the other hand bring out something that is deeper within us in our everyday will, rooted in sympathy and antipathy.

[ 24 ] The former is achieved by treating thinking in a very specific way in so-called meditation — the terms used are not important — in so-called meditation. This not only leads to a different way of thinking, but also to a transition from ordinary thinking, which only provides mental images of things, to a lively, real thinking that — as we shall see — truly leads us into a world other than the one that surrounds us during our waking life. In doing so, thinking and mental images must be treated in a certain way.

[ 25 ] You all know, dear attendees, that ordinary thinking and mental images are reinforced and consolidated for life by repeatedly and deliberately presenting certain sensory impressions, certain perceptions. We know how much in teaching and education is based on sharpening our thinking in the right way through repeated impressions, through repeated absorption of what happens in ordinary waking life, which is carried out at a higher level for the awakening of contemplative consciousness. Only here we proceed with mental images, with thinking itself, in the same way as we do in order to arrive at thinking, with sensory phenomena, with sensory perceptions. And this happens by directing attention, instead of as usual in life, focusing one's attention on sensory perceptions, one focuses one's attention and repeatedly refocuses it on a certain content of imagination that one has found particularly suitable for oneself, or that one has been advised to use by someone who has experience in such matters — that one returns again and again to a certain content of imagination.

[ 26 ] This returning, however, dear audience, is often quite inconvenient, because this returning does not take up much time during the day, does not need to take up much time in a day, but it must be repeated again and again. When the same specific content of imagination, to which the person returns day after day in an intense inner life of mental images — this often takes years — until, through returning to such a content of mental images, this imagining, these powers of thought are so sharpened that what must happen for spiritual research really does happen.

[ 27 ] But what then occurs, as I have already said, is not merely a higher training of the mind, a higher development of thinking, but a complete transformation of thinking, something in comparison to which ordinary thinking seems, I would say, dead. And something occurs in human nature of which we can say: as a result of these efforts, which I have only outlined here, the human being now feels inwardly permeated by something; the human being feels permeated by something that is now objectively within him, not as subjective as thinking, but something that is objectively within him, just as our eye is objectively within us. And just as our eye, our physical eye, gives us sensory perception, so spiritual perception gives us that which we have, as it were, detached through repeated, meditative efforts from our ordinary thinking; thus we awaken from this ordinary thinking the contemplative consciousness, just as we acquire ordinary thinking consciousness from sensory perception, from the life of the senses.

[ 28 ] In this way, we learn to recognize how thinking, as it lives within us, can indeed be transformed, just as dream life is transformed into [ordinary waking imagination].

[ 29 ] People who are still unfamiliar with these ideas today will understandably find that, in speaking of such a development of the life of mental images, human beings can be caught up in all kinds of self-deception, can be caught up in suggestions, that they are indulging in self-deception, and perhaps also that what appears as a development of the life of imagination, like an awakened consciousness, is based merely on some kind of visions or hallucinations. I say: understandably, one can come to such thoughts. But this shows what is still natural today, that one does not know all the precautions that you can read about in my book “How to Gain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds,” which the spiritual researcher prescribes for himself in order to advance to such a seeing consciousness, and which all involve examining every kind of suggestion that may arise so that it can be ruled out. Likewise, every possibility of arriving at anything from a hallucination or a vision is strictly excluded, because one knows precisely the paths that can lead to such things. And one learns to know them very well. And one learns to avoid these things very easily; because the path I want to outline here does not lead into the hallucinatory, into the visionary life, but to the development of precisely those powers that are suitable for dispelling everything that is merely visionary, everything that is fantastical. It is precisely in the right, positive way, in which one, so to speak, deflects all the forces that lead to such aberrations, that the characteristic feature of the path of spiritual research is revealed.

[ 30 ] Now one might also say: Yes, but how does the spiritual researcher know that when his [seeing] consciousness is awakened, he is not simply engaging in a special, perhaps [higher], but only special form of the ordinary life of imagination that is bound to the brain and develops in everyday life through the brain as its tool — that he has not developed within himself something that is only developed in the [higher] sense, but is still bound to the brain?

[ 31 ] He knows this, dear attendees, because at the moment when he truly awakens to the formation of what I have called the objective organ of imagination, which is not otherwise there, and which now resides in us as spiritual-soul, just as our eye otherwise resides objectively in us, that through this organ he simultaneously observes observe how the ordinary thoughts from which it arose [arise] alongside it, and how these are bound to the instrument of the brain. When one is inside a thing, one cannot see through it at all. The best example of this is our own eye. The eye sees everything and can convey other things to us for judgment; but it does not see itself. Similarly, ordinary mental images, which are bound to the brain, cannot judge itself as long as it remains within itself. But it is recognized precisely in its uniqueness, and it is recognized precisely in its connection to the brain in ordinary physical earthly life from birth to death, when the human being has reached the point where he has stepped out of this ordinary thinking and now views this ordinary thinking from the outside.

[ 32 ] In many respects, dear friends, what a person arrives at in this way is an extraordinary shock, an experience that deeply affects the soul, an experience that can shake its bearer in two ways — first, because when this seeing consciousness really occurs, the sensory world is no longer there, just as as the dream is no longer there when one awakens; but because, during the visionary consciousness, everything that is otherwise around us in the sensory world is not immediately around us; and one could say: it is as if the ground were taken away from under our feet and we were floating in the air. One must first become accustomed to such experiences, when the whole sensory world seems to disappear and a new organ awakens within us.

[ 33 ] But there is something else that makes the experience so unsettling, and that is: through this experience we are indeed led to a seeing consciousness. But this seeing consciousness, I would say, becomes particularly — and I may use this expression in the truest sense — frightening in a certain way when this seeing consciousness looks back on the human being itself; and the first object given to this seeing consciousness is the human being himself. Therefore, it must also be the case that those who are made aware in the sense of the books mentioned are not led in a one-sided way on this spiritual research path to develop this seeing consciousness, but that other soul experiences, so-called exercises, go parallel, which take away the frightening aspect that would arise from now looking at oneself from the perspective of the observing consciousness, which immediately takes away the fear of this frightening aspect. This observing consciousness is initially directed quite naturally toward the human being himself. But if it were simply directed toward the human being as he is in ordinary waking consciousness, then something would arise for this observing consciousness that could be compared to a glare, a glare that would cause spiritual pain to this observing consciousness.

[ 34 ] Why is this so? For the reason, dear attendees, that a dazzling impression, an overpowering impression for this observing consciousness, are those impulses in our ordinary human life which, as they must be in this ordinary human life, spring from sympathies and antipathies that place us in life. The view of the observing consciousness on these ordinary sympathies and antipathies would be like exposing the eye directly to the dazzling sun, if precautions were not taken. Therefore, certain exercises must go hand in hand with others that awaken the seeing consciousness. And these exercises consist in enabling the human being, at the moment when he unfolds the seeing consciousness, to dampen all that that lives in ordinary life in the ebbing and flowing sympathies and antipathies. Just as it is important in the development of mental images or thinking that we shape the power of thought or mental images as intensely as possible and thereby draw it out of ordinary thinking, awakening it from ordinary thinking, on the other hand, it is important that we do the soul exercises described in detail in the books mentioned, which are in no way . That would be very bad, because it would result in all kinds of people who are useless in life being placed in life instead of spiritual researchers; in life we need our sympathies and antipathies. People who would be turned into fish-like creatures by having their sympathies and antipathies driven out of them in ordinary life, and who, like real fish-like creatures, would only want to go through life, would not be true spiritual researchers — so there must be no involuntary dampening of sympathy and antipathy in life, but rather, for certain moments when they want to look into the spiritual world, people must be able to put themselves in a position to dampen the whole life of sympathy and antipathy, to bring it to a standstill, so that what otherwise rushes through life as will on the waves of sympathy and antipathy is completely torn out, detached from sympathies and antipathies.

[ 35 ] And just as the life of mental images and thought is brought out and awakened through meditation in the manner described above, so in a new way, that which otherwise lives in the will but is enclosed in the life of sympathy and antipathy, which can only develop through our physical organism, is placed before this observing consciousness. But now we tear away from this physical organism that which otherwise lives in our impulses of will.

[ 36 ] Then we have, first of all, a special kind of self-knowledge of the human being. That which can now, in the true sense, to use Goethe's expression, be called a “spiritual eye,” the seeing consciousness, can focus on that which has been torn away from sympathies and antipathies, and thus torn out of, detached from, physical life. And what is born in human beings is not merely the abstract idea of a higher human being, not merely the abstract ideal of a spiritual human being within human beings, but a real spiritual human being with real spiritual sense organs, to whom a new world is given; and through what is a new world given? What now occurs as a result of the human being undergoing the development I have described as a spiritual researcher can be illustrated in the following way by means of a comparison.

[ 37 ] You see, dear audience, we can go from one place to another in life; we exert our muscular strength, we make our way by directing our eyes to the left and right and forward in order to have the appropriate orientation, and so on. In short, what brings us forward step by step is connected with our immediate organism. But we can also sit in a carriage and ride; then our ordinary organism rests, and yet we move forward, we still cover our distance. And by perhaps steering the carriage ourselves, we orient ourselves in a completely different way than we would otherwise have done, by adding another activity to the one we would otherwise have needed to do.

[ 38 ] By developing such spiritual powers within ourselves as those described, we have in fact created something spiritual that can be compared to a carriage in which we ride. Our ordinary thinking is contained within itself, just as we sit inside the carriage, so we have our ordinary thinking: but this thinking is ultimately completely shaken [by that what] the contemplative consciousness unfolds. And our ordinary life of will, which we otherwise develop in life in sympathy and antipathy, continues to pulsate as the car carries us along without us straining our feet.

[ 39 ] We have a second person who now carries us through the world. And within this second person, the first has remained. Thinking and willing develop, but in such a way that [they] have, in a certain sense, come to rest within themselves, like the person inside the car in which he is traveling.

[ 40 ] The essential point for our topic today is this: when the will is torn away, detached from the flow of sympathy and antipathy, this will does not appear as an abstract phenomenon, when it is truly detached and observed by the observing consciousness, then, dear attendees, this will reveals itself in such a way that it shows us integrated into a real spiritual world with which our body is connected in some specific way.

[ 41 ] I would like to use a comparison here again, because such mental images, which are still unfamiliar today, can only be made clear by comparison. I would like to use a comparison here again to illustrate what I have to say.

[ 42 ] In our everyday lives, we live in a rhythm of sleeping and waking. This rhythm is also a rhythm of the external physical world. It would go too far to show how there really is a connection between our inner rhythm of sleeping and waking, how this replicates an inner relationship of our organism with the forces of the world that cause day and night, how this inner rhythm of sleeping and waking is really connected with the change in the great cosmic nature of day and night. We replicate, experiencing within ourselves, this rhythm of day and night. We experience an inner night and an inner day through sleeping and waking. Human beings are creatures who, in all their inner laws, rest in a rhythm that is modeled on the outer rhythm of the world. And what human beings experience physically within themselves is also a reflection of the outer physical rhythm of the world.

[ 43 ] External science will also increasingly research such things and thereby bring to light tremendously interesting results, which in the future will also have a profound impact on practical life, [and will] discover forces quite different from the power of electricity and the like, which have brought such great practical advances to modern life.

[ 44 ] But just as our ordinary life in the physical body between birth and death replicates the rhythm of day and night, so the will within us — which underlies the will that is bound to the organism and flows along the waves of sympathy and antipathy — this will replicates a spiritual rhythm, a rhythm in the spiritual world that we do not know at all in our ordinary consciousness. And we come to the conclusion that we live in a spiritual rhythm, just as we live in the ordinary rhythm of sleeping and waking in ordinary life, which must be described as follows: it begins, just as our waking begins in the morning, it begins when we enter existence through birth, a certain state in our spiritual-physical constitution, which runs through our entire earthly life and ends with death, which occurs sooner or later. That is how it is, we could say like sleeping or waking, it does not matter, but what matters is the interrelationship between them. But we also notice that just as when we wake up today through our ordinary consciousness, we know that our life today is the continuation of yesterday's life, so we know that the rhythm in which we live with the deeper forces of our will, that this rhythm, extending over our life from birth to death, first emerges from a life that flowed between a previous death of ours and our present birth or conception, and goes back further to an earlier earthly life, and so on; and that, as we pass through the gate of death, we enter into another phase of this rhythm of life, a phase that lasts considerably longer than the phase between birth and death, a phase of purely spiritual existence, an existence which we now go through between, say, our death and our new birth, a new entry into a physical earthly life.

[ 45 ] And so, just as ordinary consciousness oversees the rhythm of repeated life in successive days, separated by states of sleep, so the contemplative consciousness oversees something that is, at first, striking: a rhythm extending over much longer phases, in which the eternal essence of our human soul unfolds, unfolds through repeated earthly lives and much longer intermediate states between death and a new birth. And it is revealed by stripping the will of its attachment to sympathy and antipathy, which bind it to physicality; what appears before the seeing consciousness is that which extends as the eternal essence of the human soul through repeated earthly lives and other lives between deaths and births. For the observing consciousness, this is no other rhythm than the rhythm of the alternation between day and ever-new day, separated by nights — or rather, by waking and [ever-renewed] waking — separated by states of sleep.

[ 46 ] I have thus attempted to show you how one can understand how spiritual research arrives at the view of repeated earthly lives. For what we speak of [repeated earth lives in Spiritual Science], but it is something based on a view, albeit on real, seeing consciousness, which is acquired as reality in the manner indicated.

[ 47 ] Only when people have grasped the whole truth of the awakening of ordinary consciousness to seeing consciousness will what is still so grotesque for many today — the view of repeated earthly lives — no longer seem grotesque to them; Instead, this view will experience the fate, dear attendees, that many spiritual achievements of humanity have experienced, which were initially regarded as heresy and then became self-evident. I need only recall what Galileo, Copernicus, and others discovered.

[ 48 ] Now it is a matter of looking a little further into what is connected in human life with the repeated earthly lives that open up to the observing consciousness. Here, attention should first be drawn to something that I have already pointed out in earlier lectures, including here in this city. Attention should be drawn to something that, like so many other things, deserves attention — and rightly so, because Spiritual Science does not reject natural science, but admires it in all its achievements. attention should be drawn to something of which modern natural science, physiological and psychological research, is rightly proud, namely that in recent times considerable and wonderful progress has been made with regard to the problem of heredity. Now, it can be said today for many things that occur in human life how the descendant has certain characteristics, which affect him indirectly through his physical nature, from characteristics of his ancestors up to distant ancestors through heredity.

[ 49 ] A beautiful book has been written about Goethe — this book, like many others that also say things about heredity with seemingly profound justification, can be read with burning interest by anyone who is interested in the subject — a beautiful book has been written about Goethe, which attempts to present everything that can be researched about Goethe's ancestors, such as how these distant ancestors in the ancestral line also display certain characteristics, which then reappear in Goethe in a summarized form, so to speak, and make us understand how what was distributed among many ancestors was concentrated in Goethe. Individual cases would of course prove nothing, but many attempts have been made in this direction, and beautiful results have been brought to light.

[ 50 ] And now someone might come along and say: Yes, but what do you actually mean by tracing back the whole course of present earthly life, as it unfolds in human beings with all their predispositions and all the strokes of fate to which their predispositions lead them? It can be explained by the fact that we see what the ancestors have passed on to their descendants.

[ 51 ] Certainly, Spiritual Science should not overlook the fact that wonderful, magnificent things have been achieved in this field; but there is a fundamental error underlying this whole way of thinking. Nothing should be objected to what natural science finds in this field; the things that are said are, in a certain sense, purely and fully justified as facts. However, it is strange that it is considered proof in principle that if someone displays certain characteristics that also occur in their ancestors, this can only be based on the fact that they have physically inherited them from their ancestors, in the sense that we understand it today. This does not actually prove anything in the world of facts!

[ 52 ] Proof would be something quite different; for, dear audience, I have often used the comparison, and one can use the comparison: If someone displays the characteristics found in their ancestors, this is quite natural, because they have physically passed through all the forces that extend from their ancestors down to them; and it is no more remarkable that they physically display these characteristics that their ancestors had, no more remarkable than — if you think about it more deeply, you will find — it is no more surprising than a person who falls into water and is pulled out being wet. They simply display what they have acquired in the element they have passed through. If one wanted to be logical, truly logical, then in order to really substantiate the inheritance of spiritual characteristics, one would have to show how spiritual characteristics that appear in a person today are passed on to their descendants. One would not have to trace the descendants back to their ancestors, but one would have to start with the spiritual ancestor and show how his characteristics are inherited. Yes, one could say: Do you see, the special spiritual characteristics that occurred in the ancestors are evident in the descendants, if one observes them? One would probably refrain from doing so. One would not see any particular characteristics of great spiritual qualities in Goethe's son or grandson. And one would refrain from doing so, because it would be inaccurate.

[ 53 ] Nevertheless, as I said, this would be the only way to prove it logically. There is a fundamental error underlying the matter. Nevertheless, we should by no means deny the facts that emerge from the study of heredity and can be proven. We should not deny that through heredity we receive the tools we need to develop our spirit, which has now come over, our soul and spirit, which has come over from a previous earthly life and has passed through a spiritual world between death and new birth; we can look at this fact, which the Spiritual Science itself uses and which has come from heredity. But in doing so, the other fact remains for spiritual observation, for the observing consciousness; and the two facts combine very well with each other. One need only think of what spiritual research shows precisely, that the spiritual world of which it speaks, which we enter by passing through the gate of death, is not somewhere far away from the physical world, but that it permeates the physical world everywhere in its entire extent. Where is the spiritual world? Yes, the spiritual world is nowhere else than where the physical world is. It differs from the physical world in its nature, not in its location. And as we live through time spiritually, we live through the same time in which, through many generations in the stream of heredity, the characteristics are prepared that we then display when we enter an earthly life. We are connected — although not physically present in the world — with the spirit from which everything in the physical world springs forth.

[ 54 ] And when we look at everything that can be stated as facts, as physical facts, through a long series of generations, this is only the result of events taking place in the spiritual world; for everything physical shows the spiritual world as a result of events. In spiritual events, it is we ourselves who, between our death and a new birth, guide heredity out of the spiritual world. With a different consciousness than we have here in the physical world, we have before us the entire stream of heredity through long generations. And just as we begin here in physical life, when we want to begin an action, with the beginning /gap] and so on, so in the spiritual world between death and a new birth we join a certain stream of heredity, into which we live ourselves, as it were, from the spiritual world, and which leads us to be born as descendants of those ancestors who can give us the qualities we need so that we can carry over into a new earthly life what we have experienced in our last earthly life, what we have acquired in terms of strengths.

[ 55 ] What I have just described is a fact for the clairvoyant consciousness, dear attendees. And the fact is that, long, long centuries before the birth or conception of a human being in the physical world, a spiritual bond of attraction is formed within the spiritual world to the entire stream of heredity — in a sense, a choice in the hereditary stream brought about by a higher consciousness that we have between death and a new birth — leads us to guide ourselves, with the soul that represents the eternal being within us, to those ancestors we need so that we can live out the inner dispositions we have prepared in previous earthly lives.

[ 56 ] That is one thing. The other must be understood in the following way. Again, it is detailed, precise, conscientiously undertaken spiritual research that leads to this other. And the world around us still knows little about how conscientiously and how much more laboriously than physiological or astronomical research this spiritual research is carried out. Therefore, it still has so little confidence in this spiritual research, still so easily ridicules it as something fantastical.

[ 57 ] When the seeing consciousness is developed, then one sees very dear attendees, how something completely different is happening in the world in which we live as physical human beings than what our ordinary consciousness perceives. Let me highlight just one case for now. On the one hand, we entered into relationships with this or that person in life, and we also live out these relationships. But we live the relationships we enter into with people in ordinary life by allowing these relationships to influence our ordinary consciousness, to enter into our ordinary consciousness, and by shaping our lives in relation to other people in an ideal way. But what we take into our consciousness in this way as an elementary relationship to other people is, for the observing consciousness, only a small part of what is really connected.

[ 58 ] For this observing consciousness, it turns out that when we enter into certain interactions with a human being or even with another being or with the physical outside world, relationships arise in our deeper soul being on a much broader scale than can be fulfilled in one earthly life. These relationships initially remain below the threshold of consciousness, but they are real, not merely imagined; they are so real within us that they can unfold real effects. They live within us in the same way that a plant seed develops into a plant flower, and is not merely a thought of the plant, but has within itself the real power to now form a new plant in a physical way.

[ 59 ] What lives in us spiritually and soulfully, even though it is spiritual and soulful, is in reality a real force that passes through the gate of death, that lives its way into the spiritual world, that continues to develop in the world in which we now evolve with other human beings in the long life between death and new birth, even if they have also passed through the gate of death, or even while they are still in their physical bodies and we have already passed through the gate of death. These relationships are developed and taken with us on our journey. And by orienting ourselves on the one hand toward our inner dispositions, which we bring into a new earthly life, according to the currents of heredity, we permeate our spiritual existence with all that we have developed in deeper relationships in previous earthly lives with regard to our surroundings. And out of this, a certain imagination, a certain inner formation about the situation of the new earthly life is formed. Not only do we develop our inner soul dispositions in the time described, but with a prophetic creative power in a higher consciousness between death and a new birth, we shape our path into a specific life situation — indeed, into a specific place, into a specific family, and so on, into a specific situation.

[ 60 ] This is what the soul experiences between death and a new birth, by allowing the one stream that leads to its inner dispositions to flow together and which, through the forces of heredity, has a bond of attraction with the other stream, which is based on the spiritual, soul, emotional, or other experiences of a previous earthly life, and which is now being worked together. And from the cooperation of these two streams arises, on the one hand, our birth, in that we are drawn to be born out of a particular family, and on the other hand, we are drawn into a particular life situation. And because the other person has the same bond of attraction to us as we have to them, it often happens that we are brought together again in later earthly lives, even though there may be overlaps, and one person may be reunited with the other in the next life or only in many lives later, and so on. I cannot go into such details now.

[ 61 ] You see, dear attendees, what we now recognize as human destiny shows above all something that is based on the lawful rhythm of life, in which, in a higher sense, the eternal essence of the human soul is contained, as here in the rhythm of life, which is expressed externally through day and night, through sleeping and waking, in which the human being is contained.

[ 62 ] When we look at life in this way, and destiny, as it were, presents itself to our conscious awareness, it is of course very easy to say: Well, yes, but then you take away all possibility of human beings developing freely! I have referred to the problem of freedom in my book “The Philosophy of Freedom” from a purely philosophical point of view. And anyone who considers this book properly will not accuse me of advocating any view of life that rebels against human freedom. But it is precisely what is developed in conscientious spiritual research that shows what freedom is based on. This earthly life that we go through in the physical body — [and into which our eternal soul enters in the manner described] — we do not go through this earthly life merely to live for a year, nor do we regard it as an evil and a suffering, as Buddhism believes, but we go through this earthly life as an important and essential part of our entire spiritual life.

[ 63 ] And to the many other things [that are added] to our life — if we were still living in so many spiritual worlds — are added through physical earthly life, to the many things that we then need to process further in the spiritual world, to the many things that are added precisely in physical earthly life, the achievement of free will is added. For this free will is based precisely on the fact that that which lives under completely different conditions in the spiritual world between death and new birth sinks into the physical human body through birth or conception, and thereby in turn lives in such mental images that are based on the sensory perceptions of the physical body; and on the other hand, in such a will that flows on the waves of sympathy and antipathy. And it is precisely in passing through this earthly life in this way that we attain free will, because we are cut off by the senses from that direct insight into the spiritual world that results in the seeing consciousness, and also in the consciousness between death and a new birth, that we are, as it were, cut off from this spiritual life in ordinary, physical waking life. And that we are cut off by our rhythm, which extends over long periods of time, like our short rhythm of sleeping and waking, that we are cut off by this rhythm from the state in the eternally flowing being of our soul, and that through this isolation, in this seclusion, in a sense in this loneliness from the spiritual world, we develop what we call freedom and what we call free will. This is an ability that, to the extent that we acquire it through repeated earthly lives, is never lost again. This shows, as a special result about freedom, spiritual research.

[ 64 ] Anyone who wants to go into these things in more detail can read about them, especially about the problem of freedom, in my latest book, "The Riddle of Man," where the whole relationship of clairvoyant consciousness to a knowledge of the higher worlds is pointed out. I need only mention in parentheses, because not everything can be said in a lecture, that it would be unfounded if someone were to object: So you view human life as if it were to take place in eternity in repeated earthly lives? That is not the case! From my “Outline of Occult Science” you can see that these repeated earthly lives once began and will once end, that this earth itself emerged from another planet and will progress to other planetary states, and that human beings will then live under other conditions, [as] I have described, and will live under other conditions in the future.

[ 65 ] Ladies and gentlemen, in this brief outline — as brief as can be given in a short lecture — I have described some of what Spiritual Science or anthroposophy has to say about the eternal nature of the human soul. This Spiritual Science does not speak in an abstract way, referring to the concept of eternity and the like in such an abstract manner, but rather speaks by pointing to spiritual experiences and showing how one earthly life emerges from another, just as next year's plant emerges from last year's plant, which in turn emerged from the seed. And from what these experiences are, the idea of eternity is ultimately formed.

[ 66 ] As I have said, ladies and gentlemen, there is not yet much sympathy for this kind of view of the true relationship between the spiritual and the physical, and of the deeper, higher will. As I have already mentioned, , what must now be incorporated into the spiritual development of humanity as conscientious spiritual research is met with hostility for similar reasons to those that led natural science to be incorporated into the spiritual life of humanity three or four centuries ago as a new science. Above all, there is a different kind of opposition to this way of looking at the world, as it has been outlined in relation to a certain problem. On the one hand, there are objections from followers of religious denominations who believe their religious beliefs are threatened, or who come from the theologians of such denominations; on the other hand, there are also attacks coming from the scientific community.

[ 67 ] Anyone who engages with some of what Spiritual Science shows — you can see this in particular in a lecture that I had printed to document such opposition, on “The Task of Spiritual Science and Its Structure in Dornach” — what is discussed there shows how those who believe they must fight against what Spiritual Science has to say about the life of the soul and its eternal nature on the part of religion or theology show that they have not engaged deeply enough with what what Spiritual Science or anthroposophy is on the one hand, and on the other hand, what it can become as the best support for religious belief. On the other hand, it is exactly the same with the opposition that comes from the natural sciences.

[ 68 ] Let me say a few words about this at the end. First of all, Spiritual Science does not in any way detract from religious truths; however, it does influence them — something that becomes increasingly clear when one looks at modern life as a whole, which is already largely determined by scientific thinking and a scientific worldview, and will become more and more so. On the other hand, religious life is influenced by natural science in such a way that a counterbalance from Spiritual Science is necessary. However, those who believe themselves to be true adherents of this or that religious creed today see things from a different perspective. And this gives rise to some very strange things.

[ 69 ] Spiritual Science shows in many ways how what appears as religious revelation within religious denominations is rightly supported by its insights. The lecture does not allow us to go into details, but natural science is causing theologians in particular to lose their footing, so that they are making strange compromises. I am not making this up, but such strange compromises have actually been made. I am thinking of an outstanding contemporary theologian and religious leader who says to his audience:

Yes, theology or religious belief should not rebel against what science has to say about physical man; it should leave physical man entirely to science and should only

[ 70 ]— as this theologian puts it—

reserve for the human being of freedom.

[ 71 ] The only question is whether this is possible. It would be nice if, as a theologian, especially with the scientific worldview raging against theology, one could arrive at a genuine division: I give you what relates to the physical human being, and I take from you what relates to the human being of freedom. A loaf of bread can indeed be divided, but the division is such that both parts have the same. If one were to divide the human being in the sense described and say: one part is given to science, and the other to theology, then just as one half of the loaf of bread, the part given to natural science, would contain spirit and physicality, so too would the other part, given to theology, contain spirit and physicality. And with such a division, ladies and gentlemen, nothing else can result but what happened between Hans and Karl. When they were supposed to share an apple, their father said: Yes, but share it Christianly, my dear Hans! Then Hans said: Yes, but how should one share Christianly? Well, said his father, share it so that you keep the smaller half and give Karlchen the larger half. Well, then Hans said: Karlchen had better share the apple. That's roughly how the division may happen, with one person intent on getting the larger piece. But that cannot be the case.

[ 72 ] For if one really wants to carry out such a division, which is supposed to lead to genuine cooperation between spiritual worldview and natural science, then it must be done be carried out in such a way that one divides, as when one divides bread into flour and water, for example; then, of course, it is no longer bread, but on the one hand one has the flour and on the other the water. This is indeed the case: what natural science can investigate about human beings is that into which human beings immerse themselves with their eternal being. That is not the human being; for in this human being between birth and death there also sits this eternal being; but this eternal being passes through repeated earthly lives and through other lives between death and birth, as has been shown. And that which intervenes so transformatively when human beings come into existence through birth, which permeates the physical human being as water permeates flour in bread, can indeed be seen for itself through contemplative consciousness, and separated from that which can be grasped with the hands and seen with physical eyes, and recognized with ordinary scientific instruments: the outer physical human being.

[ 73 ] In many respects, it will be necessary to think even more precisely and differently than is possible for human beings today if we want to understand what Spiritual Science can and should be for the whole of spiritual culture, in accordance with the demands that the present and the future will increasingly make. And also with regard to natural science, many prejudices will have to be overcome. Today, however, natural scientists believe that by researching only the physical human being — who is not the human being at all, just as flour is not bread — they are researching the whole human being. But with this human being who is being researched by natural science, it is no different than it is, I would like to say in another field, where a deeper feeling very well perceives the completely inappropriate [in relation to] existence as opposed to the scientific hypothesis. That is, when science has established over the years what is called the Kant-Laplace theory. I know, dear audience, that this Kant-Laplace theory is now thought of by many in a very modified way; but the spirit from which it is still established today is the same from which it was established by Kant and Laplace themselves. It shows how, from a kind of primordial nebula that was in rotation, the sun and other planets gradually separated, and how what surrounds us today as the solar system came into being in this way. What is ignored, however, is what was already spiritual within this primordial nebula and led to the spiritual form we see today.

[ 74 ] Such things can even be made very vivid, and this visualization can be a great temptation: Children are shown this in school by taking a small drop of oil floating on water, cutting a small card or piece of paper to size, pushing a straw through it, causing the whole thing to rotate until small droplets have indeed detached themselves from this central drop: you have a miniature world of rotating points, an entire world system. This visual representation is extremely illuminating. And people today love things that are so obvious, except that in doing so, they forget the one thing that is often good to forget: they forget that it was they themselves who turned it! And in a scientific experiment, you mustn't forget anything. So in this experiment to illustrate the creation of a world system, you would have to — assume that there was a great teacher, a great professor, standing there and sticking a needle through it; because without that, the rotation could not have taken place, the separation of the planets! On the other hand, one forgets that only oil droplets separate from the oil droplet, i.e., something that is of the same shape as something that may be contained in the primordial nebula.

[ 75 ] That is why deeper minds have felt this way, as expressed by Herman Grimm, the eminent art historian, who refers to Goethe and says: "Goethe would ultimately have such fantasies about the creation of a world picture. " Herman Grimm says, and it is worth noting how such people with deeper feelings view these things:

Long ago, in his

[ 76 ] — Goethe's —

youth, the great Laplace-Kant fantasy of the origin and eventual demise of the globe had already taken hold. From the rotating nebula—children already learn this in school—the central gas cloud forms, which then becomes the Earth, and, as a solidifying sphere, it went through all phases, including the episode of habitation by the human race, in inconceivable periods of time, only to finally fall back into the sun as burnt-out slag: a long process, but one that is completely comprehensible to today's audience, for the realization of which no external intervention is now necessary other than the effort of some outside force to keep the sun at the same heating temperature.

No more fruitless prospect for the future can be imagined

[ 77 ] — Herman Grimm continues

than the one that is being imposed on us today as scientifically necessary. A carcass around which a hungry dog made a detour would be a refreshing, appetizing morsel in comparison to this 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 true, a sign of a sick imagination, which scholars of future epochs will once again apply much acumen to explain as a historical phenomenon of the time.

Goethe never allowed such desolation to enter his work.

[ 78 ] So said Herman Grimm.

[ 79 ] No, just as little as this hypothesis — fully justified within its limits — hypothesis, knowledge cannot remain with regard to the eternal nature of the human soul with what the natural scientist has to say physiologically about the nervous system, the rest of the organism, and physicality. For the same words that Herman Grimm, out of a deeper sense of humanity, applied to the Kant-Laplace 's theory when it appears unjustified beyond its limits, could also be said against what some natural scientists of the present day have to say about a real worldview in relation to the eternal nature of the human soul today.

[ 80 ] In doing so, nothing should be objected to — as you may have recognized from the spirit of my lecture today — against the real, positive results of this natural science. Just as the professed believers would see, if they really engaged with Spiritual Science, that Spiritual Science is precisely a firm support for the religious life of human beings, and that it is true, deeply true, what can be said in connection with a theologian, and I now mean a Catholic theologian, whom I always remember when these questions come up, a Catholic theologian who was a good priest and who emphasized until his death that he had always wanted to remain a faithful son of his church, he said in his rector's speech, when he took up his rectorship — he was a professor of Christian philosophy — that the newer Christian attitude should not rebel against something as Galileo introduced into the intellectual development of humanity. For in relation to everything that is introduced in this way into the intellectual development of humanity, one must behave in such a way that one says to oneself: through such discoveries, the wisdom that is spread, the divine wisdom that flowed from the divine universe, is not diminished, but on the contrary, increased in knowledge.

[ 81 ] So one can also say: through the recognition of the secrets of the spiritual world, the workings of divine wisdom are not placed in a lesser light, but in an ever wider and brighter light. And natural science will also see that precisely what it has to offer as significant can only be explained when it can be animated by what Spiritual Science has to say about the spiritual worlds.

[ 82 ] At present, however, natural science, or rather its representatives, are still not very inclined to engage with these matters. However, dear friends, in this regard, one can sometimes catch natural science in something quite special. There is no need to draw attention to insignificant, inferior minds when pointing out opposition to Spiritual Science today — opposition to the whole spirit of Spiritual Science — one can point to the most important natural scientists of the present day. But how do such natural scientists sometimes think under the lasting influence of the newer scientific trend?

[ 83 ] I would like to quote something from an important natural scientist whom I hold in high esteem, who has written a book that is very significant in the field of astrophysics, and who says the following in his foreword, in which, I would say, because he expresses himself unconsciously, can really be caught out by the inner feeling that is so strangely prevalent among natural scientists today. This, I emphasize once again, is what this extraordinarily important natural scientist says:

Sometimes we hear it said that we live in the “best of all worlds”; it is difficult to say anything well-founded about this, but we — at least natural scientists — can say with certainty that we live in the “best of times.” We can say with the great naturalist and humanist Goethe, in the firm hope that the future will only get better:

[ 85 ] — he is clear that what natural science produces does not need to be explained by any kind of spiritual research; that is why natural scientists live in the “best of times” —,

we can say with the great naturalist and humanist Goethe, in the firm hope that the future will only get better:

"It is a great delight
To put oneself in the spirit of the times,
To see how a wise man thought before us,
And how we have ultimately come so far."

[ 86 ] You all know, dear guests, what the great naturalist, in order to justify himself, is not feeling at this moment. You all know, dear guests, that Goethe puts these words into Wagner's mouth when Wagner confronts Faust. It is not “Goethe, the great naturalist and connoisseur of human nature,” but Wagner, the pedantic Wagner, the narrow-minded Wagner; it is he who opposes Faust with these words!

[ 87 ] It is a nice sentiment — especially in one of the most important natural scientists of the present day — by catching him out in such a way. But Faust, looking at Wagner's attitude, says, as Herman Grimm looks at those natural scientists who, for example, seek the “Umundum” of all worldview knowledge in the Kant-Laplace hypothesis, Faust says:

How all hope does not vanish from the head,
Which constantly clings to stale evidence,
Digging for treasures with greedy hands,
And is happy when it finds earthworms!

[ 88 ] Faust, who in any case expresses Goethe's sentiments more than Wagner, perhaps we can say with him, the Faust “with the great connoisseur of nature and humanity, Goethe,” he says:

How only the head does not lose all hope,
Who clings to stale evidence,
Digging greedily for treasures,
And is happy when he finds earthworms!

[ 89 ] Today, one could just as rightly hold this attitude against many an eminent natural scientist, just as some musicians might hold it against Weber, the composer of “Freischütz,” Weber, who had heard Beethoven's Seventh Symphony and said:

With these extravagances, Beethoven has reached the ultimate; he is completely ready for the madhouse!

[ 90 ] This shows that one does not even need to be an insignificant person, but can be Weber, the composer of “Der Freischütz,” and misjudge something that is part of the intellectual development of humanity and which will later be recognized in its greatness, despite all the interpretations one may have oneself.

[ 91 ] That is why it must be said again and again, especially to those opponents of Spiritual Science who come from the natural sciences and also from religious denominations — it should be pointed out that one might speak more accurately of a “great mind, like Goethe” if, instead of the words he puts into Wagner's mouth, instead of the words

“It is a great delight
To put oneself in the spirit of the times,
To see how a wise man thought before us,
And how we have finally come so far.”

[ 92 ] —if one uses other words instead of these. For, dear attendees, these words express the intellectual attitude of stagnation, the spirit of prejudice, which does not want to go along with what must be incorporated into the intellectual development of humanity. To those who need nothing, but who insist on what they already have, to those people, one would rather speak with Goethe and with all those who are deeply rooted in the spirit of human progress, if one contrasts these words of Wagner with others, with which you, dear audience, would like me to conclude my reflections today, with the words of Wagner:

“It is a great delight
To put oneself in the spirit of the times,
To see how a wise man thought before us,
And how we have finally come so far.”

[ 93 ] — anyone who is truly serious about what has always been the impulse of progress in human development must use other words, which I would like to formulate as follows:

It is a great experience,
To rise to the spirit of the times,
To hear how many a true sage speaks:
Only by striving can we reach the light.