The Rudolf Steiner Archive

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

[ 1 ] Dear attendees! Some time ago, I took the liberty of speaking here about the relationship between what I refer to as Spiritual Science or anthroposophy and contemporary scientific worldviews. Following on from this, a few weeks ago I gave a lecture in which I pointed out very specific insights that Spiritual Science can offer for human life.

[ 2 ] Today, I would like to present some additions to what I have said in my previous lectures here. In order to avoid repetition, it will be permissible to to take for granted, as it were, what has been said in recent lectures. And since the subject of this evening is, in a sense, immeasurable, [I would like] to speak in a more narrative form about the experiences and adventures of the spiritual researcher that lead him to his conclusions. In doing so, however, I will have to ask my esteemed audience even more than in previous lectures to bear in mind that Spiritual Science or anthroposophy, as it is meant here, is only at the beginning of its development, and that some things in this field must therefore still appear paradoxical, perhaps even fantastic, all the more fantastical when presented in a more narrative form without any basis in evidence. Today, we will have to answer some big questions, which opponents of Spiritual Science approach not only as one would normally approach scientific or life struggles, but with much greater passion. One might say that this seems quite understandable, although it remains to a certain extent misunderstood, and in such a struggle one repeatedly fails to address the real content of Spiritual Science, but instead takes the liberty of creating distorted images, caricatures, as one wants to have oneself, of this Spiritual Science, and then actually wants to fight not against what Spiritual Science really says, but against these self-created distortions and caricatures.

[ 3 ] But on the other hand, it seems understandable that such opposition, passionate opposition, arises, because Spiritual Science not only spreads itself over what, so to speak, spreads out separately from us in the world of nature and sensory appearances, but because Spiritual Science directly grasps what is the innermost essence of human beings, what are the innermost experiences of human beings. One touches the innermost essence, one touches the innermost being and innermost experiences of human beings when one reflects on the question of the soul in connection with the question of human destiny. For, after all, every human being feels to a high degree that he or she is at every moment the result of his or her own destiny, so that when one speaks of the question of destiny, one immediately appeals to the most intense human mystery.

[ 4 ] Now, for the reason already indicated, I will refrain from discussing the manner in which the soul can develop certain inner powers of knowledge that are hidden from ordinary life, but which must be developed if one truly wants to penetrate the mysteries of the soul life. For it will become apparent, especially in today's considerations, that the Spiritual Science or anthroposophy referred to here does not in any way conflict with the [great] advances of modern scientific research. On the other hand, however, it must be in complete agreement — as well as in opposition — with certain assumptions of what is often called the scientific worldview today. It must agree with the scientific worldview insofar as this scientific worldview speaks of the limits of knowledge. These limits of knowledge certainly exist. But they exist only as long as one remains with those powers of cognition that, in a sense, arise naturally for human beings in the natural course of their lives. However, it is possible for human beings to discipline their souls and, in their ordinary existence, to bring forth powers slumbering within them from the depths of their soul life. In this way, the powers of the soul and spiritual knowledge. And there the spiritual researcher first arrives at that form of knowledge, that kind of knowledge, which I took the liberty of calling imaginative knowledge in my book “How to Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds” and in my “Secret Science.”

[ 5 ] This imaginative knowledge should not be something merely imagined, but something developed in a real way from the depths of the soul. How this imaginative knowledge is developed, I ask you to look up in the books just mentioned, for if I were to explain it, it would mean repeating what I have said here in earlier lectures. But reference should be made to what is actually present in the human soul when the spiritual researcher is in a state of imaginative knowledge.

[ 6 ] In ordinary life, in our dealings with the outside world, in scientific pursuits, human beings develop what we know as a mental image, feeling, and willing. Other forces — forces that are an intensification of these forces — are developed when human beings attain imaginative knowledge. This imaginative knowledge is rooted in ordinary thinking, however, and in this respect the attainment of this imaginative knowledge is by no means miraculous, but it must first be brought out. Just as the trunk and leaves of a plant must grow out of the root, so imaginative knowledge must grow out of ordinary thinking. I would like to suggest only the spirit of this imaginative knowledge as it emerges from thinking; anything more precise is left to be found in the books cited.

[ 7 ] By following the paths and exercises described above, the spiritual researcher actually approaches what is otherwise only theoretically referred to as the “limits of knowledge,” of ordinary knowledge. He actually approaches these limits of knowledge in life by concentrating his thinking, making this thinking more and more intense. It is precisely through strenuous, intense thinking that one reaches the limits, the utmost of this thinking. Then the moment comes when one feels very clearly: reality goes further than this thinking goes. One cannot follow the course of reality with thinking alone, because with this thinking one is bound to the tools of the body or the tools of the brain. Then comes the moment when one experiences a limit of ordinary human soul-being, the moment when you know that the scientific assumption is entirely justified, that this ordinary thinking is bound to the brain and cannot go beyond the will that expresses itself through the effort you develop with the help of the physical tool. But in order to understand this properly, one must experience it, one must come to see how reality is more than what one can achieve with thinking. Then one must — and will achieve this through the exercises often described here — be able to develop the necessary inner peace of mind so that, in a sense, in the further operation that must now take place in the soul, one is no longer present with one's limited bodily thinking, brain thinking, but to leave thinking itself to itself, to one's own life, so to speak. But that does not mean that one falls into an unconscious state. With the consciousness that one has developed up to that point, that has accompanied one by pushing thinking to its limits, with this consciousness one must continue to follow all processes [unclear passage], [but] one [must now] give free rein to thinking, observe what is now happening in the soul, whereas before — one knows this very well — one was the thinker oneself.

[ 8 ] You now experience in a very intense way, dear attendees, what can be called ego thinking. That [which] otherwise always lives within us now passes into what can only be described as: “It thinks within us.” One feels new forces, as it were, moving along on the waves of thinking now left to its own devices, forces that one did not know before, but of which one now knows: they are constantly present in the soul. One has not added anything to the soul in any way, but has only brought into consciousness that which is also constantly present in the soul. What powers have we actually discovered? For we have discovered powers that we were not consciously aware of before.

[ 9 ] When one looks at the ordinary forces of everyday life, they are those forces that one can follow with one's consciousness, which arise from perceiving things in the environment and connecting them with one's thinking, forming concepts and ideas from them, developing one's senses, and so on, and so on. I would like to say: what happens in everyday life, between waking and sleeping, is perceived with ordinary consciousness. Now forces flow into our thinking that go beyond this everyday life, forces that we now know about because we experience them in their quality, in their essence: These are forces that are similar to those that accompany our organic growth in the physical body from birth to death, that not only allow us to see colors through our eyes, not only allow us to hear sounds through our ears, that not only allow us to follow the course of day and night and what happens in external existence and [what] takes place under the influence of day and night, but we also discover in this way those forces that are formative forces in our organism. We discover those forces through which we grow from early childhood, becoming larger and larger, those forces through which we develop our organs; we discover those forces that work from the spiritual world to create an image in our body with all its individual parts, a physical image. What the day is to us, the course of human life between birth and death becomes to us. We survey, as it were, the forces that span it. And that is why I have taken the liberty of calling the knowledge that results in this way at this stage, because its content is the formative forces of the organism, because we then live in the element that represents the inner essence of what shapes and forms our material substances and forces.

[ 10 ] Let us, dear audience, return once more to what has been said about reaching the limits of thinking and creating mental images. I said that one must have the calmness to now let thinking take its own course, to let the formative forces flow into the course, the flow, the stream of thinking, and now observe these formative forces in this stream of thinking. Then one observes a peculiar process. One sees — just as one is connected in physical life, say, to the ground on which one stands, through gravity — how one is connected through contact with other objects of life, how one is connected through breathing with the air, and so on and so forth. So you see yourself in real imagination, that is, in a way of seeing that is only more alive, but otherwise similar to conceptual seeing, only more alive and for that reason alone can be called imaginative, pictorial. You see yourself placed in a new world, a time [gap].

[ 11 ] Do not be offended by expressions and words; some must be used to describe things that can be called an “etheric world”; a world that is much more spiritual; a world in which one now stands and from which one sees how the formative forces emerge, just as the physical formative principles enter with food. Just as breathing enters with the air, so the formative forces enter from a special world, from an ethereal world. And with this ethereal world, one now sees oneself connected. One feels lifted out of physical existence, connected to a whole new world, to an ethereal world to which one belongs with one's own ethereal life or body, just as one belongs to the physical environment with one's physical body.

[ 12 ] So when thinking is left to itself, imaginative perception enters. And that — [everything that animates life], permeating the principles of life — can only be seen, it can never be conceived, never really found through hypnosis, never found through any natural science. It can only be seen if one is truly able to direct one's soul toward the formative forces.

[ 13 ] Now, in order to give a more precise mental image of what is actually meant here, I would like to point out the difference that arises for the imaginative knower between animals and human beings. For those who have entered into this imaginative knowledge, , ladies and gentlemen, the world now truly has more content than the merely physical world. Above all, in addition to the usual content, there is now the possibility of following human beings in their life course not only until death, and seeing how physical life comes to an end, but also, in a sense, of following them further, at least for a few days, to see how — when ordinary physical death has occurred — something continues to live on, specifically the kind of existence, the essence, that can be seen through imaginative knowledge. That which continues to live on for days after physical death has occurred and remains connected to the human being as a soul being is precisely what can be called the etheric body. This etheric body contains everything that is otherwise connected with the growth and formative forces of the human being. But also everything that is alive — I would like to reflect first on humans and animals — everything living appears imbued in this etheric world, appears permeated with the formative forces that are accessible to imaginative knowledge.

[ 14 ] If we now look at the animal with imaginative knowledge, the animal appears in such a way that one must say: Everything, almost everything that can be seen in terms of formative forces in animals is intimately connected with what has developed in the animal in terms of physical form, physical structure, and physical organs. The animal has this entire etheric body, I would say, completely inserted into and intimately connected with its physical body. This etheric body has found in the animal the possibility of creating a complete image of what it wants, so to speak.

[ 15 ] This is not the case for the human etheric body. The only part of the human etheric body that is somewhat similar, dear attendees, is that which relates to the human head. For as strange as it may sound, as paradoxical as it may seem: For those who see through the world with imaginative insight, it is not the head that is the most spiritual, but rather that which has descended most firmly, most intensely, into the physical world. This means that in the head, the etheric body has found its greatest expression in what is physically present, so that the etheric body of the head is most similar to the etheric body as I have just described to you in relation to the physical body in the animal world. In contrast, for the rest of the human being, for the rest of the human organization, the etheric body has not fully, I would say, found expression in the form of the physical body. The forms of the rest of the physical body are, in a certain sense, the result of the formative forces of the etheric body, but the etheric body still retains certain formative forces that are now purely etheric, that is, much more spiritual than the physical entity. So that something is present in the human being, something etheric, that does not find its complete imprint, its complete expression in what is the physical image.

[ 16 ] This whole thing is brought about, dear audience, by the fact that human beings are organized in such a way that they can walk upright; for this more intense expression of the etheric body in the physical body in animals is probably brought about by the fact that the forces which act etherically from the earth, have a very strong effect on the animal because of its position in relation to the earth, so that its main axis, which runs through the spinal cord, became parallel, as it were, to the surface of the earth in the main axis. The fact that human beings are organized in such a way that they rise vertically above the surface of the earth means that their organism is removed from the direct influences of the earth. In this way, he opens [his organism] to the side, I would say to the whole universe and its etheric influence. As a result, the etheric body in humans does not develop to its full potential, does not penetrate as deeply into the physical being as in animals, but remains behind as an etheric bond.

[ 17 ] Now, in this way, we see a whole new world through imaginative knowledge. But this world remains quite incomprehensible at first. However, the [essential] must be emphasized very strongly. And this [essential] consists in that at every stage in which the human being enters this imaginative world as a spiritual researcher, he is himself present with his full consciousness, so that he is fully aware of the transition from ordinary thinking and mental images to what spreads out as imagination, just as sunlight spreads out at sunrise, so that he is fully conscious throughout this entire transition. Therefore, ladies and gentlemen, it is impossible to achieve this imagination, everything that is achieved and to which so much importance is sometimes attached today excluded, everything that is based on suggestion, hypnotism, and so-called mediumship. The development that the soul undergoes under the influence of hypnotism, under any suggestive treatment, in the attainment of mediumship, the path that the soul takes in this process, is the opposite of what I have just described for the attainment of imaginative knowledge. For in all the paths that are based on hypnotism and so forth, the consciousness of the human being is suppressed, pushed down. Precisely that which must be driven to a particular intensity in imaginative cognition is eliminated. One sees — allow me to make this remark — how averse today's self-taught world is to the path has just been described as the path to imaginative knowledge — when one sees, when one notices how this world, in order to gain knowledge of the supersensible, much prefers to resort to mediumship, to all kinds of soul paths similar to those that can be attained through mediumship.

[ 18 ] It was reported in recent days that one of the most eminent scholars of our time, Sir Oliver Lodge, was convinced of the existence of his son's soul in the supersensible world through certain experiences he had with mediums, following a traumatic event in his family, namely the death of his son in the war. It is true, I would say, this path through mediums is more convenient than the path that is purely internal and requires an enormous amount of patient effort than putting a medium into a subdued state of consciousness, into a so-called trance, and then experiencing certain manifestations, which are then reported by the medium. But it must be said, dear attendees, that by suppressing ordinary consciousness, the soul does not ascend into the superconscious — as is the case with the attainment of imaginative knowledge — but descends into the subconscious, descends deeper into the body, so that what comes out of the medium is affected by all the cloudiness that passes through the soul. For the soul does indeed penetrate and settles deeper into the physical body of the medium. But in doing so, the soul mixes with the physical, and everything that the soul now reveals must be mixed with the physical.

[ 19 ] But through this, dear attendees, the very power in the human soul that is needed when ascending into superconsciousness, into the supersensible, is led astray, so to speak. What the medium kills is precisely what is needed, and by consciously using it, it is led away from its aberrations, its dullness is removed, and it is used precisely to bring light and discernment into the supersensible worlds. One can say that the spiritual researcher brings precisely those forces to their highest development, to their highest evolution, in order to consciously view the spiritual world, which are suppressed, pushed down, and thereby forced into the animal kingdom, but thereby also caused to obscure the truly spiritual, to cloud it, to immerse it in all kinds of illusions.

[ 20 ] But I would say that this path is made accessible to today's materialistic world through something else — through the medium connecting with the supersensible world. What the medium produces is clothed in the words of everyday life, regardless of whether this happens through table-tapping or through writing mediums, through automatic writing. What comes through the medium is forced into connections that are familiar from everyday life, familiar through language, through writing, and the like. By rising to the supersensible through imaginative knowledge of the kind described, the spiritual researcher learns that nothing that is practiced and learned only in physical life, such as our mind and language, which is bound to physical tools, can be a real means of expression for a spiritual being.

[ 21 ] By rising to imaginative knowledge, one must also rise to higher means of expression. It may be, however, that a significant limitation occurs precisely in these worlds. I have already mentioned, and I will go into these things in more detail shortly, that after the physical death of the human being, what I have characterized as the connection of the formative forces, the etheric body, remains connected for a few days with the actual soul being of the human being, which now enters the spiritual world through the gate of death, then detaches itself, so that the human being discards his etheric body some time after death, just as he discarded his physical body in physical death. Just as the physical body connects with the forces of the earth, just as it is dissolved by its power, so the etheric body passes into the general etheric force. This etheric body, however, carries with it the remnants of what it has practiced learned between birth and death in the physical body. This etheric body can therefore still express the rudiments, let us say, of the art of writing, even the rudiments of speech in some more primitive way — whether through writing or through table-tapping, by these means. But one is not dealing with what is expressed there, with a real spiritual life, a real supersensible being, as man is when he has passed through the gate. One has no connection with the real human being, but with what he has left behind as his etheric body. It is important to note that one can only deal with the finer corpse, so to speak, if one has anything to do with it at all. In cases where even the spiritual researcher, where possible, once determines: it is not a mere deception, as was indeed the case in the vast majority of cases in these areas. But in no case, if it is a real expression of the spiritual world, does one have to deal with what is only exercised in the physical body for the physical world through its forces. But we have even had to see in recent times that the spirit of our age — that [human beings] can no longer resist the longing for the spiritual world, because it [once] existed — has even, yes, forgive the harsh expression, come to the horse, and even to the dog.

[ 22 ] We have heard all the reports about horses that can do arithmetic, dogs that can do arithmetic, research monkeys, reports about a monkey that can do arithmetic and is also extraordinarily wise in other ways; and one might believe that in certain circles it is believed that what grips the animal from the spiritual world can really be expressed in a similar way to what shapes the human being, [such as] the special nature of their human body, learning arithmetic, for example. However, it has recently become apparent in the field of physical development that the whole thing was an illusion, that it is nothing more than a kind of intense response to certain subtle expressions of the soul of the trainer, the person who trained the animals in question. I cannot go into the subject further; it would take us too far afield. But I wanted to mention it only to show how one can succumb to misunderstandings in these areas if one has no idea that what is truly spiritual, what is truly supersensible, lies beyond what is acquired with the help of the human physical body.

[ 23 ] I said that the spiritual researcher must not stop at imaginative knowledge, because this in itself provides an incomprehensible world. But he really wants — also through the path he has now embarked upon, which in itself produces the [urge] for progress — he does not want to remain there. However, if one wants to understand these things, one must familiarize oneself with a special peculiarity of spiritual research. In ordinary science, in everyday life, we use our soul forces to think and feel in order to arrive at certain results. We immediately work out what we then have as a result. This is not the case when it comes to entering the spiritual world. We cannot, so to speak, pull the spiritual world out of thin air, just as we develop our mental images through our own will. We cannot do this with regard to the spiritual world. And no matter how carefully, indeed, much more carefully we have to work, how much more scientifically than in ordinary science we have to think, how much more inwardly we have to work: The work we can do, what the soul creates inwardly, is only preparation for the soul to reach a state in which it becomes capable of allowing the spiritual world to flow into it.

[ 24 ] How does that actually work? I would like to use a comparison to draw attention to what is important. We only need to pump out a vessel that is closed on all sides, pump out the air, and empty it of air. Now that it is empty, if we open it in one place, drill a hole in it, air will flow in from outside. For the air to flow in, we need only make the necessary preparations. Air flows into the space that has been emptied. What the spiritual researcher really achieves with the exercises he performs is, in a sense, to bring the soul to the point where the spiritual world flows in. Therefore, it is not a passive surrender, not a kind of brooding, not what is so often described as a confused, nebulous mysticism, but rather, I would say, hard inner work. But this work is all preparation of the will, directing that within us, making the soul fit, [unclear passage], so that the world of the spirit surrenders to it. Therefore, when the spiritual researcher has advanced so far in imaginative knowledge that his imaginations are truly intense, that they truly represent what are by no means hallucinations — anyone who confuses what what I have described with hallucinations, shows at the same time that he completely misunderstands it — but when the spiritual researcher has come to truly live in his imaginative world, he will, purely through the continuation of his ongoing life in this imaginative world, urge a kind of will-being to pour into his imaginings. Just as there is a difference between the state of the ordinary person in the physical world, who merely sits and thinks, and the person into whom the will pulsates, as it were, who gets up and goes to work, so the transition occurs from the imaginative world to the being of the imaginative world by the will; but now by a will that does not spring from within us and lead to our actions, as our human will does, but by a will that comes from the spiritual world—since there is now more than the imaginations around us—that now comes more from the spiritual world. And this will now makes it possible that on the real [ground] of imaginations, not only the image-forming powers appear, as I have described them, but that real beings of the spiritual world appear, among whom we are just as beings in our physical world are among the physical entities of the objective world. As souls, we are [then] among spiritual beings. And when we have attained this ability, that is, to live as a soul in imagination, in imagination that is now permeated by the element of will that has flowed in from all sides, then we have before us a concrete spiritual world consisting of individual spiritual beings, not a generally vague spirituality that appears to the spiritual researcher just as if he were talking about a general plant world without distinguishing between individual plants. One has a real, concrete spiritual world around oneself, consisting of individual spiritual beings. And this state of the soul with these spiritual beings, to which we ourselves belong as souls — not only between birth and death, bound in a physical body — this togetherness with these spiritual beings, the state that lives in our soul as a spiritual perception through this togetherness with the spiritual beings, is now a higher level of spiritual knowledge. And what I take the liberty of calling inspiration — whereby all ordinary inspiration must be eliminated as an unequal concept associated with the [word content] — is merely what has been described here.

[ 25 ] Now, dear friends, when one has truly raised one's soul to this inspiration, then it becomes possible to have powers in one's spiritual perception that are not merely the formative forces of our physical body as it develops between birth and death, but are those forces that connect with what has become through physical inheritance in the sense that I indicated recently in my lecture: Through the physical inheritance of our ancestors, we receive a physical body that connects with what we have physically within us from the spiritual world.

[ 26 ] For in fact, to inspired knowledge, human life appears to extend beyond birth and death, and one looks back on forces that come from the purely spiritual world and connect with what father and mother give as a physical body. These forces work into ordinary human life; they work into ordinary human life in such a way that they are an unconscious inspiration for this ordinary human life. And everything that we experience not only as the formative forces of our body, but also as the developmental forces of our soul between birth and death, everything that is not merely bound to the physical body but permeates the physical body as soul life, is inspired by what has also developed over a long period of time between our last death and our present birth, as our soul has passed through a purely spiritual world.

[ 27 ] In this interim period between death and rebirth, the human soul lives in a purely spiritual world. There it is imbued with forces that can only be perceived through inspiration, just as here it is imbued, just as here the human being as an organism is imbued with physical forms and physical forces that are accessible to physical perception.

[ 28 ] Nowadays, one might even encounter quite strong resistance when one speaks of human beings being developed between birth and death by such forces: souls that come out of the spiritual world. But one will only encounter strong opposition because of today's materialistic attitude — even among those who believe they have long since gone beyond materialism — because science indulges in the delusion that what develops in our soul can only come from our ancestors through physical inheritance, can only be inherited through the physical. The time is not far off, dear friends, when science will reveal how great the delusion in this area is. It will be studied how children from the same marriage do indeed have a certain basic set of predispositions in common, based on physical inheritance, but how these predispositions, these dispositions based on physical inheritance, leave certain paths open.

[ 29 ] Gottfried Keller says in a nice little poem that he had a schoolmate; they both had the peculiarity as young boys of living somewhat in their imagination, not just taking things as they are in reality, but living somewhat in their imagination. That was the peculiarity that was, of course, linked to the particularity of the physical body. But Gottfried Keller emphasizes in the little poem: One of the two, not him, but the other, one of the two, became a thief, became a scoundrel, because he arranged reality for himself in the sense that he went astray. [Keller], however, became a poet — both starting from the same predispositions! Their development took different paths, leading the same predispositions in different directions. But we also see [gap] that Gottfried Keller is not talking about brothers, but about two acquaintances. But we also see in such cases how the same character predispositions are led in very different ways by the innermost forces of the soul. Today, natural scientists are already beginning to study these things; but they cannot yet, at least not initially, interpret them correctly, because they know nothing of the forces that come into play from the supersensible world, because they do not want to let them in. A certain sum of specific predispositions — which we can find today in natural scientists, and which can be found everywhere nowadays, discussed in various sources — leads to one brother becoming an impostor, another a respectable merchant, and a third perhaps a poet.

[ 30 ] What comes from heredity is always, I would say the same foundation. But what makes use of this same foundation is transformed by what I have called here the powers of inspired knowledge, which look up to what enters the physical body and what comes from the spiritual world.

[ 31 ] Now, dear friends, last time I mentioned how Spiritual Science or anthroposophy, in the sense in which it is meant here, is by no means opposed to what is rightly claimed today by scientific research as hereditary forces and principles. We look at any descendant, at the ancestral line, and see how, in purely scientific terms, the characteristics of the descendant are prepared in the ancestral line, and the descendant is, in a sense, a result of the ancestral line. But I already explained last time: the spiritual world is not somewhere in a cloud cuckoo land; it permeates the physical world, just as our human soul permeates our physical body between birth and death, just as the spiritual world in which we live between death and birth penetrates the entire physical world, and it is connected with what happens here in the physical world. If we now look up to the ancestral line, we can look far, far up, and we will see that in a certain way the forces from a certain side come together, which ultimately lead to the birth of a human being. And with the birth of a human being, the forces of the ancestors come to expression as if summed up. But as these forces are extended to the human being who wants to be born, what can be recognized through inspiration works in the entire ancestral line, dominating it, ruling over it in its deeds. In fact, centuries before we are born, our soul, preparing for its own birth, works on what develops as a special characteristic in the ancestral line in successive generations, which then culminates in our [special] characteristics.

[ 32 ] This is the process by which our inner being, our character, our temperament, /illegible word], like that which is expressed through our physical body, is prepared by ourselves. Heredity is correct; but heredity is prepared by that which is spiritual. We determine heredity ourselves by being connected to the spiritual world and being completely connected to the flow of generations between death and rebirth, just as we are connected here in the physical body to the movement of our hands and the walking of our feet.

[ 33 ] Of course, what we do here for the mode of inheritance is mixed with other influences that lead to other births, to other beings. But in the stream of inheritance is what we implant in it from the spiritual world; therefore, it brings us our characteristics.

[ 34 ] Thus we see how those forces from the spiritual world flow in and carry our human soul along, using these hereditary forces, these forces of growth, those forces that now become conscious through inspired knowledge. Thus we see at the bottom of the human soul first of all those forces that are active between death and birth, while we develop in the spiritual world, [gap], living in the spiritual world just as we live here in the physical world as in a physical world of facts.

[ 35 ] [Beyond this], however, there is still a stage of supersensible knowledge that can be attained, which in turn is attained through progress. For just as a volitional element flows into our imagination when we are thoroughly prepared for it, so later an essential element comes; and this essential element, this individual element, is what first makes us fully acquainted with the individualities of the spiritual beings around us, the individualities of the spiritual beings who never come to earth in a physical human body, but also with the individual human souls who themselves live in the spiritual world between death and new birth. The soul unites with them when it leaves the physical body or when it reaches this higher stage through supernatural knowledge.

[ 36 ] I do not call intuition what we call [an idea] in ordinary life, what we call only a vague knowledge, but rather the highest immersion in the spiritual world, being so immersed in it that inspirations are not merely external points of view of spiritual knowledge, but that spiritual beings are around us, not physically, but spiritually, in the spiritual, in the supersensible environment.

[ 37 ] But then, when that has happened, dear friends, it is not only what reaches the powers of inspiration that influences our knowledge, but also what is always unconsciously present in human life, but which is brought up into consciousness in this way. What causes this is what comes over from previous or various previous earth lives. For our previous earth lives have an effect on subsequent earth lives through the forces that can be brought to human consciousness through intuition in the sense indicated here. Then we find that something indeed lives within us that drives us toward what we call our fateful experiences and the real driving force lies in our previous earthly lives. It carries over, just as the spiritual world we experience between death and birth carries over, to shape our character, our inner soul, so that we can undergo progressive development between birth and death. This is how the forces of previous earthly lives, which can be recognized through intuition, carry over. They intuit our present life in such a way that we develop the tendency that pushes us toward one thing or another.

[ 38 ] What works in from the previous incarnation, from the previous earthly life, is not a disposition — if I were to call it a disposition, I would be using a word that is usually used for the opposite of what it is — what works in creates emptiness in us. Dis Disposition is an impulse, something full that expresses itself. What comes over from the past creates emptiness, something that causes the soul to be sucked into the world through this emptiness and driven toward what it perceives as fate.

[ 39 ] Just as, for my sake, an air bubble in water is driven to a higher [void] because it is lighter than the surrounding water, so in us — it is a crude, brutal comparison from our former earthly life — soul bubbles are created, and these soul bubbles exert an attraction to this or that, to which we draw closer. By using this brutal comparison with soul bubbles, I am already hinting that what carries over from previous earthly lives is what actually empties our soul, makes it imperfect. In fact, this carrying over is an imperfection of the soul. As a result, we seek out the blows of fate.

[ 40 ] All this works unconsciously in ordinary life, but intuitive knowledge makes it conscious, really shows us how our soul forces strive over from our previous earthly lives, driving us to this or that, to endure some blows of fate, however heavy they may be. One may, however, find such a view paradoxical.

[ 41 ] It is also true for ordinary physical knowledge. However, approaching the spiritual facts at issue here through what I have indicated today as intuitive knowledge, one sees that the soul, even if initially unconsciously, is not driven to any stroke of fate, no matter how harsh, without feeling a void within itself that is filled by the experience of these strokes of fate, so that it is driven on the path to a certain perfection, to a certain fulfillment, to a certain development. Even if this stroke of fate consists, dear attendees, in our tragic death in the prime of youth due to some elemental event, such a stroke of fate is intuited from previous earthly lives; one intuits it willingly; otherwise, if this is not the case, one intuits in the next earthly life what can be caused by it. And as strange as it may seem, one must nevertheless say: what prevails here in the depths of spiritual existence is wiser than the judgment we might pass on it. For when someone — as intuitive knowledge shows — if someone dies tragically, for example, by being hit by a train, then this moment of transition from physical life to spiritual life, this one moment, means such an intense experience that it must not be sought, but must be brought about by fate alone — the word is not spoken here in any way, the search for secret threads of fate, that would be completely distorted — but when this stroke of fate is brought about, it means, in the momentary context of an experience such as losing one's body in this way, such an enrichment of the soul life for the higher forces, as we might otherwise only be able to obtain through the slow experiences we would have gone through over many years of life if we had continued to live. Things appear quite differently in the real world than we often believe we can recognize in the sensory world through our own judgments.

[ 42 ] Therefore, dear attendees, because fate itself is caused in this way, intuited in a sense in an unconscious way, the intuitive knowledge that runs on the waves of the life of fate is related to fate itself.

[ 43 ] And it certainly seems quite paradoxical to a materialistic outlook on life that the course of fate is now addressed as something outwardly physical and real! However, just as one sees the supersensible formative forces of an organism, the etheric body, through imaginative knowledge, just as one sees the spiritual soul forces that extend beyond life through inspired knowledge [to what] the human soul experiences between death and birth, so too, through intuitive knowledge, one sees the stream of fate that flows from one earthly life to another. And on the waves of this stream of fate floats and runs that which is intuitive knowledge.

[ 44 ] However, I would like to say that this cannot be attached to anything external and tangible, such as sensory phenomena — and is therefore not really recognized — but it can be connected to everything we experience in our innermost soul life when we witness the destiny flowing through us with intense and inner intuition, intense and inner consciousness. It is precisely this deeper immersion in destiny, this true experience of destiny, that makes us ever more familiar and acquainted with what intuitive knowledge reveals as the aforementioned stream of destiny.

[ 45 ] And so, one might say, human beings advance toward full knowledge of their being by taking hold of imaginative, inspired, intuitive knowledge. In this way, that which one otherwise believes to be completely unreal, that which exists only in norms, in mere abstract ideals, becomes a real world. it becomes that which flows from [illegible words], which can otherwise only be grasped in thoughts, in abstractions; it itself becomes the stream of life, the recognized stream of destiny. And human beings learn to recognize their full selves only by recognizing that they are not merely bound to the physical body, but also bound to that which passes between birth and death, and that which flows from one life to another as the stream of destiny.

[ 46 ] Therefore, the advancement from imaginative knowledge to inspired knowledge is always connected with an extraordinary inner revolution of soul experience. One must immediately say goodbye to many cherished prejudices, many cherished feelings, and so on and so forth. When inspired knowledge enters a person, the life of the soul is then directed into other channels and made more comprehensive, because the spiritual world becomes a reality. But it seems like a stroke of fate when a person enters the intuitive world and thereby learns about causation in the stream of fate.

[ 47 ] Imaginative knowledge, I would say, is initially the lesser requirement. What one must acquire for imaginative knowledge is, first of all, an active mind that understands science. For thinking must always accompany imaginative knowledge. Continuous judgment — not letting oneself be led [through life] — but a continuous judgment, a much finer judgment than is necessary in earlier life, is necessary; but then one must become accustomed to what one must continually feel in imaginative knowledge when the formative forces of the world, the etheric forces, approach one. One experiences if I may call it that, the constant shock that astonishes you, and we experience this astonishment because it is actually always different from what you expect.

[ 48 ] This is precisely what shows that one is in a real world. In a dream world, one experiences no surprises; one does not need to harden oneself against terror, so to speak. But one must harden oneself against terror when one enters the real imaginative world, and you also have to develop what you might call “presence of mind.” For imaginative knowledge does not approach human knowledge in such a way that it can be comfortably viewed for a long time, but rather like a reflex, like a reflex movement in external physical life.

[ 49 ] A fly lands on our eyelid; we close our eyelid; the movement happens in quick succession. It is the same with imaginative knowledge. We try to develop the presence of mind necessary to grasp what appears to us in the image, otherwise it is already gone in an instant. In addition, it is necessary in this imaginative knowledge that we carry into our inner soul life, which thus finds its way into the same imaginative world, that which we otherwise have in our outer life in moral bias. In ordinary thinking, we allow ourselves to think this or that, because there it is only a matter of refuting lies. In outer life, we forbid ourselves to do this or that; we prohibit ourselves from doing this or that. When we enter the imaginative world, inner morality must, in a sense, take hold of us. We do not have to believe in this ourselves: there is an erroneous thought that does no harm. For in the imaginative world, we must avoid erroneous thinking as we would avoid a bad deed or a lie; we must bring into imaginative cognition that which otherwise only permeates moral feelings. These are the requirements of imaginative cognition.

[ 50 ] The requirements of inspired cognition are somewhat higher. They are addressed in [illegible word] in that one must say: because one is in a completely different world, having, so to speak, completely left the physical body, one initially feels as if there is no ground beneath one's feet. One must develop the courage to grasp from within what we have lost from without — the perception of the physical world — from within. And this must be the case to an even greater degree with intuitive knowledge. [Intuition] is nourished by the individual experience of real fateful events, experiences that completely change what we have been up to now.

[ 51 ] Now, to conclude, I would like to mention something, dear audience, which should show you how imagination, inspiration, and intuition not only affect people in the way I have indicated — that is, only in the way that the mind enlightens itself — but also how they introduce people to the entire course of the world's development. I recall something I mentioned in my previous lecture.

[ 52 ] Our external natural science, which draws its conclusions from what is in the physical world around it, our external natural science comes to the conclusion that the earth and the entire solar system emerged — as I mentioned last time — from a ball of gas that began to rotate, and from which the sun separated; the sun's movements arose from the rotation, and so on. Last time, I mentioned how an unbiased observer, Herman Grimm, thinks about the emergence of what we have around us as the world and what permeates us as the world. Herman Grimm says:

[ 53 ] A carcass bone around which a hungry dog circles is a more appetizing piece than this excrement of creation, and a future time will have to study how, in our time, a morbid imagination has led us to draw such conclusions from the physical world around us, conclusions that make the earth, with all the living things on it, emerge from a ball of gas as a gas ball.

[ 54 ] I do not wish to read the relevant passage from Herman Grimm again today. Those of you who were here last time will remember how harsh the judgment of an impartial observer is.

[ 55 ] Now, what we are actually looking for — earlier stages of our planet's development — can only be found through supersensible knowledge.

[ 56 ] By advancing to imaginative knowledge, dear audience, human beings come into contact — as I have indicated — with the etheric world that surrounds them. Within this etheric world, a very special experience now occurs. As I said, today I am recounting the experiences of the spiritual researcher; you can find more details about these things in my books, which I have already mentioned, namely “The Secret Science.” In this etheric world, this finer world, a very specific experience occurs.

[ 57 ] One looks just as one does in one's individual human life when one recalls a previous experience that one had years ago, as if one were standing inside the memory, inside what one experienced years ago. so you live, when you pass into the etheric of our globe, not only in the etheric that is still there, but you live in something that is like a memory, like an afterimage of what the earth was before it became earth. So that you experience that our Earth has evolved from an earlier planetary life, just as we ourselves evolve in repeated Earth lives from earlier lives. Our Earth has evolved from an earlier planetary life, but one experiences that this earlier planetary state of the Earth was quite different from what our present Earth represents.

[ 58 ] What is now the mineral kingdom on our present Earth was not yet solidified. Therefore, what belongs to the mineral kingdom could not be within us as human beings on Earth. However, human beings already participated in this previous planetary state of our Earth. The Earth did not originate from a ball of gas; the Earth originated from another being, of which it is the reincarnation. In this other planetary state, human beings went through what they cannot go through in a mineral state [as] during the Earth's development. During the Earth's development, through the incorporation of physical, mineral matter, his senses can develop as he now has them. He did not have them on the planet that preceded the Earth, but there he developed in a much more spiritual way. This brings Spiritual Science to a real theory of evolution, to that which [gap]. And he is already on the path of modern world perception, which is also gradually finding its way in, even if he has to go beyond mere physical observation and then enter into Spiritual Science if he wants to get there. Human beings have already gone through a kind of animal-like state in ancient times, but not on Earth, but in the body carried over from which Earth developed as a stage in evolutionary history. Human beings have therefore not gone through animalhood under the same conditions as today's animals, which are, so to speak, accustomed to this earthly matter.

[ 59 ] During the latter planetary life, human beings went through a kind of instinctive life [gap] But their instincts were not the animal instincts of today, but spiritualized instincts, which they have now brought over, which have reappeared on the reincarnated Earth, and which now dwell within their physical bodies.

[ 60 ] And now we could go further and further back, when an even earlier Earth is embodied, [it can be] recognized through inspiration, an even earlier one through intuition. And so what leads us to the knowledge of our own development and our own destiny also leads us to the knowledge of the entire development of the world, and we then recognize the human being in relation to this entire world development. We recognize how he truly lives not only in the physical stream of heredity, but how he is lifted out of the entire universe, but spiritually. What I have characterized today as repeated earthly life first occurred on our Earth planet and will disappear again when our Earth planet transitions into another embodiment. Therefore, one must not believe that our repeated earthly lives are eternal. But why this is so can only be explained in a lecture that may take place in the future, but can be looked up in the books mentioned. So, supersensible knowledge really does lead to an understanding of the relationship of the human being to the development of the whole world.

[ 61 ] Just recently, another man from the ranks of those who absolutely do not want to allow such an ascent from ordinary knowledge to higher knowledge declared that all this is subjective, that all this is basically a figment of the imagination when one looks back on earlier incarnations of our earthly body.

[ 62 ] Well, dear audience, one really does not know what kind of strange system of thought people who speak like this actually have, how they are completely incapable of transferring a thought from one area to another. The man who spoke like this will always admit that it is justified for us to explore the layers of our earth and find the shells of prehistoric animals there, find the remains of prehistoric physical animals, form certain mental images from what we see before our eyes about what the earth used to look like. Is this not a subjective process? Is this not something we construct purely internally? Only an intensification, a making more real, is what now progresses to imaginative knowledge. Truly, like a memory image, there is something inside, in connection with the outer world, [what one] has before one, which is an earlier state of our Earth; and if one wants to characterize this as a fantasy, one must always say to such people: One does not understand how their thinking is constituted, that they cannot transfer their thoughts from one area to another. Is a memory something other than a mere inner, subjective experience, and is there not [nevertheless] a unity in this reality that recognizes this memory as something that originated in the past? Does one demand that the spiritual researcher present what are earlier, past states, on a silver platter so that it can be seen with the eyes? Must not that which belongs to the supersensible world, which does not belong to the immediate present, must not that rise through subjectivity [in order to be seen in its soul form]?

[ 63 ] The objection raised against evolution, as it has only been hinted at here for the previous state of the earth, would, if one thinks logically, have to be made against the validity of memories of the ordinary individual, everyday earthly existence of human beings. But people find it difficult to decide to really transfer what is experienced as thinking [in the sense] of a moving spirit into the other realm.

[ 64 ] And on the other hand, we see how today, everywhere, there is a deep longing to look into the supersensible world, to truly understand the connection between human beings and the supersensible world.

[ 65 ] Now, in conclusion, I would just like to make one more comment, because this is usually misunderstood. Just as little, dear audience, as someone who wants to understand Goethe's Faust has to go through all the complicated, profound experiences which Goethe himself went through for sixty years in order to write Faust, does someone who accepts Spiritual Science, who [familiarizes themselves with its content], need to be a spiritual researcher themselves in order to find what I have pointed out. To extract those things from the spiritual world that have been spoken of today, one must be a spiritual scientist; but then, when one clothes what spiritual research finds in developed ideas and concepts, these concepts and ideas can be understood by everyone, even those who are not spiritual researchers — although today, as Herman Grimm shows, everyone can become a spiritual researcher to a certain extent. And then they are not only a key for everyone to understand the spiritual world, but the concepts from the spiritual researcher can be taken and applied to what surrounds us. Then they are a key. Therefore, literature from Spiritual Science must be accepted in a completely different way than other literature. The researcher in Spiritual Science is not there to provide people with results, as the natural scientist does about things that already exist, that one finds, that one can take over and prove, but the researcher in Spiritual Science is there to prepare the instrument for what can be grasped and must be taken in by our souls.

[ 66 ] But it will not have to be taken in as something dead, but as something alive, and it will then become the key within us to penetrate the mysteries of the spiritual world. That is why Spiritual Science literature has something living about it, if it is true Spiritual Science literature; it seizes our soul so that our soul experiences awake the experiences of the spiritual researcher clothed in concepts and ideas. The path of the spiritual researcher — although it is safe and easy in the beginning — today, anyone can become a spiritual researcher. Many people today follow this path in a thoroughly modern way — but spiritual steps are difficult and, to a certain extent, involve external renunciation and experiences of fate, inner experiences of fate of the soul, which many will shy away from, which some cannot go through, although the entire path of Spiritual Science research can be followed without in any way impairing one's ordinary professional life, one's outer life, one's outer sense of duty. This continues, for spiritual life is not a life alongside the sensory world, but a life that one continues to share with the sensory world, with sensory life. This misunderstanding should not prevail, that everyone who takes in the results of spiritual research must become a spiritual researcher. Those who are sufficiently open-minded, who are sufficiently free of prejudice, have the powers in their souls to understand what the spiritual researcher investigates; and the ideas the concepts that they convey can be used as keys, as instruments for entering the spiritual world.

[ 67 ] Today, this spiritual research still has many opponents. These opponents are mostly those who do not discuss it in its true form, but form a caricature, a distorted image, and then criticize this distorted image. Last time, I drew attention to a particularly egregious case where something like this occurred. On the other hand, however, it is already noticeable today how, especially in serious natures, a longing for knowledge of the spiritual world is awakening, and how this does not remain a vague, indefinite, nebulous longing, but how people also feel drawn to a real exploration of the spiritual worlds.

[ 68 ] But the moment one refrains from creating all kinds of cheap caricatures, such as: Spiritual Science — or anthroposophy, as it is meant here — is just a rehashing of old mysteries, is just a kind of brooding, and what all these things are called, those who do not want to form a comfortable judgment can easily form for themselves. Once people realize that Spiritual Science is a genuine, true continuation of what natural science today shows for the outer world, then one will also approach this Spiritual Science in the same way as one approaches the fruitful, successful experiences and results of natural science. But the time will come in the not too distant future when people will recognize that truth cannot be attained merely by confronting the external world and forming concepts and ideas from it, but that truth, especially truth relating to the innermost affairs of human beings, must be attained in a much more lively way. What is attained in the former way remains, in essence, dead knowledge. But what the soul and spirit themselves recognize, that what is otherwise dead knowledge, when Spiritual Science develops out of this dead knowledge, when thinking and feeling, willing are carried up from what it is in ordinary life, from dead knowledge about an external world to a living grasp of truth — because a life with truth then enlightens the human being, dear attendees — [then] there remains no truth that merely penetrates one from outside. Only a truth that is itself a living organism, with which the human being connects, with which he enters the spiritual world through his own efforts, can enlighten the human being. And more and more, the longings for the spiritual world that still exist darkly in the souls today, but are clearly perceptible, will lead people not only to want to let truth flow into themselves dogmatically from outside, but to grasp truth with their innermost soul in order to connect it with the whole of truth, and to receive from this living truth the answer that every human being needs [in order to understand] what human beings are actually here for in the world and what the meaning of the world is, that meaning which at the same time gives this truth and the human beings within it that which what is man's most original, truest essence.