The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Immortality of the Soul, Forces of Destiny, and the Human Life Course

[ 1 ] Dear attendees! I would like to address important questions concerning the human soul life today and the day after tomorrow evening from two different perspectives, so that the two lectures will complement each other in a sense. Nevertheless, I will endeavor to make each of the lectures a self-contained whole, so that perhaps each can be understood on its own.

[ 2 ] Allow me to begin with something personal, which is not my usual practice, as those of you who are frequent listeners to these lectures, which I have been giving on subjects of Spiritual Science for many years, will know.

[ 3 ] In years past, when I often passed by the bust of Friedrich Theodor Vischer here in Stuttgart — who once played a significant role in Stuttgart's intellectual life and is known in literary circles as “V-Vischer” — a meaningful statement by Vischer always came to mind, one he once made when discussing a book that also deals with spiritual life. A statement that sounds strange, one might almost say paradoxical. Vischer speaks about the human soul, about the unified human soul life, in the most diverse physical and spiritual expressions of its being. And he says: “The unity of spiritual life certainly cannot be located in the body, although it cannot actually occur anywhere else but in the body.” A strange contradiction! One might ask: Where, then, does Vischer actually conceive of this unified human spiritual life? It cannot be in the body, and yet it cannot occur outside the body. Why does this statement seem particularly significant?

[ 4 ] Many of you in the audience will know what a sharp mind and bold thinker Vischer was, how he tackled not only aesthetic questions but also general questions of worldview with courageous thinking. But precisely for this reason, such a statement, which he arrived at, can appear particularly characteristic of such a bold thinker who wants to delve into the meaningful questions of the human soul. It often seems to me that this statement by a thinker, to which similar statements by other thinkers could be added, is characteristic because it appears to me to be the point a thinker arrives at when he has a vital need to explore the mysteries of life and yet, as was the case with Vischer, cannot penetrate them because the time had not yet come for what is meant here in these lectures as Spiritual Science.

[ 5 ] Vischer pursued, in a sense, the life of the soul as it was accessible to him, and he comes — since he approaches one of the most important questions, namely the question of the nature of the soul itself — he comes to a complete contradiction, a contradiction in relation to which one may ask: Must one remain with him, as Vischer, for example, remained with him?

[ 6 ] For me, ladies and gentlemen, this personal matter is particularly serious because it is so important to me. In the 1880s, when I was following with deep interest precisely what Friedrich Theodor Vischer wanted to achieve philosophically, I wrote a treatise as a very young badger that was intended to record what I can still say today: it was the very beginning of what I would like to call spiritual research. These were the first thoughts I was able to write down from that direction, that current of research, which I want to talk about. And I sent my manuscript — of course, at that time, one could not hope that such material from a young badger would be printed — I sent my manuscript to Vischer. Vischer, who was already old at the time, replied very kindly and, strangely enough, addressed precisely what I would like to call the nerve center of my early research, so that I already believed I would be able to experience, for once, winning over a man who was so closely connected with the spiritual life of the nineteenth century to take an interest in the matter; just as Vischer had the most extensive interest and the greatest goodwill for everything that presented itself as something new.

[ 7 ] Friedrich Theodor Vischer died soon after, and this single exchange of letters remained. But especially when I want to discuss the fundamentals of Spiritual Science, I must remember Vischer—particularly since this is so close to home—because those who came after him and who no longer carried the deeper philosophy of the second half of the nineteenth century in their souls as Friedrich Theodor Vischer did, were much less able to identify with what is meant here by Spiritual Science. And so Spiritual Science must fight, and it will fight for its existence. Why this statement in particular is being used today may be apparent from the following: Spiritual research, as it is meant here, means the spiritual life, the spiritual essence of the human being, insofar as it expresses itself in the soul, just as natural science researches the physical essence of the human being, insofar as this physical essence is the condition for the soul. Only natural science and Spiritual Science must, so to speak, take completely different paths in opposite directions. And yet there is something similar in these paths of natural science and Spiritual Science.

[ 8 ] Before we turn to the actual Spiritual Science, let us briefly consider, with reference to today's question, the way in which the natural scientist approaches the physical conditions of the soul life from his point of view. He seeks to investigate what happens in the senses when external sensory impressions are made on these senses. He then seeks to investigate how sensory impressions are transmitted through the nervous system. Using the means available to him today, he seeks to determine how sensory impressions are further processed by mental images, feeling, and thinking, the inner physical mechanism, or rather organism, can be assigned. He then follows how the nerves branch out and unite in the brain, in the nervous system, how they integrate with the muscular system, and so on. And by following this physically, he tries to get a picture of what conditions, physical conditions, are present for the soul's experience. He seeks to gain a mental image of what is actually going on in the human organism in which the soul life takes place.

[ 9 ] It can be said, and I have often emphasized this here, that Spiritual Science, as it is meant here, wants to fully acknowledge the great and significant results of modern natural science. And it can be said that natural science has come a long way in this direction, has achieved results that are truly worthy of recognition, that today it is already possible to investigate in a certain way — I cannot go into detail here — which individual parts of the brain are active when linguistic, auditory, and visual images develop, permeate spiritual life, and so on.

[ 10 ] What is the natural scientist actually trying to achieve here? He says to himself: As we experience ourselves as human beings, we experience sensory impressions that we process into mental images, ideas, and feelings that trigger certain impulses of will. For the natural scientist, observing all this as it is initially experienced is only a starting point. He pursues this initially only by asking himself: How is spiritual life structured, and how can I, by connecting one mental image to another, by transforming sensory impressions into mental images, by allowing the will to spring from the depths of the soul, how can I imagine that the inner organization of the human being, the physical organization of the human being, is also involved? In other words, he takes the soul life only as a starting point and then pursues this marvelous structure of human organization, which appears as a marvel especially when viewed in relation to the human soul life. If one pursues these paths, what does one actually arrive at? One arrives at researching and fathoming that which is mortal in the human being — as I said, great progress has been made in this field — what is transitory and mortal in human beings, what is handed over to the elements of earthly life at death. The mortal conditions of human life come to the fore in human knowledge and human understanding through this research.

[ 11 ] The question now arises: Is it perhaps just as possible, as the natural scientist, so to speak, regards the soul life as the starting point and then moves on from this to the physical, the mortal, the transitory; is it also possible to regard spiritual life on the other side as the starting point and to find the way into the immortal, into the imperishable spiritual, just as the natural scientist finds the way into the mortal and transitory? This is the great mystery of existence, which is not only connected with certain stages of development, but which is connected with the deepest emotional and spiritual needs and longings of human beings. But then it must be possible, we can say that from the outset, it must be possible, in a sense, to find the spirit on the other side, just as it is possible to find the body on this side.

[ 12 ] Now it is interesting that in the reflections on human soul life made by various thinkers, especially in the nineteenth century, this very question that I have now raised did not occur to these thinkers at all; that they did not even attempt to apply what had led to brilliant results on one side to the other side as well. And I would like to emphasize that what I am saying now is important, that the question, the raising of the riddle in the way I have just explained, did not arise at all, that the thinkers did not feel compelled to direct their thoughts, ideas, and mental images in this direction. If we ask: Where does this strange phenomenon come from, that thinkers have basically taken no opportunity to go to something so simple?

[ 13 ] When we ask ourselves this question, we can best answer it from the facts. The esteemed listeners who have been here for previous lectures will know that, without in any way professing to agree with what Eduard von Hartmann represented as his philosophy, I nevertheless regard Hartmann as a very significant philosopher of the nineteenth century. Now, Eduard von Hartmann sought to explore philosophically virtually all areas of human experience. It is interesting to note how, in his attempt to write an outline of psychology, encountered certain difficulties in psychology right at the beginning, that is, difficulties that existed for him and, as he believes, for others as well. He points to difficulties that are very interesting presented by von Hartmann himself, and I would therefore like to quote them to you in his own words. I will therefore quote Hartmann's words, but replace the foreign language expressions with German ones, because I want to avoid using overly pedantic philosophical language. Hartmann says:

Psychology seeks to determine what is present in the soul. To do this, it must above all observe it. However, the observation of one's own mental experiences is a peculiar matter, since it inevitably disturbs and alters [that which it is directed toward to a lesser or greater degree].

[ 14 ] Hartmann pointed out how difficult it is to recite memorized material and to observe oneself while doing so, which is where this difficulty comes from. Hartmann concludes from this that it is impossible to observe one's own mental processes because observing them destroys them.

[Strong feelings or even emotions, such as fear and anger, make it impossible to observe one's own psychological phenomena. Observation often distorts the result by first introducing into the given situation what it expects to find. It seems almost impossible to objectify the psychological experiences of the present moment in such a way that they become the object of simultaneous observation; either the experience does not allow simultaneous observation to occur, or the observation falsifies and represses the experience.

[ 15 ] You see, dear attendees, here we have an indication of a difficulty that arises for the soul researcher. He says:

If we want to observe spiritual experiences, we distort them by directing our gaze toward them; we cannot succeed in observing them.

[ 16 ] But precisely when one really takes this difficulty to heart, one realizes what I said earlier, that such a thinker does not even think to ask the question correctly and therefore cannot bring what is the question of immortality into line with the appropriate forms of knowledge.

[ 17 ] Let us look at the matter clearly. Does the natural scientist, because the soul experiences that must also be his starting point cannot be observed, allow himself to be deterred from investigating the physical processes in the appropriate way? No. He takes spiritual experiences as his starting point, even though they are just as difficult for him to observe. Then he moves on to the physical and investigates in this field what the transitory conditions of the soul life are. Could it not be exactly the same with regard to the investigation of the spiritual foundations as it is with the investigation of the physical foundations of the soul life? Does the spiritual investigation of the soul — the fact that we cannot really approach soul phenomena through observation — more than the exploration of the physical disturbs it? The fact is that it is easier, more convenient, to move from soul experiences as a starting point to physical processes and physical parts and limbs.

[ 18 ] It is more difficult to find the path from the spiritual starting point into the spiritual realm. But this path can be found, and one can — even though it cannot be the same, one might say, where things always remain the same, for the physical constitution remains for a certain time, even if the soul life is fleeting; even though it cannot be so external — the transition can be made, but it must be made internally. In a sense, the observation of soul experiences must remain within the spiritual realm; the path into the spiritual realm must be found. To do this, it is necessary not to refer to anything that is experienced externally, but to something that can only be experienced internally. That is, just as the natural scientist presents the sensory processes and builds a bridge to physical phenomena, so too must a bridge be built entirely within spiritual -spiritual life. This bridge can only be built if one wants to pursue Spiritual Science with the same seriousness and thoroughness as natural science, only as a science based on the inner life.

[ 19 ] The first thing to consider here is that the soul forces that express themselves in thoughts and mental images should not be pursued on one side by examining how the nerve pathways branch out and connect when mental images are linked together, but that this life of ideas and thoughts should be pursued on the side of the power of thought, that is, on the other side. And here, by remaining in pure inner experience, one must often take paths that are precisely opposite to those taken by ordinary, everyday thinking, as we need it for practical life and external science.

[ 20 ] I will now try to describe how thinking must first be treated if one wants to build a bridge to the way thinking expresses itself in the soul, to the way the power of thinking springs forth from the spirit, just as physical conditions spring forth from the body when thinking . The path of thinking must be such that one first asks oneself, so to speak: Yes, in what way is thinking capable of development at all? If one considers the dependence of thinking, the dependence of mental images on physical foundations, then one will never succeed. One must take a path that makes what is experienced in thinking as independent as possible from the physical foundation. One must tear thinking out of its embeddedness in physical foundations. This can be achieved.

[ 21 ] And today I want to point out some of the ways in this direction from a fundamental standpoint. You can read more about this in the writings “How to Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds,” in “Occult Science,” and in similar books. One arrives at this when, through strong inner self-discipline, through self-discipline, you bring yourself to immerse your thinking as much as possible in the external experiences of the world, in what you experience in the world; if one does not make a thought dependent on what it is, if one has grasped it, it then sinks into unconsciousness and is later retrieved [imperfectly] from memory. If one lets thoughts play out as they arise spontaneously from the soul life, then one achieves nothing for spiritual research. But if one endeavors to follow the experiences of the world as objectively and comprehensively as possible with one's thinking, as they unfold independently of us, if one tries to bring into one's thinking what one can experience outside, what one can forget, and yet it is still there as one experienced it; that it was forgotten is due to poor organization. One must strive to penetrate as many things in the world as possible.

[ 22 ] Then one arrives at, I would say, a kind of—please do not misunderstand the expression, it will become clearer—one arrives at a kind of flexibility of thinking. Thinking is torn out of a certain rigidity, out of that rigidity and inflexibility that comes from the fact that most people think in the way prescribed by the outside world or by the mental images laid down in language. If you try to penetrate the world, to arrange the most diverse points of view for one experience or another — experiences can be illuminated and understood from many sides — if you tell yourself that, you can bring yourself to the point where not just one thought, which is often only a prejudiced thought, arises on any occasion, but if you manage to you can really approach a thing from the most diverse points of view, just as you can photograph a tree from different sides, then thinking becomes flexible and free from the rigidity and inflexibility of physical conditions. You come to recognize, which is very important, that thinking should work with the ease of imagination, and yet not be fantastical . What matters is that it is flexible, so that many things come to mind, many ideas occur to you, and yet nothing of fantasy and enthusiasm interferes with this assertion of different points of view. This must be linked to something else, to strict self-control, otherwise your thinking can run away with you; it can easily fall into enthusiasm and fantasy.

[ 23 ] Self-control consists in telling yourself what some people do not like to tell themselves, that in spiritual research, in order to make progress, you must be able to assess yourself to a high degree, you must be able to say to yourself: This is how my life has been so far, and based on that you can judge this or that. Because you have these preconditions for something, you can surrender to the thoughts that come to you. You have prepared yourself for this, you will not be in love with your thoughts; you will not let all kinds of thoughts shoot into the blue. Self-control combined with flexibility of thinking is what matters. However, such a process must be driven again and again with one's thinking. Then one comes to know through inner experience that one is gradually becoming independent of the physical conditions of thinking, and one comes to have a kind of knowledge of what is actually going on. If I were to describe what is actually going on, let me describe it through something negative.

[ 24 ] The process I have just described is the opposite of what is understood by hypnosis and suggestion. What happens during hypnosis, during suggestion? Control is reduced. The person on whom hypnosis is to be performed is made to erase their own mental images. Otherwise, they would chase the hypnotist away if they could consider other points of view. Hypnosis is linked to the dulling of judgment. The path of spiritual research is the path that does not diminish judgment, does not reduce critical faculties, but on the contrary calls for criticism, by making thinking flexible, so that with every mental image, all the objections for and against it, and the like, are immediately apparent. In this way, the path of spiritual research takes the direction that lies precisely on the opposite side of everything illusory, everything hallucinatory, which is the opposite of everything that can lead to obsessive ideas.

[ 25 ] For by directing thinking toward judgment and criticism, all illusions are seen through much more easily than in ordinary life. All illusions are dispelled. The path is found where everything hallucinatory must be eradicated if it were to arise. But it cannot arise at all if the path I have described as spiritual research is followed correctly. Thus, there is nothing more certain to lead people beyond all enthusiasm, all complicated mysticism, all illusion, than the path of spiritual research. If one takes such a thing seriously, then it gradually becomes an inner need.

[ 26 ] And those of you in the audience who have also heard such lectures from me, as they have been given for years in smaller circles, will know how it is my need — forgive this personal remark — when any subject is developed, not only to say that it is this way or that way, but always to bring forth a whole wealth of objections, a whole wealth of other points of view, so that whatever is being discussed at the moment is always illuminated from a wide variety of angles. And not only is what speaks for a cause brought forward, but an attempt is always made to highlight the things that speak against what is actually being stated, so that one's thinking becomes flexible and one can approach the matter in the right way. Therefore, in my lectures, one finds a wealth of refutations of what I assert, for the simple reason that I want to enable everyone to to truly bring to life in their souls the opposing claims. All these refutations can therefore be found in sufficient detail in my own writings. Those who are more familiar with these writings know this. This has even led to some strange things.

[ 27 ] Understandably, the strangest opposition to Spiritual Science is being asserted, with more or less good or bad intentions. Such opposition, such as that of which I am now going to speak, has actually been little experienced. What is put forward from this side is intended as a refutation, but this refutation is copied from my own books. So that what is presented to people — it is presented by that side, dipped in poison and gall — are my own words. No one makes it as easy for opponents as those who take Spiritual Science seriously. For them, it is not a matter of fooling others with assertions, but of developing a living way of thinking that frees itself from physical conditions, that [it] is the spiritual that underlies mental images and thinking. And it is less important to the spiritual researcher that this or that assertion be made, that one speak for or against this or that, but rather just as it is important, if one wants to become physically capable for a job, so that skill lives in the work, that it is less important to learn the necessary movements in a makeshift way than to develop a skill that works independently, [gap] so it is also when thinking frees itself from the physical. It is not important to make this or that assertion. [gap]

[ 28 ] It is also important to find in ordinary thinking, which is linked to physical conditions, that which is not linked to these physical conditions, but can detach itself, can unfold, so to speak, free from physical conditions. That it unfolds in this way can only be experienced through inner experience. What lives in liberated thinking is what matters. For one learns to recognize that in this thinking that has come alive lives that which is not bound to physical conditions, but which is above birth and death. For one learns to know the life of the soul from a completely different side, just as the natural scientist learns to know the life of the soul from his side. One now learns to take in from the other side what Eduard von Hartmann lists as difficulties. For what is the nature of such difficulties?

[ 29 ] Well, you see, Hartmann says, for example: "I have acquired something as memorized material; but when I observe myself, when I want to recite what I have acquired, I disturb myself. But I don't need to observe. I recite the material I have memorized, allowing what has gradually entered my physical organization through learning to unfold, so to speak. But while I am reciting the material I have memorized, something spiritual is also happening within me. The spiritual is at work while I recite the material; I just cannot observe it at first if I remain in my ordinary state of consciousness, so I leave it unobserved at first; just as the ordinary person also leaves unobserved, while thinking and feeling, what is going on inside the nerves of his brain. One does not observe what is going on with the nerves when one thinks, or even when one digests. One simply leaves it unobserved."

[ 30 ] But when one has detached thinking from physical conditions in the way I have described, one is left with the physicality, not at the same time, but afterwards — just as one can remember a mental image — to recall what happened during the memorization. One no longer misses what one must miss once you have prepared your thinking. You learn to bring spiritual life to life in your soul in such a way that you do not need to observe simultaneously, so that afterwards you can look back, as in a memory, at what has taken place in your mind while you were letting the material to be memorized run its course. You enrich your soul experience with something completely new, which is always within us. For the spiritual researcher does not produce anything new, but enriches consciousness with something new. You make it sharper, brighter, more capable of observation. The power of consciousness, the power of thinking, becomes sharper. Eduard von Hartmann says: Physical pain becomes stronger when you follow it with attention. Hysterical people demonstrate this at every opportunity. People who really empathize with their pain naturally feel it more strongly.

[ 31 ] So why do we feel physical pain so intensely? Because we are dependent on the physical organism, because the emotional experience — which makes the physical pain feel more intense — is driven by the physical organism to focus our attention on the pain. But if we have that stronger thinking, then we also learn to distract our attention from the pain. Then you learn not to be disturbed by the pain by observing it, but you learn to divert your attention and can then observe afterwards what is actually there, by withdrawing the soul, as it were, from the physical pain. In this way, one really learns to know the spiritual life in the soul in its power and essence. And it is particularly important to ascend in this way to a different kind of learning and knowing. All soul experiences are seen in a different light, so to speak, when one has grasped and captured the inner power that lives as the spiritual in soul thinking.

[ 32 ] In particular, soul experiences such as remembering and forgetting are seen in a new light. Just think about how remembering and forgetting actually take place in ordinary life, for ordinary soul consciousness. One remembers something. There is very little self-determination in remembering; thoughts arise as the physical organization allows, because thoughts come to mind, but often they do not, quite the contrary. Anyone who has taken an exam will know this. They do not come to mind, they do not want to come up, even though you have memorized them. They are down there, they could be brought up, but the physicality is so dense that it does not let them up. Remembering and forgetting, one does not observe it, precisely because one believes these difficulties to be present, which Eduard von Hartmann emphasizes.

[ 33 ] But in becoming independent in spiritual experience, one becomes, in a sense, one's own spectator. One can really watch what actually happens within oneself when one remembers and when one forgets. Remembering and forgetting are otherwise just a difficult-to-observe spiritual experience. But now one knows something else. So when one is able to separate the spiritual from the soul, when one has found the bridge, you notice that every time you forget something, something very peculiar happens within you; this is always because the life forces, the unconscious life forces, as they are also in plants, assert themselves in a special way. Because they work from within themselves, because they stir in life, the mental images are brought down into oblivion. Forgetting is brought about by the stirred-up organic life. The more one surrenders to this vitality, the more it must proliferate, the more forgetting occurs. Remembering is the reverse process. It is the process whereby I dive down into the physical organization of a thought, a mental image, an image, a sensory perception. Every time I dive down into the physical organization in such a way that a mental image becomes a memory, the vitality is suppressed, the vitality is spun down; there is a decrease in the proliferating life forces. Thus, in remembering and forgetting, one notices life rising and falling. One notices how the spirit works from within; how the spirit, when it consumes the body, by consuming it, brings the mental images into memory so that they can be retrieved. But when the life forces proliferate, when they tower above the spirit, then one forgets. That is something one can ascend to.

[ 34 ] Another is the contrast between heredity and self-determination, self-development. Today, the strangest mental images prevail about this question of heredity and self-determination. Certainly, natural science has shed a great deal of light on the idea of heredity. But those who emancipate their thinking powers from physical conditions, as I have described, realize that, because we are the descendants of our ancestors, we carry their characteristics and powers within us. We carry inherited powers and characteristics within us. But that is only one direction of life, only one current in the course of human life. If one is not very inclined to see what lives in the spirit, to which a bridge can be built from the soul, those who are not inclined to see this allow themselves to be fooled, so to speak, by the effect of the mere inherited powers, and do not see that our entire life course is actually a continuous struggle against the inherited powers in self-determination and self-development. Our entire life is a struggle against inherited forces. But the fact that we are really fighting against inherited forces, and that a distinction can be made between what is in us through inheritance and what must fight against inheritance out of self-determination, only becomes clear and vivid when we have emancipated our thinking in the manner described.

[ 35 ] And there is a third thing that then occurs, so to speak, as a consequence, which one must gradually develop, if one experiences emancipating one's thinking in the manner described, under the conditions I have just stated, namely, that one gains an immediate insight into the processes that are so significant in the course of human life, into the mental images of birth and death. How, for example, does death appear to us? One really does ascend from the simple mental images I have mentioned to death, to this question of death that cuts so deeply into human life. If one learns to understand memory in the way I have indicated, one learns to understand that human beings only have the capacity for memory because they can continually intervene in their physicality from their spirit, can draw down the life forces there; then it is only a matter of ascending, to experience that increase in the power of memory in inner spiritual experience that we call death. For the working of memory is — if you will allow the expression — an atomistic dying. When I pass on some mental image from my memory, it is as if I were doing something to the physical organization, as if I were lighting a flame; a little is always taken away from the substance of the candle. In the human body, it is replaced, but in this way memory is suppressed. That is to say, the spirit makes itself master of physicality. It is the same thing on a small scale that happens in death, where the spirit disposes of the entire physicality, where the spirit expels physicality from itself. As far apart as these two points, memory and death, are, there is a straight line of experience, a straight line of experience from one to the other.

[ 36 ] You can also see from this, my dear audience, that what spiritual research strives for is truly not fantasy, but that it is done quite methodically, quite seriously and with dignity, just as any natural science is done. The only difference is that natural science takes the physical as its starting point, while spiritual science takes the spiritual. In their living inner experience, spiritual scientists rise from the physical to the spiritual, living not only in the soul but in the spirit.

[ 37 ] And forgetting — forgetting leads directly to understanding how the vital forces gain the upper hand over consciousness, how the spirit is, in a sense, overwhelmed. In forgetting we have the expression of the atomistic; that which happens to the life of the spirit when this life of the spirit, coming out of the spiritual world, takes possession of that which is given to us through inheritance from our parents and ancestors. And that which is given to us through inheritance, through its purely organic life activity, drowns out the spiritual, if the spiritual does not come out immediately. Just as in forgetting on a small scale it does not come out because the life force proliferates, so the life force proliferates in the whole organism [gap] and is seized by physicality, and therefore between birth and death in the human life course there is a continuous forgetting of the spirit on a large scale. How similar is the way we behave towards our birth is similar to forgetting. Death is, in a sense, always before our soul through external experience. Outwardly, it is quite similar to memory. The world itself constantly reminds us of it. Even the moment of our birth, not to mention everything that preceded birth or conception as the life of the soul in the spiritual realm, is consigned to oblivion. The way in which human beings enter life is really something to which the atomistic view of forgetting leads, even if the points are very far apart.

[ 38 ] Then, my dear friends, when one considers such things, one comes to regard birth and death, or conception and death, as events, experiences for the soul that are determined from the spiritual world.

[ 39 ] This is linked to something that I would like to emphasize, even though it is risky. On the one hand, I have said that Spiritual Science, when pursued seriously from the real, genuine, true sense of science, it must be placed alongside natural science in its attitude and in its seriousness of research today. But in a certain other way, it must not only think about other things, it must even think in a completely different way. We have seen that the thinking that is to be active in spiritual research must first be developed. Spiritual research must think in a different way, I said. And then one comes to the conclusion that spiritual research must understand something that is perhaps difficult for humanity to understand — as it once was for those who always said, based on their external sensory perception: The earth stands still, the sun and the stars move around the earth — just as it became difficult for these people to accept the Copernican worldview, which forced them to let the sun stand still and let the earth move around with the stars. For certain people, or at least for certain authorities who dealt with such matters, it took until the year [1822] before it was permissible to regard this worldview as correct, even though centuries had passed since Copernicus had presented this worldview. Of course, some people believed that this would infringe on religious sentiment.

[ 40 ] So today, people will think again: it will interfere with religious deepening if a similar principle is applied with regard to the human life course in relation to spiritual experience. According to the outward appearance of life, it seems as if our life course runs between birth or conception and death, and that the soul and spirit run alongside it. This is how we imagine it, even if we are not always aware of it, for those who have not undergone the inner training I have described.

[ 41 ] One thinks something like this: We are born. Gradually, we become spiritually conscious, and the spiritual aspect runs alongside the physical aspect. We reach the ages of seven, fourteen, thirty, sixty, and it continues alongside the physical aspect. This mental image is just as apparent as the mental image that the sun revolves around the earth was apparent. For the developed thinking described today learns, so to speak, a Copernicanism for the soul-spiritual. We remember back to a certain point in our lives. Beyond this point, one does not remember back in ordinary consciousness, but only in the consciousness described today is this possible. What lies before us?

[ 42 ] What lies before us is that, when we truly consider the soul life in its relationship to the spirit, what we call our I, our innermost self, does not participate in the course of life in the trivial way that is usually imagined. Rather, this soul-spiritual being, our actual I, remains at the point in our life to which we can remember in later life, and the soul bound to the physical continues until death and sends its rays back. [Gap] Throughout our entire life, our soul-spiritual self always remains in the spiritual world and rests there, while the soul life bound to the physical body runs its course in life and only sends its rays, like the resting sun sends its rays to the moving earth. Here it is the other way around. The moving life course sends back to the soul resting in the spirit world what the soul experiences with the help of the physical. The life course, in a sense, in its movement in relation to the resting I, to the resting soul-spiritual, becomes clear to the thinking I have just described.

[ 43 ] One can now create a mental image of perhaps even greater resistance opposing this truth than opposed Copernicanism at the time. But truth prevails. Just as the sun was correctly understood through Copernicanism, so the soul-spiritual, the core of our being, our I, will be recognized as resting in the spiritual world. And that which passes as the course of life will be recognized as that which sends back its rays, just as the outer world sends rays to our senses when we face it. The soul resting in the spirit receives its experiences.

[ 44 ] And now I may perhaps explain the rest by referring to familiar mental images. For you can see that by addressing these subjects, one arrives at entirely new concepts and ideas, concepts and ideas that lead to the immortal part of the soul, to that which truly lives on in the spiritual world beyond birth and death. Spiritual Science does not answer the question of the immortality of the soul by speculating whether immortality exists or not, but by seeking ways in which human beings, whose eternal nature remains in the spiritual world, are immortal in the spiritual world and pass through birth and death just as we pass through the external world. Just as the natural scientist approaches the physical organization, that is, something that no longer shows the soul's point of origin in itself, the spiritual researcher goes to another consciousness, to a consciousness that I have called in my last book — following a word of Goethe's — “contemplative power of judgment,” the “contemplative consciousness.”

[ 45 ] And we can illustrate this contemplative consciousness to ourselves by saying that ordinary consciousness leads us into ordinary everyday experiences, into ordinary science. This consciousness is contrasted with another consciousness that may interest us from a perspective of Spiritual Science, simply because we want to make a comparison, but from which we cannot learn anything: dream consciousness. What do we experience in dreams? Images run through our minds, we live in these images, and while we experience the images, we consider them to be reality. Only when we awaken from the dream do we no longer consider them to be reality, because we measure them against external life, where we are connected with our will to what connects us in the external world. A dreamer would be someone who wanted to explain the dream from within themselves.

[ 46 ] It is like this with dreams: a person dreams that he hears someone calling “Oh!”, then the call becomes “Ioh!”, then it becomes “Fire!”. He wakes up, the fire department is driving by outside, that was his experience. But while he experiences this call, a whole dream drama can unfold. The external call has reached his ear, and a whole wealth of images plays out internally. We only understand why this is so when we can follow the external events, which are quite different from these dream images, with our waking consciousness. We can only explain what happens in dreams from the perspective of waking consciousness. It is, of course, a foolish superstition to try to explain waking consciousness through dream experiences. You can find more details about this in my latest book.

[ 47 ] Just as one awakens from the dream image into the actual reality in which one stands with one's whole physical being, just as one awakens into ordinary waking consciousness, so one awakens through the inner processes I have described from waking consciousness into seeing consciousness. Natural research into the soul is a return to the unconscious physical; spiritual research is an ascent from the consciousness that we have every day, to contemplative consciousness. There is nothing superstitious, as malice would have it, nothing of suggestion or hypnosis in what spiritual research aims at, but rather a leading of the human being upward to an awakening, to an awakened consciousness.

[ 48 ] But now, if we continue the comparison with the experience of dream images, which owe their existence to external and internal stimuli but are quite different from what actually stimulates them, we can now consider something in our ordinary experience that appears to us in ordinary experience as a tangle of coincidences that approaches us, which we can only grasp with our emotions, with our sympathies and antipathies, under which we suffer or rejoice. Just as the dream conjures up its images for us, just as these images come into order when we explain the dream from our waking consciousness, so we see fate with its images, its colorful formations, from our ordinary consciousness. When we wake up into seeing consciousness, we will experience fate in the same way as we wake up from a dream and face what caused the dream. In ordinary consciousness, we experience human destiny in the same way that we experience a dream that we cannot interpret in the dream itself.

[ 49 ] However, in a higher degree, the observing consciousness is like what happened to one of Goethe's friends, Knebel, when he tried to to survey the apparent chaos of the coincidences of fate. Knebel says: It is only like a flash of light shining into ordinary consciousness. Awakened in contemplative consciousness, the ordinary course of fate becomes something completely different for the human being, just as the dream becomes something completely different for the dreamer when he awakens and surveys the causes of the dream with his waking consciousness. of the dream with waking consciousness.

[ 50 ] And let me suggest what view of fate one comes to in this way, and what relationship fate has to the human life course.

[ 51 ] If, as spiritual researchers, we truly experience what I have described, and have brought this experience to a certain point, then what we experience inwardly, this building of bridges to the spirit, will lead to a very special inner experience. If we continue on the path of building bridges from the soul to the spirit, something arises in our soul experience that can initially be a unique inner experience. For the knowledge that one acquires in this way becomes one's destiny. One regards it as something special that strikes our destiny, and that we ourselves have now brought about by developing our knowledge. One regards what happens to one as a special stroke of fate; what happens to us insofar as we say to ourselves — and this saying to ourselves is of immense tragedy in our inner life, an event of indescribable significance — we finally say to ourselves: By experiencing this in the realization of how you have awakened into seeing consciousness, this means something for you that is more important than all the other fateful events that you have seen play out in your life, no matter how difficult or significant they may have been.

[ 52 ] One arrives at this point precisely when one lives through all these experiences in inner healing. The realization becomes such a fate that one says to oneself that one truly does not need to become numb to other strokes of fate and events, but the inner transformation that one has undergone in awakening to contemplative consciousness has a stronger impact on life than even the most shattering other experiences. Then one experiences fate, fate in immediate consciousness. When one experiences the full gravity of one's inner experiences, one has reached the point where one's consciousness has also awakened to the answers to other questions of fate. For then one can immediately see the questions of fate. You have brought about something that, as I have described, has an impact on fate. And this now leads you further; it is the impulse that leads you further to the insight in your contemplative consciousness of how the immortal spirit in human beings, which passes through birth and death, has such an effect that destiny is formed out of the spiritual world from the individuality that is only obscured by the physical and soul aspects.

[ 53 ] Once one has approached the questions of destiny at a point such as I have described, once one has recognized destiny as that which one's own self has brought about, then one's view of destiny expands beyond birth and death. What otherwise occurs in the events of destiny becomes like a dream illuminated from the spiritual world. If one views what takes place in the course of human life in the usual way, one regards it in such a way that, in relation to what the human being is inwardly, what they can experience inwardly, what abilities and impulses they can develop, which is connected with their destiny, for those who have one ability are driven to one destiny, others to another destiny, which is regarded as the result of what one inherits.

[ 54 ] Certainly, people may come and say: What wonderful results science has brought! I do not underestimate them! These results are not underestimated by Spiritual Science; on the contrary, they are illuminated from another perspective. What is physical here is only the manifestation of the spiritual. And the spirit is not in a cloud cuckoo land, but everywhere around us. We are eternally connected to the spiritual-soul realm in the spiritual world. But it is not only what happens between birth and death that is connected to the spirit. To show how what happens between birth and death is inherited, the following is very often referred to. It is said—and in this regard, some very interesting studies have been conducted—that when you look at a person, you can also observe their abilities in their father and mother or grandparents and so on.

[ 55 ] A very beautiful book has been written about Goethe, in which the author sought to explain his abilities through heredity. The results are beautiful. However, the conclusion drawn from this is that a great genius carries the abilities of his ancestors within him. This is a strange factual logic, because the fact that a genius's characteristics echo those of his ancestors is no more surprising than the fact that you get wet when you fall into water. We know this from experience. But the fact that genius is inherited can only be demonstrated in descendants, and this will probably be left alone, because experience will provide us with completely different results. Experience, therefore, does not exactly speak in favor of the inheritance of intellectual characteristics, but Spiritual Science, with its contemplative consciousness, sees things differently. Not only when we enter into existence is our physical body connected with the spirit at every moment, but that which leads to our conception, that which passes through our ancestral lines, is also already connected to the spiritual world. Our ego is in the spiritual world when our grandfather and great-grandfather live in it; and just as the physical body interacts with the physical bodies of our ancestors between birth and death, so our spiritual soul interacts long before in those physical processes, in what takes place when our ancestors are brought together. That is where it works.

[ 56 ] And just as the soul evokes what I will think tomorrow because it is connected with today's processes, we not only inherit the characteristics of our ancestors, but our ancestors also acquire characteristics through us. To look at it as if we were awakening from a dream and looking at the outer world, to look at the world from which we bring our inner destiny by allowing our powers to flow into our inheritance, to look at this inner destiny, we achieve this by by emancipating our thinking. And once we have achieved the other thing, that we have experienced knowledge itself as destiny, then it becomes clear to us that what lives in our inner destiny is what we determined from the spiritual world before birth in the predisposition of our ancestors. This is how what what comes to us as external events is determined by the fact that we develop forces of attraction for them in the most natural way in the world, from our previous earthly lives. We learn to look at our previous earthly lives by attaining clairvoyant consciousness, and we become aware of our inner destiny as a consequence of our previous earthly life. In this way, what a person builds as a foundation in the spiritual world between death and new birth is added to what develops from heredity. We do not want to eliminate heredity from the world, but we want to illuminate it with the light of the spirit from the spiritual world.

[ 57 ] Thus, when we are able to extend our ego individuality beyond birth and death into the times of repeated earthly lives, into the times between death and a new birth, we recognize, just as we recognize the outer physical world as the cause of the dream when we awaken from it, then we recognize the spiritual world as that which now intervenes in the course of causation, and which, just as the outer world explains the dream out of chaos, explains our destiny and brings order to our destiny. We not only accept our destiny with suffering and joy, but we learn to understand it, so that we know: in the individuality that extends beyond personal experience lie the determining factors for our destiny, which flows to us from the spiritual world.

[ 58 ] Thus we see how awakening to contemplative consciousness leads thinking beyond itself, but also leads feeling and willing beyond themselves to a contemplative consciousness. The fate of ordinary life presents itself to us like a dream that is dreamed from a higher reality that gives it meaning and significance. Therefore, we understand that it is precisely a deeply probing thinker, who goes to the limits of what can be achieved by remaining within ordinary reality, who encounters contradictions in these thoughts that arise in reference to ordinary reality. It is precisely the boldness of such a thinker as Friedrich Theodor Vischer that leads him to say: The unity of the soul is not in the body, but it cannot be anywhere else but in the body.

[ 59 ] You see, ordinary thinking leads to contradiction. This contradiction is only resolved in contemplative consciousness. If one can recognize that in ordinary life [gap] the spiritual does not lie within, but one must [gap]. In this paradox lies Vischer's need to look into something that ordinary consciousness can never resolve. This is also, and now for the spiritual realm, a transition from a pre-Copernican to a Copernican point of view.

[ 60 ] The best people of the nineteenth century felt the necessity, and with a reference to one of the best people of the nineteenth century, let me conclude today's presentation, which, however, will be illuminated from another angle the day after tomorrow in a lecture on the topic “The Human Soul and the Human Body in Nature and Spiritual Knowledge.”

[ 61 ] Let me conclude today's reflection with a reference to a great, sympathetic thinker. I am referring to Gustav Theodor Fechner. He was one of those thinkers of the nineteenth century who truly succeeded in perceiving how the great, brilliant advances in natural science, especially when viewed in their full scope, are not suited to solving the deepest mysteries of the soul, but rather to unraveling them. That is precisely the mystery of the significant natural science of our time: that it does not solve the mysteries of the soul for us, that it does not lead us to the solution of the mysteries of the immortality of the soul and the riddle of fate, as has been shown today by pointing to the paths of Spiritual Science, but that it can train us in thinking, that it can stimulate us raise questions in the appropriate way. But if it wanted to undertake to answer these questions, then what happened to a thinker as sensible as Gustav Theodor Fechner would happen. He could see that something must come that leads to spiritual knowledge. He himself could not penetrate to seeing consciousness; the time was not yet ripe when he was alive. But the way in which natural science approaches the spirit appeared to him in such a way that he described this position as the night view, the night view of the worldview, and that he longs for what penetrates into this night view as seeing consciousness, just as the awakening of day penetrates into dream life, just as the view of day stands in contrast to the view of night. Thus it came about that Fechner, although he stood only at the gate of anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science and could not pass through the gate, nevertheless spoke beautiful words about the passage of human spiritual life into the future, which is to lead from the view of night to the view of day, which wants to lead into the spirit with with the same certainty as natural science penetrates from the soul into physical life. Fechner speaks these beautiful words:

Indeed, it is my belief [that, as surely as night follows day, that night view of the world will one day be followed by a day view which, instead of contradicting the natural view of things, will rather underpin it and find in it the basis for a new development. For when the illusion that turns day into night disappears, then naturally everything related to it that is wrong, and there is much, will have to disappear, and the world will appear in a new context, in a new light, under new] positive points of view.

[ 62 ] What Gustav Theodor Fechner longs for from his profound mind, my dear friends, Spiritual Science would like to make a start on. With the still primitive means available for research, as has been indicated today, it would like to make a start on this vision of the day that Fechner has brought about. For what Fechner has expressed as his conviction must be true in the course of human spiritual life, and every spiritual researcher can express this in relation to penetration into the spiritual world. And Spiritual Science, which wants to bring about what has been expressed in these words of longing:

[ 63 ] Now clarity is the last thing in these matters, [but clarity will also be the last thing].

[ 64 ] Spiritual Science would like to make a start on the path to this clarity, which can only come from the light of the spirit, a path that can lead ever further and ultimately to a goal that can provide satisfactory answers to the deepest human mysteries — or at least lead part of the way there.