Foundations of Anthroposophy
GA 79
28 November 1921, Christiania
I. Foundations of Anthroposophy
I wish to give you in three lectures a survey of what Anthroposophy has to say concerning the Human Being and his relation to the Universe. The universe and man are undoubtedly the two most important problems, for they embrace every question dealing with science and life, every problem of greatest and smallest importance.
It lies in the nature of these problems that in regard to these things I must limit myself to the anthroposophical horizon, that is to say, to the things connected with the great life-problems of human existence which transcend the knowledge gained through sensory perception and which lie beyond the sphere of ordinary science.
In regard to the human being, self-knowledge is undoubtedly a problem which must appeal to us most of all. For in order to gain a foundation and a firm standpoint in life, we must first obtain a conception of our own nature. And it must be said that at all times people have sought to gain a knowledge of the universe, for they knew that the mysteries of the world's evolution are connected with man's own being; they knew that they could only learn something about man's being by seeking to know what the universe is able to give them, the universe of which the human being forms part.
Moreover, it cannot be denied that in connection with a knowledge of man and of the universe modern people show a deep interest for everything which transcends ordinary science, and we may say that innumerable attempts are now being made to transcend the spheres of ordinary science in order to investigate what lies beyond birth and death, beyond the world which can be fathomed by ordinary sense-perception and by the understanding which is based upon it.
In recent times we can observe above all that there are scientific investigators who in many ways endeavour to transcend the spheres indicated above, and as an introduction let me mention a few striking conceptions of modern investigators, examples which prove that the keen interest in the problems which will form the subject of my three lectures really exists, but which prove at the same time how very difficult it is, even in the case of people well grounded in science, to penetrate into the sphere of the soul and of the spirit. As I do not wish to speak in abstract terms, let me proceed immediately from concrete examples.
A German scientist who worked very hard to discover how to penetrate into the super-sensible nature of the soul, and how to investigate the influence exercised by the soul's super-sensible nature upon the body's physical nature, tried to give many examples taken from his medical and scientific experience, showing the soul's influence, the influence of an unquestionably psychic essence upon the body. A marked example contained in one of the books written by this physician and scientist named Schleich, who was personally well known to me, is the following. He describes a patient, who came to him in a great state of excitement, because in the office he had pricked his skin with an inky nib. The doctor could ascertain that it was quite an insignificant scratch. But the patient was under the delusion that this prick with an inky nib had given him a blood poisoning and that he would have to die unless his hand was amputated, and he begged the doctor to amputate his hand, his arm as quickly as possible.
The doctor could only tell him to be calm, that he would be quite well again in a couple of days and that there was nothing to be afraid of. As a responsible doctor he had to tell him this and could not, of course, amputate his arm.
But the patient was not satisfied He went to another doctor who told him exactly the same thing and also refused to amputate his arm. Schleich was nevertheless nervous, for he was acquainted with soul-moods, and so he enquired the next day how the patient was feeling and he was told that the man had died.
The autopsy did not reveal any trace of blood-poisoning, or similar symptoms. This was out of the question. Yet the patient had died.
In connection with this case, Schleich remarks: Death caused by radical auto-suggestion.
The patient had the fixed idea that he had to die; it was an extremely radical auto-suggestion and he really did die under its influence.
This is the statement of an investigator well acquainted with all the natural-scientific methods, with all the medical methods. He reports this case in order to show a purely psychical influence, i.e. the influence of a thought, upon bodily processes, an influence showing, according to Schleich, that death set in as a result.
Schleich mentions many other cases, less marked and radical, in order to prove that it is possible to observe the soul, living in thoughts, feelings, sensations and will-impulses, and that the soul can really influence the body. He wishes to describe, as it were, the influence of the super-sensible upon the physical.
Another case is described by a far more conspicuous scientist, by Sir Oliver Lodge. Sir Oliver Lodge lost his son Raymond in the last war. He fell on the Belgian-German frontier, and Oliver Lodge, who had long ago felt the inclination to build a bridge leading from the sensory-natural-scientific sphere to the super-sensible sphere, was deeply stirred by the loss of his beloved son. Through many incidents, which are not directly connected with this matter and which I need not relate, he was induced to use the mediumistic power of a certain person, in order to enter into connection with the departed soul of his son, Raymond.
When such a case arises in ordinary spiritistic circles, it is not necessary to consider it seriously, for one knows how unscientific these meetings are, and how amateurishly and unscientifically such cases are judged and investigated in them. But the matter must be taken more seriously when we have to do with one of the greatest of modern scientists, with a man so thoroughly at home in the sphere of external, natural scientific research and so well acquainted with scientific methods. That is why Oliver Lodge's book on his spiritual intercourse with his son Raymond, made such a deep impression on the world.
On reading this book, we immediately feel that it is written by a man who does not approach the investigation of such things superficially, but by a conscientious and responsible scientist. Even in other things, which I will not mention here, one can see that Oliver Lodge applies to this sphere the same way of thinking, the same scientific method which he is accustomed to apply in his physical laboratory. The real facts which he relates, and which, one might say, rightly produced such a deep impression upon all those who read Sir Oliver Lodge's book, are as follows :
Through the medium in question, Oliver Lodge and a few other people who were present at the seances, were told that his son, that is, the soul, the spirit of Oliver Lodge's son, wished to describe a scene enacted on the Belgian-German frontier shortly before his death, and the medium related that Raymond Lodge had a photograph taken and described this act in detail. It was expressly stated that two photographs were taken; these two photographs were carefully described and attention was drawn to the fact that upon the second photograph Sir Oliver Lodge's son had a somewhat different pose from that on the first one.
When these communications were made in London through the medium (Sir Oliver Lodge describes it so that one can really see—I emphasize this expressly—that he took every possible scientific precaution), at the time when these experiments were made, no one in London knew anything about these photographs, nor that they had been taken. After examining all the facts, Sir Oliver Lodge came to the conclusion that if this message were true, it could only come from his son, from the departed son himself.
In fact, after two or three weeks, the photographs which no one had seen before really arrived in London. They corresponded with the description given by the medium, or, as Sir Oliver Lodge believed, with the description given by the soul of his son. Even a scientist could see in this fact, to begin with, one might say, “experimentum cruris.” Nobody in London could possibly have seen the photographs. It appeared that the description was correct even in regard to the fact that two photographs were taken and that the second one shows a difference. The photographer had taken the photograph of the group which included Raymond Lodge twice, and for the second photograph he had shifted his camera a little. All this had been described exactly. A conscientious scientist could not find the slightest reason for questioning the medium's communication.
The two radical cases I have described to you, show that the longing, the great desire of unquestionably serious modern scientists lead them to seek a knowledge which goes beyond the facts revealed by ordinary external scientific research.
But one who speaks of the foundations of anthroposophical research, one who speaks from an anthroposophical standpoint, must draw attention to the fact that the methods of this investigation differ from those adopted even by such serious minded scientists. For, in regard to a scientific way of thinking and a scientific mentality the foundations of anthroposophical research (I hope that my three lectures will make things clear to you from every aspect) should be stricter and more conscientious than any other, even in comparison with such strict scientists as the above. And one who ventures to criticize such great scientists is perhaps first called upon to judge and to explain the far greater certainty constituting the foundation of Anthroposophy, which is so often accused of advancing fantastic notions; this certainty given by Anthroposophy is far greater than that transmitted by the most conscientious scientific investigators of the present time. In order to indicate the critical attitude, the earnest and truly scientific character of Anthroposophy and its foundations, let me first bring forward the critical objections which can be raised against the scientific interpretations given in the two above mentioned examples.
Let me now begin with these things, for in connection with to-day's subject my last two lectures already contained many [25th November. The Reality of the Higher Worlds. 26th November. Paths to the Knowledge of Higher Worlds.] explanations, so that the essential facts are known to the great majority of those who are now present; allow me therefore briefly to illumine the things already explained to you from another angle.
The following objection must be raised in regard to Schleich and his case of “death through auto-suggestion.” Please accept this, to begin with, as a simple critical objection showing how matters might also be viewed! Let us suppose that the man who pricked his hand with an inky nib and who believed that he had blood poisoning, really had some unknown inner defect, so that sudden death through a natural cause would have arisen in any case during the night after the accident. Such cases of sudden death really exist. On the other hand, all those who seriously investigate what can be achieved by a strengthening and intensification of the human cognitive powers, in the direction which I tried to indicate during the last few days, know that certain undefined soul-forces may be driven to a special climax through some abnormal conditions, through—one can really say—abnormal pathological conditions. Such cases undoubtedly exist and are critically described in books, so that everyone can test them, whenever the human will (and we shall see how this is possible) becomes transformed and thus attains cognitive power. Since the human will is directed towards the future, it is able, under certain pathological conditions, to have a premonition of events which prepare themselves, of events which will take place in the future out of the whole connections of a person's life. It is a matter of indifference whether we call this a foreboding, or whether we give it any other name. But it is a fact that under certain pathological conditions of a lighter nature, which do not clearly appear in the form of illness, a person may foresee, in the form of a picture, that he will, for instance, in fourteen days be thrown from his horse. All precautions will be useless, for he cannot perceive the accompanying circumstances. He has simply had a foreboding, he has simply foreseen an event about to take place.
The critical objection which must be raised by one who really knows the spiritual connections of man in a deeper sense, is that in the case of Schleich's patient, the factors which brought about his sudden death on the following night, can simply have already existed and that he had had an inner presentiment of his approaching death. Such a presentiment need not be fully conscious; it can quite well remain in the subconscious depths of the soul. But its influence upon consciousness manifests itself in symptoms which can be designated as nervousness and restlessness. One does all manner of unpremeditated things, and it is quite possible to prick one's finger with an inky nib under the influence of the nervousness arising from such a premonition. The person in question therefore simply knew unconsciously (let me use this paradoxical expression) that he would die. He did not clothe this in the statement that he had a presentiment of his death, but he grew nervous, pricked his hand with the nib and clung to the belief that he would have to die through blood poisoning. Thus it was not a case of death through auto-suggestion, but the man in question had had a presentiment of his coming death and all his actions were determined by this. In that case Schleich simply mistakes cause and effect, there is no auto-suggestion, as Schleich supposes, to the effect that a conscious thought exercised so strong a suggestion that death ensued; but death would have arisen in any case and the death-presentiment was the cause of the patient's fixed idea.
You see, even such things can be viewed critically, if another, undoubtedly possible thing is borne in mind; namely, that certain subconscious conditions which always exist in the soul, faintly rise to the surface of ordinary consciousness, but masked. In the unconscious depths of the human soul many conscious manifestations have quite a different aspect, and ordinary consciousness simply gives them a different interpretation.
Let us now turn to the other case, that of Sir Oliver Lodge. Undoubtedly you are all acquainted with the phenomenon known as “second sight.” Through an intensification of the human cognitive forces, it is possible to perceive things which cannot be perceived by the ordinary sound senses; it is possible, as it were, to see things in a way which is not in keeping with the ordinary conditions of environing space, so that this perceptive faculty can, so to speak, transcend space and time. This fact supplies the critical objection which must be raised even against the conscientiousness of an Oliver Lodge. For Sir Oliver Lodge uses this experimentum crucis in order to prove that his son's soul and none other must have spoken to him from the Beyond. But those who know the fine and intimate way in which second sight works, and that under certain abnormal conditions the intimate character of such a perceptive capacity is really able to overcome space and time (mediums always possess this perceptive faculty, though in the great majority of cases this is not to their advantage) those who are acquainted with this fact, also know that a person endowed with second sight can go to the point of giving a description as in the case of Sir Oliver Lodge's son, a description which may be characterised as follows:—
The two photographs arrived in London two or three weeks after the séance. The attention of the people who were present at the séance was turned towards these pictures, that is to something pertaining to the future. And this fact pertaining to the future could be interpreted by a kind of second sight which the medium possessed.
In that case, it can no longer be said that Raymond Lodge's soul shone supersensibly into the room where Sir Oliver Lodge was making his experiments. Here, we simply have to do with something enacted completely upon the physical plane, that is to say, with a vision of the future surpassing the ordinary perceptive capacity, but which does not justify the belief that a soul from beyond the threshold manifested itself in the séance room.
I mention these two examples and the objections against them, in order to awaken in you a feeling for the conscientiousness and for the critical attitude of anthroposophical spiritual research. The spiritual investigation practised in Anthroposophy does not at first proceed from any abnormal phenomena (the two last lectures proved this), but from completely normal conditions of human life, which appear in the forces of cognition, of the will and of feeling. Anthroposophical research seeks to develop these forces which enable one to gain a knowledge of the super-sensible worlds, in order to be, as it were, inwardly entitled to this knowledge, and in order to gain the true conscientiousness required in a training which strengthens thought.
Meditation exercises, such as those recently described to you, strengthen our thought to a high degree, so that our way of thinking becomes just as alive and intensive as sensory perception. Then there are the will exercises which I have already mentioned to you, and which will be characterised more fully in these lectures. Will-exercises require above all an intensive observation of normal life, we must become quite familiar with the conditions in which we normally live.
A short time ago, a scientist published a brief resume of the science of Anthroposophy inaugurated by me. This man is in no way a blind believer. He briefly recapitulates what I have been giving you as Anthroposophy, a material which already constitutes a voluminous literature. He recapitulates it, at the same time declaring that he is neither for nor against Anthroposophy, but then he makes a remark which has the semblance of being that of a strong opponent, although the author is neither an opponent nor a follower. I must confess that this cutting remark pleased me exceedingly, particularly if seen in the light in which Anthroposophy appears in comparison with the rest of modern culture. The writer remarks that in the light of ordinary consciousness many of my statements produce an irresistibly comical effect. I must admit that I like this remark for the following simple reason: When things are mentioned, such as Sir Oliver Lodge's case, or the other case reported by me, people prick up their ears, because in a certain way this appeals to their sensationalism and because it differs from what they are accustomed to hear.
This does not seem irresistibly comical to them. But when an Anthroposophist is obliged to establish a connection with altogether normal and human things, with human memory, or with the ordinary expressions of the human will, and explains that through certain exercises human thought may be intensified and that through self-education the will can be developed so that one changes and is able to penetrate as a transformed human being into the super-sensible world—and because he uses ordinary words designating things which ordinarily surround us, words which people do not like to apply to anything else—then he may produce an “irresistibly comical effect.” Many things therefore have such an irresistibly comical effect on people who only wish to apply the words to things to which they are applied in ordinary life. To an anthroposophical spiritual investigator, such views on Anthroposophy frequently appear like a letter which some one is supposed to read, but instead of reading it begins to make a chemical analysis of the ink with which it is written. I must confess that many statements on Anthroposophy really appear to me as if a person were to analyse the ink used in writing a letter, instead of reading it.
The essential point in the foundations of Anthroposophy is that one starts from completely normal human experiences, that one has a good knowledge of modern scientific truths, of modern ethical life, and develops these very things more intensively, so that one can penetrate into the higher worlds through an intensification of the cognitive forces which already exist less intensely in ordinary life and in science. One must of course have an understanding for these ordinary human experiences. One must pay attention to thoroughly ordinary normal experiences, which, however, we are not very much interested in observing carefully. Things must, so to speak, become enigmas and problems. Although they form part of ordinary life, one easily fails to see their enigmatic character. And here already begins for many people the “irresistibly comical effect,” that is, when one begins to say: The questions connected with man's alternating conditions of waking and sleeping must above all be looked upon as enigmas.
During our life, we continually change over from the condition of waking to that of sleeping, but we do not take much notice of this pendulum of life, swaying between the conditions of waking and sleeping. The strangest theories have been advanced in this connection. I might talk for a long time, were I to mention some of these theories relating to the alternating conditions of waking and sleeping. But let me mention only one, the most well-known and usual one, namely that one simply takes for granted that when the human being is awake he gets tired and when he is sufficiently tired goes to sleep, and that sleep in its turn counter-balances fatigue. Sleep (this can be described in one or the other way, more or less materialistically) eliminates the causes of fatigue.
I should like to know if radical supporters of this theory can really say that fatigue is the cause of sleep, when for instance, they observe a person who really has no cause whatever for getting tired during the day—let us say, a fat gentleman living on private means, who goes to a more or less solid concert or to a lecture, not late in the evening, but in the afternoon, and who falls asleep not after the first five minutes, but after two minutes!
These things at first may really present a slightly comical aspect, but if they are viewed from every side, their earnest enigmatic character must stand before our soul. Those who believe that the alternating conditions of waking and sleeping can be studied with the aid of the ordinary scientific methods applied to-day, will never reach a satisfactory solution of this problem. Even such completely normal questions of life cannot be approached with the ordinary cognitive forces, but with a thinking intensified by meditation, concentration and other soul-exercises described in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and in my Outline of Occult Science, and also with transformed forces of the will.
What is attained when we try to strengthen thought by earnest meditation? I already explained to you that meditation must begin by strengthening thought to such an extent that it becomes a transformed memory. Our ordinary memory contains inner pictures which reproduce the experiences of our ordinary earthly life since our birth. Through memory, the picture of some real event stands before the soul, and that our soul-life is healthily connected with the external world in which we live, is guaranteed by the fact that we do not somehow mix up things fantastically, but that our memory-pictures indicate things which really existed.
We must therefore come to the point of being able to place before our soul, in the imaginative understanding described in the last few days, pictures which resemble our ordinary memory pictures. These pictures simply arise by our more and more bringing meditation concepts into our consciousness, and thus strengthening the soul-faculty of thinking, just as a muscle is made strong through exercise. We must reach the point of strengthening thinking to such an extent that it can live within its own content, in the same way in which we ordinarily live within our sense-experiences through our senses.
When such exercises have been made for a sufficiently long time, when we really attain to such a living way of thinking, then something develops which may be designated as a plastic form-giving, morphological way of thinking. Our thinking then contains a living essence, it has a living content which can ordinarily only be found in sense-perception. In that case we begin to notice something new: What modern natural science brings to the fore, is a source of regret to many, it constitutes materialism. But Anthroposophy which aims through its methods at penetrating into the super-sensible worlds, must in a certain sphere become thoroughly “materialistic,” stimulated in the right way by modern science.
This is the case if we learn to strengthen our thinking in the right way, if we can have before us, in imaginative thought, images which are just as alive as sense-perceptions and with which we deal just as freely as with sensory perceptions. When we perceive something through our senses we know unmistakably that we see Red or hear the note C sharp and that these are impressions which come to us from the external world, not impressions which rise out of our own soul. In the same way we know through imaginative thinking that the images which rise up before us are not empty phantasms produced by the soul, but that they are a living essence within, resembling sensory perception.
When we inwardly experience this emancipation from the body, this freedom which also exists in sense-perception, we also know what constitutes memory in ordinary life. When we remember something, we always plunge into our physical body; every memory-thought is connected with a parallel physical or at least etheric bodily process. We learn to know the material importance of that life which constitutes the ordinary life of memory. We then no longer ascribe the contents of memory to the independent soul, as does Bergson, the French thinker, but we know that in the ordinary memory-process the soul simply dives down into the body and that the body is the instrument which conjures up our memories. Now we know that only by imagination we reach the stage of being able to think independently of the body, of being able to think in ordinary life only with the soul, which we never do otherwise. In ordinary life we perceive through our senses, we abstract our thoughts from the sensory perception and retain them in our memory. But this process of retaining the thoughts in memory implies that we dive down into our body.
Imaginative knowledge alone shows us the true process of memory and that of sensory perception. Imaginative knowledge shows us what it means to live in free thoughts, emancipated from the body. It also shows us what it means to dive down into the physical organism with our thoughts, when we remember something. Even as we learn to know these things through an intensification of thinking, through an enhancement and strengthening of thought by meditation, so we may learn to know through the will how to pass through a kind of self-training which leads to similar results.
In ordinary life, the will only acquires a certain value when it passes over to external action; otherwise it remains mere desire, even though we may cherish the highest ideals, the most beautiful ideals, even though we may be true idealists. The highest ideals will remain mere desires, if we are not able to take hold of the external physical reality.
What characterises a desire, a wish? It has the peculiar quality of being abstracted and withdrawn from the world of reality. Symbolically one might say: When we only have desires, this is like drawing back the feelers of the soul. We then live completely within our own being, within the soul-element. But we also know that desires are, to begin with, tinged by the human temperaments. A melancholic person will have desires which differ from those of a sanguine person. The physical foundation of desires could soon be discovered by those who investigate these matters conscientiously with the aid of natural-scientific methods. The etheric foundation of desires can therefore be seen in the temperament, but their physical conditions can be perceived in the special composition of the blood or in other qualities of the bodily constitution.
This calls for that critical attitude mentioned at the beginning of my lecture; such a critical attitude shatters, I might say, many a pleasant dream. Allow me to give you a few indications which show how such pleasant dreams can be dispelled.
I certainly do not mean to be irreverent, nor do I destroy any ideal through lack of reverence, for I have a deep feeling for all the beauty contained, for instance, in the mysticism of a St. Theresa or of a St. John of the Cross. Do not think that I am second to anyone in admiring all the beauty contained in such mystical expressions. But those who have some experience of the special way in which, for instance, St. Theresa or St. John of the Cross produced their visions, know to what extent human desires have a share in these visions. They know that desires which live in the soul's depths have a share particularly in mystical experiences, and these desires may lead a spiritual investigator to study the bodily constitution of these mystics. Nothing is desecrated when a spiritual investigator draws attention to such things, when he indicates that in certain organs he discovers an inner state of excitement, that the nerves exercise a different influence on certain organs, thus producing a certain effect in the soul, which may even take on the beautiful aspect of the visions described by St. John of the Cross or by St. Theresa, or by other mystics of that type. We are far more on the right track if we seek the foundation of such visions, which are so beautiful and poetic in the case of St. Theresa and of St. John of the Cross, in certain bodily conditions than in the beholding of some nebulous mystery.
As I have said I do not wish to pull to pieces something which I revere as much as any other person in this room, but the truth must be shown, and also the critical attitude derived from an anthroposophical foundation. It must be shown that an anthroposophist above all should not fall a prey to illusions. Above all, he should be free from illusion in regard to human desires which are rooted in the human organism, desires rooted in the physical human organism which flare up, come, so to speak, to boiling point, if I may use this expression, and lead to the most beautiful visions.
A person who wishes to become a spiritual investigator in the anthroposophical sense, should not only strengthen his thinking through meditation, but he should also transform his desires through self-training.
This can be done by taking in hand systematically that which otherwise takes place as if of its own accord. Let us honestly admit that during our ordinary life we allow events to guide us far more than we ourselves guide the course of our life. In ordinary life this or that thing may influence us, and if we look back ten years into our past earthly existence, we find that the external conditions and the people whom we met, unfolded within us a side of our character which now presents a different aspect from what it was like ten years ago.
A person who earnestly strives to become an anthroposophical spiritual investigator must, in this connection, also make exercises which influence the will. The ordinary will in life acquires a meaning when directed towards external actions. But an anthroposophical spiritual investigator must apply the impulses of the will to his own development, to his own life. He should be able to pursue the following aim: “In regard to this or that characteristic or expression of life, you must change, you must become different from what you were.” Though it may seem paradoxical, it is a great help if we begin to change something within us through our own initiative, through our own impulse; if we change some strongly rooted habit, or even a small trifle. I repeat that it can be something quite insignificant, for instance, one's handwriting. If someone really strives with an iron will to change his handwriting, the application of energy required for the transformation of a habit may be compared with the strengthening of a muscle because the will is strengthened. By growing stronger and by being applied inwardly instead of outwardly, the will begins to exercise certain influences in man. The transformations in the external world once produced by the effects of the will, now become transformations within human nature.
If we do exercises of the will, as described in detail in anthroposophical books, we reach the point of transforming our life of desire, so that this becomes emancipated from the human organisation, even as our thinking emancipates itself from the body through meditation.
During the moments in which we live in anthroposophical research, we are no longer in a condition which may be described by saying that the wish is father to the thought. When we exercise this self-training, this application of education of oneself at a maturer age, our wishes and desires become an inner power which unites with the emancipated thinking. This leads us to a real perception of the true nature of the will-impulses in ordinary life, and to a perception of the true nature of thoughts in ordinary life. Even as we ordinarily perceive red or blue, or hear C sharp or C, so we now perceive thoughts as realities; we learn to know the will-impulses objectively, that is to say, separated from our own being.
In this way we reach the point of having a right judgment of the alternating conditions of waking and sleeping. Only by rendering thought objective through exercise, as objective as a sense-perception, so that we are no longer connected with our body as in the case of a remembered thought, only with this thinking developed in free meditation, can the act of falling asleep be rightly grasped and perceived.
A person who seeks to gain insight into the normal act of falling asleep, with the aid of the ordinary cognitive forces, may set up one hypothesis after the other, but he will not be able to recognise the true nature of sleep.
This strengthened thinking which we acquire, and on the other hand our transformed desires, are those which show us that when we fall asleep we can, in a certain way, still follow the moment in which sleep takes hold of us; we look, as it were, upon the act of falling asleep and we learn to know that when we go to sleep we do not simply have before us a changed bodily condition, but that we really slip out of our body with our independent soul-life; we go out of our body and we leave something behind—namely, our thoughts.
We can leave our thoughts behind consciously, when we fall asleep, only because our thinking has been intensified. The thoughts remain behind with the body and fill it in the shape of formative forces. We notice that we have abandoned our body only with our feeling and with our will. But by perceiving with what part of the soul we leave the body, we obtain at the same time an objective certainty that we have an independent soul-essence and that we go out of the body with this independent soul-essence.
And now we know that what we leave behind on the bed on falling asleep, is not only something which can be investigated by physiology, anatomy and biology, but that it is permeated by the web of thoughts, This web of our thoughts must first be made strong enough, so that we can abandon it consciously, in the same way as we consciously turn our face away from colours and leave off looking at them. Through this strengthened thought we know that we leave behind on the bed our physical body and a body of forces containing thoughts which act like forces; we leave these bodies behind so that they may exist independently between falling asleep and waking up.
These thoughts, these morphological thoughts described to you in recent lectures, exist in our ordinary consciousness only as reflected images. They too have a reality, and with this reality they fill out our physical body as a special etheric body.
Now we know that when we fall asleep we abandon our sensory body and our thought body. (I might also say, the physical body and the etheric body, or the physical body and the body of formative forces). We abandon these bodies with our will and with our feeling. In ordinary life our constitution does not enable our consciousness to remain clear, it is not strong enough to maintain consciousness unless it is filled out by thoughts. Consciousness, such as we have it in ordinary life and in ordinary science, must unite with the body and experience within the body the thoughts of the body; only then it is fully conscious. But when the soul goes out of the body as mere feeling and will, we ordinarily become unconscious.
But a person who attains to the imaginative thinking referred to here recently, experiences the moment of falling asleep consciously, and he can produce conditions which resemble ordinary sleep, except that they are not unconscious, but that forces are at work within him and that he can really experience the organism of feeling and of the will; that is to say, he really experiences that part of his being which can emancipate itself from the body.
If we thus learn to know the moment of falling asleep, we also learn to know the moment of waking up. We now learn to judge that the moment of waking up really consists of two parts: Our attitude on waking up is the same as when a sense-impression is produced. Whenever we wake up, something must stimulate the soul. This need only be our own body, which has slept long enough and which produces this stimulus in its changed condition. But even as there is a stimulus in every sensory impression, so there is always a stimulus when we wake up, and this stimulus works upon our feeling, which left the body when we fell asleep. Even as the eyes and the ears perceive colours and sounds, so the emancipated soul now perceives through feeling something which is outside; the moment of waking up is a perception through feeling; we take hold of the body when we wake up. The independent will takes hold of the physical organism in the same way in which we ordinarily move an arm or a leg. Waking up really consists of these two acts.
In regard to falling asleep and waking up, we have now learned to know the alternating connection between the independent soul which leaves the body every night with its feeling and with its will, and the conditions in which the soul lives from the moment of waking up to the moment of falling asleep, when it is united with the body. Anthroposophical investigation is therefore based upon a strengthening of the capacities of thinking and of the will, so that we are able to observe and really perceive things which we ordinarily cannot perceive. And if in this way we are able to perceive the alternating conditions of sleeping and waking, we are then capable of passing on to something else.
For if we continue more and more in the exercises described in the recent lectures and indicated in detail in the books already mentioned we come to the point that we do not always fall asleep when we leave the body, but that we can at will draw out of the body our feeling and our will and really look back upon the body. Then the human body is as objective as a desk or a table in ordinary life. We learn to know a thing only because we are no longer connected with it, no longer penetrated by it subjectively, because it stands before us as an object.
The object which stands before us when we go out of the body with the will and with the feeling is above all the physical body. To-morrow we shall see that this perception outside the body gives us a new aspect of man's physical being. We perceive, above all, the body of formative forces, consisting of a web of thoughts, but active thoughts. We look back upon it as if it were a mirror. And then we are confronted by the strange fact that whereas formerly we were subjectively or personally connected with our thoughts, we now face this world of thoughts as if it were a photographic plate; in looking back upon our body our thoughts stand before us like a photographic plate. This is the same as the miniature reflection of the world which we ordinarily have in our eye. Even as the eye is an organ of sight through the fact that it can reproduce the world within itself, so the etheric and the physical body which remained behind, become a reflecting apparatus, where something becomes reflected through the soul and spirit, whereas the eye only gives us a physical reflection of something outside. By leaving our thoughts behind in the physical body, we see through this mirror not only the web of thoughts, but also the world.
The course of soul-spiritual events can therefore be described in detail, when the cognitive forces are intensified through meditation and a self-training of the will, in order to gain knowledge of the super-sensible worlds. Such a training enables us to develop certain conditions in which we are outside our body, but which do not resemble sleep; they constitute something which is indicated in my books as the continuity of consciousness. In higher knowledge we really go out of the body with our emancipated soul-being. We can recognise that we have left the body through the fact that the mirror of thoughts is now no longer within us, but outside. We go out of the body, yet we remain completely self-conscious, as already explained.
We are able to return into the body whenever we like; we do not fall a prey to hallucinations or visions, but we can follow the whole process with mathematical precision. Since the whole process can be observed in this way, we are also able to judge the ordinary events of earthly life when we return into the body. Now we know what it is like to dive down into the body with the emancipated soul. We not only learn to know the act of falling asleep, when we abandon the body, but now we also learn to return at will into our body with the emancipated soul.
It leaves a special impression upon us when we once experience this emancipated soul and then dive down again into the body, so that the soul becomes imprisoned by the body. The soul-spiritual world which was round about us when we were outside the body, now ceases to exist for us. We feel as if this world had vanished and that the body absorbs us as we dive into it. We also learn to know what it is like to abandon the body; we see how the thoughts go away from us, for they remain with the body, and how we abandon the body with the feeling and willing part of our soul. But in abandoning our body we feel at the same time that the spiritual world begins to rise up before us.
What knowledge have we now gained? Through the processes of waking up and of falling asleep, we have learned to know birth and death. We have experienced how the human being unconsciously abandons his physical and etheric organism with his feeling and with his will and how he returns into the body when he wakes up in the morning.
When we have made the above-mentioned exercises, we grow conscious where formerly we were unconscious, upon leaving our body. In full consciousness we now experience in advance a process which takes place when we die. And when we dive down into our physical body on returning from the spiritual world, when the thoughts outside vanish and once more appear as mere images, asserting themselves within the personality as something which is not real, then we learn to know the process of birth.
Whereas the ordinary scientific methods content themselves with the ordinary understanding, with ordinary thoughts which are applied to external observations and experiments that remain connected with us, anthroposophical investigation transforms the personality by rendering thought objective and by using the body as an all-embracing sense-organ. I might say that the body becomes one large eye. This eye, however, is outside and it is simultaneously a photographic plate.
The world into which we penetrate through spiritual investigation, the soul-spiritual world, now reflects itself in the external world as thought. An insight into completely normal processes, such as sleeping and waking, or birth and death, now enables us also to attain an inner vision of the soul-world, we perceive everything that pertains to the soul. Now our own experience enables us to distinguish whether what Professor Schleich designates as death through autosuggestion was merely an unconscious representation, or whether what was described by Sir Oliver Lodge, was “second sight.”
We can now recognise the attitude of a person who is not a conscious spiritual investigator, but whose independent soul is thrust out of the body by some abnormal conditions. This may be due to some illness of the physical body. Let us suppose that there is a lesion in an organ; this may be quite sufficient to cause the soul-spiritual being of a person not yet capable of independent spiritual vision to be driven out of the physical body not because he falls asleep, but owing to a pathological condition of the body, so that he now obtains an imperfect perception of things which a spiritual investigator perceives consciously and methodically.
We need not deny the truth of the abnormal observations which are interesting those people to-day who wish to go beyond the sphere of ordinary, trivial facts. But we can look upon such abnormal observations critically, and such a critical attitude is due to the fact that the spiritual science of Anthroposophy is not the caricature which many people suppose it to be, but by awakening special spiritual forces and by fully recognising the scientific conscientious method acquired by humanity in the course of the past centuries, it endeavours to rise up to the super-sensible worlds. And since the human being is connected with the super-sensible worlds with the innermost, immortal kernel of his being, spiritual investigation alone can recognise man's mortal and immortal essence. This will be explained more fully in tomorrow's lecture.
Through the fact that the human being dives down into his eternal part, that he does not only build up an anthropology transmitting a knowledge which can only be gained through the physical body, but through the fact that he builds up an Anthroposophy, transmitting a knowledge which man as independent being, obtains through his soul and spirit, through this fact the human being really learns to know the world in its true aspect.
The task of my next two lectures will be to describe the true being of man, his immortal, everlasting being, and the true aspect of the universe, from the stand-point indicated to-day.
Grundlagen der Anthroposophie
In drei Vorträgen denke ich Ihnen einen Überblick zu geben über das, was Anthroposophie zu sagen hat über den Menschen und über das Verhältnis des Menschen zur Welt. Dies sind ja ohne Zweifel die beiden bedeutendsten Fragegebiete für alle menschliche Anschauung: die Welt und der Mensch. Sie schließen im Grunde genommen sowohl jede kleinste wie jede größte wissenschaftliche und Lebensfrage ein. Es liegt nun in der Natur der Aufgabe, daß ich mich darauf zu beschränken haben werde, zu sagen, was über diese beiden Fragegebiete innerhalb der anthroposophischen Horizonte liegt, das also, was sich bezieht auf die großen Lebensfragen des menschlichen Daseins, welche über die sinnliche Erkenntnis und über das Feld der gewöhnlichen Wissenschaft hinausgehen.
Man kann nicht leugnen, daß in bezug auf den Menschen, in bezug auf Selbsterkenntnis des Menschen eine derjenigen Fragen gegeben ist, welche den Menschen selbst am tiefsten, am intensivsten berühren muß. Denn der Mensch muß, um Sicherheit im Leben zu haben, um einen festen Standpunkt im Leben zu haben, eine Anschauung seiner eigenen Wesenheit haben. Und der Mensch hat, das darf wohl gesagt werden, jederzeit auch nach Welterkenntnis gesucht, denn er weiß, daß das, was in den Geheimnissen der Weltentwickelung eingeschlossen ist, zusammenhängt mit seinem eigenen Wesen, daß er vor allen Dingen über das letztere, über das eigene Wesen nur etwas wissen kann, wenn er erkennt, was die Welt, der er einmal angehört, ihm zu geben vermag. Nun kann man auch nicht leugnen, daß in der Gegenwart ein reges Interesse vorhanden ist für alles, was in bezug auf Menschenerkenntnis und Welterkenntnis über die gewöhnliche Sinneswissenschaft hinausgeht, und wir sehen zahlreiche Versuche, über diese gewöhnliche Wissenschaft hinauszugehen, um zu erforschen, was jenseits von Geburt und Tod liegt, was jenseits desjenigen liegt, was man durch die gewöhnliche Sinnesbeobachtung und durch den auf diese Sinnesbeobachtung gestützten Verstand ergründen kann. Wir sehen ja in der neueren Zeit gerade wissenschaftlich forschende Menschen in der mannigfaltigsten Weise bemüht, über die gekennzeichneten Gebiete hinauszugehen, und ich möchte einleitungsweise wenigstens markante Anschauungen gegenwärtiger Forscher erwähnen, welche beweisen, daß ein reges Interesse für Fragen, wie die in meinen drei Vorträgen zu behandelnden, vorhanden ist, daß es aber auch außerordentlich schwierig ist, selbst den in der gewöhnlichen Wissenschaft ganz gut bewanderten Persönlichkeiten, in das Gebiet des Geistigen, des Seelischen einzudringen. Ich möchte nicht im Abstrakten herumreden, möchte gleich von konkreten Beispielen ausgehen.
Ein deutscher Forscher, der sich viel damit beschäftigt hat, zu sehen, wie die übersinnliche Natur der Seele als solche zu erforschen ist, wie die übersinnliche Natur der Seele auf die sinnliche Natur des Leibes wirkt, hat aus seiner ärztlichen und sonstigen Naturforschererfahrung heraus manches Beispiel von der Wirkung der Seele, des zweifellos Seelischen auf die menschliche Körperlichkeit gegeben, und ein eklatantes Beispiel, das dieser Arzt und Forscher Schleich, der mir auch persönlich sehr gut bekannt ist, in einem seiner Bücher erwähnt, ist das folgende. Er stellt dar, wie in furchtbarer Aufregung ein Patient zu ihm kam, der in seinem Büro während des Tages sich ein wenig die Haut mit der tintigen Feder geritzt hatte. Es war, wie der Arzt konstatieren konnte, eine außerordentlich leichte, unbedeutende Verwundung. Aber der Patient war von der Wahnidee befallen, daß er sich eine Blutvergiftung durch diesen Stich mit der tintigen Feder zugezogen habe, und daß er unbedingt sterben müsse, wenn ihm die Hand nicht abgenommen, amputiert würde, und er bat, so schnell als möglich die Hand, den Arm amputiert zu bekommen. Der Arzt konnte ihm nichts anderes sagen als, er solle nur ruhig sein, die Sache werde in ein paar Tagen vorüber sein und er habe gar nichts zu befürchten. Selbstverständlich konnte eben der Arzt unter voller Verantwortung nichts anderes als dieses sagen. Er konnte ihm doch nicht den Arm wegschneiden. Der Betreffende aber gab sich nicht damit zufrieden, ging zu einem anderen Arzt, der ihm dasselbe sagte, der ihm den Arm natürlich auch nicht abschnitt. Aber etwas ängstlich, weil mit den menschlichen Gemütszuständen sehr gut bekannt, war Schleich doch, und er erkundigte sich am nächsten Morgen nach dem Patienten, und siehe da: der Patient war gestorben! Die Autopsie ergab nichts von irgendeiner bemerkbaren inneren Blutvergiftung oder dergleichen. Es konnte gar keine Rede davon sein. Aber der Patient war gestorben. Schleich fügt zu diesem Fall, den er erzählt, hinzu: Tod durch radikale Autosuggestion. Der Betreffende habe sich eingebildet, er müsse sterben; das war eine außerordentlich radikale Autosuggestion, und der Betreffende ist wirklich unter dem Einfluß dieser Autosuggestion gestorben.
So sagt ein Forscher, der immerhin mit allen naturwissenschaftlichen Methoden, mit allen medizinischen Methoden sehr gut bekannt ist. Er berichtet diesen Fall, um daran zu erhärten, welche Macht etwas rein Seelisches, also ein Gedanke, der gefaßt wird, auf den Verlauf von Körperprozes sen haben könne: bis zum Herbeiführen des Todes. So meint Schleich. Schleich bringt eine ganze Menge anderer Fälle als Beispiele, die weniger markant und radikal sind, um zu beweisen, daß tatsächlich eine Möglichkeit vorhanden ist, hinzuschauen auf das in Gedanken, in Empfindungen, in Gefühlen, Willensimpulsen lebende Seelenwesen, das durch die eigene Kraft nun wirken kann auf das Körperliche. Also es soll sozusagen dargestellt werden die Wirkung des Übersinnlichen auf das Sinnliche.
Ein anderer Fall, der von einem viel bedeutenderen Naturforscher erzählt wird, von Oliver Lodge, ist der folgende: Oliver Lodge hat ja seinen Sohn Raymond im Weltkriege verloren. Der Betreffende ist an der belgisch-deutschen Grenze gefallen, und Sir Oliver Lodge — er hat ja schon seit langem hingeneigt dazu, eine Brücke zu bauen von SinnlichNaturwissenschaftlichem zu Übersinnlichem — wurde durch diesen Fall, durch den Verlust seines geliebten Sohnes, ja noch persönlich außerordentlich stark getroffen. Und durch allerlei Veranstaltungen, die an ihn herantraten, die hier nichts zur Sache tun, die ich daher auch nicht zu erzählen brauche, wurde er dazu geführt, die mediale Kraft einer Persönlichkeit dazu zu benützen, mit der abgeschiedenen Seele seines Sohnes Raymond Lodge in Verbindung zu treten.
Nun, wenn in gewöhnlichen Spiritistenkreisen ein solcher Fall auftaucht, braucht man ihn nicht besonders ernst zu nehmen, denn man weiß ja, wie unkritisch da verfahren wird, und wie laienhaft gegenüber den naturwissenschaftlichen Untersuchungsmethoden über solche Fälle, über solche Dinge in solchen Kreisen geurteilt und geforscht wird. Aber man muß die Sache ernster nehmen, wenn man es zu tun hat mit einem der größten Naturforscher der Gegenwart, mit jemandem, der durchaus auf dem Gebiet äußerer naturwissenschaftlicher Forschung gründlich bewandert ist, der die naturwissenschaftliche Methode kennt. Und aus diesem Grunde ist es auch, daß das Buch, welches Sir Oliver Lodge geschrieben hat über den Geistverkehr mit seinem Sohne Raymond Lodge, einen so großen Eindruck gemacht hat. Wenn man das Buch liest, so hat man ohne weiteres sogleich das Gefühl: Man hat es hier zu tun mit einer Persönlichkeit, welche nicht leichtsinnig, nicht ohne wissenschaftliche Verantwortung und Gewissenhaftigkeit an die Untersuchung solcher Dinge herangeht. Und auch in den anderen Dingen, die ich hier nicht erzählen will, sieht man überall, daß Oliver Lodge auf dieses Gebiet dieselbe Denkweise anwendet, dieselbe wissenschaftliche Methode, die er gewöhnt ist, im physikalischen Laboratorium anzuwenden. Das Reale, das er nun erzählt und das, wie man ja sagen kann, mit Recht einen großen Eindruck hervorgerufen hat bei all denen, die das Werk von Sir Oliver Lodge lasen, das ist das Folgende. Durch das betreffende Medium wurden Oliver Lodge und einige andere Persönlichkeiten, die bei den Versuchen dabei waren, darauf aufmerksam gemacht, wie sein Sohn, das heißt die Seele, der Geist seines Sohnes ihm berichten will von einer Szene, die sich kurz vor dem Tode an der belgisch-deutschen Grenze zugetragen hat, und es wurde durch das Medium erzählt, daß sich Raymond Lodge photographieren ließ, und dieser Akt des Photographierens wurde mit einer besonderen Ausführlichkeit auf medialem Wege erzählt. Es wurde ausdrücklich gesagt: Es wurden zwei Aufnahmen gemacht, und diese zwei Aufnahmen wurden beschrieben, und es wurde hingedeutet darauf, daß auf der zweiten Aufnahme die ganze Stellung des Sohnes von Oliver Lodge erwas anders ist als auf der ersten Aufnahme. In der Zeit, als diese mediaJlen Mitteilungen in London durch das Medium gemacht worden sind — und von Sir Oliver Lodge wird es so dargestellt, daß man wirklich sieht, er braucht, ich betone das immer wieder, alle wissenschaftlichen Vorsichtsmaßregeln —, in der Zeit, in der der Versuch angestellt wurde, wußte niemand in London etwas von den Photographien oder von dem Akt der photographischen Aufnahme. Es konnte also, so meinte Lodge, nachdem er alles geprüft hat, die Mitteilung, wenn sie wahr ist, nur von dem toten Sohne selber kommen. Und siehe da, nach etwa zwei oder drei Wochen kamen die Photographien wirklich nach London, die vorher niemand gekannt hat. Sie waren so, wie sie durch das Medium, beziehungsweise also nach dem Glauben von Sir Oliver Lodge durch die Seele seines Sohnes beschrieben waren. Darinnen konnte auch ein Naturforscher zunächst, man möchte sagen, ein experimentum crucis sehen. Es konnte eben niemand die Photographien in London gesehen haben. Und es stellte sich heraus, daß die Mitteilung bis auf den Grad hin genau war, daß tatsächlich zwei Aufnahmen gemacht waren, und die zweite Aufnahme hatte die andere Haltung. Der Photograph hatte die Aufnahme gemacht in der Gruppe, innerhalb welcher Raymond Lodge war, und sie bei der zweiten Aufnahme etwas anders gesetzt, und das war nun ganz genau wirklich beschrieben worden. Man hat nicht den geringsten Grund, bei einem gewissenhaften Naturforscher an dieser mitgeteilten Tatsache irgendwie zu zweifeln.
Nun, ich habe Ihnen zwei radikale Fälle dargestellt, die zeigen, wie aus der Sehnsucht, der Erkenntnissehnsucht von durchaus ernsten wissenschaftlichen Persönlichkeiten in unserer Gegenwart das Streben entsteht, vom Menschen mehr kennenzulernen, als die äußere sinnliche Forschung geben kann.
Wer vom anthroposophischen Gesichtspunkte sprechen will, und wer über die Grundlagen der anthroposophischen Forschung berichten will, der ist heute schon einmal genötigt, darauf aufmerksam zu machen, daß diese Methoden anthroposophischer Forschung doch noch andere sind als diejenigen, die selbst von so ernst zu nehmenden Persönlichkeiten heute geübt werden. Denn diese Grundlagen — ich hoffe, daß das durch die drei Vorträge, die ich hier zu halten habe, nach allen Seiten hin klar wird —, diese Grundlagen anthroposophischer Forschung sollen, selbst solchen kritischen Geistern gegenüber, noch kritischer, noch gewissenhafter in bezug auf wissenschaftliche Denkweise und Gesinnung sein. Und wer es nun wagt, selbst gegenüber solchen Persönlichkeiten Kritik zu üben, der ist vielleicht erst berufen, darüber zu urteilen, auf einer wie viel größeren Sicherheit, als selbst die gewissenhaftesten Naturforscher der Gegenwart, Anthroposophie, die man so leicht der Phantastik zeiht, bauen will. Und um gerade auf das Kritische, auf das im ernsten Sinne Wissenschaftliche der anthroposophischen Grundlagen hier hinzuweisen, will ich das nun vorbringen, was gegen die wissenschaftliche Ausdeutung, die in beiden Fällen hier von angesehenen Persönlichkeiten gegeben wird, doch kritisch sich einwenden läßt. Ich gehe heute von diesen Dingen aus, weil gerade mit Bezug auf mein heutiges Thema manches ja vorausgenommen ist durch meine beiden letzten Vorträge, so daß Wesentliches wohl für die meisten der hier versammelten verehrten Zuhörer in diesen beiden Vorträgen schon gesagt worden ist, und ich will daher das Gesagte von einem anderen Gesichtspunkte aus kurz beleuchten. Schleich gegenüber mit seinem Tod durch Autosuggestion muß folgendes eingewendet werden. Ich bitte zunächst das so aufzufassen, daß ich nur einen kritischen Einwand mache, wie die Sache auch sein könnte! Nehmen wir einmal an, die betreffende Persönlichkeit, die sich die tintige Feder in die Hand gestochen hat und glaubte, an Blutvergiftung zu leiden, hätte doch einen innerlichen Defekt gehabt, der einen schnellen Tod in der nächsten Nacht einfach durch natürliche Ursache herbeiführen mußte. Solche plötzlichen Tode gibt es ja. Aber auf der anderen Seite weiß jeder, der sich im Ernste bekanntmacht mit dem, was immerhin an einer Verstärkung, an einer Intensivierung der menschlichen Erkenntniskräfte geleistet werden kann in dem Sinne, wie ich das in den letzten Tagen versuchte auseinanderzusetzen, daß gewisse unbestimmte Gemütskräfte durch abnorme Zustände, man kann durchaus sagen, durch abnorme pathologische Zustände, zu einer besonderen Höhe getrieben werden können. Und die Fälle sind ja durchaus vorhanden und wiederum im kritischen Sinne so in der Literatur verzeichnet, daß sie jeder nachprüfen kann, wo immerhin der Wille des Menschen — wir werden gleich nachher sehen, wie das möglich ist — sich umgestaltet, metamorphosiert zu einer gewissen Erkenntniskraft. Und weil der Wille des Menschen in die Zukunft gerichtet ist, kann er, durch gewisse pathologische Voraussetzungen bedingt, das, was sich aus dem ganzen menschlichen Zusammenhang heraus für die Zukunft eines Menschen vorbereitet, unter Umständen vorausahnen. Ob man das nun Ahnungen nennt oder wie man es nennen will, das ist gleichgültig. Und es ist durchaus in das Gebiet des Tatsächlichen zu rechnen, daß Menschen in pathologischen Zuständen, die leichter Art sind, so daß sie nicht gerade als Krankheit zum Vorschein kommen, sagen wir, vorausahnen, wie sie in vierzehn Tagen — sie sehen es im Bilde — vom Pferde stürzen werden. Alle Vorsichtsmaßnahmen helfen nichts, weil sie ja die begleitenden Umstände doch nicht wahrnehmen. Sie haben einfach das vorausgeahnt, was in der Zukunft eintreten wird.
Kritisch ist nun einzuwenden von dem, der wirklich die geistigen Verhältnisse des Menschen in ihrer Intensivierung kennt, daß ja bei dem betreffenden Patienten des Schleich einfach das vorgelegen haben kann, was seinen Tod in der nächsten Nacht bewirkte, und er vorher eine innere Ahnung hatte von diesem eintretenden Tode. Solche innere Ahnung braucht nicht zum Bewußtsein zu kommen, kann durchaus im Unterbewußten bleiben. Aber ihre Wirkung auf das Bewußtsein kann sie äußern durch das, was man nennt: Man wird nervös, man wird zappelig, man tut allerlei Dinge, die unüberlegt sind. Und es könnte durchaus das Stoßen der tintigen Feder in die Hand unter dem Einfluß der Nervosität, die von dieser Ahnung kam, gekommen sein, so daß der Betreffende einfach innerlich unbewußt wußte — wenn ich mich des Paradoxons bedienen darf —, er werde sterben. Aber er kleidete das nicht in die Behauptung, daß er seinen Tod ahne, sondern er wurde nervös, stieß sich die Feder in die Hand und kleidete das in die Behauptung, er werde an Blutvergiftung sterben. Es handelte sich dann nicht um einen Tod durch Autosuggestion, sondern darum, daß der Betreffende eine innere Ahnung hatte von seinem kommenden Tode, und alles, was er unternahm, aus seiner Ahnung heraus unternahm. Wenn die Sache so ist, dann verwechselt Schleich einfach Ursache und Wirkung, dann liegt eben nicht eine Autosuggestion in der Weise vor, wie Schleich es annimmt, daß der bewußte Gedanke irgendwo suggestiv den Tod bewirkt habe, sondern dann liegt das vor, daß der Tod unter allen Umständen eingetreten wäre, daß aber die Todesahnung den Betreffenden zu seinen Forderungen gebracht hat. Sie sehen, man kann sich schon kritisch auch zu solchen Dingen verhalten, wenn man bekannt ist mit dem, was eben durchaus auch möglich ist: das Heraufdämmern von gewissen unterbewußten Zuständen, die in der Seele immer vorhanden sind, in das Bewußtsein, aber in maskierten Zuständen. Vieles von dem, was sich im Bewußtsein äußert, ist eigentlich in anderer Form in den unbewußten Tiefen der Menschenseele vorhanden und wird nur vom Bewußtsein anders ausgelegt. Nehmen wir den andern Fall von Sir Oliver Lodge. Sie werden wahrscheinlich alle das kennen, was man «second sight», das zweite Gesicht, nennt. Da kann durchaus durch eine Intensivierung der menschlichen Erkenntniskräfte der Mensch etwas schauen, was er eben durch seine gewöhnlichen gesunden Sinne nicht schauen kann. Da kann in einer gewissen Weise der Mensch schauen, wie es nicht den sonstigen Bedingungen des Raumes, in den er eingespannt ist, entspricht, und da kann der Mensch in einer gewissen Weise Raum und Zeit mit seinem Wahrnehmungsvermögen überwinden. Nun, hieraus ergibt sich der kritische Einwand, selbst gegen die Gewissenhaftigkeit von Sir Oliver Lodge. Denn immerhin braucht Sir Oliver Lodge dieses Experimentum crucis, um zu beweisen, daß kein anderer, als die Seele seines Sohnes aus dem Jenseits mit ihm gesprochen haben könne. Aber derjenige, der weiß, wie fein und intim gerade dieses «second sight» wirkt, wie sich durch die Intimitäten dieser Art von Wahrnehmung Raum und Zeit unter gewissen abnormen Umständen — wie sie ja bei einer medialen Persönlichkeit immer vorhanden sind, wenn auch meistens nicht zum Heile dieser medialen Persönlichkeit — überwinden lassen, der weiß auch, daß das bis zu dem Grade gehen kann, den man in der folgenden Art charakterisieren kann.
Die beiden Bilder sind jedenfalls vierzehn Tage oder drei Wochen später in London angekommen. Diejenigen Personen, die bei der Mediumssitzung waren, hatten ihre Augen auf diese Bilder gerichtet. Es war eine Zukunftstatsache, daß Sir Oliver Lodge selber und seine Verwandten diese Bilder ansahen. Und diese Zukunftstatsache, die brauchte einfach durch eine Art zweiten Gesichts das Medium zu interpretieren. Wenn dies der Fall war, kann man nicht mehr sprechen von einem Hereinleuchten des Übersinnlichen der Seele des Raymond Lodge in die Experimentierstube von Sir Oliver Lodge; dann hat man es in diesem Falle zu tun mit etwas, das durchaus im Bereich des Irdischen sich abspielt, einfach mit einem Zukunftsehen, das ja auch über das gewöhnliche Wahrnehmungsvermögen hinausgeht, das aber nicht berechtigt, anzunehmen, daß die jenseitige Seele sich herein in das Sitzungszimmer geäußert habe.
Ich erwähne diese beiden Fälle und die kritischen Einwände, um ein Gefühl davon hervorzurufen, wie vorsichtig und wie durchaus kritisch die Denkweise der anthroposophischen Geistesforschung ist. Denn diese anthroposophische Geistesforschung geht zunächst überhaupt gar nicht aus — das haben ja schon meine beiden letzten Vorträge gezeigt — von abnormen Erscheinungen, sondern sie geht aus von dem durchaus normalen Menschenleben, von dem, was als Erkenntniskräfte, als Willenskräfte, als Gefühlskräfte im normalen menschlichen Leben da ist. Und diese Kräfte will anthroposophische Forschung zum Behufe der Erkenntnis übersinnlicher Welten weiter entwickeln, um gewissermaßen ein innerliches Recht zu haben, um die richtige Gewissenhaftigkeit zu haben, Übungen vorzunehmen, welche das Denken verstärken. Meditationsübungen, wie ich sie in den letzten Tagen beschrieben habe, verstärken das Denken bis zu einem hohen Grade, so daß der Mensch zu einem Denken kommt, das ebenso lebendig, intensiv ist, wie das sinnliche Wahrnehmen. Oder es sind Willensübungen, wie ich sie auch schon erwähnt habe, wie ich sie auch weiterhin noch charakterisieren will in diesen Vorträgen. Um diese Übungen vorzunehmen, dazu ist vor allen Dingen notwendig, daß der Mensch eine intensive Aufmerksamkeit habe auf das normale Leben, daß er sich gut auskenne in den Verhältnissen, in denen der Mensch im normalen Leben selber drinnen steht.
In Deutschland hat jüngst ein wissenschaftlich geschulter Mann einen kurzen Abriß der von mir gegründeten anthroposophischen Wissenschaft gegeben. Der betreffende Mann ist durchaus nicht ein Blindgläubiger. Er stellt das, was ja in einer reichen Literatur von mir gegeben worden ist, in einem kurzen Abriß zusammen. Er stellt es zusammen, indem er zunächst sich weder für ja noch für nein entscheidet, und er macht eine Bemerkung, die sich so ausnimmt, wie die Bemerkungen eines starken Gegners, obwohl der Mann weder Gegner noch Anhänger ist. Aber ich muß gestehen, daß mir diese scharfe Bemerkung außerordentlich gut gefällt, gut gefällt aus der ganzen Situation heraus, in der anthroposophische Geistesforschung gegenüber der anderen geistigen Zivilisation in unserer Gegenwart ist. Der Mann macht die Bemerkung: Manche meiner Behauptungen wären, wenn man sie mit dem gewöhnlichen Bewußtsein verfolgt, unwiderstehlich komisch. — Ich muß gestehen, daß mir diese Bemerkung außerordentlich gut gefällt aus folgendem einfachem Grunde. Wenn man solche Dinge erzählt, wie die von Oliver Lodge oder den anderen Fall, den ich erzählt habe, da horchen die Menschen auf, weil es in einem gewissen Sinne an die Sensationsgefühle heranschlägt, weil es herausrückt aus dem, was man gewöhnt ist, und da findet man keine unwiderstehliche Komik. Wenn aber der Anthroposoph genötigt ist, gerade an das ganz normale Menschliche anzuknüpfen, an die gewöhnliche menschliche Erinnerung, an die gewöhnlichen menschlichen Willensiußerungen, und davon redet, daß man durch gewisse Übungen das menschliche Gedankenleben verstärken kann durch Meditation, daß man durch Selbsterziehung den Willen in einer gewissen Weise entwickeln kann, so daß der Mensch ein anderer wird als er vorher war und als anderer dann in die übersinnlichen Welten eindringen könne, dann kann, weil man sozusagen mit gewöhnlichen Worten redet, welche die Menschen eben im Leben auf das anwenden, was immer um sie ist, die sie sich daher nicht nehmen lassen wollen für etwas anderes, dann kann man unwiderstehlich komisch wirken. Daher wirkt auf diejenigen Menschen, welche die Worte nur auf das anwenden wollen, worauf sie eben im gewöhnlichen Leben angewendet werden, manches so unwiderstehlich komisch. Der anthroposophische Geistesforscher findet nur, daß sehr häufig solche Urteile über anthroposophische Geisteswissenschaft sich vor ihm so ausnehmen, wie wenn jemand einen Brief bekommt, den er lesen sollte, ihn aber nicht liest, sondern die Tinte chemisch analysiert. Ich muß gestehen, daß mir sehr vieles, was über Anthroposophie gesagt wird, so vorkommt, wie wenn jemand einen Brief nicht liest, sondern die Tinte chemisch analysiert.
Das ist das Wesentliche bei den Grundlagen der Anthroposophie, daß man ausgeht von den durchaus normalen menschlichen Erlebnissen, daß man das gut kennt, was heutige wissenschaftliche Erkenntnis ist, was heutiges moralisches, ethisches Leben ist, und daß man gerade diese Dinge zu einer höheren Intensität entwickelt, so daß man dann in die höheren Welten eindringt durch die Steigerung derjenigen Erkenntniskräfte, die eigentlich in ihrem minderen Grade auch im gewöhnlichen Leben und in der Wissenschaft vorhanden sind. Allerdings muß man dazu eben einen Sinn haben für diese gewöhnlichen Erlebnisse des Menschen. Man muß dasjenige, was ja durchaus gewöhnliches, normales Erlebnis ist, aber herausfällt aus dem, was man gern aufmerksam beobachtet, ins Auge fassen. Es müssen sozusagen Dinge Rätselfragen werden können, deren Rätselhaftigkeit man im gewöhnlichen Leben leicht übersieht, obwohl sie dastehen im gewöhnlichen Leben. Und hier schon beginnt für manchen. die unwiderstehliche Komik, wenn man sagt: Vor allen Dingen müssen gerade Rätselfragen werden die Fragen, die sich auf den Wechselzustand des Menschen zwischen Wachen und Schlafen beziehen. Wir wechseln für unser Leben fortwährend zwischen Wachen und Schlafen, beachten aber wenig diesen Pendelschlag des Lebens, der sich abspielt zwischen dem Zustande des Wachens und dem Zustande des Schlafens. Man hat ja die sonderbarsten Theorien aufgebaut. Ich könnte lange sprechen, wenn ich die einzelnen Theorien erwähnen würde, die man aufgebaut hat über den Wechselzustand von Wachen und Schlafen. Aber ich will nur die eine, die bekannteste, gebräuchlichste erwähnen, die einfach annimmt: Während des Wachens wird der Mensch ermüdet, und wenn er genügend ermüdet ist, dann schläft er eben ein, und der Schlaf bringt dann wiederum die Ausgleichung für die Ermüdung. Er schafft — man kann das nun so oder so darstellen, mehr oder weniger materialistisch — die Ursache der Ermüdung fort. Ich möchte einmal wissen, ob derjenige, der radikal diese Theorie vertritt, schon einmal genügend beobachtet hat, wenn so jemand, der nun durchaus keine Veranlassung gehabt hat, am Tage besonders zu ermüden, sagen wir, ein dicker Rentier, wenn der, ich will nicht einmal sagen, abends spät, sondern vielleicht des Nachmittags zu einem schwierigeren Konzert oder gar zu einem Vortrage geht und vielleicht nicht erst nach den ersten fünf Minuten, sondern nach zwei Minuten einschläft, ob man bei dem durchaus sagen kann, daß die Ermüdung die Ursache des Einschlafens ist.
Es sind das durchaus Dinge, die ja zunächst wirklich eine Art von komischem Anstrich haben, die aber in ihrer vollen, ernsten Rätselhaftigkeit, gerade wenn man sie allseitig beurteilt, vor des Menschen Seele treten müssen. Und wer einfach glaubt, durch die gewöhnlichen, heute anerkannten naturwissenschaftlichen Methoden den Wechsel zwischen Wachen und Schlafen studieren zu können, der wird eben niemals zu irgendeiner befriedigenden Problemlösung auf diesem Gebiete kommen können. Denn schon solche durchaus normalen Fragen des Lebens setzen voraus, daß man nicht mit den gewöhnlichen Erkenntniskräften, sondern mit den durch Meditation, Konzentration, durch andere Seelenübungen, wie ich sie beschrieben habe in meinem Buche «Wie erlangt man Erkenntnisse der höheren Welten?» und in meiner «Geheimwissenschaft», mit verstärktem, mit intensiviertem Denken und auch mit einem umgestalteten Willen an die Erscheinungen herantritt.
Was gewinnt man, wenn man zunächst versucht, durch eine ernst gemeinte Meditation sein Denken zu verstärken? Ich habe es in diesen Tagen erörtert, wie diese Meditation, wenn sie in gesundem Sinne wirken soll, darauf ausgeht, das Denken so zu verstärken, daß dieses Denken eine umgewandelte Erinnerung wird. Im gewöhnlichen Erinnern haben wir ja innerliche Bilder, welche uns irgend etwas abbilden, was wir im gewöhnlichen Erdenleben seit der Geburt durchgemacht haben. Von einem realen Ereignis stellt sich uns in der Erinnerung ein Bild vor die Seele, und der Zusammenhang des gesunden Seelenlebens und der Zusammenhang mit der äußeren Welt, in dem wir drinnenstehen, bürgt uns einfach dafür, daß wir in den Erinnerungen Dinge nicht irgendwie phantastisch aufwerfen, sondern daß das Erinnerungsbild hinweist auf etwas, was wirklich einmal real da war. So muß man dahin gelangen, Bilder, wie die Erinnerungsbilder sonst sind, im imaginativen Erkennen, wie ich es genannt habe in diesen Tagen, vor die Seele stellen zu können, Bilder, die einfach dadurch entstehen, daß man immer mehr und mehr meditative Vorstellungen in sein Bewußtsein hereinrückt und, so wie man sonst einen Muskel an der Arbeit erkraftet, die Seelenfähigkeit des Denkens erkraftet, stärker macht. Man muß dazu gelangen, das Denken so stark zu machen, daß es in seinem Inhalte lebt, wie man sonst nur in der Sinneserfahrung, in den Sinnen lebt. Dann aber, wenn man eine genügend lange Zeit solche Übungen durchgemacht hat, wenn man wirklich zu einer solchen inneren Lebendigkeit des Denkens gekommen ist, dann tritt das ein, was man eben bildhaftes, gestaltendes, morphologisches Denken nennen kann. Dann hat man im Denken ein so Lebendiges, einen so lebendigen Inhalt, wie man ihn sonst nur in der sinnlichen Wahrnehmung hat. Dann aber lernt man noch etwas anderes erkennen. Das, was uns die moderne Wissenschaft heraufgebracht hat, wird ja eigentlich von vielen bedauert: Es ist der Materialismus. Nun aber muß auf einem gewissen Gebiete gerade Anthroposophie, welche mit ihren Methoden in die übersinnlichen Welten eindringen will, unter der Anregung der modernen Wissenschaft im rechten Sinne auf gewissen Gebieten durchaus materialistisch werden. Und das ist der Fall, wenn man nun gelernt hat, sein Denken in gesunder Weise zu verstärken, wenn man gelernt hat, im imaginativen Denken Bilder von sinnlicher Lebendigkeit vor Augen zu haben, durch die man wirklich frei wird in der Behandlung des Wahrnehmungsmaterials, wie man sonst nur frei ist in der Sinneswahrnehmung, wo man ganz gewiß weiß: Wenn ich Rot sehe, wenn ich Cis höre, so habe ich es mit etwas Äußerlichem zu tun, nicht mit etwas, was aus meiner Seele aufsteigt. So weiß ich, wenn ich das imaginative Denken habe, daß ich nicht etwas habe, was als Phantasma aus meiner Seele aufsteigt, sondern was in mir lebt wie eine Sinneswahrnehmung.
Dann aber, wenn man dieses innerlich erlebt, dieses Freigewordensein von der Leiblichkeit, wie man eben nur frei ist in der Sinneswahrnehmung, dann weiß man auch, was die Erinnerung des gewöhnlichen Lebens ist, dann weiß man, daß man mit der Erinnerung, mit den Gedächtnisvorstellungen jederzeit hinuntertaucht in den physischen Leib, daß man jederzeit, indem man eine Erinnerungsvorstellung hat, einen parallelgehenden physischen oder wenigstens ätherischen Leibesvorgang hat. Man lernt die materielle Bedeutung desjenigen Lebens kennen, das das gewöhnliche Gedankenleben ist. Man schreibt nicht mehr, wie es etwa der französische Philosoph Bergson tut, das, was in den Erinnerungen lebt, der selbständigen Seele zu, sondern man weiß, daß im gewöhnlichen Erinnerungsleben die Seele einfach in den Leib untertaucht und im Leibe das Instrument hat, die Erinnerungen heraufzuzaubern. Denn man weiß jetzt, daß man erst in der Imagination dazu gekommen ist, körperfrei zu denken, mit der bloßen Seele zu denken, und daß man das niemals im gewöhnlichen Leben tut. Im gewöhnlichen Leben nimmt man sinnlich wahr, zieht die Gedanken ab von der sinnlichen Wahrnehmung, behält die Gedanken im Gedächtnis. Dieses Im-Gedächtnis-Behalten aber bedeutet, in den Leib untergetaucht sein. Man lernt jetzt erst durch imaginatives Erkennen den Prozeß des Erinnerns und den Prozeß der Sinneswahrnehmungen kennen. Man lernt erkennen, was es heißt, frei, leib-, körperfrei in Gedanken zu leben. Man lernt aber auch erkennen, was es heißt, mit den Gedanken durch die Erinnerungen unterzutauchen in den physischen Organismus. Und ebenso, wie man dieses kennenlernen kann durch ein Intensivermachen des Denkens, durch ein Verstärken, Erkraften des Denkens in der Meditation, so kann man nach der anderen Seite, nach der Willensseite, eine Art von Selbsterziehung üben, durch die man zu einem ähnlichen Resultate kommt. Im gewöhnlichen Leben hat ja der Wille eigentlich nur einen bestimmten Wert, wenn er in die äußere Handlung überfließt, sonst bleibt er ein bloßer Wunsch, selbst wenn wir in unseren höchsten Idealen leben, in den schönsten Idealen, wenn wir ganz Idealisten sind. Sind wir nicht in der Lage, Hand anzulegen an die äußere physische Wirklichkeit, können wir die schönsten Ideale haben, es bleibt beim bloßen Wunsch. Was hat denn also der Wunsch eigentlich für eine besondere Eigenschaft? Der Wunsch hat die besondere Eigenschaft, daß er sich von der Wirklichkeit zurückzieht. Und man kann bildhaft sagen: Es ist wie ein Einziehen der seelischen Fühler, wenn man im bloßen Wunsche lebt. Man lebt ganz innerlich im Seelischen, wenn man im bloßen Wunsche lebt. Aber man weiß auch, wie der Wunsch gefärbt ist zunächst von den menschlichen Temperamenten. Anderes wünschen melancholische Menschen, anderes wünschen sanguinische Menschen. Und derjenige, der nun mit gewissenhafter naturwissenschaftlicher Methode zu Werke gehen würde, würde schon auch die physischen Bedingungen des Wünschens sehen. Man kann also die ätherischen Bedingungen des Wünschens in den Temperamenten sehen, aber auch die physischen Bedingungen des Wünschens, die besondere Art der Blutzusammensetzung, der sonstigen Körperbeschaffenheit und dergleichen erkennen. Allerdings ist es da notwendig, daß man jene Kritikhaftigkeit, von der ich in der Einleitung zu meinem heutigen Vortrage schon gesprochen habe, wirklich üben kann, und ich möchte sagen, durch diese Kritikhaftigkeit wird mancher schöne Traum zerstreut. Gestatten Sie mir auch den Hinweis, wie da mancher schöne Traum zerstreut wird.
Ich will gewiß nicht pietätlos sein und aus Pietätlosigkeit vor Ihnen sehr ideale Dinge zerstören, denn ich habe ein Gefühl für das Schöne, für das Herrliche, das zum Beispiel enthalten ist in der Mystik einer Heiligen Theresa oder eines Johannes vom Kreuz. Glauben Sie nicht, daß ich irgend jemandem nachstehe in der Verehrung des Schönen, das in diesen mystischen Äußerungen liegt. Aber der, welcher sich nun Erfahrung gesammelt hat für die besondere Art, wie zum Beispiel die Heilige Theresa oder Johannes vom Kreuz ihre Gesichte, ihre Visionen vorbringen, der weiß, welchen Anteil an diesen Dingen das menschliche Wünschen hat, welchen Anteil gerade bei diesen mystischen Dingen die in dem Untergrund der Seele lebenden Wünsche haben, und er wird dann weitergeführt von den Wünschen auf die körperliche Beschaffenheit. Für den Forscher gibt es nichts, was in dieser Weise entheiligt werden könnte dadurch, daß man auf die Wahrheit hinweist. Allein, es ist eine gewisse innere Aufgeregtheit gewisser Organe, eine andere Nervenwirkung in gewissen Organen, welche heraufwirkt in die Seele und selbst so Schönes bewirkt, wie dasjenige, was vorgebracht wird von Johannes vom Kreuz oder der Heiligen Theresa oder anderen solchen Mystikern. Und man hat viel mehr Recht, wenn man in einer gewissen Körperbeschaffenheit auch die Beschaffenheit der Bilder sucht, die hier so schön, so wunderbar poetisch zutage treten, als wenn man diese Beschaffenheit der Bilder in dem Schauen irgendeines nebulosen Geheimnisses sucht. Wie gesagt, nicht zerpflücken möchte ich das, was ich nicht weniger verehre als irgend jemand hier, aber auf die Wahrheit muß hingewiesen werden, auf den kritischen Geist der anthroposophischen Grundlagen, darauf, daß sich der Anthroposoph vor allen Dingen keinen Illusionen hingeben darf. Und illusionsfrei muß er zunächst sein auch gegenüber dem menschlichen Wünschen und seinem Wurzeln in dem menschlichen Organismus, in dem physischen Organismus, und in dem, ich möchte sagen, Aufleuchten dessen, was im menschlichen Organismus — wenn ich mich des Ausdruckes bedienen darf — kocht und zu den schönsten Visionen wird.
Der Mensch muß nicht nur, wenn er Geistesforscher im anthroposophischen Sinn werden will, sein Denkvermögen verstärken durch Meditation, er muß auch durch Selbsterziehung sein Wunschleben zu einem anderen machen. Das geschieht auf die Weise, daß man das, was sonst im Leben wie von selbst geschieht, systematisch in die Hand nimmt. Seien wir ehrlich: Im gewöhnlichen Leben lassen wir uns von allem viel mehr leiten, als daß wir unser eigenes Leben leiten. Im gewöhnlichen Leben wirken diese oder jene Dinge auf uns ein, und wenn wir zehn Jahre zurückblicken in unser vergangenes Erdenleben, so finden wir durchaus, daß die äußeren Verhältnisse, die Menschen, mit denen wir zusammengekommen sind, dasjenige in uns zur Entwickelung gebracht haben, was heute in uns anders ist, als es vor zehn Jahren war. Wer im ernsten Sinne anthroposophischer Geistesforscher werden will, der muß in dieser Beziehung auch solche Übungen machen, die Willensübungen sind. Der gewöhnliche Lebenswille hat einen Sinn, wenn er auf äußere Handlungen geht. Der anthroposophische Geistesforscher muß die Willensimpulse anwenden auf die eigene Entwickelung, auf das eigene Leben. Er muß sich vornehmen können: in bezug auf diese oder jene Charaktereigenschaft, in bezug auf diese oder jene Lebensäußerung mußt du anders werden als du jetzt bist.
So paradox es klingen mag, etwas, was man stark in Gewohnheit hat, und wenn es selbst nur eine Kleinigkeit ist, es hilft einem, wenn aus der eigensten Initiative, aus ureigenstem Impuls heraus man sich vornimmt, mit Bezug auf irgendeine Sache anders zu werden. Eine Kleinigkeit, sage ich, es braucht nur die Kleinigkeit der Handschrift zu sein. Wenn sich jemand wirklich mit eiserner Energie vornimmt, eine andere Handschrift zu schreiben, als er bisher geschrieben hat, so ist die Anwendung dieser Kraft durch die Abänderung einer Gewohnheit — hier wiederum mit Bezug auf die Gewohnheit — zu vergleichen mit der Verstärkung einer Muskelkraft, weil der Wille verstärkt ist. Und indem der Wille innerlich sich verstärkt, nicht auf Äußerliches, sondern innerlich angewandt wird, entwickelt er dabei seine Wirkungen im Menschen. Und was ich sonst durch meine Willenswirkungen an der äußeren Welt verändere, das verändere ich nun in bezug auf meinen eigenen Menschen. Und wenn man solche Willensübungen, wie sie wiederum in anthroposophischen Schriften im einzelnen angegeben sind, durchmacht, dann kommt man dazu, das Wunschleben so umzugestalten, daß es nun frei wird von der menschlichen Organisation, wie durch das Meditieren das Denken vom Körper, vom Leibe frei wird. Dann ist das vorüber - für diejenigen Augenblicke, in denen man in anthroposophischer Forschung verweilt —, wovon man noch sagen kann: Der Wunsch ist der Vater des Gedankens. — Wenn solche Selbsterziehung, solches Auf-sich-selber-Anwenden der Erziehungsimpulse geübt wird im reifsten Alter, dann wird der Wunsch zu einer innerlichen Kraft, welche sich verbindet mit dem frei gewordenen Denken. Und dadurch gelangt man dazu, nun wirklich zu sehen, was die Willensimpulse des gewöhnlichen Lebens sind, was die Gedanken des gewöhnlichen Lebens sind. Wie man früher Rot und Blau oder Cis oder C wahrzunehmen gelernt hat, so lernt man jetzt Gedanken wahrzunehmen als Wirklichkeiten, so lernt man jetzt dieWillensimpulse von sich abgesondert kennen.
Man gelangt auf diese Weise dazu, erst die Wechselzustände zwischen Wachen und Schlafen in der richtigen Weise zu beurteilen. Erst dadurch, daß man den Gedanken durch Übung so gemacht hat, daß er objektiv geworden ist wie eine Sinneswahrnehmung, daß man mit diesem in freier Meditation entwickelten Gedanken nicht mehr mit seinem Leibe verbunden ist wie mit einem erinnerten Gedanken, gelangt man dazu, den Akt des Einschlafens in der richtigen Weise durch Anschauung erfassen zu können. Derjenige, der so etwas wie das gewöhnliche, normale Einschlafen mit den gewöhnlichen Erkenntniskräften durchschauen will, der wird Hypothesen über Hypothesen aufstellen können: Er lernt nicht erkennen, was das Einschlafen selber ist. Und dieses verstärkte Denken, das man sich angeeignet hat, und andererseits der umgestaltete Wunsch, die sind es, welche dem Menschen zeigen: Wenn du einschläfst, so kannst du in einem gewissen Sinne den Moment deines Einschlafens noch verfolgen, du schaust gewissermaßen auf dein Einschlafen hin, und du erfährst jetzt, daß du, indem du einschläfst, nicht einfach vor dir hast einen veränderten Zustand deines Leibes, sondern daß du wirklich mit deinem selbständigen Seelenleben aus deinem Leibe hinausschlüpfst, hinausgehst, denn du Jäßt etwas zurück, und das sind deine Gedanken.
Erst dadurch, daß man die Gedanken verstärkt hat, kann man sie bewußt zurücklassen beim Einschlafen. Sie bleiben beim Leibe, die Gedanken, sie durchsetzen den Leib als Bildekräfte. Und man merkt, man ist nur herausgetreten aus seinem Leibe mit dem Fühlen und dem Wollen. Aber man hat damit auch, indem man sieht, mit welchem Seelischen man heraustritt aus dem Leib, eine anschauliche Sicherheit davon bekommen, daß man ein selbständiges Seelisches hat, daß man mit dem selbständigen Seelischen aus dem Leib herausrückt. Und man weiß jetzt: Was man im Bette beim Einschlafen zurückgelassen hat, ist nicht bloß das, was man durch die physische Anatomie und Physiologie und Biologie erforschen kann, sondern das ist durchsetzt von dem Gedankengewebe. Man mußte das Gedankengewebe erst stark genug machen, damit man es nun so verlassen kann, bewußt, wie man sich abwendet mit dem Gesicht von den Farben, wie man die Anschauung verläßt. Und man weiß durch das verstärkte Denken: Du hast in deinem Bette zurückgelassen, damit diese für sich bestehen zwischen dem Einschlafen und Aufwachen, deinen physischen Leib und einen Kraftleib, der die kraftartig wirkenden Gedanken enthält. — Diese gestaltenden Gedanken, diese morphologischen Gedanken, von denen ich in den vorigen Vorträgen gesprochen habe, die sind in unserem gewöhnlichen Bewußtsein nur wie Spiegelbilder. Sie haben auch eine Wirklichkeit, und mit dieser Wirklichkeit sitzen sie als ein besonderer ätherischer Leib in dem physischen Leib darinnen. Man weiß jetzt: Mit deinem Willen, mit deinem Fühlen bist du einschlafend aus deinem Sinnenleibe und aus deinem Gedankenleibe — ich kann auch sagen physischen Leib und Ätherleib, oder physischen Leib und Bildekräfteleib — herausgetreten. Nur sind wir im gewöhnlichen Leben so geartet, daß unser Bewußtsein nicht stark genug ist, sich bewußt besonnen zu erhalten, wenn es nicht gedankenerfüllt ist. Das Bewußtsein, wie wir es im gewöhnlichen Leben und in der gewöhnlichen Wissenschaft haben, muß sich mit dem Leibe vereinigen und die Gedanken des Leibes in sich erleben, dann ist es eben voll bewußt. Wenn es als bloßes Fühlen und Wollen nun heraustritt aus dem Leibe, dann wird es im Gewöhnlichen eben unbewußt. Aber wer das in diesen Tagen hier erwähnte imaginative Denken sich angeeignet hat, der erlebt eben den Augenblick des Einschlafens bewußt, und er kann auch solche Zustände herbeiführen, die sonst so sind, wie der gewöhnliche Schlaf, nur daß sie jetzt nicht unbewußt sind, sondern daß der Mensch in sich ein Kraftendes fühlt, daß er das, womit er aus dem Leibe herausgetreten ist, den Gefühls- und Willensorganismus der Seele, wirklich erlebt, daß er also dasjenige, was leibfrei werden kann, wirklich erlebt.
Wer auf diese Weise kennengelernt hat den Moment des Einschlafens, der lernt auch den Moment des Aufwachens kennen. Er lernt jetzt beurteilen, daß der Moment des Aufwachens eigentlich aus zwei Teilen besteht: Wir wachen auf, wie wir sonst uns verhalten, wenn wir durch einen Sinneseindruck gereizt werden. Es muß bei jedem Aufwachen irgendwie etwas unsere Seele reizen. Es braucht nur der eigene Leib zu sein, der lange genug geschlafen hat, und der in seinem veränderten Zustand diesen Reiz ausübt. Aber es ist immer, geradeso wie beim sinnlichen Eindruck ein Reiz da ist, ein Reiz da beim Aufwachen, und dieser Reiz spricht zu unserem Gefühl, das beim Einschlafen herausgetreten ist. Wie sonst die Augen, die Ohren Ton oder Farbe wahrnehmen, so nimmt jetzt die selbständige Seele mit ihrem Fühlen etwas Äußerliches wahr, und es ist der Moment des Aufwachens ein Wahrnehmen durch das Gefühl, und es ist der Moment des Aufwachens ein Ergreifen des Körpers. Wie wenn wir sonst einen Arm bewegen oder ein Bein bewegen, so ergreifen wir mit dem selbständigen Willen den Organismus. Es sind wirklich zwei Akte, die da sind beim Aufwachen.
Jetzt haben wir für das Einschlafen und Aufwachen die Wechselbeziehung kennengelernt zwischen der selbständigen Seele, die in ihrem Fühlen und Wollen sich aus dem Leibe jede Nacht herausbegibt, und den Zuständen, in denen diese Seele ist vom Aufwachen bis zum Einschlafen, wo sie eben mit dem Leibe verbunden ist. Die Grundlagen anthroposophischer Forschung sind also eine Erkraftung der Erkenntnis- und Willensfähigkeit, so daß man Dinge anschauen kann, wirklich wahrnehmen kann, die man sonst nicht wahrnehmen kann. Und ist man imstande, in dieser Weise die Wechselzustände zwischen Schlafen und Wachen wahrzunehmen, so kann man auch noch zu etwas anderem vorrücken.
Wenn man immer mehr und mehr solche Übungen, wie ich sie in diesen Tagen geschildert habe, wie sie in den angedeuteten Büchern ausführlich mit Einzelheiten beschrieben sind, weiter macht, dann kommt man dadurch dazu, eben nicht immer schlafen zu müssen, wenn man aus seinem Leibe heraus ist, sondern willkürlich Gefühl und Wille aus seinem Leibe wirklich herausziehen zu können und wirklich zurückzuschauen auf den Leib. Dann ist der Leib des Menschen etwas, was objektiv ist, wie sonst das Pult oder der Tisch. Und erst dadurch lernt man wirklich eine Sache kennen, daß man nicht mehr mit ihr verknüpft ist, nicht mit ihr subjektiv durchdrungen ist, sondern dadurch, daß man sie als Objekt vor sich hat. Was man als Objekt vor sich hat, wenn man mit Wille und Gefühl herausrückt aus dem menschlichen Leib, das ist vor allen Dingen der physische Leib. Wir werden morgen sehen, wie er in etwas veränderter Form auftritt, wie man durch diese Anschauung außerhalb des Leibes eben auch eine neue Anschauung vom physischen Wesen des Menschen bekommt. Aber es ist vor allen Dingen der Bildekräfteleib, der aus einem Gedankengewebe, aber aus kraftenden Gedanken besteht. Auf den sieht man zurück wie auf einen Spiegel. Und man hat die eigentümliche Tatsache, daß man früher als Subjekt, als Persönlichkeit, mit seinen Gedanken verbunden war; jetzt hat man die Gedankenwelt, ich möchte sagen, wie auf einer photographischen Platte vor sich, indem man auf den eigenen Leib zurückschaut. Es ist, wie man sonst eben im Auge drinnen ein kleines Abbild der überschauten Welt hat. Wie das Auge dadurch ein Organ für das Sehen ist, daß sich die Welt drinnen abbilden kann, so wird für eine solche Anschauung der zurückgebliebene Äther- und physische Leib ein Spiegelungsapparat, wo sich nun eben geistig-seelisch etwas spiegelt, während sich im Auge nur äußerlich physisch etwas spiegelt. Aber man sieht durch diesen Spiegel eben nicht nur das Gedankengewebe, sondern man sieht die Welt, indem man die Gedanken zurückgelassen hat am physischen Leibe.
So kann man ganz genau im einzelnen schildern, wie es hergeht, wenn der Mensch meditativ und durch Selbsterziehung des Willens seine Erkenntniskräfte zum Behuf der Erkenntnis übersinnlicher Welten verstärkt. Dadurch kommt der Mensch dazu, gewisse Zustände zu entwickeln, die nun nicht schlafend sind, wenn er außerhalb des Leibes ist, sondern das darstellen, was ich in meinen Schriften die Kontinuität des Bewußtseins genannt habe. Der Mensch geht mit seinem selbständigen seelischen Wesen im höheren Erkennen wirklich aus seinem Leibe heraus. Er erkennt dieses Herausgekommensein dadurch, daß er den Gedankenspiegel jetzt nicht an sich, sondern außer sich hat. Der Mensch geht aus dem Leibe heraus, aber er bleibt — ich habe das schon ausgeführt — durchaus seiner selbst bewußt. Er kann immer wieder zurückkehren, er ist keiner, der halluziniert, der sich Visionen hingibt, sondern mit mathematischer Sicherheit den ganzen Vorgang verfolgt, der sich hier abspielt. Dadurch, daß der Mensch in dieser Weise den Vorgang verfolgen kann, kann er nun auch zurück das gewöhnliche irdische Leben beurteilen. Er weiß, wie das ist, wenn er nun mit der selbständigen Seele in den Körper untertaucht. Er lernt nicht nur das Einschlafen, das Herausgehen aus dem Körper kennen, er lernt jetzt g'anz willkürlich in seinen Körper mit der selbständigen Seele untertauchen. Das macht noch einen besonderen Eindruck, wenn der Mensch einmal seine selbständige Seele erlebt hat und dann untertaucht, der Körper ihn wieder gefangennimmt. Da hört dasjenige auf, was man selbständig als geistig-seelische Welt um sich hat. Man fühlt es wie abschwinden, und man fühlt, wie man absorbiert wird, indem man wieder untertaucht in den Körper. Man lernt ebenso das Herausgehen aus dem Körper kennen, indem man sieht, wie die Gedanken sich von einem entfernen, wie sie beim Körper bleiben, und wie man mit dem fühlenden und wollenden Wesen der Seele aus dem Körper herausgeht. Man fühlt aber in dem Momente, wo man herausgeht, die geistige Welt auftauchen. Was hat man jetzt kennengelernt? Jetzt hat man kennengelernt auf dem Umwege durch das Aufwachen und Einschlafen das Geborenwerden und Sterben. Man hat kennengelernt, wie der Mensch beim Einschlafen unbewußt mit seinem Fühlen und Wollen aus dem physischen und ätherischen Organismus herausrückt und darin wiederum untertaucht des Morgens beim Aufwachen. Wie er da unbewußt wird, so wird er heller bewußt, wenn er nach stattgehabten Übungen aus seinem physischen Körper herausgeht. Das ist, was man nun erlebt im vollen Bewußtsein als eine Vorausnahme des Vorganges, der im Tode eintritt, und dessen, was man erlebt, wenn man untertaucht aus der geistigen Welt in den physischen Leib. Wenn die Gedanken wiederum verschwinden, wenn sie sich wiederum als bloße Bilder, als Unwirklichkeiten in der Persönlichkeit geltend machen, lernt man den Moment des Geborenwerdens kennen.
Während man mit den gewöhnlichen wissenschaftlichen Methoden dabei stehenbleibt, den gewöhnlichen Verstand anzuwenden, die Gedanken anzuwenden auf die äußere Beobachtung oder das Experiment, die mit einem verbunden bleiben, macht man durch anthroposophische Forschung eine andere Persönlichkeit aus sich insofern, als man die Gedanken verobjektiviert, als man seinen eigenen Leib zu einem umfassenden großen Sinnesorgan macht. Ich möchte sagen, ein einziges Auge wird der eigene Leib. Das Auge ist aber jetzt außer ihm, ist zugleich wie eine photographische Platte. Die Welt, in der man ist, die geistig-seelische Welt, die bildet sich jetzt gedankenhaft in der Außenwelt ab. Und jetzt kommt man dazu, indem man sozusagen ganz normale Vorgänge, das Aufwachen und Einschlafen, das Geborenwerden und Sterben, durchschaut hat, auch eine innere Anschauung zu haben von dem Seelischen. Jetzt lernt man durch Anschauung entscheiden, ob das eine bloß unbewußte Vorstellung war, was Professor Schleich Tod durch Autosuggestion nennt, oder ob das «second sight» war, was Oliver Lodge beschreibt. Man lernt jetzt nämlich wirklich erkennen, wie sich der Mensch verhält, wenn er nicht zum bewußten Geistesforscher wird, sondern wenn durch abnorme Verhältnisse herausgedrängt wird das selbständige Seelische aus dem physischen Leibe. Dazu ist Veranlassung, wenn der physische Leib in irgendeiner Weise krank wird. Sagen wir nur, irgendein Organ wird verletzt. Das kann schon durchaus hinreichen, daß bei dem noch zum selbständigen Schauen unfähigen Menschen, Seelen- und Geistesmenschen, nun doch, weil er nicht durch den bloßen Schlaf, sondern durch pathologische Zustände herausgedrängt wird aus seinem physischen Leib, ein unvollkommenes Schauen von dem auftritt, was sonst in bewußter, methodischer Weise von dem Geistesforscher bewirkt wird. Daher hat man nicht nötig, die abnormen Beobachtungen, die heute schon durchaus die Leute interessieren, die etwas über das gewöhnliche Triviale hinauskommen wollen, in ihrer Wahrheit zu leugnen. Aber man wird auch kritisch dagegen, und diese Kritik rührt einfach davon her, daß anthroposophische Geisteswissenschaft nicht das ist, was ihr viele Leute nachsagen, daß sie nicht die Karikatur ist, die viele Leute aus ihr machen, sondern eben mit der Anerkennung aller wissenschaftlichen, gewissenhaften Methodik, die sich die Menschheit im Laufe der letzten Jahrhunderte errungen hat, aufrücken will durch Erweckung besonderer Geisteskräfte in die übersinnlichen Welten. Und da der Mensch mit seinem innersten, ewigen Wesenskern diesen übersinnlichen Welten angehört, so kann der Mensch nach seinem sterblichen und unsterblichen Teil, nach seiner ganzen Wesenheit nur durch diese Geistesforschung erkannt werden, wie das im morgigen Vortrage gezeigt werden soll. Dadurch aber, daß der Mensch in dieses sein Ewiges untertaucht, daß er gewissermaßen nicht bloß eine Anthropologie aufbaut, durch die man weiß, wie der Mensch durch seinen Körper weiß, sondern daß er aufbaut eine Anthroposophie, die da weiß, wie der Mensch durch seine Seele und durch seinen Geist als selbständige Wesenheit weiß, dadurch lernt der Mensch erst die wahre Welt kennen.
Von diesem Gesichtspunkte aus das wahre Wesen des Menschen, auch sein unsterbliches, sein ewiges Wesen, und die wahre Gestalt der Welt zu schildern, das wird die Aufgabe der beiden nächsten Vorträge sein.
Fundamentals of Anthroposophy
In three lectures, I intend to give you an overview of what anthroposophy has to say about human beings and their relationship to the world. These are undoubtedly the two most important areas of inquiry for all human understanding: the world and human beings. They basically encompass every scientific and life question, from the smallest to the largest. It is in the nature of the task that I will have to limit myself to saying what lies within the horizons of anthroposophy regarding these two areas of inquiry, that is, what relates to the great questions of human existence that go beyond sensory perception and the field of ordinary science.
It cannot be denied that, in relation to human beings, in relation to human self-knowledge, there is one of those questions that must touch human beings most deeply and intensely. For in order to have security in life, in order to have a firm footing in life, human beings must have a view of their own nature. And it can be said that human beings have always sought knowledge of the world, because they know that what is contained in the mysteries of world development is connected with their own being, that above all they can only know something about the latter, about their own being, if they recognize what the world to which they belong can give them. Now, it cannot be denied that there is currently a lively interest in everything that goes beyond ordinary sensory science in relation to human knowledge and knowledge of the world, and we see numerous attempts to go beyond this ordinary science in order to explore what lies beyond birth and death, what lies beyond what can be fathomed through ordinary sensory observation and through the intellect based on this sensory observation. In recent times, we have seen people engaged in scientific research making efforts in a wide variety of ways to go beyond the areas mentioned, and I would like to begin by mentioning at least some striking views of contemporary researchers, which prove that there is a lively interest in questions such as those to be dealt with in my three lectures, but also that it is extremely difficult, even for personalities who are well versed in ordinary science, to penetrate into the realm of the spiritual, the soul. I do not want to talk in abstract terms, but would like to start with concrete examples.
A German researcher who has devoted much of his time to investigating how the supersensible nature of the soul can be explored as such, and how the supersensible nature of the soul affects the sensory nature of the body, has, based on his medical and other natural science experience, given many examples of the effect of the soul, of the undoubtedly spiritual, on human physicality. and a striking example mentioned by this physician and researcher, Schleich, whom I also know very well personally, in one of his books is the following. He describes how a patient came to him in a state of terrible agitation, having slightly scratched his skin with an ink pen in his office during the day. As the doctor was able to ascertain, it was an extremely minor, insignificant injury. But the patient was seized by the delusion that he had contracted blood poisoning from this prick with the ink pen and that he would certainly die if his hand was not removed, amputated, and he asked to have his hand and arm amputated as soon as possible. The doctor could say nothing else to him but to stay calm, that the matter would be over in a few days and he had nothing to fear. Of course, the doctor, under full responsibility, could say nothing else. He couldn't cut off his arm. But the patient was not satisfied with this and went to another doctor, who told him the same thing and, of course, did not cut off his arm either. But Schleich, who was very familiar with human emotions, was somewhat anxious, and he inquired about the patient the next morning, and lo and behold: the patient had died! The autopsy revealed no evidence of any noticeable internal blood poisoning or the like. There was no question of that. But the patient had died. Schleich adds to this case, which he recounts: Death by radical autosuggestion. The person concerned had imagined that he had to die; this was an extremely radical autosuggestion, and the person concerned really did die under the influence of this autosuggestion.
So says a researcher who is, after all, very well acquainted with all scientific methods and all medical methods. He reports this case to confirm the power that something purely mental, i.e., a thought that is conceived, can have on the course of bodily processes: even to the point of causing death. That is Schleich's opinion. Schleich cites a whole host of other cases as examples that are less striking and radical in order to prove that it is indeed possible to look at the soul being that lives in thoughts, sensations, feelings, and impulses of the will, which can now act on the physical through its own power. In other words, the effect of the supersensible on the sensible is to be demonstrated, so to speak.
Another case, recounted by a much more important natural scientist, Oliver Lodge, is the following: Oliver Lodge lost his son Raymond in the World War. He fell at the Belgian-German border, and Sir Oliver Lodge — who had long been inclined to build a bridge between the sensory-scientific and the supersensible — was personally affected extremely strongly by this event, by the loss of his beloved son. And through all kinds of events that came his way, which are irrelevant here and which I therefore do not need to recount, he was led to use the mediumistic powers of a personality to communicate with the departed soul of his son Raymond Lodge.
Now, when such a case arises in ordinary spiritualist circles, there is no need to take it particularly seriously, because we know how uncritically such cases are dealt with and how amateurishly such cases and such things are judged and researched in such circles with regard to scientific methods of investigation. But one must take the matter more seriously when dealing with one of the greatest natural scientists of the present day, someone who is thoroughly versed in the field of external scientific research and who knows the scientific method. And it is for this reason that the book Sir Oliver Lodge wrote about communicating with his son Raymond Lodge made such a great impression. When you read the book, you immediately get the feeling that you are dealing with a personality who does not approach the investigation of such things lightly, without scientific responsibility and conscientiousness. And in other matters, which I do not wish to recount here, one sees everywhere that Oliver Lodge applies the same way of thinking to this field, the same scientific method that he is accustomed to applying in the physics laboratory. The reality that he now recounts, and which, it can be said, has rightly made a great impression on all those who have read Sir Oliver Lodge's work, is as follows. Through the medium in question, Oliver Lodge and several other personalities who were present during the experiments were made aware of how his son, that is, the soul, the spirit of his son, wants to tell him about a scene that took place shortly before his death on the Belgian-German border, and it was told through the medium that Raymond Lodge had his photograph taken, and this act of photographing was recounted in great detail through mediumistic means. It was expressly stated that two photographs were taken, and these two photographs were described, and it was pointed out that in the second photograph the entire position of Oliver Lodge's son is slightly different from that in the first photograph. At the time when these mediumistic communications were made in London through the medium—and Sir Oliver Lodge presents it in such a way that one really sees, I emphasize this again and again, that he takes all scientific precautions—at the time when the experiment was conducted, no one in London knew anything about the photographs or the act of taking photographs. So, according to Lodge, after he had checked everything, the message, if it was true, could only have come from the dead son himself. And lo and behold, after about two or three weeks, the photographs, which no one had known about before, actually arrived in London. They were exactly as described by the medium, or rather, according to Sir Oliver Lodge's belief, by the soul of his son. At first glance, a natural scientist might see this as an experimentum crucis. No one in London could have seen the photographs. And it turned out that the message was accurate to the degree that two photographs had indeed been taken, and the second photograph showed a different pose. The photographer had taken the photograph in the group in which Raymond Lodge was standing, and had positioned them slightly differently in the second photograph, and this had been described very accurately. There is not the slightest reason for a conscientious natural scientist to doubt this reported fact in any way.
Now, I have presented two radical cases that show how the longing, the thirst for knowledge of thoroughly serious scientific personalities in our present time gives rise to the striving to learn more about human beings than external sensory research can provide.
Anyone who wants to talk about the anthroposophical point of view and report on the foundations of anthroposophical research is already compelled today to point out that these methods of anthroposophical research are still different from those practiced today even by such serious personalities. For these foundations — I hope that this will become clear in all respects through the three lectures I am to give here — these foundations of anthroposophical research should be even more critical, even more conscientious in relation to scientific thinking and attitude, even towards such critical minds. And anyone who dares to criticize even such personalities is perhaps the only one qualified to judge how much more certainty than even the most conscientious natural scientists of the present day can be found in anthroposophy, which is so easily accused of being fantastical. And in order to point out precisely the critical, in the serious sense scientific, nature of the anthroposophical foundations here, I would now like to present what can be critically objected to in the scientific interpretation given in both cases here by respected personalities. I am starting from these things today because, with regard to my topic today, some things have already been anticipated in my last two lectures, so that the essentials have already been said in these two lectures for most of the esteemed listeners gathered here, and I would therefore like to briefly illuminate what has been said from a different point of view. The following objection must be raised against Schleich with his death by autosuggestion. First of all, please understand that I am only making a critical objection as to how the matter could be! Let us assume that the person in question, who pricked his hand with an ink pen and believed he was suffering from blood poisoning, did in fact have an internal defect that was bound to cause his rapid death the following night simply from natural causes. Such sudden deaths do occur. But on the other hand, anyone who seriously familiarizes themselves with what can be achieved in terms of strengthening and intensifying human powers of cognition, in the sense that I have been trying to explain over the last few days, knows that certain undefined mental powers can be driven to a particular height by abnormal conditions, one might even say by abnormal pathological conditions. And the cases do exist and are recorded in the literature in such a critical sense that anyone can verify them, where the will of the human being—we will see how this is possible in a moment—is transformed, metamorphosed into a certain power of cognition. And because the human will is directed toward the future, it can, under certain pathological conditions, foresee what is being prepared for a person's future from the whole human context. Whether you call this premonition or whatever you want to call it is irrelevant. And it is entirely within the realm of possibility that people in pathological states that are mild enough not to be considered an illness might, for example, foresee that in two weeks' time they will fall off a horse — they see it in their mind's eye. All precautions are useless because they do not perceive the accompanying circumstances. They have simply foreseen what will happen in the future.
Those who are truly familiar with the intensification of human mental states may now critically object that the patient in question may simply have had a premonition of what would cause his death the following night, and that he had an inner sense of this impending death beforehand. Such an inner premonition does not need to come to consciousness; it can remain in the subconscious. But its effect on consciousness can be expressed by what is called: one becomes nervous, one becomes fidgety, one does all sorts of things that are ill-considered. And it could well have been the poking of the ink pen into his hand under the influence of the nervousness that came from this premonition, so that the person concerned simply knew unconsciously — if I may use the paradox — that he was going to die. But he did not express this in the form of a statement that he sensed his death, but rather he became nervous, stabbed himself in the hand with the pen, and expressed this in the form of a statement that he would die of blood poisoning. It was not a case of death by autosuggestion, but rather that the person concerned had an inner premonition of his impending death and did everything he did based on this premonition. If this is the case, then Schleich is simply confusing cause and effect. It is not a case of autosuggestion in the way Schleich assumes, that the conscious thought somehow suggestively caused death, but rather that death would have occurred in any case, but that the premonition of death led the person concerned to make his demands. You see, one can take a critical view of such things if one is familiar with what is also quite possible: the dawning of certain subconscious states that are always present in the soul, but in masked states. Much of what is expressed in consciousness is actually present in another form in the unconscious depths of the human soul and is only interpreted differently by consciousness. Let us take the other case of Sir Oliver Lodge. You are probably all familiar with what is called “second sight.” Through an intensification of the human powers of cognition, a person can see something that he cannot see with his ordinary healthy senses. In a certain way, a person can see in a manner that does not correspond to the usual conditions of the space in which he is confined, and in a certain way, a person can overcome space and time with his powers of perception. Now, this gives rise to a critical objection, even against the conscientiousness of Sir Oliver Lodge. After all, Sir Oliver Lodge needs this experimentum crucis to prove that no one other than the soul of his son could have spoken to him from the beyond. But anyone who knows how subtle and intimate this “second sight” is, how space and time can be overcome through the intimacies of this kind of perception under certain abnormal circumstances — which are always present in a mediumistic personality, even if they are usually not for the benefit of that mediumistic personality — also knows that this can go to the extent that can be characterized in the following way.
In any case, the two pictures arrived in London fourteen days or three weeks later. Those who had been at the mediumistic session had their eyes fixed on these pictures. It was a future fact that Sir Oliver Lodge himself and his relatives would look at these pictures. And this future fact simply needed to be interpreted by the medium through a kind of second sight. If this was the case, one can no longer speak of the supernatural soul of Raymond Lodge shining into Sir Oliver Lodge's laboratory; then in this case we are dealing with something that takes place entirely in the earthly realm, simply with a vision of the future that goes beyond ordinary perception, but which does not justify the assumption that the soul from the beyond has expressed itself in the sitting room.
I mention these two cases and the critical objections in order to convey a sense of how cautious and thoroughly critical the thinking of anthroposophical spiritual research is. For this anthroposophical spiritual research does not start from abnormal phenomena at all — as my last two lectures have already shown — but from normal human life, from what is present in normal human life as powers of cognition, will, and feeling. And anthroposophical research wants to develop these powers further for the purpose of knowing supersensible worlds, in order to have, as it were, an inner right, to have the right conscientiousness to carry out exercises that strengthen thinking. Meditation exercises, as I have described them in recent days, strengthen thinking to such a high degree that the human being arrives at a way of thinking that is just as lively and intense as sensory perception. Or there are exercises of the will, as I have already mentioned, which I will continue to characterize in these lectures. In order to perform these exercises, it is necessary above all that the individual pay close attention to normal life, that they be well acquainted with the circumstances in which the individual finds themselves in normal life.
In Germany, a scientifically trained man recently gave a brief outline of the anthroposophical science I founded. The man in question is by no means a blind believer. He summarizes what I have written in a wealth of literature in a brief outline. He does so without initially deciding for or against it, and he makes a remark that sounds like the remarks of a strong opponent, although the man is neither an opponent nor a supporter. But I must confess that I like this sharp remark very much, very much in view of the whole situation in which anthroposophical spiritual research finds itself in relation to the other spiritual civilization of our time. The man makes the remark: Some of my assertions would be irresistibly comical if one pursued them with ordinary consciousness. — I must confess that I like this remark very much for the following simple reason. When you tell people things like those told by Oliver Lodge or the other case I mentioned, they prick up their ears because, in a certain sense, it appeals to their sense of sensation, because it goes beyond what they are used to, and they do not find it irresistibly comical. But when the anthroposophist is compelled to refer precisely to what is quite normal in human beings, to ordinary human memory, to ordinary expressions of the human will, and talks about how certain exercises can strengthen human thought life through meditation, how self-education can develop the will in a certain way, so that the person becomes different from what they were before and can then penetrate the supersensible worlds as a different person, then, because one is speaking, so to speak, in ordinary words, which people apply in life to what is always around them and which they therefore do not want to be taken away for something else, then one can appear irresistibly comical. That is why some things seem so irresistibly funny to people who only want to apply words to what they are used for in everyday life. The anthroposophical spiritual researcher finds that very often such judgments about anthroposophical spiritual science appear to him as if someone had received a letter that he should read, but instead of reading it, he chemically analyzes the ink. I must confess that much of what is said about anthroposophy strikes me as if someone were chemically analyzing the ink instead of reading a letter.
The essence of the foundations of anthroposophy is that one starts from entirely normal human experiences, that one is well acquainted with what is known today as scientific knowledge, what is known today as moral and ethical life, and that one develops precisely these things to a higher intensity, so that one then penetrates into the higher worlds through the enhancement of those powers of knowledge that are actually also present in their lesser degree in ordinary life and in science. However, to do this, one must have a sense for these ordinary human experiences. One must take into account that which is indeed an ordinary, normal experience, but which falls outside of what one likes to observe attentively. Things must, so to speak, be able to become riddles, the mysteriousness of which is easily overlooked in ordinary life, even though they are present in ordinary life. And here already begins, for some, the irresistible comedy when one says: Above all, the questions that relate to the changing state of human beings between waking and sleeping must become riddles. We constantly alternate between waking and sleeping throughout our lives, but we pay little attention to this pendulum swing of life that takes place between the state of waking and the state of sleeping. The strangest theories have been constructed. I could speak at length if I were to mention the individual theories that have been constructed about the alternating states of waking and sleeping. But I will mention only the one that is best known and most commonly used, which simply assumes that during wakefulness, humans become tired, and when they are tired enough, they fall asleep, and sleep then compensates for the fatigue. It eliminates—one can describe it in more or less materialistic terms—the cause of fatigue. I would like to know whether those who radically advocate this theory have ever observed enough when someone who has had no reason to be particularly tired during the day, say, a fat pensioner, when he I don't even want to say late in the evening, but perhaps in the afternoon, goes to a difficult concert or even a lecture and falls asleep, perhaps not after the first five minutes, but after two minutes, whether one can definitely say that fatigue is the cause of falling asleep.
These are things that at first glance seem somewhat comical, but when viewed in their full, serious mystery, especially when assessed from all sides, they must come before the human soul. And anyone who simply believes that they can study the alternation between waking and sleeping using the usual scientific methods recognized today will never be able to arrive at any satisfactory solution to the problem in this area. For even such perfectly normal questions of life presuppose that one approaches the phenomena not with the ordinary powers of cognition, but with intensified and intensified thinking and also with a transformed will, through meditation, concentration, and other soul exercises, as I have described in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds” and in my “Occult Science,” with intensified thinking and also with a transformed will.
What does one gain by first trying to intensify one's thinking through serious meditation? I have discussed in recent days how this meditation, if it is to have a healthy effect, aims to strengthen thinking in such a way that this thinking becomes a transformed memory. In ordinary memory, we have inner images that depict something we have experienced in ordinary earthly life since birth. An image of a real event arises in our memory, and the connection between our healthy soul life and the external world in which we live simply guarantees that we do not conjure up fantastical things in our memories, but that the memory image points to something that really once existed. So we must learn to place images, such as the images of memory, before the soul in imaginative cognition, as I have called it these days, images that arise simply by bringing more and more meditative ideas into our consciousness and, just as we otherwise strengthen a muscle through exercise, strengthening the soul's capacity for thinking. One must succeed in making thinking so strong that it lives in its content, as one otherwise only lives in sensory experience, in the senses. But then, when one has undergone such exercises for a sufficiently long time, when one has really attained such an inner liveliness of thinking, then what can be called pictorial, formative, morphological thinking occurs. Then one has in one's thinking something so alive, such a living content, as one otherwise only has in sensory perception. But then one learns to recognize something else. Many people regret what modern science has brought us: materialism. But now, in a certain area, anthroposophy, which seeks to penetrate the supersensible worlds with its methods, must, under the influence of modern science, become thoroughly materialistic in the right sense in certain areas. And that is the case when one has learned to strengthen one's thinking in a healthy way, when one has learned to have images of sensory liveliness before one's eyes in imaginative thinking, through which one becomes truly free in the treatment of the material of perception, as one is otherwise only free in sensory perception, where one knows with certainty: When I see red, when I hear C sharp, I am dealing with something external, not with something that arises from my soul. So I know, when I have imaginative thinking, that I do not have something that arises from my soul as a phantasm, but something that lives in me like a sensory perception.
But then, when one experiences this inwardly, this freedom from physicality, just as one is free in sensory perception, then one also knows what the memory of ordinary life is, then one knows that with memory, with memory images, one descends into the physical body at any time, that at any time, when one has a memory image, one has a parallel physical or at least etheric bodily process. One learns the material meaning of that life which is ordinary thought life. One no longer attributes what lives in memories to the independent soul, as the French philosopher Bergson does, but one knows that in ordinary memory life, the soul simply descends into the body and has the body as an instrument to conjure up memories. For we now know that it is only in the imagination that we have come to think without the body, to think with the soul alone, and that we never do this in ordinary life. In ordinary life, we perceive sensually, withdraw our thoughts from sensory perception, and retain our thoughts in memory. But this retaining in memory means being submerged in the body. Only now, through imaginative cognition, do we learn about the process of remembering and the process of sensory perception. We learn to recognize what it means to live freely, body-free, in our thoughts. But you also learn to recognize what it means to immerse yourself in the physical organism with your thoughts through your memories. And just as you can learn this by intensifying your thinking, by strengthening and empowering your thinking in meditation, so you can practice a kind of self-education on the other side, the side of the will, which leads to a similar result. In ordinary life, the will actually only has a certain value when it flows over into external action; otherwise it remains a mere wish, even if we live in our highest ideals, in the most beautiful ideals, if we are complete idealists. If we are not able to lay hands on external physical reality, we can have the most beautiful ideals, but they remain mere wishes. So what is the special characteristic of desire? Desire has the special characteristic of withdrawing from reality. And one can say figuratively: it is like withdrawing one's soul's feelers when one lives in mere desire. When we live in mere desire, we live entirely inwardly in the soul. But we also know how desire is colored, first of all, by human temperaments. Melancholic people desire different things than sanguine people. And anyone who would go about their work with a conscientious scientific method would also see the physical conditions of desire. So one can see the ethereal conditions of desire in the temperaments, but also recognize the physical conditions of desire, the particular type of blood composition, the other physical characteristics, and the like. However, it is necessary to be able to truly exercise the critical faculties I mentioned in the introduction to my lecture today, and I would like to say that this critical faculty will dispel many a beautiful dream. Allow me to point out how many a beautiful dream is dispelled.
I certainly do not want to be irreverent and destroy very ideal things before you out of irreverence, for I have a feeling for the beautiful, for the glorious, which is contained, for example, in the mysticism of a Saint Theresa or a John of the Cross. Do not think that I am inferior to anyone in my reverence for the beauty that lies in these mystical expressions. But anyone who has gained experience in the particular way in which, for example, Saint Teresa or John of the Cross present their visions knows what part human desires play in these things, what part the desires living in the depths of the soul play in these mystical things in particular, and is then led on by these desires to the physical constitution. For the researcher, there is nothing that could be desecrated in this way by pointing out the truth. However, it is a certain inner excitement of certain organs, a different nervous effect in certain organs, which works its way up into the soul and produces something as beautiful as that presented by John of the Cross or Saint Teresa or other such mystics. And one is much more right to seek the nature of the images that appear here so beautifully, so wonderfully poetically, in a certain physical constitution than to seek this nature of the images in the contemplation of some nebulous mystery. As I said, I do not want to pick apart what I revere no less than anyone else here, but the truth must be pointed out, the critical spirit of the anthroposophical foundations, the fact that anthroposophists must above all not indulge in illusions. And they must first of all be free of illusions about human desires and their roots in the human organism, in the physical organism, and in what I would call the illumination of what, if I may use the expression, simmers in the human organism and becomes the most beautiful visions.
If they want to become spiritual researchers in the anthroposophical sense, human beings must not only strengthen their thinking capacity through meditation, they must also change their life of desire through self-education. This is done by systematically taking control of what otherwise happens automatically in life. Let us be honest: in ordinary life, we allow ourselves to be guided by everything much more than we guide our own lives. In ordinary life, this or that thing affects us, and when we look back ten years into our past earthly life, we find that the external circumstances and the people we have encountered have brought about a development in us that is different today from what it was ten years ago. Anyone who seriously wants to become an anthroposophical spiritual researcher must also do exercises in this regard that are exercises of the will. The ordinary will to live has a meaning when it is directed toward external actions. The anthroposophical spiritual researcher must apply the impulses of the will to his own development, to his own life. He must be able to resolve: in relation to this or that character trait, in relation to this or that expression of life, you must become different from what you are now.
As paradoxical as it may sound, something that is deeply ingrained in one's habits, even if it is only a small thing, helps one if, on one's own initiative, out of one's own impulse, one resolves to become different in relation to some matter. A trifle, I say, it only needs to be the trifle of handwriting. If someone really resolves with iron energy to write a different handwriting than he has written before, then the application of this power through the alteration of a habit — here again with reference to habit — can be compared to the strengthening of muscle power, because the will is strengthened. And as the will strengthens internally, applied not externally but internally, it develops its effects in the human being. And what I otherwise change in the external world through the effects of my will, I now change in relation to my own human being. And when one undergoes such exercises of the will, as are described in detail in anthroposophical writings, one comes to transform one's life of desire in such a way that it becomes free from the human organization, just as through meditation thinking becomes free from the body. Then, for those moments in which one dwells in anthroposophical research, what can still be said — that desire is the father of thought — is over. — When such self-education, such application of educational impulses to oneself, is practiced at the most mature age, then desire becomes an inner force that connects with the liberated thinking. And through this, one comes to truly see what the impulses of the will in ordinary life are, what the thoughts of ordinary life are. Just as one has learned to perceive red and blue or C sharp and C, one now learns to perceive thoughts as realities, one now learns to know the impulses of the will as separate from oneself.
In this way, one first comes to judge the alternating states of waking and sleeping in the right way. Only by training the thought to become as objective as a sensory perception, so that one is no longer connected to this thought developed in free meditation as one is to a remembered thought, does one arrive at being able to grasp the act of falling asleep in the right way through observation. Those who want to understand something like ordinary, normal falling asleep with ordinary powers of cognition will be able to formulate hypothesis after hypothesis: they will not learn to recognize what falling asleep itself is. And it is this intensified thinking that one has acquired, and on the other hand the transformed desire, that show the person: when you fall asleep, you can in a certain sense still follow the moment of your falling asleep, you look, as it were, at your falling asleep, and you now experience that, as you fall asleep, you do not simply have a changed state of your body before you, but that you really slip out of your body with your independent soul life, you go out, because you leave something behind, and that is your thoughts.
Only by strengthening your thoughts can you consciously leave them behind when you fall asleep. They remain with the body, the thoughts, they permeate the body as formative forces. And you realize that you have only stepped out of your body with your feelings and your will. But by seeing with which soul you step out of your body, you have also gained a vivid certainty that you have an independent soul, that you are stepping out of your body with your independent soul. And now you know: what you left behind in bed when you fell asleep is not merely what can be explored through physical anatomy, physiology, and biology, but is permeated by the fabric of thought. You first had to make the fabric of thought strong enough so that you could now leave it, consciously, as you turn your face away from the colors, as you leave the realm of perception. And through strengthened thinking, one knows: you have left behind in your bed, so that they may exist for themselves between falling asleep and waking up, your physical body and a body of power that contains the powerfully acting thoughts. — These formative thoughts, these morphological thoughts, of which I spoke in the previous lectures, are only like mirror images in our ordinary consciousness. They also have a reality, and with this reality they sit as a special etheric body within the physical body. You now know: with your will, with your feeling, you have stepped out of your sensory body and your thought body — I can also say physical body and etheric body, or physical body and formative body — as you fall asleep. But in ordinary life we are such that our consciousness is not strong enough to remain consciously alert when it is not filled with thoughts. Consciousness, as we have it in ordinary life and in ordinary science, must unite with the body and experience the thoughts of the body within itself; then it is fully conscious. When it emerges from the body as mere feeling and willing, it becomes unconscious in ordinary life. But those who have acquired the imaginative thinking mentioned here in recent days experience the moment of falling asleep consciously, and they can also bring about states that are otherwise like ordinary sleep, except that they are now not unconscious, but that the person feels a power within themselves, that they really experience what they have left the body with, the feeling and will organism of the soul, that they really experience what can become body-free.
Those who have become acquainted with the moment of falling asleep in this way also become acquainted with the moment of waking up. They now learn to judge that the moment of waking up actually consists of two parts: we wake up as we otherwise behave when we are stimulated by a sensory impression. When we wake up, something must somehow stimulate our soul. It only needs to be our own body, which has slept long enough and which, in its altered state, exerts this stimulus. But just as there is a stimulus in sensory impressions, there is always a stimulus in waking up, and this stimulus speaks to our feeling, which has emerged when falling asleep. Just as the eyes and ears perceive sound or color, so now the independent soul perceives something external with its feelings, and the moment of waking up is a perception through feeling, and the moment of waking up is a grasping of the body. Just as we otherwise move an arm or a leg, so we grasp the organism with our independent will. There are really two acts involved in waking up.
The foundations of anthroposophical research are therefore a strengthening of the capacity for knowledge and will, so that one can see things, really perceive things that one cannot otherwise perceive. And if one is able to perceive the alternating states between sleeping and waking in this way, one can also advance to something else.
If one continues to do more and more of the exercises I have described in recent days, as described in detail in the books mentioned, one will eventually reach a point where one does not always have to sleep when one is out of one's body, but can deliberately withdraw one's feelings and will from one's body and truly look back at the body. Then the human body becomes something objective, like a desk or a table. And it is only through this that one truly gets to know something, not by being connected to it, not by being subjectively imbued with it, but by having it before one as an object. What one has before one as an object when one withdraws from the human body with will and feeling is, above all, the physical body. Tomorrow we will see how it appears in a slightly altered form, how this view from outside the body also gives us a new view of the physical nature of the human being. But above all, it is the image-forming body that consists of a web of thoughts, but of powerful thoughts. One looks back on this as on a mirror. And one has the peculiar fact that one was previously connected to one's thoughts as a subject, as a personality; now one has the world of thoughts, I would say, as on a photographic plate in front of one, looking back on one's own body. It is as if one had a small image of the world surveyed inside the eye. Just as the eye is an organ for seeing because the world can be reflected inside it, so for such a view the etheric and physical body left behind becomes a mirroring apparatus, where something spiritual and soul-related is now reflected, while in the eye only something external and physical is reflected. But through this mirror one sees not only the fabric of thoughts, but one sees the world, having left one's thoughts behind in the physical body.
Thus one can describe in detail exactly what happens when a person, through meditation and self-training of the will, strengthens their powers of cognition for the purpose of perceiving supersensible worlds. This enables the human being to develop certain states which are not sleep when he is outside the body, but which represent what I have called in my writings the continuity of consciousness. The human being really leaves his body with his independent soul being in higher cognition. He recognizes this leaving by the fact that he now has the mirror of thought not within himself but outside himself. Human beings leave their bodies, but they remain — as I have already explained — fully conscious of themselves. They can return again and again; they are not people who hallucinate or indulge in visions, but rather follow the entire process that takes place here with mathematical certainty. Because the person can follow the process in this way, they can now also judge ordinary earthly life. They know what it is like when they now submerge themselves into the body with their independent soul. They not only learn to fall asleep and leave the body, they now learn to submerge themselves into their body with their independent soul completely at will. This makes a special impression once a person has experienced their independent soul and then submerges, and the body captures them again. What one has independently as the spiritual-soul world around oneself ceases. One feels it fading away, and one feels oneself being absorbed as one submerges back into the body. One also learns to leave the body by seeing how thoughts move away from one, how they remain with the body, and how one leaves the body with the feeling and willing essence of the soul. But at the moment you leave, you feel the spiritual world emerge. What have you learned now? Now you have learned about birth and death through the detour of waking up and falling asleep. One has learned how, when falling asleep, the human being unconsciously withdraws with his feelings and will from the physical and etheric organism and then submerges into it again in the morning when waking up. As he becomes unconscious there, he becomes more clearly conscious when he leaves his physical body after the exercises have taken place. This is what one now experiences in full consciousness as a foretaste of the process that occurs at death and of what one experiences when one submerges from the spiritual world into the physical body. When thoughts disappear again, when they assert themselves again as mere images, as unrealities in the personality, one learns to recognize the moment of being born.
While ordinary scientific methods remain limited to applying ordinary understanding, applying thoughts to external observation or experimentation, which remain connected to oneself, anthroposophical research allows one to develop a different personality insofar as one objectifies one's thoughts and makes one's own body into a comprehensive, large sensory organ. I would say that a single eye becomes one's own body. But the eye is now outside of it, like a photographic plate. The world in which one is, the spiritual-soul world, is now reflected in the outer world in thought. And now, having seen through what are, so to speak, completely normal processes—waking up and falling asleep, being born and dying—one also comes to have an inner view of the soul. Now, through observation, one learns to decide whether this was merely an unconscious idea, what Professor Schleich calls death through autosuggestion, or whether it was “second sight,” as described by Oliver Lodge. One now learns to truly recognize how a person behaves when they do not become a conscious spiritual researcher, but when abnormal circumstances force the independent soul out of the physical body. This is caused when the physical body becomes ill in some way. Let's just say that some organ is injured. This can be enough to cause a person who is not yet capable of independent seeing, a soul and spirit person, to experience an imperfect vision of what is otherwise achieved in a conscious, methodical way by the spiritual researcher, because they are forced out of their physical body not by mere sleep but by pathological conditions. Therefore, there is no need to deny the truth of the abnormal observations that already interest people today who want to go beyond the ordinary and trivial. But one also becomes critical of them, and this criticism simply stems from the fact that anthroposophical spiritual science is not what many people say it is, that it is not the caricature that many people make of it, but rather, with the recognition of all the scientific, conscientious methodology that humanity has achieved over the course of the last centuries, it wants to advance into the supersensible worlds by awakening special spiritual powers. And since human beings, with their innermost, eternal core, belong to these supersensible worlds, human beings can only be understood in terms of their mortal and immortal parts, in terms of their entire being, through this spiritual research, as will be shown in tomorrow's lecture. But by immersing themselves in this eternal aspect of their being, by building up not merely an anthropology that tells us what we know through our bodies, but an anthroposophy that tells us what we know through our souls and spirits as independent beings, human beings can learn to know the true world.
From this point of view, the task of the next two lectures will be to describe the true nature of human beings, including their immortal, eternal nature, and the true form of the world.