The Tension Between East and West
GA 83
1 June 1922, Vienna
1. Anthroposophy and Natural Science
This congress has been announced as a Congress on the philosophy of life, and no doubt you will take it as such. Anyone who wishes to talk about philosophical questions today, however, cannot ignore natural science, and in particular the philosophical consequences that natural science has brought with it. Indeed, for centuries—since the fifteenth or sixteenth century, we may say—science has increasingly come to dominate human thinking in the civilized world.
Now it would take a great many words to survey the triumphs of science in the field of human knowledge, and the transformation of our whole life brought about by the achievements of scientific research. And it would be merely a repetition of what you all know already. Philosophically speaking, what is interesting about science is something quite different. I mean the function it long ago assumed of educating the civilized world. And it is precisely in discussing this educational rôle in the development of modern man that we come up against two paradoxes, as I should like to call them. Let me begin with these paradoxes.
The first thing that has followed from the scientific method of research is a transformation of human thinking. Any impartial observer of earlier philosophical trends must conclude that, because of the conditions which then determined man's development, thinking inevitably added something subjective to what was given by experiment and the observation of nature. We need only recall those now outmoded branches of knowledge, astrology and alchemy, to perceive how nature was approached in former times—how human thinking as a matter of course added to what was there something that it wished to express, or at any rate did not suppress.
In face of the scientific attitude of recent times, this has ceased. Today, we are virtually obliged simply to accept the data given us by observation and experiment, and to work them up into natural laws, as they are called. Admittedly, to do so we make use of thought; but we make use of it only as a means of arranging phenomena so that through their own existence they manifest to us their inner connection, their conformity to law. And we make it our duty not to add any of our own thought to our observation of the world. We see this, indeed, as an ideal of the scientific attitude—and rightly so.
Under these conditions, what has become of human thinking? It has actually become the servant, the mere tool of research. Thought as such has really nothing to contribute when it comes to investigating the conformity to law of external phenomena.
Here, then, is one of my paradoxes: that thought as a human experience is excluded from the relationship that man enters into with the world. It has become a purely formal aid for comprehending realities. Within science, it is no longer something self-manifesting.
The significance of this for man's inner life is extraordinarily great. It means that we must look upon thinking as something which must retire in wisdom and modesty when we are contemplating the outside world, and which represents a kind of private current within the life of the soul.
And it is precisely when we now ask ourselves: How, in turn, can science approach thinking? that we come up against the paradox, and find ourselves saying: If thinking has to confine itself to the working-up of natural processes and can intervene only formally, in clarification, combination and organization, it cannot also fall within the natural processes themselves. It thus becomes paradoxical to raise the question (which is certainly justified from the scientific point of view): How can we, from the standpoint of scientific law, understand thinking as a manifestation of the human organism? And to this, if we stand impartially and seriously within the life of science, we can only reply today: To the extent that thinking has had to withdraw from the natural processes, contemplation of them can go on trying to encompass thinking, but it cannot succeed. Since it is methodologically excluded, thinking is also really excluded from the natural processes. It is condemned to be a mere semblance, not a reality.
Not many people today, I believe, are fully conscious of the force of this paradox; yet in the depths of their subconscious there exists in countless numbers of people today an awareness of it. Only as thinking beings can we regard ourselves as human; it is in thinking that we find our human dignity—and yet this, which really makes us into human beings, accompanies us through the world as something whose reality we cannot at present acknowledge, as a semblance. In pointing to what is noblest in our human nature, we feel ourselves to be in an area of non-reality.
This is something that burdens the soul of anyone who has become seriously involved with the research methods both of the inorganic sciences and of biology, and who wishes to draw the consequences of these methods, rather than of any individual results, for a philosophy of life.
Here, we may say, is something that can lead to bitter doubts in the human soul. Doubts arise first in the intellect, it is true; but they flow down into the feelings. Anyone who is able to look at human nature more deeply and without prejudice—in the way I shall be demonstrating in detail in the lectures that follow—knows how the state of the spirit, if it endures long enough, exerts an influence right down to the physical state of the person, and how from this physical state, or disposition, the mood of life wells up in turn. Whether the doubt is driven down into our feelings or not determines whether we stride courageously through life, so that we can stand upright ourselves and have a healthy influence among our fellow-men, or whether we wander through life disgruntled and downcast—useless to ourselves and useless to our fellow-men. I do not say—and the lectures which follow will show that I do not need to say—that what I have just been discussing must always lead to doubt; but it can easily do so, unless science is extended in the directions I shall be describing.
The splendid achievements of science vis-ä-vis the outside world make extraordinary demands on man's soul if, as from the philosophical standpoint here expounded he certainly must do, he adopts a positive attitude to science. They demand that he should be capable of meeting doubt with something stronger and more powerful than would otherwise be needed.
Whilst in this respect science would appear to lead to something negative for the life of the soul, yet—and this brings me to my second paradox—on the other hand it has resulted in something extremely positive. Here, I express once more a paradox that struck me particularly when, more than twenty years ago now, I worked out my The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity and attempted, whilst maintaining a truly scientific outlook on life, to fathom the nature of human freedom.1The German title of The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity is Die Philosophie der Freiheit.
For, with its conformity to law, science does easily lead, in theory, to a denial of human freedom. In this respect, however, science develops theories that are just the opposite of its practical effect. When we go further and further into the semblance nature of thinking and, by actually pursuing the scientific attitude—not scientific theories—arrive at a right inward experience of that nature, then we conclude: if it is only a semblance and not a reality, then the process of thought does not, like a natural force, have a compelling effect. I may thus compare it—and this is more than a mere comparison—to a combination of mirror-images. Images before me cannot compel me. Existent forces can compel me, whether they are thought of as existing outside me or inside me; images cannot compel me. If, therefore, I am able to conceive my moral impulses within that pure thinking which science itself fosters in us by its methods; if I can so shape moral impulses within me that my attitude to their shaping is that to which science educates me, then in these moral impulses conceived by pure thinking I have, not compelling forces, but forces and semblances that I myself am free to accept or not. That is to say: however much science, from its very premises, is bound, and with some justification, to deny freedom, yet in educating him to semblance thinking it educates the man of our culture to freedom.
These are the two poles, the one relating to the life of thought and the other to the life of the will, with which the human soul is confronted by present-day scientific opinions. In distinguishing them, however, we indicate at the same time how the scientific view of life points beyond itself. It must take up some attitude towards human thinlting; yet it excludes that thinking. By so doing, it suggests a method of research that can be fully justified in the eyes of science and yet lead to a comprehensible experience of thinking. It suggests, on the other hand, that because it cannot itself arrive theoretically at freedom, the scientific attitude must be extended into a different region, precisely in order to attain the sphere of freedom.
What I am presenting as a necessity deriving from science itself—an extension into a region that science, at least as understood today, cannot reach—is attempted by the philosophy of life I am here advocating. Today, of course, since it stands at the beginning of its development, it can achieve this extension only imperfectly. Yet the attempt must be made, because more and more people in the civilized world today are being affected by the problems of thinking and freedom that I have described. It is no longer possible for us today to believe that only those in some way involved with science are faced with demands and questions and riddles of this kind. Even the remotest villages, to which no scientific results of any consequence penetrate, are nevertheless brought by their education to the kind of thinking that science demands; and this brings with it, though quite unconsciously as yet, uncertainty about human freedom. It is therefore not only scientific questions that are involved here, but quite clearly general human ones.
What it comes to is this: taking our stand on the ground of scientific education, can we penetrate further along the path of knowledge than does present-day science?
The attempt to do so can be made, and made in such a way that the methods used can be justified to the strictest scientist, and made by paths that have been laid down in complete accordance with the scientific attitude and with scientific conscientiousness. I should like now, at the start of my lectures, to go on to speak of these paths.
Yet, although many souls already unconsciously long for it, the present-day path of knowledge is still not easy to explain conceptually. In order that we may be able to understand one another this evening, therefore, I should like to introduce, simply as aids to understanding, descriptions of older paths that mankind has followed in order to arrive at knowledge lying beyond the ordinary region science deals with today.
Much of what, it is believed today, should just remain an article of faith and is accepted as ancient and honourable tradition, leads the psychologically perceptive observer of history back into age-old epochs of humanity. There, it turns out that these matters of faith were sought after, as matters of knowledge suited to their time, by certain individuals through the cultivation of their own souls and the development of hidden spiritual powers, and that they thus genuinely constituted matters of knowledge. People today no longer realize how much of what has emerged historically in man's development was once actually discovered—but discovered by earlier paths of knowledge.
When I describe these paths, I do so, of course, with the aid of methods I shall outline later; so that in many cases those who form their picture of the earlier epochs of mankind only from outward historical documents, and not from spiritual documents, may take exception to my description. Anyone who examines impartially even the outward historical documents, and who then compares them with what I shall have to say, will nevertheless find no real contradiction. And secondly, I want to emphasize that I am not describing these older paths of knowledge in order to advocate them today. They suited earlier epochs, and nowadays can even be harmful to man if, under a misapprehension, he applies them to himself. It is simply so that we shall understand each other about present-day ways of knowledge that I shall choose two earlier ways, describe them, and thus make clear the paths man has to walk today, if he wishes to go beyond the sphere of scientific knowledge as it is now understood.
As I have said, I could select others from the wealth of earlier ways of knowledge; but I am selecting only two. First, then, we have a way which in its pure form was followed by individuals in ancient times in the East—the way of yoga.
Yoga has passed through many phases, and the aspect to which I shall attach the greatest value today is precisely one that has come down to later epochs in a thoroughly decadent and harmful state. What I shall be describing, the historian will thus be forced, when considering later epochs, to present as something actually harmful to mankind. But in successive epochs human nature has experienced the most varied developments. Something quite different suited human nature in ancient epochs and in later ones. What could, in earlier times, be a genuine means of cognition was later perhaps used only to titillate man's itch for power over his fellow-men. This was certainly not true of the earliest periods, the ones whose practice of yoga I am describing.
What did it comprise, the way of yoga, which was followed in very ancient times in the Orient by individuals who were scholars, to use the modern term, in the higher sphere? It comprised among other things a particular kind of breathing exercise. (I am singling out this one from the wealth of exercises that the yoga pupil or the yoga scholar, the yogi, had to undertake.) When nowadays we examine our breathing, we find that it is a process which for the most part operates unconsciously in the healthy human organism. There must be something abnormal about the man who is aware of his breathing. The more naturally the process of breathing functions, the better it is for ordinary consciousness and for ordinary life. For the duration of his exercises, however, when he wished to develop cognitive powers that are merely dormant in ordinary consciousness, the yogi transformed the process of respiration. He did so by employing a length of time for inhaling, for holding the breath and for exhaling, different from that used in ordinary, natural breathing. He did this so as to make conscious the process of respiration. Ordinary respiration does not become conscious. The transformed respiratory rhythm, with its timing determined by human volition, is entirely conscious. But what is the result? Well, we have only to express ourselves in physiological terms to realize what the yogi achieved by making conscious his respiration. When we breathe in, the respiratory impulse enters our organism; but it also goes via the spinal cord into the brain. There, the rhythm of the respiratory current combines with those processes that are the physical carriers of mental activity, the nerve and sense processes. Actually, in our ordinary life, we never have nerve and sense processes alone; they are always permeated by our respiratory rhythm. A connection, interaction, harmonization of the nerve and sense processes and of respiration always occurs when we allow our minds to function. By transmitting his altered respiratory rhythm into the nerve and sense process in a fully conscious way, the yogi also made a conscious connection between the respiratory rhythm and the thought rhythm, logical rhythm or rather logical combination and analysis of thoughts. In this way he altered his whole mental activity. In what direction did he alter it? Precisely because his breathing became fully conscious, his thoughts permeated his organism in the same way as did the respiratory current itself. We could say that the yogi set his thoughts moving on the respiratory currents and, in the inner rhythm of his being, experienced the union of thought and breath. In this way, the yoga scholar raised himself above the mass of his fellow-men and was able to proclaim to them knowledge they could not gain for themselves.
In order to understand what was really happening here, we must look for a moment at the particular way in which knowledge earlier affected the ordinary, popular consciousness of the masses.
Nowadays, when we look out at the world, we attach the greatest value to seeing pure colours; to hearing pure sounds, when we hear sounds; and similarly to obtaining a certain purity in the other perceptions—such purity, that is, as the sensory process can afford. This was not true for the consciousness of men in older civilizations. Not that, as a certain brand of scholarship often mistakenly believes, people in earlier times projected all sorts of imaginings on to nature: the imagination was not all that unusually active. Because of man's constitution at that time, however, it was quite natural for older civilizations not to see only pure colours, pure sounds, pure qualities in the other senses, but at the same time to perceive in them all something spiritual. Thus, in sun and moon, in stars, in wind and weather, in spring and stream, in the creatures of nature's various realms, they saw something spiritual where we today see pure colours and hear pure sounds, the connection between which we only later seek to understand with the aid of purified thinking. And there was a further consequence of this for earlier humanity: that no such strong and inwardly fortified self-consciousness as we have today existed then. Besides perceiving something spiritual in everything about him, man perceived himself as a part of this whole environment; he did not separate himself from it as an independent self. To draw an analogy, I might say: If my hand were conscious, what would it think about itself? It would conclude that it was not an independent entity, but made sense only within my organism. In some such way as this, earlier man was unable to regard himself as an independent entity, but felt himself rather a part of nature's whole, which in turn he had to see as permeated by the spiritual.
The yogi raised himself above this view, which implied the dependence of the human self. By uniting his thought-process with the process of respiration that fills all man's inner substance, he arrived at a comprehension of the human self, the human I. The awareness of personal individuality, implanted in us today by our inherited qualities and, if we are adults, by our education, had in those earlier times to be attained, indirectly, through exercises. The consequence was that the yogi obtained from the experience of self something quite different from what we do. It is one thing to accept something as a natural experience, as the sense of self is for us, and quite another to attain to it by the paths that were followed in early Eastern civilization. They lived with what moves and swells and acts in the universe; whereas today, when we experience all this from a certain elevation, we no longer know anything of the universe directly. The human self, therefore, the true nature of the human soul manifested itself to the yogi through his exercise. And we may say: since what could be discovered in this way passed over as revelation into the general cultural consciousness, it became the subject-matter of extremely important early products of the mind.
Once again, let me mention one of many. Here we have an illumination from the ancient Orient, the magnificent song Bhagavad-Gita. In the Gita we have the experience of self-awareness; it describes wonderfully, out of the deepest human lyricism, how, when by experiencing he recognizes it and by recognizing he experiences it, this self leads man to a sympathy with all things, and how it manifests to him his own humanity and his relationship with a higher world, with a spiritual and super-sensible world. In ever new and marvellous notes, the Gita depicts this awareness of the self in its devotion to the universal. To the impartial observer of history, who can immerse himself in these earlier times, it is clear that the splendid notes of the Gita have arisen from what could be experienced through these exercises in cognition.
This way of attaining knowledge was the appropriate one for an earlier epoch of civilization in the Orient. At that time, it was generally accepted that one had to retire into solitude and a hermit's life if one sought connection with super-sensible worlds. And anyone who carried out such exercises did condemn himself to solitude and the life of the hermit; for they bring a man into a certain state of sensibility and make him over-sensitive towards the robust external world. He must retire from life. In earlier times it was just such solitary figures who were trusted by their fellow-men. What they had to say was accepted as knowledge. Nowadays, this no longer suits our civilization. People today rightly demand that anyone they are to trust as a source of knowledge should stand in the midst of life, that he should be able to hold his own with the robustness of life, with human labour and human activity as the demands of the time shape them. The men of today just do not feel themselves linked, as the men of earlier epochs did, to anyone who has to withdraw from life.
If you reflect carefully on this, you will conclude: present-day ways of knowledge must be different. We shall be speaking of these in a little while. But before doing so, and again simply by way of explanation and not with any idea of recommending it, I want to describe the principles underlying a way that was also appropriate to earlier times—the way of asceticism.
The way of asceticism involved subduing and damping down bodily processes and needs, so that the human body no longer functioned in its normal robust fashion. Bodily functions were also subdued by putting the external physical organism into painful situations. All this gave to those who followed this ascetic path certain human experiences which did indeed bring knowledge. I do not, of course, mean that it is right to inhibit the healthy human organism in which we are born into this life on earth, where our aim is to enable this organism to be effective in ordinary life. The healthy organism is unquestionably the appropriate one for external sensuous nature, which is after all the basis of human life between birth and death. Yet it remains true that the early ascetics, who had damped down this organism, did in fact gain pure experience of their spirituality, and knew their souls to inhabit a spiritual world. What makes our physical and sensuous organism suited for the life between birth and death is precisely the fact that, as the ascetics' experiences were able to show, it hides from us the spiritual world. It was, quite simply, the experience of the early ascetics that by damping down the bodily functions one could consciously enter the spiritual worlds. That again is no way for the present. Anyone who inhibits his body in this way makes himself unfit for life among his fellow-men, and makes himself unfit vis-à-vis himself as well. Life today demands men who do not withdraw, who maintain their health and indeed restore it if it is impaired, but not men who withdraw from life. Such men could inspire no confidence, in view of the attitude of our age. Although the path of asceticism certainly did lead to knowledge in earlier times, it cannot be a path for today.
Yet what both the way of yoga and the ascetic way yielded in knowledge of the sensible world is preserved in ancient and, I would say, sacred traditions, and is accepted by mankind today as satisfying certain needs of the soul. Only people are not interested to know that the articles of faith thus accepted were in fact discovered by a genuine way of knowledge, if one no longer suited to our age.
Today's way of knowledge must be entirely different. We have seen how the one way, yoga, tried to arrive at thinking indirectly, through breathing, in order to experience this thinking in a way in which it is not perceived in ordinary life. For the reason already given, we cannot make this detour via breathing. We must therefore try to achieve a transformation of thinking by other means, so that through this transformed thinking we can reach knowledge that will be a kind of extension of natural knowledge. If we understand ourselves correctly, therefore, we shall start today, not by manipulating thinking indirectly via breathing, but by manipulating it directly and by doing certain exercises through which we make thinking more forceful and energetic than it is in ordinary consciousness.
In ordinary consciousness, we indulge in rather passive thinking, which adheres to the course of external events. To follow a new super-sensible way of knowledge, we place certain readily comprehended concepts at the centre of our consciousness. We remain within the thought itself. I am aware that many people believe that what I am now going to describe is present already in the later way of yoga, for example in that of Patanjali. But as practised today, it certainly does not form a part of Eastern spirit-training—for, even if a man carried out the yoga exercises nowadays, they would have a different effect, because of the change in the human organism, from the effect they had on the people of earlier epochs.
Today, then, we go straight to thinking, by cultivating meditation, by concentrating on certain subjects of thought for longish periods. We perform, in the realm of the soul, something comparable to building up a muscle. If we use a muscle over and over again in continuous exertion, whatever the goal and purpose, the muscle must develop. We can do the same with thinking. Instead of always submitting, in our thinking, to the course of external events, we bring into the centre of our consciousness, with a great effort of will, clear-cut concepts which we have formed ourselves or have been given by someone expert in the field, and in which no associations can persist of which we are not conscious; we shut out all other consciousness, and concentrate only on this one subject. In the words Goethe uses in Faust, I might say: Yes, it is easy—that is, it appears so—yet the easy is difficult. One person takes weeks, another months, to achieve it. When consciousness does learn to rest and rest continually upon the same content, in such a way that the content itself becomes a matter of complete indifference, and we devote all our attention and all our inward experience to the building up and spiritual energization of mental activity, then at last we achieve the opposite process to what the yogi went through. That is, we tear our thinking away from the process of respiration.
Today, this still seems to people something absurd, something fantastic. Yet just as the yogi pushed his thinking into his body, to link it with the rhythm of his breath and in this way experience his own self, his inner spirituality, so too we release thinking from the remnant of respiration that survives unconsciously in all our ordinary thinking. You will find the systematic exercises described in greater detail in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment, or in another one, Outline of Occult Science, or again in Riddles of the Soul and other books of mine. By these means, one gradually succeeds not only in separating the thought sequence from the respiration process, but also in making it quite free of corporeality. Only then does one see what a great service the so-called materialistic, or rather mechanistic, outlook on life has rendered to mankind. It has made us aware that ordinary thinking is founded on bodily processes. From this can stem the incentive to seek a kind of thinking no longer founded on bodily processes. But this can only be found by building up ordinary thinking in the way described. By doing so, we arrive at a thinking set free from the body, a thinking that consists of purely psychic processes. In this way, we come to know what once had a semblance nature in us—as images only to begin with, but images that show us life independent of our corporeality.
This is the first step towards a way of knowledge suited to modern man. It brings us, however, to an experience that is hidden from ordinary consciousness. Just as the Indian yogi linked himself in his thinking with the internal rhythm of respiration, and so also with his spiritual self which lives in the respiratory rhythm, just as he moved inwards, so we go outwards. By tearing our logical thinking away from the organism to which it is actually connected, we penetrate with it into the external rhythm of the world, and discover for the first time that such a rhythm exists. Just as the yogi made conscious the inner rhythm of his body, so we become conscious of an external world rhythm. If I may express myself metaphorically: in ordinary consciousness, what we do is to combine our thoughts logically and thus make use of thinking to know the external sensuous world. Now, however, we allow thinking to enter a kind of musical region, but one that is undoubtedly a region of knowledge; we perceive a spiritual rhythm underlying all things; we penetrate into the world by beginning to perceive it in the spirit. From abstract, dead thinking, from mere semblance thinking, our thinking becomes a vitalized thinking. This is the significant transition that can be made from abstract and merely logical thinking to a vital thinking which we clearly feel is capable of shaping a reality, just as we recognize our process of growth as a living reality.
With this vital thinking, however, we can now penetrate deeper into nature than with ordinary thinking. In what way? Let me illustrate this from present-day life, although the example is a much-disputed one. Nowadays, we may direct our abstract mental activity, by observation and experiment, on to a higher animal, for instance. With this thinking, we create for ourselves an internal image of how the organs of the animal are arranged: the skeleton, musculature, etc., and how the vital processes flow into one another. We make a mental image of the animal. Then, with the same thinking, we pass to man, and once again make a mental image of him—the configuration of his skeleton, his musculature, the interaction of his vital processes, etc., etc. We can then make an external comparison between the two images obtained. If we tend towards a Darwinian approach, we shall regard man as being descended from animals through an actual physical process; if we are more spiritually and idealistically inclined, we imagine the relationship differently. We will not go into that now. The important point is that there is something we cannot do: because our thinking is dead and abstract, we are not in a position—once we have formed a mental image of the animal—out of the inner life of thinking itself to pass over from that into the image of man. Instead, we have first to extract our ideas, or mental images, from the sensory realities, and then to compare these ideas with one another. When, on the other hand, we have advanced to vital thinking, we do indeed form a mental image still, but now it is a living mental image, of the skeleton, the musculature, and the interaction of vital processes in the animal. Because our thought has now become a vital one, we can pursue it inwardly as a living structure and pass over in the thought itself to the image of man. I might say: the thought of the animal grows into the thought of the man. How this works I can only suggest by means of an example.
Faced with the needle of a magnet, we know that there is only one position in which it remains at rest, and that is when its axis coincides with the North-South direction of the earth's magnetism. This direction is exceptional; to all other directions the needle is indifferent. Everything in this example becomes for vital thinking an experience about total space. For vital thinking, space is no longer an aimless juxtaposition, as it is for dead and abstract thinking. Space is internally differentiated, and we learn the significance of the fact that in animals the spine is essentially horizontal. Where this is not the case, we can demonstrate from a more profound conformity to law that the abnormality is particularly significant; but essentially an animal's spine lies in the horizontal plane—we may say, parallel to the surface of the earth. Now it is not immaterial whether the spinal cord runs in this direction or in the vertical direction to which man raises himself in the course of his life. In vital thinking, accordingly, we come to know that, if we wanted to set upright the line of the animal, that is to orientate it differently in the universe, we should have to transform all its other organs. Thought becomes vital simply through the rotation of ninety degrees from the vertical to the horizontal orientation. We pass over in this way, by an inward impulse, from the animal to the human shape.
Thereby, we enter into the rhythm of natural process and so reach the spiritual foundation of nature. We attain, in our vital thought, something with which we can penetrate into the growth and progress of the external world. We reach once more the secrets of existence, from which we departed in the course of human development with the unfolding of ego-consciousness, the feeling of self.
Now you can all raise a weighty objection here. You can say, for example: there have indeed been individuals with this kind of thinking, ostensibly vital; but the present time, with its insistence on serious research, has rightly turned away from “vital thinking” as it was expounded, for instance, by the philosopher Schelling or the natural philosopher Oken. I myself agree entirely with those who raise this kind of objection; there is something quite fantastic, something that leaves reality behind and breathes no actuality, about the way in which mental images gained from external processes and substances are inwardly vitalized by Oken and Schelling and then applied to other natural facts and creatures, in order to see “in the manner of nature.” So long as our vital thinking does not pass on to a mode of knowledge other than this we cannot, even with its aid, reach any assurance of reality. Only by adding exercises of will to the exercises of thought do we secure in vital thoughts a guarantee of spiritual reality.
Exercises of the will can be characterized as follows.
Let us be quite honest with ourselves. In ordinary life, if we think back ten or twenty years, we have to conclude: in the actual content of the life of our soul, we have in many ways become different people; but we have done so by submitting more or less passively, as children to heredity, environment and education, and in later life to life itself. Anyone who wishes to attain knowledge of spiritual reality must take in hand, if I may use this somewhat coarse expression, by an inner education and discipline of the will, what is usually experienced rather passively. Here again you will find the relevant exercises, which are intimate exercises of the soul, described in the books I have named. Today, I can only indicate briefly what is involved.
At present, we have certain habits that perhaps we did not have ten years ago, since life has only recently imposed them on us. Similarly, we can decide to adopt these or those qualities of character. The best thing is to assume qualities of character for whose shaping you have to work on yourself for years on end, so that you must direct attention over and over again to that strengthening and fortifying of the will which is connected with such self-discipline. If you take in hand the development of your will like this, so that you in part make of yourself what the world would otherwise make of you as a person, then the vital thoughts into which you have found your way by meditation and concentration take on a quite special aspect for your experience. That is, increasingly they become painful experiences, inward experiences through suffering, of the things of the spirit. And in the last analysis nobody can attain to higher knowledge who has not passed through these experiences of suffering and pain. We must pass through and conquer these experiences, so that we incorporate and go beyond them, gaining an attitude of indifference to them once more.
What is going on here can be represented as follows: take the human eye (what I am saying here could be expounded scientifically in every detail, but I have time only for a general outline): as light and colours affect it, changes occur in its physical interior. Earlier mankind undoubtedly perceived these as suffering and mild pain; and if we were not so robust and did not remain indifferent to them because of our make-up, we could not help also experiencing the changes in eye and ear as mild pain. All sensory perception is ultimately grounded on pain and suffering.
In thus permeating the entire life of our soul painfully and in suffering with vital thought, we do not permeate the body with pain and suffering as does the ascetic; we keep it healthy to suit the demands of ordinary life; but we inwardly and intimately experience pain and sorrow in the soul. Anyone who has gone some way towards higher knowledge will always tell you: The pleasure and joy that life has brought me I gratefully accept from fate; but I owe my knowledge to my pain and suffering.
In this way, life itself prepares the seeker after knowledge for the fact that part of the path he travels involves the conquest of suffering and pain. For if we overcome this suffering and pain, we make our entire psychic being into a “sense-organ,” or rather a spirit-organ, just as through our ordinary senses we look into and listen to the physical world. I do not need to discuss epistemological considerations today. I am naturally familiar with the objection that the external mode of knowledge must first also be investigated; but that does not concern us today. What I want to say is simply this: that, in the same sense in which in ordinary life we find the external physical world authenticated by our sensory perceptions, we find, after the soul's suffering has been conquered, the spiritual world authenticated by the soul-organ or spirit-organ which as a complete spiritual being we have become.
Let us call this way of looking “modern exact clairvoyance,” by contrast with all earlier nebulous clairvoyant arts, which belong to the past. With it, we can also penetrate into the eternal substance of man. We can penetrate with exactitude into the meaning of human immortality. But consideration of this must be reserved for tomorrow's lecture, where I shall be speaking about the special relationship of this philosophy of life to the problems of man's psyche. Today, I wished to show how, in contrast to earlier ways of knowledge, man can attain a modern super-sensible way of knowledge. The yogi sought to move into the human substance and reach the self; we seek to move out to the rhythm of the world. The ancient ascetic depressed the body in order to ex-press spiritual experience and allow it to exist independently. The modern way of knowledge does not incline to asceticism; it avoids all arts of castigation and addresses itself intimately to the very life of the soul. Both the modern ways, therefore, place man entirely inside life. Whereas the ways of asceticism and yoga drew men away from life.
I have tried today to describe to you a way that can be followed by developing powers of knowledge, now sleeping in the soul, in a more spiritual sense than they were formerly developed.
By doing this, however (I should like to suggest in conclusion), we also reach deeper into the essence of nature. The philosophy of life of which I speak stands in no sort of opposition to the science of today. On the contrary, it takes precisely the genuine mood of enquiry which is there in scientific research and, through its exercises, develops this as a separate human faculty. Science today seeks exactness and feels particularly satisfied if it can achieve it by the application of mathematics to natural processes. Why is this? It is because the perceptions with which external nature provides us, through the senses, for observation and experiment are wholly outside us. We permeate them with something we develop solely in our innermost human entity—with mathematical knowledge. And Kant's saying is often quoted and even more often practised by scientific thinkers: In all true knowledge there is only so much science as there is mathematics. This is exaggerated if we are thinking of ordinary mathematics. And yet, when we apply these to lifeless natural phenomena, and nowadays even regard it as an ideal, for instance, to be able to count the chromosomes in the blastoderm, we reveal how satisfied we are if we can permeate with mathematics what otherwise stands outside us. Why? Because mathematics is experienced inside us with immediate certainty: we often have to represent this experience to ourselves by means of diagrams, but the diagrams are not essential to the certainty, the truth. Things mathematical are seen and discovered within us, and what we find within us we connect with what we see outside. In this way we feel satisfied.
Anyone who perceives this process of cognition in its entirety must conclude: things can satisfy man as knowledge and lead to a science only if they rest on something he can really experience and observe through his inner powers. With the aid of mathematics, we can penetrate into the facts and structures of the inanimate world; but we cannot move more than a little way at most, and that somewhat primitively, into the organic world. We need a way of looking as exact as that of mathematics with which to penetrate into the higher processes of the outside world. Even one of the outstanding representatives of the school of Haeckel has expressly admitted that we must advance to an entirely different type of research and observation if we wish to move up from the inorganic into the organic realm of nature. For the inorganic, we have mathematics, geometry; for the organic, the living, we have nothing as yet that corresponds to a triangle, a circle, or an ellipse. By vital thinking we shall achieve them: not with the ordinary mathematics of numbers and figures, but with a higher mathesis, a qualitative approach working creatively, one which—and here I must say something which many people will find abominable—which touches the realm of the aesthetic.
By penetrating with mathematics of this kind into worlds that we cannot otherwise penetrate, we extend the scientific attitude upwards into the biological sphere. And we may be sure that eventually the epoch will come when people will say: earlier times rightly emphasized that the amount of science extracted from inorganic nature is proportional to the amount of quantitative mathematics, in the broadest sense, that can be applied to it; the amount of science extracted from the vital processes is proportional to the extent to which we can probe them with a living thought structure and an exact clairvoyance.
People will not believe how close this modern kind of clairvoyance is, in reality, to the mathematical outlook. Eventually, when it is realized how, from the spirit of modern knowledge of nature, knowledge of spirit can be gained, this spiritual science will be found to be justified precisely from the standpoint of our modern knowledge of nature. It has no wish to run counter to the important and imposing results of natural science. It seeks to attempt something different: we can look with our external senses at the physical form of someone standing before us—his gestures, his play of feature, the individual expression of his eyes—and yet perceive merely externals, unless we look through all this to something spiritual in him, by which alone the whole man stands before us. In the same way, unless we travel the ways of the spirit, we look with science only at the external physiognomy of the world, its gestures and its mask. Only when we penetrate beyond the outward physiognomy that natural phenomena present to us, beyond the mask and gestures, into the spiritual region of the world, do we recognize something to which we are ourselves related, something of the eternal in the world.
That is the aim of the spiritual science whose methods I have sought to describe to you today by way of introduction. It does not wish to oppose triumphant modern science, but to accept it fully in its importance and substance, just as we accept fully the external man. But just as we look through the external man at the soul, so it seeks to penetrate through natural laws, not in a lay and dilettante fashion, but with a serious approach, to the spiritual element underlying the world. And so this spiritual science seeks not to create any kind of opposition to natural science, but to be its soul and spirit.
Anthroposophie und Naturwissenschaft
Meine sehr verehrten Anwesenden! Dieser Kongreß ist Ihnen als ein Weltanschauungskongreß angekündigt worden, und Sie werden ihn wohl auch nach der Ankündigungsweise als einen solchen hinnehmen. Wer aber heute über Weltanschauungsfragen sprechen will, darf nicht vorbeigehen an der Naturwissenschaft, vor allen Dingen nicht an den Weltanschauungskonsequenzen, welche diese Naturwissenschaft gebracht hat. Diese Naturwissenschaft ist ja in einem gewissen Sinne seit Jahrhunderten, man darf sagen, seit dem 15., 16. Jahrhundert, immer mehr und mehr die Beherrscherin des menschlichen Denkens innerhalb der Kulturwelt geworden.
Nun würde man ja sehr viel zu sagen haben, wenn man hinweisen wollte auf die großen Erkenntnistriumphe dieser Naturwissenschaft und auf die Umgestaltung unseres ganzen Lebens durch die Errungenschaften naturwissenschaftlicher Forschung. Das hieße aber, für alle Anwesenden Bekanntes wiederholen. Vom Weltanschauungsstandpunkt aus muß an der Naturwissenschaft noch etwas ganz anderes interessieren, Das ist die Rolle als Erzieher der ganzen zivilisierten Menschheit, welche die Naturwissenschaft seit langer Zeit eingenommen hat. Und gerade wenn man von dieser erzieherischen Rolle im Entwickelungsgang der modernen Menschheit spricht, dann kommt man eigentlich auf, ich möchte sagen, zwei Paradoxien. Gestatten Sie mir, von diesen Paradoxien heute auszugehen.
Das erste, was sich vollzogen hat mehr in bezug auf das menschliche Innere, von der naturwissenschaftlichen Forschungsweise aus, das ist eine Umgestaltung des menschlichen Gedankenlebens als solchem. Wer unbefangen frühere Weltanschauungsströmungen ins Auge zu fassen weiß, der wird sich sagen müssen, daß innerhalb dieser Weltanschauungsströmungen, aus den Bedingungen der Menschheitsentwickelung in älteren Epochen, das Denken wie selbstverständlich etwas aus dem eigentlichen Menschlichen hinzugetan hat zu demjenigen, was Experiment und Beobachtung der Natur ergaben. Man braucht sich nur zu erinnern an die gegenwärtig überwundenen Erkenntniszweige, an die Astrologie, die Alchimie, und man wird darauf kommen, wie in solchen für ehemalige Kulturepochen angemessenen Erkenntnisarten an die Natur so herangegangen wurde, daß wie selbstverständlich das menschliche Denken aus sich heraus zu demjenigen etwas hinzugab, was es aussagen wollte, oder auch, was es sich offenbaren ließ durch die Dinge der Welt.
Das hat vor der naturwissenschaftlichen Gesinnung der neueren Zeit aufgehört. Wir sind, wenn ich mich so ausdrücken darf, heute gewissermaßen verpflichtet, die Wahrnehmungen, die uns Beobachtung und Experiment geben, rein hinzunehmen, sie zu verarbeiten zu den sogenannten Naturgesetzen. Wir bedienen uns in der Bearbeitung von Experiment und Beobachtung allerdings des Denkens; aber wir bedienen uns des Denkens nur als eines Mittels, um die Erscheinungen zusammenzustellen, so daß sie uns durch ihr eigenes Dasein ihren inneren Zusammenhang, ihre Gesetzmäßigkeit offenbaren. Und machen es uns zur Aufgabe, vom Denken aus nichts hinzuzutun zu dem, was wir in der Außenwelt beobachten können. Wir sehen dies geradezu als ein Ideal naturwissenschaftlicher Gesinnung, und das mit Recht, an.
Was ist unter solchen Einflüssen das menschliche Denken geworden? Es ist eigentlich der Diener, das bloße Mittel für die Forschung geworden., Der Gedanke als solcher hat gewissermaßen nichts mehr zu sagen, wenn es sich darum handelt, die Gesetzmäßigkeit der Erscheinungen in der Welt zu untersuchen.
Damit aber ist das eine Paradoxon gegeben, auf das ich hinweisen möchte. Dadurch ist der Gedanke gewissermaßen als ein menschliches Erlebnis ausgeschaltet aus dem Verhältnis, das der Mensch mit der Welt in bezug auf Realitäten eingeht. Der Gedanke ist ein formales Hilfsmittel geworden, um die Realitäten zu begreifen. Er ist innerhalb der Naturwissenschaft nicht mehr ein Selbstoffenbarendes.
Das bedeutet für das Innere des Menschenlebens außerordentlich viel. Es bedeutet, daß wir hinschauen müssen auf das Denken als auf dasjenige, was sich weise und bescheiden zurückzuhalten hat, wenn es auf die Betrachtung der Außenwelt ankommt, was gewissermaßen innerhalb des Seelenlebens eine eigene Strömung ist.
Und fragt man sich dann: Wie kann Naturwissenschaft selber an dieses Denken heranrücken? - dann kommt man eben auf das Paradoxon, dann kommt man dazu, sich zu sagen: Wenn sich das Denken zurückziehen muß in die Verarbeitung der Naturprozesse, wenn es nur formell, aufklärend, zusammenstellend, ordnend eingreifen darf, dann liegt es auch nicht innerhalb der Naturprozesse selber, dann wird es paradox, wenn wir die, allerdings jetzt vom naturwissenschaftlichen Standpunkt aus, berechtigte Frage aufwerfen: Wie können wir aus naturwissenschaftlicher Gesetzmäßigkeit das Denken als eine Offenbarung des menschlichen Organismus begreifen? - Und da können wir heute denn doch nichts anderes sagen, wenn wir unbefangen und ernst im naturwissenschaftlichen Leben drinnenstehen, als: in demselben Maße, in dem sich das Denken zurückziehen mußte von den Naturprozessen, kann zwar die Betrachtung der Naturprozesse immer wieder und wiederum anstreben, bis zum Denken hinzugelangen, aber sie kann dieses Streben nicht zu irgendwelcher Befriedigung bringen. Das Denken ist gewissermaßen, wie es methodisch ausgeschaltet ist, so auch in der Realität aus den Naturprozessen ausgeschaltet, ist verurteilt, bloßes Bild und keine Realität zu sein.
Ich glaube nicht, daß heute schon viele Menschen im vollen Bewußtsein sich die Tragweite dieses Paradoxons klarmachen. Aber in den unterbewußten Untergründen des Seelenlebens lebt in einer ungezählten Menge von Menschen der Gegenwart schon die Empfindung davon, daß wir mit demjenigen, was uns zum Menschen eigentlich macht - denn nur als denkende Wesen können wir uns als Menschen betrachten, im Denken schen wir unsere menschliche Würde —, als mit etwas durch die Welt gehen, dessen Realität wir vorläufig nicht zugeben können, das wir als Bilddasein durch die Welt tragen. Wir fühlen uns gewissermaßen in einer Nichtrealität, indem wir auf unser Edelstes in der Menschennatur hinweisen.
Das ist etwas, was dem auf der Seele liegt, der in ernster Weise sich in die naturwissenschaftlichen Forschungsmethoden sowohl der unorganischen Naturwissenschaft wie der Biologie eingelassen hat und für sich im Sinne einer Weltanschauung mehr die Konsequenzen dieser Forschungsmethoden als der einzelnen Ergebnisse ziehen möchte.
Man möchte sagen: Hier liegt etwas, was zu herben Zweifeln der Menschenseele hinführen kann. Zweifel entstehen allerdings zunächst im Verstand, aber sie strömen hinunter in das menschliche Gemüt. Und gerade derjenige, welcher in einem tieferen, unbefangenen Sinn die menschliche Natur - in dem Sinn, wie ich es in den nächsten Vorträgen für Einzelheiten werde auszuführen haben — zu betrachten versteht, der weiß, wie die Gemütsverfassung, namentlich wenn gewisse Strömungen dieser Gemütsverfassung in die Dauer übergehen, hinunterwirkt selbst in die Leibesverfassung des Menschen und wie aus dieser Leibesverfassung oder Leibesdisposition zu diesem und jenem wiederum heraufquillt die Lebensstimmung. Ob wir den Zweifel hinunterschicken müssen durch unser Gemüt oder nicht, davon hängt es ab, ob wir mutvoll durch das Leben schreiten, so daß wir für uns selbst aufrecht zu stehen wissen, daß wir auch in heilsamer Weise wirken können unter unseren Mitmenschen, oder ob wir verstimmt, niedergeschlagen, untüchtig für uns selbst, untüchtig für unsere Mitmenschen durch das Leben wandeln. Ich sage nicht - und meine nächsten Vorträge werden zeigen, daß ich das nicht zu sagen brauche —, daß das, was ich jetzt ausgesprochen habe, dauernd zum Zweifel führen muß; aber es führt leicht, wenn keine Fortsetzung der Naturwissenschaft nach jenen Richtungen hin stattfindet, die ich zu schildern haben werde, auf den Weg des Zweifels.
Die großartigen Errungenschaften der Naturwissenschaft nach der Außenwelt hin stellen an den Menschen in bezug auf seine Seele außerordentliche Anforderungen, wenn er, wie es der hier vertretene Weltanschauungsstandpunkt durchaus muß, in positiver Art zur Naturwissenschaft steht — Anforderungen: Stärkeres, Kräftigeres dem Zweifel entgegensetzen zu können, als man entgegenzusetzen braucht, wenn diese Anforderungen nicht von den gesicherten Ergebnissen der Naturwissenschaft kommen.
Führt nach dieser Seite hin also, allerdings nur scheinbar, die Naturwissenschaft zu etwas Negativem für das Seelenleben, so hat sie uns - und damit habe ich mein zweites Paradoxon auszusprechen - nach der anderen Seite etwas außerordentlich Positives gebracht; und ich spreche mit diesem Positiven wiederum ein Paradoxon aus, das mir besonders stark vor die Seele getreten ist, als ich vor jetzt mehr als zwanzig Jahren meine «Philosophie der Freiheit» ausgearbeitet habe, als ich versuchte, unter Aufrechterhaltung einer wirklichen naturwissenschaftlichen Weltanschauung hinter das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit zu kommen.
Ja, Naturwissenschaft mit ihrer Gesetzmäßigkeit kommt eigentlich theoretisch leicht zu einer Ableugnung der menschlichen Freiheit. Hier aber ist es, wo Naturwissenschaft für ihre Anschauungen theoretisch eigentlich das Gegenteil von dem herausbekommt, was sie in der Praxis ausbildet. Wenn wir immer ernster und ernster uns vertiefen in die Bildnatur des Denkens, wenn wir gerade aus dem Verfolg naturwissenschaftlicher Anschauungsart, nicht naturwissenschaftlicher Theorien, dazu kommen, diese Bildnatur des Denkens, von der ich gesprochen habe, innerlich seelisch richtig zu erleben, dann sagen wir uns: Wenn das Denken in uns nur Bild ist, wenn es nicht eine Realität ist, dann hat es nicht wie eine Naturkraft eine zwingende Wirkungsweise. Ich darf dann dieses Denken vergleichen, und der Vergleich ist mehr als ein solcher, etwa einer Summe von Spiegelbildern. Bilder, vor denen ich stehe, können mich nicht zwingen. Vorhandene Kräfte können mich zwingen, ob sie außer mir oder in mir vorhanden gedacht werden; Bilder können mich nicht zwingen. Bin ich also in der Lage, innerhalb jenes reinen Denkens, das gerade die Naturwissenschaft durch ihre Methoden in uns heranerzieht, meine moralischen Impulse zu fassen, kann ich moralische Impulse so in mir ausgestalten, daß ich zu ihrer Ausgestaltung lebe in dem selben Denken, zu dem mich die Naturwissenschaft erzieht, dann habe ich in diesen im reinen Denken erfaßten moralischen Impulsen keine zwingenden Kräfte, sondern Kräfte und Bilder, nach denen ich mich nur selbst bestimmen kann. Das heißt, wenn Naturwissenschaft auch noch so sehr, man möchte sagen, sogar mit einem gewissen Rechte, aus ihren Untergründen heraus die Freiheit leugnen muß, so erzieht sie, indem sie zu dem Bilddenken erzieht, den Menschen unserer Kulturwelt zur Freiheit.
Das sind, ich möchte sagen, die beiden Pole, der eine in bezug auf das Gedankenleben, der andere in bezug auf das Willensleben, vor die die menschliche Seele durch die naturwissenschaftlichen Anschauungen der Gegenwart hingestellt wird. Aber damit weisen wir zugleich darauf hin, wie die naturwissenschaftliche Weltanschauung über sich selbst hinauszeigt. Sie muß ja irgendeine Stellung einnehmen zu dem menschlichen Denken. Aber sie schaltet dieses menschliche Denken aus. Sie weist damit auf eine Forschungsmethode hin, die sich vor ihr, vor dieser Naturwissenschaft, voll rechtfertigen und die dennoch zu einem begreiflichen Erleben des Denkens hinführen kann. Sie weist auf der anderen Seite darauf hin, daß die naturwissenschaftliche Anschauungsweise, weil sie selbst im Grunde genommen theoretisch bis zur Freiheit nicht herankommen kann, fortgesetzt werden muß in ein anderes Gebiet, um eben die Sphäre der Freiheit zu erreichen.
Was ich hier wie eine Notwendigkeit, die sich aus der Naturwissenschaft selbst ergibt, hinstelle, das Fortsetzen dieser Naturwissenschaft in ein Gebiet hinein, zu dem wenigstens die heute anerkannte Naturwissenschaft nicht kommen kann, versucht die Weltanschauung, die hier vertreten werden soll. Sie kann das heute, da sie im Anfang ihres Werdens steht, selbstverständlich nur in einer gewissen unvollkommenen Art. Aber der Versuch muß gemacht werden; denn gerade die Seelenerlebnisse in bezug auf das Denken und die Freiheit, die ich geschildert habe, breiten sich aus über immer mehr Seelen der gegenwärtigen Kulturmenschheit. Wir dürfen ja heute nicht mehr glauben, daß sich etwa nur diejenigen, die sich irgendwie mit der Wissenschaft zu tun gemacht haben, solche Forderungen und Fragen und Rätsel vorlegen müssen, wie ich sie charakterisiert habe. Auch in die Kreise, man möchte sagen, bis in die fernsten Dörfer hinaus, in die keine naturwissenschaftlichen Ergebnisse erheblicher Art dringen, dringt die Erziehung zu einem solchen Denken, wie die Naturwissenschaft es fordert, und bringt dann, wenn auch heute noch sehr, sehr unbewußt, die Ungewißheit in bezug auf die menschliche Freiheit. Daher handelt es sich bei diesen Dingen nicht bloß um wissenschaftliche Fragen, sondern es handelt sich durchaus um allgemeine Menschheitsfragen.
Es handelt sich also darum: Kann man, wenn man sich auf den Boden naturwissenschaftlicher Erziehung stellt, innerhalb des Erkenntnisweges weiter dringen, als die Naturwissenschaft der Gegenwart dringen kann?
Meine sehr verehrten Anwesenden! Das kann versucht werden; kann so versucht werden, daß man die Wege vor dem strengsten Naturwissenschafter rechtfertigen kann; kann auf Wegen gesucht werden, die von naturwissenschaftlicher Gesinnung und von naturwissenschaftlicher Gewissenhaftigkeit angelegt sind. Von solchen Wegen möchte ich nun zunächst heute, meine Vorträge einleitend, sprechen. Aber dieser Erkenntnisweg ist, obzwar er von vielen Seelen heute bereits unbewußt ersehnt wird, noch nicht einmal in Begriffen leicht auszusprechen. Daher möchte ich, damit wir uns am heutigen Abend verständigen können, nur zur Verständigung, die Schilderung von älteren Erkenntniswegen heranziehen, welche die Menschheit gegangen ist, um zu Erkenntnissen zu kommen, die über dieses Gebiet, das heute die Naturwissenschaft behandelt, hinaus liegen.
Man kann sagen: Vieles von dem, wovon heute die Meinung besteht, daß es gar nicht Objekt der Erkenntnis sein könne, sondern nur Objekt eines Glaubens, was traditionell heraufgekommen ist in der Menschheitsentwickelung, was als ehrwürdige Tradition heute lebt und als solche als Glaubensinhalt hingenommen wird, das ist, vor einer wirklich unbefangenen Geschichtsbetrachtung, doch herstammend aus älteren, unserer heutigen Kultur nicht mehr angemessenen Erkenntnismethoden. Alles, wovon man heute glaubt, daß es eben Glaubensvorstellung bleiben solle, was als altehrwürdige Tradition hingenommen wird, das führt den psychologischen Geschichtsbetrachter zurück in uralte Menschheitsepochen. Und dort zeigt sich, daß solche heutigen Glaubensinhalte als der damaligen Zeit angemessene Erkenntnisinhalte von irgendwelchen Menschen durch Ausbildung ihrer eigenen Seele, durch Entwickelung verborgener Seelenkräfte gesucht worden sind, also wirkliche Erkenntnisinhalte bildeten. Man ist sich heute nicht bewußt, wie manches einmal gefunden worden ist, was geschichtlich heraufgekommen ist in der Menschheitsentwickelung; aber es ist auf älteren Erkenntniswegen gefunden worden.
Wenn ich solche Erkenntniswege schildere, so geschieht es allerdings schon mit Hilfe der Methoden, die ich später schildern werde, also so, daß vielfach diejenigen, die nur aus äußeren historischen, nicht aus geistigen Dokumenten die älteren Epochen der Menschheit schildern, Anstoß nehmen können an meiner Schilderung. Derjenige aber, der unbefangen auch die äußeren historischen Dokumente prüft und sie dann vergleicht mit dem, was ich heute aus einem gewissen Schauen heraus zu sagen haben werde, der wird dennoch einen wirklichen Widerspruch nicht finden. Und als zweites möchte ich betonen, daß ich diese älteren Erkenntniswege nicht etwa aus dem Grund schildere, weil ich sie heute irgend jemandem anempfehlen möchte, um höhere Erkenntnisse zu erringen. Sie sind älteren Epochen angemessen und können heute dem Menschen, wenn er sie aus einem Irrtum heraus auf sich anwendet, sogar schädlich werden. Also nur damit wir uns verständigen können über heutige Erkenntnismethoden, greife ich zwei ältere Wege heraus, schildere sie und veranschauliche daran die Wege, die der Mensch heute zu gehen hat, wenn er über die bloße Sphäre des naturwissenschaftlichen Erkennens, wie es heute gilt, hinaus will,
Da haben wir zunächst einen Weg — wie gesagt, ich könnte aus der Fülle der älteren Erkenntniswege auch andere herausgreifen, ich greife aber die zwei folgenden heraus -, da haben wir zunächst einen Weg, der in seiner reinen Gestalt in uralten Zeiten im Orient von einzelnen Menschen begangen worden ist: den Jogaweg.
Der Jogaweg hat mannigfaltige Phasen durchgemacht, und gerade das, worauf ich heute den größten Wert legen werde, ist in spätere Epochen hineingekommen in einem durchaus dekadenten, schadhaften Zustand, so daß der Historiker, wenn er spätere Epochen betrachtet, vom Menschen ausgehend das, was ich zu schildern haben werde, als etwas für ihn sogar Schädliches wird schildern müssen. Allein die Menschennatur hat in den aufeinanderfolgenden Epochen die mannigfaltigsten Entwickelungen durchgemacht. Für alte Epochen war etwas ganz anderes der Menschennatur angemessen als in späteren. Was in früheren Zeiten eine echte Erkenntnismethode sein konnte, wurde vielleicht später nur verwendet, um dem Machtkitzel der Menschen, dem Machtkitzel des einzelnen Menschen gegenüber seinen Mitmenschen zu frönen. Das war in den ältesten Zeiten, für die ich die Jogaübung charakterisieren möchte, nicht der Fall.
Worin bestand der Jogaweg, der in sehr alten orientalischen Zeiten von einzelnen, die, wenn wir den heutigen Ausdruck gebrauchen wollen, Gelehrte in höheren Weltengebieten bildeten, gegangen worden ist? Nun, er bestand neben anderem in einer besonderen Art von Atmungsübungen. Ich greife die Atmungsübungen aus einer Fülle von Übungen, die der Jogaschüler oder -Gelehrte, der Jogi, auf sich nehmen mußte, heraus. Wenn wir heute auf unser Atmen achten, so müssen wir sagen: Es ist ein Prozeß, der sich im gesunden menschlichen Organismus zum größten Teil unbewußt vollzieht. Man muß schon in irgendeiner Weise etwas Krankhaftes in sich tragen, wenn man das Atmen spürt. Je selbstverständlicher, so möchte man sagen, sich der Atmungsvorgang in unserem Leben abspielt, desto richtiger ist es für das gewöhnliche Bewußtsein und für das gewöhnliche Leben. Der Jogi aber gestaltete für die Zeit seines Übens, in der er sich Erkenntniskräfte anentwickeln wollte, die im gewöhnlichen Bewußtsein nur schlummern, den Atmungsprozeß um. Warum tat er das? Er gestaltete ihn so um, daß er eine andere Zeitlänge zum Einatmen, zum Atemhalten, zum Ausatmen verwendete, als man das im gewöhnlichen selbstverständlichen Atmen tut. Er tat das, um sich den Atmungsprozeß zum Bewußtsein zu bringen. Der gewöhnliche Atmungsrhythmus wird nicht bewußt. Der umgestaltete Atmungsrhythmus, der aus der menschlichen Willkür heraus in seinen Zeitlängen festgesetzt wird, der verläuft vollständig bewußt. Was aber geschieht dadurch? Nun, man braucht sich nur physiologisch auszudrücken, wenn man einsehen will, was der Jogi erreichte durch dieses Sich-zum-Bewußtsein-Bringen seines Atmungsprozesses: Wenn wir einatmen, geht der Atemstoß in unseren Organismus hinein, er geht aber auch durch den Rückenmarkskanal in das menschliche Gehirn hinein. Da vereinigt sich der Rhythmus der Atmungsströmung mit den Vorgängen, welche die materiellen Träger des Gedankenlebens sind, mit den NervenSinnesvorgängen. Wir haben eigentlich niemals, wenn wir im gewöhnlichen Denken leben, bloße NervenSinnesvorgänge, sondern immer Nerven-Sinnesvorgänge, die durchströmt sind von unserem Atmungsrhythmus. Eine Verbindung, ein Ineinanderwirken, ein SichHarmonisieren der Nerven-Sinnesvorgänge und der Atmungsrhythmus-Vorgänge, die finden immer statt, wenn wir unser Gedankenleben ablaufen lassen. Indem nun der Jogi in vollbewußter Weise seinen veränderten Atmungsrhythmus in den Nerven-Sinnesprozeß hineinschickte, verband er auch für sein Bewußtsein den Atmungsrhythmus mit dem Denkrhythmus, mit dem logischen Rhythmus, besser gesagt, mit der logischen Zusammensetzung und Analyse der Gedanken. Dadurch veränderte er sein ganzes Gedankenleben. Nach welcher Richtung veränderte er es? - Nun, gerade dadurch, daß ihm sein Atmungsleben voll bewußt wurde, durchströmten gewissermaßen die Gedanken nun ebenso seinen Organismus wie die Atmungsströmung selbst. Man möchte sagen: der Jogi ließ auf den Atmungsströmungen die Gedanken laufen, und er erlebte sich im inneren Rhythmus seines menschlichen Wesens erfüllt mit auf den Strömungen des Atmens lebenden Gedanken. Dadurch hob sich der Jogagelehrte heraus von der übrigen Masse seiner Mitmenschen, und er konnte dieser Masse Erkenntnisse verkünden, die sie selber nicht haben konnte.
Um einzusehen, was da eigentlich geschah, muß man ein wenig hinschauen auf die besondere Art, wie die älteren Erkenntnisse im gewöhnlichen populären Bewußtsein der Menschenmassen wirkten.
Wir legen heute den größten Wert darauf, daß, wenn wir in die Außenwelt hinausschauen, wir reine Farben schauen, daß, wenn wir Töne hören, wir reine Töne hören, und daß wir ebenso die übrigen Wahrnehmungen in einer gewissen Reinheit, das heißt in der Reinheit, wie sie uns der bloße Sinnesprozeß geben kann, hinnehmen. Das war für die Bewußtseine älterer Kulturmenschen nicht so. Nicht daß, wie vielfach irrtümlicherweise eine gewisse Gelehrsamkeit glaubt, die Menschen älterer Zeiten in die Natur allerlei hineinphantasiert hätten! Die Phantasie war nicht so außerordentlich wirksam. Aber es war dieser älteren Kulturmenschheit durch die ganze Konstitution des Menschen der damaligen Zeit ganz natürlich, nicht bloß reine Farbenerscheinungen, reine Tonerscheinungen, reine andere Sinnesqualitäten zu sehen, sondern in allem zugleich ein Seelisch-Geistiges wahrzunehmen. So sah man in Sonne und Mond, in den Sternen, in Wind und Wetter, in Quelle und Fluß, in den Wesen der einzelnen Naturreiche Geistig-Seelisches, wie wir heute reine Farben sehen, reine Töne hören, die wir dann erst mit Hilfe des rein gewordenen Denkens in ihrem Zusammenhang zu erkennen suchen. Damit war aber für die ältere Menschheit ein anderes noch gegeben: nämlich daß damals nicht ein so starkes, innerlich gefestigtes Selbstbewußtsein vorhanden war, wie wir es heute haben. Indem der Mensch Geistig-Seelisches in allen Dingen der Umwelt wahrnahm, nahm er sich selber als ein Glied dieser ganzen Umwelt wahr. Er sonderte sich nicht als ein selbständiges Ich von dieser Umwelt ab. Wenn ich vergleichsweise sprechen wollte, so könnte ich sagen: Wenn meine Hand Bewußtsein hätte, wie würde sie dann denken über sich selbst? Sie würde sich sagen, sie sei kein selbständiges Wesen, habe nur Sinn an meinem Organismus. So etwa hat der ältere Mensch sich nicht als ein selbständiges Wesen ansehen können, sondern als ein Glied der gesamten Natur, die er aber durchgeistigt, durchseelt anschauen mußte.
Aus dieser Anschauung, die die Unselbständigkeit des menschlichen Ichs bedingte, hob sich der Jogi heraus. Er kam dadurch, daß er sein Denken gewissermaßen zusammenkoppelte mit dem Atmungsprozeß, der die ganze innere Wesenheit des Menschen erfüllt, zu einer Erfassung des menschlichen Selbstes, des menschlichen Ichs. Dasjenige, möchte ich sagen, was für uns heute durch unsere vererbten Eigenschaften, durch unsere Erziehung, wenn wir ein erwachsener Mensch sind, selbstverständlich ist, daß wir uns als Selbst, als Ich fühlen, das mußte in jenen alten Zeiten auf dem Umwege durch Übungen errungen werden. Dadurch aber hatte man von dem Erleben dieses Selbstes, dieses Ichs, etwas ganz anderes, als wir heute haben. Es ist durchaus zweierlei: ob man etwas wie selbstverständliches Erleben hinzunehmen hat — und uns ist das Ich-Gefühl, das Selbstgefühl ein selbstverständliches Erleben -, oder ob man es auf solchen Wegen, auf Erkenntniswegen, sich erst erringt, wie es für eine ältere orientalische Kultur der Fall war. Da lebte man mit, was im Universum kraftet und wellt und webt, während man heute, wenn man schon auf einem gewissen Niveau dasselbe erlebt, nichts mehr vom Universum miterlebt. Daher offenbarte sich durch seine Übungen die menschliche Selbstheit, die menschliche Ichheit, das menschliche Seelenwesen für den Jogi. Und wir können sagen: Indem dann dasjenige, was auf diesem Erkenntniswege gefunden werden konnte, als Offenbarungen in das allgemeine Kulturbewußtsein überging, wurde es der Inhalt wichtigster geistiger Erzeugnisse älterer Zeiten.
Wiederum will ich aus vielem eines herausheben. Da haben wir wunderbar herüberleuchtend aus dem alten Orient das herrliche Lied Bhagavad Gita. Wir haben in dieser Gita in einer wunderbaren Weise, aus tiefster menschlicher Lyrik heraus, die Erlebnisse an dem menschlichen Selbst geschildert: wie dieses Selbst den Menschen, wenn er es erlebend erkennt, erkennend erlebt, zu einem Mirtfühlen mit dem All führt, wie es ihm seine eigentliche Menschlichkeit und seinen Zusammenhang mit einer Überwelt, mit einer geistigen, mit einer übersinnlichen Welt offenbart. In immer neuen wunderbaren Tönen schildert die Gita dieses Erleben des eigenen Selbstes in seiner Hingabe an das All. Für denjenigen, der sich, wie gesagt, mit unbefangener Geschichtsbetrachtung in diese älteren Zeiten zu vertiefen versteht, ist es klar, daß die herrlichen Klänge der Gita hervorgegangen sind aus dem, was durch solche Erkenntnisübungen, wie ich sie geschildert habe, erlebt werden konnte.
Ein solcher Erkenntnisweg war für eine ältere orientalische Kulturepoche der angemessene. Es war dazumal allgemeines Menschheitsurteil, daß man sich in eine gewisse Einsamkeit und Einsiedelei zurückziehen müsse, wenn man Verbindung mit übersinnlichen Welten haben wollte. Und zur Einsamkeit, zur Einsiedelei verurteilte sich in einer gewissen Beziehung derjenige, der solche Übungen machte. Denn diese Übungen bringen den Menschen in eine gewisse Sensibilität. Sie machen ihn überempfindlich gegenüber der robusten Außenwelt. Er muß sich vom Leben zurückziehen. In älteren Zeiten fanden gerade solche einsame Menschen Vertrauen bei ihren Mitmenschen. Man nahm, was sie zu sagen hatten, als Erkenntnisvorstellungen hin. Heute ist das unserer Kultur nicht mehr angemessen. Mit Recht fordert die heutige Menschheit, daß derjenige, zu dem sie als einem Erkennenden Vertrauen haben soll, mitten im Leben drinnenstehe, daß er es aufnehmen könne mit dem robusten Leben, mit menschlicher Arbeit und menschlichem Wirken, wie es die Zeitforderung gestaltet. Mit dem, der sich zurückziehen muß vom Leben, fühlen sich die heutigen Menschen eben nicht in derselben Weise verbunden wie die Menschen älterer Kulturepochen.
Wer das gründlich überdenkt, muß sich sagen: Heutige Erkenntniswege müssen anders sein — und wir werden von solchen anderen Wegen gleich nachher zu sprechen haben. Vorher möchte ich aber, wiederum nur zur Verständigung, nicht, weil ich ihn etwa anempfehlen möchte für einen Menschen der Gegenwart, noch einen Weg, der ebenfalls für ältere Zeiten ein angemessener war, den Weg der Askese, seinem Prinzip nach schildern.
Dieser Weg der Askese wurde dadurch gegangen, daß man Leibesvorgänge, Leibesanforderungen herablähmte, herabstimmte, so daß der menschliche Leib nicht in derselben robusten Weise wirkte, wie er im normalen Leben wirkt. Man lähmte die Leibesfunktionen auch dadurch herab, daß man den menschlichen äußeren physischen Organismus in schmerzhafte Zustände hineinbrachte. Alles das brachte diejenigen, die diesen asketischen Weg gingen, zu gewissen menschlichen Erlebnissen, die durchaus Erkenntniserlebnisse waren. Ich will gewiß nicht sagen, daß es für den gesunden menschlichen Organismus, durch den wir hereingeboren sind in das Erdenleben zwischen Geburt und Tod, richtig sei, ihn herabzustimmen, wenn es sich darum handelt, diesen Organismus in das gewöhnliche Leben wirksam hineinzustellen. Dieser gesunde Organismus ist für die äußere sinnliche Natur, die zwischen Geburt und Tod des Menschen doch das menschliche Leben trägt, durchaus das Angemessene. Dabei bleibt es dennoch richtig, daß die alten Asketen, die diese Organisation herabgestimmt hatten, dazu kamen, nun ihr Seelisches rein zu erleben und sich mit ihrem Seelischen drinnenstehend zu wissen in einer geistigen Welt.
Gerade dadurch ist nämlich unser physisch-sinnlicher Organismus für das Leben zwischen Geburt und Tod das Angemessene, daß er uns, wie eben die Erlebnisse der Asketen zeigen konnten, verbirgt, was geistige Welt ist. Und es war einfach ein Erlebnis der alten Asketen, daß man durch Herabstimmen der Leibesfunktionen in die geistigen Welten bewußt eintreten konnte. Das ist wiederum kein Weg für die Gegenwart. Derjenige, der in dieser Art seinen Organismus herabstimmt, der macht sich untauglich für das Wirken unter seinen Mitmenschen, der macht sich auch untauglich gegenüber sich selbst. Das heutige Leben fordert Menschen, die sich aus ihm nicht zurückziehen, die sich ihre Gesundheit erhalten oder, wenn sie geschwächt ist, sie sogar verstärken, nicht aber Menschen, die sich vom Leben zurückziehen. Die könnten kein Vertrauen gewinnen, einfach nach der Gesinnung unserer Gegenwart. Daher kann dieser Weg der Askese, der aber durchaus in älteren Zeiten zu Erkenntnissen geführt hat, nicht ein heutiger Weg sein.
Aber sowohl dasjenige, was der Jogaweg, wie dasjenige, was der asketische Weg an Erkenntnissen über die übersinnliche Welt geliefert hat, ist in uralten, ich möchte sagen, heiligen Traditionen erhalten, wird heute von der Menschheit hingenommen als etwas, was gewisse seelische Bedürfnisse befriedigt. Und man fragt nicht danach, wie das, was man so als Glaubensvorstellungen aufnimmt, dennoch auf einem wirklichen, wenn auch für unsere heutige Zeit nicht mehr angemessenen Erkenntnisweg gesucht worden ist.
Der heutige Erkenntnisweg muß ein durchaus anderer sein. Wir haben ja gesehen: der eine Weg, der Jogaweg, versuchte gewissermaßen auf dem Umweg durch das Atmen zu dem Denken zu kommen, um dieses Denken in einer anderen Weise zu erleben, als es im gewöhnlichen Leben wahrgenommen wird. Wir können aus dem schon angeführten Grunde diesen Umweg durch das Atmen nicht machen. Daher müssen wir versuchen, auf eine andere Weise zu einer Umgestaltung des Denkens zu kommen, um durch das umgestaltete Denken dann zu Erkenntnissen zu gelangen, die eine Art Fortsetzung der Naturerkenntnisse sind. Deshalb gehen wir heute, wenn wir uns richtig verstehen, davon aus, das Denken nicht durch den Umweg des Atmens zu bearbeiten, sondern es direkt zu bearbeiten, indem wir gewisse Übungen machen, durch die wir das Denken innerlich kraftvoller, energischer gestalten, als es im gewöhnlichen Bewußtsein ist.
Im gewöhnlichen Bewußtsein geben wir uns einem mehr passiven Denken hin, das sich an den Verlauf der äußeren Vorgänge hält. Wenn wir einen neueren übersinnlichen Erkenntnisweg gehen wollen, dann setzen wir gewisse leicht überschauliche Vorstellungen in den Mittelpunkt unseres Bewußtseins. Wir bleiben innerhalb des bloßen Gedankens. Ich weiß, daß manche Menschen dasjenige, was ich jetzt schildern werde, schon im späteren Jogaweg, zum Beispiel in dem des Patanjali, finden wollen. Aber so, wie das heute gemacht wird, ist es durchaus innerhalb orientalischer Geistesschulung noch nicht enthalten; deshalb nicht enthalten, weil selbst, wenn heute ein Mensch die Jogaübungen ausführte, sie anders wirkten - wegen der Veränderung, die der menschliche Organismus durchgemacht hat —, als sie bei den Menschen früherer Epochen gewirkt haben.
Wir wenden uns also heute direkt an das Denken und zwar dadurch, daß wir Meditation pflegen, daß wir uns konzentrieren auf gewisse Gedankeninhalte durch längere Zeiten. Wir machen seelisch etwas durch, was sich vergleichen läßt mit der Erkraftung eines Muskels. Wenn wir einen Muskel in fortdauernder Arbeit immer wieder und wiederum gebrauchen, ganz gleichgültig, welches Zweck und Ziel dieser Arbeit sind, muß er erkraften. Dasselbe können wir mit dem Denken ausführen. Statt daß wir uns mit diesem Denken immer nur hingeben dem Verlauf der äußeren Vorgänge, bringen wir mit starker Willensanstrengung von uns selbst gebildete oder von einem auf diesem Gebiet Kundigen uns gegebene, überschaubare Vorstellungen, in denen keine Erinnerungsreminiszenzen leben können, deren wir uns nicht bewußt sind, in den Mittelpunkt unseres Bewußtseins, schalten alles andere Bewußtsein aus, konzentrieren uns nur auf einen solchen Bewußtseinsinhalt. Ich möchte mit einem Goetheschen Faus-Wort sagen: Zwar ist es leicht — es sieht nämlich so aus —, doch ist das Leichte schwer! Denn das muß von dem einen wochenlang, von dem andern monatelang vollzogen werden. Wenn dann das Bewußtsein lernt, auf demselben Gedankeninhalt so zu ruhen und immer wieder zu ruhen, daß er einem völlig gleichgültig ist, und man alle innere Aufmerksamkeit und alles innere Erleben auf die Erkraftung, auf die seelische Energisierung des Gedankenlebens wendet, dann gelangen wir zuletzt zu dem entgegengesetzten Vorgang gegenüber dem, den der Jogi durchmachte. Wir reißen nämlich unser Denken von dem Atmungsprozeß los.
Es erscheint das heute noch dem Menschen als etwas Absurdes, als etwas Phantastisches. Allein, geradeso wie der Jogi gewissermaßen sein Denken nach dem Innern des Leibes getrieben hat, um es mit dem Rhythmus seines Leibesatems zu verbinden und so sein Selbst, seine innere Geistigkeit zu erleben, geradeso lösen wir das Denken los auch von dem Rest des Atmungsprozesses, der unbewußt in all unserem gewöhnlichen Denken lebt. - Die genaueren Übungen, in allen Einzelheiten, die ein streng exaktes System darstellen, finden Sie geschildert in meinem Buche «Wie erlangt man Erkenntnisse der höheren Welten?» oder in dem anderen, «Geheimwissenschaft», oder auch in «Von Seelenrätseln» und in anderen meiner Schriften. - Man gelangt allmählich auf diese Weise dazu, den Gedankengang nicht nur aus dem Atmungsprozeß herauszuziehen, sondern völlig frei von der Leiblichkeit zu machen. Jetzt sieht man erst ein, welch großen Dienst auch die sogenannte materialistische, besser gesagt mechanistische Weltanschauung der Menschheit geleistet hat. Sie hat uns aufmerksam gemacht, daß das gewöhnliche Denken auf dem Untergrunde leiblicher Vorgänge steht. Dadurch kann gerade die Anregung kommen, ein Denken zu suchen, das nicht mehr auf leiblichen Vorgängen ruht. Das kann aber nur gefunden werden, indem das gewöhnliche Denken erkraftet wird in der geschilderten Weise. Dadurch gelangen wir zu einem leibfreien Denken, zu einem Denken, das in bloß seelischen Vorgängen besteht. Ja, wir lernen auf diese Weise das, was in uns Bildnatur war, zwar zunächst nur als Bilder kennen, aber als Bilder, die selbständiges, von unserer Leiblichkeit unabhängiges Leben uns zeigen.
Das ist der erste Schritt zu einem Erkenntnisweg, wie er dem modernen Menschen heute angemessen ist. Dadurch aber gelangen wir zu einem Erlebnis, das dem gewöhnlichen Bewußtsein verborgen ist. Wie der indische Jogi sich in seinem Denken verbunden hat mit dem, was innerer Atmungsrhythmus war, und dadurch auch mit seinem geistigen Selbst, das in dem Atmungsrhythmus lebt, ebenso wie er also nach innen stieg, so gehen wir nach außen. Indem wir das logische Denken losreißen von dem Organismus, an den es eigentlich gebunden ist als logisches Denken, dringen wir mit diesem Denken in den äußeren Rhythmus der Welt ein, ja wir erfahren jetzt erst, daß es einen solchen äußeren Rhythmus gibt. Wie sich der Jogi den inneren Rhythmus seines Leibes zum Bewußtsein brachte, so kommt uns auf geistige Art ein äußerer Weltrhythmus zum Bewußtsein. Wenn ich mich bildlich ausdrücken darf: wir stehen im gewöhnlichen Bewußtsein so da, daß wir unsere Gedanken logisch zusammensetzen und uns damit des Denkens als eines Mittels zur Erkenntnis der äußeren sinnlichen Welt bedienen. Jetzt lassen wir das Denken einlaufen in eine Art musikalischen Elementes, das aber durchaus ein Erkenntniselement ist, wir gewahren einen Rhythmus, der auf dem Grund aller Dinge als ein geistiger Rhythmus vorhanden ist, wir dringen ein in die Welt, indem wir sie im Geiste beginnen wahrzunehmen. Unser Denken wird aus dem abstrakten toten Denken, aus dem bloßen Bilddenken ein in sich selbst belebtes Denken. Das ist der bedeutsame Übergang, der durchgemacht werden kann von dem abstrakten, bloß logischen Denken zu einem lebendigen Denken, von dem wir durchaus das Gefühl haben, daß es fähig ist, eine Realität zu bilden, wie unser Wachstumsprozeß als lebendige Realität von uns erkannt wird.
Mit diesem lebendigen Denken aber kann man nun tiefer in die Natur hineindringen, als man es durch das gewöhnliche Denken kann. Wie das? Ich möchte es an einem Beispiel veranschaulichen, das dem heutigen Leben entnommen ist, wenn auch an einem viel angefochtenen Beispiel. Wir richten unser abstraktes Gedankenleben heute zum Beispiel beobachtend und experimentierend auf ein höheres Tier. Wir machen uns durch dieses Denken innerlich bildhaft gegenwärtig, wie die Gestaltung der Organe dieses Tieres ist, das Knochensystem, Muskelsystem und so weiter, wie die Lebensprozesse ineinander überströmen. Wir machen uns ein Gedankenbild dieses Tieres. Dann gehen wir mit demselben Denken über zu dem Menschen, machen uns wiederum innerlich ein Gedankenbild von diesem Menschen, wir vergegenwärtigen uns wiederum die Gestaltung seines Knochensystems, seines Muskelsystems, des Ineinanderströmens seiner Lebensvorgänge und so weiter. Dann können wir äußerlich das, was wir an Gedankenbildern gewonnen haben in dem einen und andern Fall, miteinander vergleichen. Sind wir mehr darwinistisch geneigt, so lassen wir den Menschen in einem realsinnlichen Prozeß sich herausentwickeln aus tierischen Vorfahren; sind wir mehr spirituell-idealistisch geneigt, so stellen wir uns die Verwandtschaft in einer anderen Weise vor. Darauf wollen wir jetzt nicht eingehen. Wichtig aber ist, daß wir nicht imstande sind, mit unserem abstrakten, toten Denken, wenn wir uns das Bild gestaltet haben von dem Tier, aus dem inneren Gedankenleben zu dem menschlichen Bild herüberzukommen: wir müssen mit dem Gedankenleben an die äußere sinnliche Wirklichkeit des Menschen herandringen, müssen unsere Ideen, unsere Gedankenbilder an den Sinnesrealitäten gewinnen und können sie dann miteinander vergleichen. Wenn wir aber vorgedrungen sind zum lebendigen Denken, dann können wir auch ein Gedankenbild, aber ein lebendiges Gedankenbild, formen von dem Knochensystem, von dem Muskelsystem, von dem Ineinanderfließen der Lebensvorgänge im Tiere, und wir können, weil jetzt unser Gedanke ein lebendiger geworden ist, diesen Gedanken dann innerlich als ein lebendiges Gebilde verfolgen und kommen im Gedanken selbst herüber zum Bild des Menschen. Ich möchte sagen: Es wächst sich der Gedanke des Tieres zum Gedanken des Menschen aus. Wie man da vorgeht, kann ich nur an einem Beispiel andeuten.
Wenn wir eine Magnetnadel vor uns haben, so wissen wir, sie bleibt, wenn sie magnetisiert ist, nur in einer Lage in Ruhe, und zwar dann, wenn ihre Richtung zusammenfällt mit der Nord-Südrichtung des Magnetismus unserer Erde. Diese Richtung ist eine besonders ausgezeichnete; für alle anderen Richtungen verhält sich die Magnetnadel neutral. Alles das, was wir da an diesem Beispiel vor uns haben, wird für das lebendige Denken Erlebnis gegenüber dem Gesamtraum. Der Raum ist für das lebendige Denken nicht mehr das gleichgültige Nebeneinander, wie er es ist für das abstrakte, tote Denken. Der Raum wird innerlich differenziert, und wir lernen erkennen, was es heißt, daß beim Tiere die Rückgratlinie im wesentlichen horizontal geht. Wo das nicht der Fall ist, können wir gerade aus tieferer Gesetzmäßigkeit die Abnormität als besonders bedeutsam nachweisen; aber im wesentlichen liegt die Rückgratlinie des Tieres in der Horizontalen, man möchte sagen: parallel zur Erdoberfläche. Es ist nun nicht gleichgültig, ob die Rückenmarkslinie in dieser Raumrichtung drinnenliegt oder in der Vertikalrichtung, zu der sich der Mensch im Verlaufe seines Lebens aufrichtet. So lernen wir im lebendigen Denken erkennen, daß wir, wenn wir die Hauptlinie des Tieres aufrecht richten wollten, also in eine andere Weltraumrichtung bringen wollten, alle übrigen Organe umformen müßten. Der Gedanke wird lebendig einfach durch die Drehung, die um 90 Grad von der Horizontalzur Vertikalorientierung durchgemacht wird. Wir gelangen so, innerlich angeregt, herüber aus der Tiergestalt in die menschliche Gestalt.
Auf diese Weise dringen wir aber, indem wir zuerst untertauchen in den Rhythmus des Naturgeschehens und dadurch auf das der Natur zugrunde liegende Geistige kommen, weiter in das Innere des Naturgeschehens hinein. Wir gelangen dazu, in unseren lebendigen Gedanken etwas zu haben, womit wir untertauchen in Wachstum und Werden der Außenwelt. Wir gelangen wieder hinein in die Geheimnisse des Daseins, aus denen wir uns herausgezogen haben im Verlauf der Menschheitsentwickelung durch die Entfaltung des Ich-Bewußtseins, des Selbstgefühls.
Nun, meine sehr verehrten Anwesenden, kann jeder von Ihnen einen sehr gewichtigen Einwand machen. Man kann zum Beispiel sagen: Ja, ein solches Denken, das ja scheinbar lebendig war, haben gewisse Persönlichkeiten gehabt, aber die Gegenwart mit ihrer ernsten Forschergesinnung hat sich mit Recht abgewendet von solchem «lebendigen Denken», wie es zum Beispiel der Philosoph Schelling entfaltet hat oder der Naturphilosoph Oken. Auch ich gebe denjenigen völlig recht, die zunächst einen solchen Einwand machen, denn die Art und Weise, wie Oken und Schelling an äußeren Vorgängen und Wesenheiten gewonnene Bildideen innerlich lebendig machen und sie dann auf andere Naturtatsachen und Wesen anwenden, um so «im Sinne der Natur» sozusagen zu schauen, diese Art hat etwas sehr Phantastisches, etwas von dem, was sich entfernt von der Realität, was nicht Wirklichkeit in sich atmet. Solange man nicht auf dem Erkenntnisweg zu einem anderen Element übergeht mit diesem lebendigen Denken, als dieses selbst ist, so lange kommt man auch nicht durch das lebendige Denken zu einem Verbürgen der Wirklichkeit. Erst dann, wenn man zu den Gedankenübungen Willensübungen hinzumacht, kommt man dazu, in den lebendigen Gedanken ein Verbürgtsein geistiger Wirklichkeit zu haben.
Willensübungen können in der folgenden Weise charakterisiert werden. Seien wir einmal ganz ehrlich mit uns selbst. Im gewöhnlichen Leben müssen wir uns sagen, wenn wir zehn Jahre, zwanzig Jahre zurückdenken: Im eigentlichen Inhalt unseres Seelenlebens sind wir vielfach andere Menschen geworden; aber wir sind es geworden, indem wir uns als Kinder den vererbten Eigenschaften, der Umgebung, der Erziehung, im späteren Leben diesem Leben selbst mehr oder weniger passiv hingegeben haben. Derjenige, der zu einem Erkennen der geistigen Wirklichkeit gelangen will, muß das, was allerdings nicht etwa im vollen Sinne des Wortes, sondern mehr oder weniger passiv erlebt wird, in innerer Willenserziehung, Willenszucht, wenn ich mich des groben Ausdrucks bedienen darf, selber in die Hand nehmen. Sie finden die entsprechenden Übungen, die intime Seelenübungen sind, wiederum in den genannten Büchern geschildert. Ich möchte nur prinzipiell andeuten, worauf es ankommt.
Wie wir heute gewisse Gewohnheiten haben, die wir vor zehn Jahren vielleicht noch nicht hatten, weil sie erst das Leben uns aufgedrungen hat, so können wir auch mit festem innerem Sinn uns vornehmen: Du prägst dir diese oder jene Charaktereigenschaften ein. Am besten geschieht das Einprägen solcher Charaktereigenschaften, für deren Gestaltung man jahrelang an sich arbeiten muß, so, daß man oft und oft die Aufmerksamkeit hinlenken muß auf jene Willenserkraftung, Willenserstarkung, die verbunden ist mit einer solchen Selbstzucht. Wenn man in dieser Weise seine Willensentwickelung in die eigene Hand nimmt, so daß man in der Tat dasjenige, was sonst die Welt aus einem als Mensch macht, zum Teil selbst aus sich macht, dann nehmen die lebendigen Gedanken, in die man sich durch die Meditation und Konzentration hineingefunden hat, für unser Erleben etwas ganz Besonderes an. Sie werden nämlich immer mehr und mehr zu schmerzhaften Erlebnissen, zu inneren Leiderlebnissen des Seelischen. Und niemand kann im Grunde genommen zu höheren Erkenntnissen kommen, der nicht diese Leid- und Schmerzerlebnisse durchgemacht hat. Diese Leid- und Schmerzerlebnisse müssen durchgemacht und dann überwunden werden, so daß man sie sich gewissermaßen einverleibt und über sie hinauskommt, zu ihnen wiederum eine neutrale Stimmung gewinnt.
Was da im Menschen vorgeht, kann man sich so vergegenwärtigen: Nehmen Sie das menschliche Auge - was ich sage, könnte in allen Einzelheiten sehr wissenschaftlich ausgeführt werden; ich kann es aber nur allgemein andeuten —, nehmen Sie dieses Auge. Indem das Licht, indem Farben auf dasselbe wirken, gehen Veränderungen im physischen Innern dieses Auges vor sich. Wir würden, wenn wir nicht so robust wären — eine ältere Menschheit hat gewiß diese Veränderungen als Leid, als leisen Schmerz empfunden —, auch diese Veränderungen im Auge, im Ohr, wenn wir uns also nicht sozusagen neutral gegen sie verhielten durch unsere Organisation, als leisen Schmerz erleben müssen. Alle Sinneswahrnehmung baut sich im Grunde genommen auf Schmerz und Leid auf.
Indem wir auf diese Weise unser ganzes Seelenleben mit den lebendigen Gedanken schmerzhaft, leidvoll durchdringen, durchdtingen wir den Leib - nicht in der selben Weise wie der Asket — mit Schmerz und Leid; wir lassen ihn gesund, lassen ihn den Anforderungen des gewöhnlichen Lebens gemäß entwickelt, aber wir erleben innerlich-intim Schmerz und Leid in der Seele. Derjenige - das mag vergleichsweise herangezogen werden —, der es ein wenig zu höherer Erkenntnis gebracht hat, der wird Ihnen immer sagen: Das, was mir das Lebensschicksal an Lust und Freude gebracht hat, ich nehme es dankbar von meinem Schicksal hin; meine Erkenntnisse aber verdanke ich dem, was ich gelitten habe, meinen Schmerzen, meinem Leid.
So bereitet das Leben den Erkenntnissuchenden schon in einer gewissen Weise darauf vor, daß er einen Teil seines wahren höheren Erkenntnisweges durch Überwindung von Leiden und Schmerzen durchmachen muß. Denn überwinden wir dieses Leid, diesen Schmerz, dann machen wir unser ganzes Seelenwesen zu einem, wenn ich mich des Ausdrucks vergleichsweise bedienen darf, «Sinnesorgan», eigentlich müssen wir sagen Geistorgan, Seelenorgan. Und jetzt lernen wir so hineinschauen in die geistige Welt, wie wir durch unsere gewöhnlichen Sinne hineinschauen, hineinhören in die physische Welt. Von erkenntnistheoretischen Erwägungen brauche ich heute nicht zu sprechen. Ich kenne natürlich den Einwand, daß auch die äußere Erkenntnisweise erst untersucht werden muß; allein das geht uns heute nichts an. Ich will nur sagen, daß wir in demselben Sinn, in dem wir im gewöhnlichen Leben die äußere physische Welt durch unsere Sinneswahrnehmungen verbürgt finden, nach dem überwundenen Seelenleid durch unser Seelen-, durch unser Geistorgan, das wir als ganzer seelischer Mensch geworden sind, die geistige Welt verbürgt finden.
Mit diesem Schauen, das ich auch - im Gegensatz zu allen alten nebulosen hellseherischen Künsten, die der Vergangenheit angehören — das moderne exakte Hellsehen nennen möchte, können wir auch eindringen in das, was die menschliche ewige Wesenheit ist. Wir können in einer exakten Weise eindringen in die Bedeutung der menschlichen Unsterblichkeit. Doch das muß dem morgigen Vortrag vorbehalten bleiben, wo ich über die besondere Beziehung dieser Weltanschauung zu den Seelenfragen des Menschen werde zu sprechen haben. Heute wollte ich zeigen, wie der Mensch, im Gegensatz zu älteren Erkenntniswegen, zu einem modernen übersinnlichen Erkenntnisweg gelangen kann. Der Jogi suchte zum Selbst in die menschliche Wesenheit hineinzudringen; wir suchen zum Rhythmus der Welt hinauszudringen. Der alte Asket stimmte den Leib herab, damit gewissermaßen das seelisch-geistige Erleben herausgepreßt wurde und für sich da sein konnte; der moderne Erkenntnisweg ist nicht der Askese geneigt, sieht ab von allen Kasteiungskünsten, wendet sich intim an das Seelenleben selber. Beide modernen Wege also lassen den Menschen voll im Leben drinnenstehen. Der alte asketische und der alte Jogaweg zogen aber den Menschen aus dem Leben heraus.
So versuchte ich, Ihnen heute einen Weg zu schildern, der gemacht werden kann dadurch, daß man in der Seele schlummernde Erkenntniskräfte auf mehr geistigseelische Erkenntnisart entwickelt, als sie einstmals entwickelt worden sind.
Dadurch aber gelangt man auch - das will ich zum Schluß noch andeuten — tiefer in das Wesen der Natur hinein. Die Weltanschauung, von der ich hier spreche, steht in keinerlei Opposition zu der Naturwissenschaft der Gegenwart. Im Gegenteil, sie nimmt gerade das, was echte Forschergesinnung ist innerhalb dieser naturwissenschaftlichen Forschung, heraus und bildet es durch ihre Übungen als eigene menschliche Fähigkeit aus. Die heutige Naturwissenschaft sucht Exaktheit und fühlt sich besonders befriedigt, wenn sie diese suchen kann durch die Anwendung der Mathematik auf die Naturvorgänge. Warum ist das der Fall? Das ist aus dem Grunde der Fall, weil die Wahrnehmungen, die uns die äußere Natur durch die Sinne für die Beobachtung und das Experiment gibt, schlechterdings außer uns sind. Wir durchdringen sie mit etwas, was wir ganz allein in unserem innersten Menschenwesen ausbilden, wir durchdringen sie mit den mathematischen Erkenntnissen. Und das Kantsche Wort wird oftmals ausgesprochen, aber noch viel öfter, ich möchte sagen, ausgeübt von naturwissenschaftlich Denkenden: In einer jeden wirklichen Erkenntnis ist nur so viel Wissenschaft, als Mathematik drinnen ist. Einseitig ist das, wenn man die gewöhnliche Mathematik nimmt. Aber indem man diese auf die Naturerscheinungen anwendet, auf die leblosen Naturerscheinungen, sogar heute schon ein gewisses Ideal darinnen sieht, zum Beispiel die Chromosomen in den Keimanlagen zählen zu können, zeigt man, wie man sich befriedigt fühlt, wenn man das, was sonst als Äußeres neben oder vor uns steht, mit Mathematik durchsetzen kann. Warum? Weil Mathematik im Innern in unmittelbarer Gewißheit erlebt wird, was wir uns zwar durch Zeichnungen oft versinnbildlichen müssen; allein die Zeichnungen sind nicht wesentlich für die Gewißheit, für die Wahrheit. Das Mathematische wird innerlich angeschaut und gefunden, und das, was wir intim innerlich finden, verbinden wir mit dem äußerlich Angeschauten. Dadurch fühlen wir uns befriedigt.
Wer in seiner Ganzheit diesen Erkenntnisvorgang durchschaut, muß sich sagen: Alles das kann den Menschen allein erkenntnismäßig befriedigen, kann im Menschen allein zu einer Wissenschaft führen, was auf etwas beruht, was er wirklich durch die Kräfte seines Inneren erleben, erschauen kann. Mit der Mathematik dringt man ein in die Tatsachen und in die Wesensstrukturen der leblosen Welt, höchstens, ich möchte sagen, primitiv etwas herauf in die belebte Welt. Man braucht aber eine innerliche Anschauung, so exakt, wie die mathematische Anschauung ist, wenn man in die höheren Wirkungsweisen der Außenwelt eindringen will. Die Haeckelsche Schule selber hat in einem ihrer hervorragendsten Vertreter ausdrücklich zugestanden, daß man zu einer ganz anderen Forschungs- und Betrachtungsweise vordringen müsse, wenn man aus dem Anorganischen in das Organische der Natur heraufwill. Für das Anorganische hat man die Mathematik, die Geometrie; für das Organische, für das Lebendige hat man zunächst noch nichts, was innerlich so gestaltet wird wie etwa ein Dreieck, wie ein Kreis, wie eine Ellipse. Durch lebendiges Denken gelangt man dazu: nicht mit gewöhnlicher Zahlen- und Figurenmathematik, sondern mit einer höheren Mathesis, mit einer Anschauung, die qualitativ ist, die gestaltend wirkt, die — wenn ich auch dadurch für viele etwas Horribles aussprechen muß, so muß ich es doch sagen —ins Künstlerische heraufgreift.
Indem wir mit einer solchen Mathematik eindringen in die Welten, in die wir sonst nicht eindringen können, erweitern wir naturwissenschaftliche Gesinnung ins biologische Gebiet herauf. Und man kann sich überzeugt halten, daß einstmals die Epoche kommen wird, wo man sagen wird: ältere Zeiten haben mit Recht betont, aus der unorganischen Natur ist soviel Wissenschaft zu gewinnen, als man ihr mit der Mathematik im weitesten Sinne beikommen kann, insofern die Mathematik eine quantitative ist; aus den Lebensvorgängen kann soviel Wissenschaft gewonnen werden, als man fähig ist, in sie einzudringen mit einer innerlich lebendigen Gedankengestaltung, mit einem exakten Hellsehen.
Man glaubt gar nicht, wie nahe in Wirklichkeit diese moderne Art des Hellsehens gerade dem mathematischen Anschauen steht. Und man wird einstmals, wenn man einsehen wird, wie aus dem Geiste moderner Naturerkenntnis hier Geist-Erkenntnis gewonnen werden soll, gerade aus diesem Gebiet moderner Naturerkenntnis heraus die hier gemeinte Geisteswissenschaft gerechtfertigt finden. Denn sie will nicht in irgendeine Opposition treten zu den bedeutsamen, großartigen Ergebnissen der Naturwissenschaft. Sie möchte etwas anderes versuchen: Geradeso wie wir, wenn wir einen Menschen vor uns stehen haben, mit den äußeren Sinnen seine Sinnesgestalt anschauen können, seine Gebärden, sein Mienenspiel, den eigentümlichen Blick seiner Augen, wie wir aber nur ein Äußeres des Menschen erkennen, wenn wir nicht durch all das hindurchschauen auf ein Seelisches in ihm, wodurch wir erst den ganzen Menschen vor uns stehen haben, geradeso schauen wir, ohne Geisteswege zu wandeln, mit einer Naturwissenschaft nur die äußere Physiognomie der Welt, nur, ich möchte sagen, die Gebärden der Welt, die Mimik der Welt. Erst dann erkennen wir etwas von dem, womit wir selber verwandt sind als dem Ewigen dieser Welt, wenn wir über die äußere Physiognomie, die uns die Naturerscheinungen geben, über diese Mimik und Gebärden, hineindringen in das Seelische der Welt.
Das möchte jene geisteswissenschaftliche Anschauung, deren Methoden ich Ihnen zunächst einleitend heute schildern wollte. Sie möchte nicht sein eine Gegnerin der triumphalen modernen Naturwissenschaft, sie möchte diese in ihrer Bedeutung und Wesenheit voll hinnehmen, wie man den äußeren Menschen voll hinnimmt. Sie möchte aber so, wie man, durch den äußeren Menschen durchdringend, auf das Seelische schaut, durch die Naturgesetze, nicht mit Dilettantismus und Laientum, sondern mit ernsthafter Gesinnung, durch die Physiognomie der Naturgesetze hindurchdringen zu dem, was als Geistiges, als Seelisches der Welt zugrunde liegt. Und so möchte diese geisteswissenschaftliche Anschauung nicht der Naturwissenschaft irgendwelche Gegnerschaft schaffen, sondern sie möchte sein die Seele, der Geist dieser Naturwissenschaft.
Anthroposophy and Natural Science
Ladies and gentlemen! This congress has been announced to you as a worldview congress, and you will probably accept it as such based on the announcement. But anyone who wants to talk about worldview issues today cannot ignore natural science, especially not the consequences for worldviews that natural science has brought about. In a certain sense, natural science has, for centuries, since the 15th or 16th century, become more and more the ruler of human thinking within the cultural world.
Now, there would be much to say if one wanted to point out the great triumphs of scientific knowledge and the transformation of our entire lives through the achievements of scientific research. But that would mean repeating what is already known to everyone present. From a worldview perspective, there is something else about natural science that is of great interest, namely the role it has long played as the educator of all civilized humanity. And when we talk about this educational role in the development of modern humanity, we actually come up with, I would say, two paradoxes. Allow me to start with these paradoxes today.
The first thing that has taken place, more in relation to the human inner life, from the point of view of scientific research, is a transformation of human thought life as such. Anyone who is able to take an unbiased look at earlier worldviews will have to admit that within these worldviews, based on the conditions of human development in earlier epochs, thinking naturally added something from the realm of the truly human to what was revealed by experimentation and observation of nature. One need only recall the branches of knowledge that have now been superseded, such as astrology and alchemy, to realize how, in such types of knowledge appropriate to former cultural epochs, nature was approached in such a way that human thinking naturally added something of its own to what it wanted to express, or what was revealed to it through the things of the world.
This came to an end with the scientific mindset of modern times. Today, if I may put it this way, we are in a sense obliged to accept the perceptions that observation and experiment give us at face value and to process them into what are known as the laws of nature. We do, of course, use our thinking in the processing of experiments and observations, but we use thinking only as a means of compiling phenomena so that they reveal their inner connections and their laws to us through their own existence. And we make it our task not to add anything from our thinking to what we can observe in the outside world. We see this as the ideal scientific attitude, and rightly so.
What has human thinking become under such influences? It has actually become the servant, the mere means of research. Thought as such has, in a sense, nothing more to say when it comes to investigating the laws of phenomena in the world.
But this presents a paradox that I would like to point out. As a result, thought has been eliminated, as it were, as a human experience from the relationship that humans enter into with the world in relation to realities. Thought has become a formal aid to understanding realities. Within natural science, it is no longer self-revealing.
This has extraordinary significance for the inner life of human beings. It means that we must regard thinking as something that must wisely and modestly hold back when it comes to observing the outside world, something that is, in a sense, a separate current within the life of the soul.
And if we then ask ourselves: How can natural science itself approach this thinking? – then we come to the paradox, then we come to say to ourselves: If thinking must withdraw into the processing of natural processes, if it may only intervene formally, enlightening, compiling, ordering, then it is not within the natural processes themselves, then it becomes paradoxical when we raise the question, which is justified from a scientific point of view: How can we understand thinking as a revelation of the human organism from the perspective of scientific laws? And today, if we stand impartially and seriously within scientific life, we can say nothing else than this: to the same extent that thinking has had to withdraw from natural processes, the observation of natural processes can strive again and again to reach thinking, but it cannot bring this striving to any satisfaction. Thinking is, in a sense, just as it is methodically excluded, so too is it excluded from natural processes in reality, condemned to be mere image and not reality.
I do not believe that many people today are fully aware of the significance of this paradox. But in the subconscious depths of the soul, countless people today already have a sense that we are walking through the world with something that we cannot yet admit is real, something that actually makes us human—for only as thinking beings can we consider ourselves human; it is in thinking that we give our human dignity—something that we carry through the world as an image of existence. which we carry through the world as an image. We feel, in a sense, that we are in a non-reality when we point to the noblest aspect of human nature.
This is something that weighs heavily on the soul of anyone who has seriously engaged with the scientific research methods of both inorganic natural science and biology and who, in terms of their worldview, would like to draw conclusions from these research methods rather than from the individual results.
One might say: Here lies something that can lead to bitter doubts in the human soul. Doubts arise first in the mind, but they flow down into the human heart. And it is precisely those who, in a deeper, unbiased sense, understand human nature — in the sense that I will explain in detail in the next lectures — knows how the state of mind, especially when certain currents of this state of mind become permanent, affects even the physical constitution of the human being, and how the mood of life springs up again from this physical constitution or physical disposition. Whether or not we have to send doubt down through our mind depends on whether we go through life courageously, so that we know how to stand up for ourselves and can also have a healing effect on our fellow human beings, or whether we go through life feeling out of sorts, depressed, incapable of helping ourselves or our fellow human beings. I am not saying – and my next lectures will show that I do not need to say this – that what I have just said must necessarily lead to doubt; but it easily leads to doubt if natural science does not continue in the directions I am about to describe.
The magnificent achievements of natural science in relation to the external world place extraordinary demands on the human soul if, as the worldview represented here absolutely must, one takes a positive stance toward natural science — demands: To be able to counter doubt with something stronger and more powerful than is needed to counter it if these demands do not come from the established findings of natural science.
If, on the one hand, natural science leads to something negative for the soul, albeit only apparently, then on the other hand it has brought us something extraordinarily positive — and with this I must express my second paradox; and with this positive aspect I am again expressing a paradox that struck me particularly strongly when I was working on my “Philosophy of Freedom” more than twenty years ago, when I was trying to get to the essence of human freedom while maintaining a truly scientific worldview.
Yes, natural science, with its laws, actually easily comes to a denial of human freedom in theory. But this is where natural science, in theory, actually arrives at the opposite of what it develops in practice. When we delve ever more seriously into the pictorial nature of thinking, when we come to experience this pictorial nature of thinking, of which I have spoken, inwardly and spiritually, precisely from the pursuit of a scientific way of thinking, not scientific theories, then we say to ourselves: If thinking in us is only image, if it is not a reality, then it does not have a compelling effect like a force of nature. I can then compare this thinking, and the comparison is more than just that, for example, a sum of mirror images. Images that I stand before cannot compel me. Existing forces can compel me, whether they are thought to exist outside me or within me; images cannot compel me. So if I am able to grasp my moral impulses within that pure thinking which natural science cultivates in us through its methods, I can develop moral impulses within myself in such a way that I live their development in the same thinking that natural science educates me in, then I have in these moral impulses grasped in pure thinking no coercive forces, but forces and images according to which I can only determine myself. That is to say, even if natural science, one might say, even with a certain right, must deny freedom from its foundations, it educates the people of our cultural world to freedom by educating them to think in images.
These are, I would say, the two poles, one in relation to the life of thought, the other in relation to the life of the will, before which the human soul is placed by the scientific views of the present. But in doing so, we are also pointing out how the scientific worldview points beyond itself. It must, after all, take some position on human thinking. But it excludes this human thinking. It thus points to a method of research that can fully justify itself before it, before this natural science, and yet can lead to a comprehensible experience of thinking. On the other hand, it points out that the scientific view, because it cannot itself, in essence, theoretically approach freedom, must be continued into another realm in order to reach the sphere of freedom.
What I present here as a necessity arising from natural science itself, the continuation of this natural science into a realm that at least today's recognized natural science cannot reach, is attempted by the worldview that is to be represented here. Today, since it is in the beginning of its development, it can of course only do so in a certain imperfect way. But the attempt must be made, for the soul experiences in relation to thinking and freedom that I have described are spreading to more and more souls of contemporary cultural humanity. Today, we can no longer believe that only those who are somehow involved in science have to face such demands, questions, and puzzles as I have characterized. Even in circles, one might say, as far as the remotest villages, where no scientific results of any significance penetrate, education in the kind of thinking demanded by science is penetrating and then, even if still very, very unconsciously today, brings uncertainty with regard to human freedom. Therefore, these things are not merely scientific questions, but rather general questions of humanity.
The question is therefore: Can one, on the basis of scientific education, penetrate further along the path of knowledge than contemporary science can?
Ladies and gentlemen! This can be attempted; it can be attempted in such a way that the paths can be justified to the most rigorous natural scientist; it can be sought in ways that are based on a scientific mindset and scientific conscientiousness. I would like to speak about such paths today, as an introduction to my lectures. But this path to knowledge, although already unconsciously longed for by many souls today, is not even easy to express in words. Therefore, in order that we may understand each other this evening, I would like to draw on the description of older paths to knowledge that humanity has taken in order to arrive at insights that lie beyond the realm of what natural science deals with today.
It can be said that much of what is today considered to be not an object of knowledge but only an object of belief, which has traditionally arisen in human development, which lives on today as a venerable tradition and is accepted as such as a matter of faith, is, when viewed from a truly unbiased historical perspective, yet stems from older methods of knowledge that are no longer appropriate to our present-day culture. Everything that is believed today to remain a matter of faith, that is accepted as a time-honored tradition, leads the psychological observer of history back to ancient epochs of humanity. And there it becomes apparent that such beliefs of today were sought by people of that time as knowledge appropriate to their time through the training of their own souls, through the development of hidden soul forces, and thus formed real knowledge. Today, we are not aware of how much has been found that has emerged historically in the development of humanity; but it has been found through older paths of knowledge.
When I describe such paths of knowledge, I do so with the help of methods that I will describe later, so that in many cases those who describe the older epochs of humanity only from external historical documents, not from spiritual ones, may take offense at my description. However, those who impartially examine the external historical documents and then compare them with what I have to say today from a certain perspective will nevertheless find no real contradiction. And secondly, I would like to emphasize that I am not describing these older paths of knowledge because I want to recommend them to anyone today as a means of attaining higher knowledge. They are appropriate for older epochs and can even be harmful to people today if they apply them to themselves out of error. So, just so that we can understand each other about today's methods of knowledge, I am picking out two older paths, describing them, and using them to illustrate the paths that people today must take if they want to go beyond the mere sphere of scientific knowledge as it is understood today.
First, we have one path—as I said, I could pick out others from the wealth of older paths of knowledge, but I will pick out the following two—first, we have a path that, in its pure form, was followed by individuals in ancient times in the Orient: the path of yoga.
The path of yoga has gone through many phases, and precisely what I will emphasize most today has entered later epochs in a thoroughly decadent, damaged state, so that when historians look at later epochs, they will have to describe what I am about to describe as something that is actually harmful to human beings. Human nature alone has undergone the most diverse developments in successive epochs. In ancient times, something quite different was appropriate to human nature than in later times. What may have been a genuine method of knowledge in earlier times was perhaps later used only to indulge in the thrill of power, the thrill of power of the individual over his fellow human beings. This was not the case in the earliest times, for which I would like to characterize the practice of yoga.
What was the path of yoga that was followed in ancient Oriental times by individuals who, to use today's terminology, were scholars in higher realms? Well, among other things, it consisted of a special kind of breathing exercises. I am picking out the breathing exercises from a wealth of exercises that the yoga student or scholar, the yogi, had to undertake. When we pay attention to our breathing today, we have to say that it is a process that takes place largely unconsciously in a healthy human organism. One must already have something pathological within oneself in order to feel one's breathing. One might say that the more natural the breathing process is in our lives, the more correct it is for ordinary consciousness and ordinary life. But the yogi, during the time of his practice, in which he wanted to develop powers of knowledge that only lie dormant in ordinary consciousness, transformed the breathing process. Why did he do this? He transformed it in such a way that he used a different length of time for inhaling, holding his breath, and exhaling than one does in ordinary, natural breathing. He did this in order to bring the breathing process into consciousness. The ordinary breathing rhythm is not conscious. The transformed breathing rhythm, which is determined by human will in its time lengths, proceeds completely consciously. But what happens as a result? Well, one need only express oneself physiologically to understand what the yogi achieved by bringing his breathing process into consciousness: when we inhale, the breath enters our organism, but it also enters the human brain through the spinal canal. There, the rhythm of the respiratory flow unites with the processes that are the material carriers of thought life, with the nerve-sense processes. When we live in ordinary thinking, we never actually have mere nerve-sense processes, but always nerve-sense processes that are permeated by our breathing rhythm. A connection, an interaction, a harmonization of the nerve-sense processes and the breathing rhythm processes always takes place when we let our thought life run its course. By consciously sending his altered breathing rhythm into the nerve-sense process, the yogi also connected the breathing rhythm with the thinking rhythm, with the logical rhythm, or rather, with the logical composition and analysis of thoughts. In this way, he changed his entire thought life. In what direction did he change it? Well, precisely because he became fully conscious of his breathing life, thoughts now flowed through his organism in the same way as the breath itself. One might say that the yogi let his thoughts run on the breath currents, and he experienced himself in the inner rhythm of his human being, filled with thoughts living on the currents of breathing. This set the yoga scholar apart from the rest of his fellow human beings, and he was able to proclaim to them insights that they themselves could not have.
To understand what was actually happening, one must take a closer look at the special way in which older insights worked in the ordinary popular consciousness of the masses.
Today, we attach great importance to seeing pure colors when we look out into the outside world, hearing pure sounds when we hear sounds, and accepting our other perceptions with a certain purity, that is, with the purity that the mere sensory process can give us. This was not the case for the consciousness of people in older cultures. It is not that, as certain scholars often mistakenly believe, people in earlier times imagined all kinds of things into nature! The imagination was not so extraordinarily effective. But it was quite natural for these older civilized people, due to the whole constitution of the human being at that time, not only to see pure color phenomena, pure sound phenomena, pure other sensory qualities, but also to perceive a spiritual-soul aspect in everything at the same time. Thus, people saw spiritual and soul aspects in the sun and moon, in the stars, in wind and weather, in springs and rivers, in the beings of the individual natural kingdoms, just as we today see pure colors and hear pure sounds, which we then seek to recognize in their context with the help of our purified thinking. But for the older humanity, there was something else: namely, that at that time there was not such a strong, internally established self-consciousness as we have today. By perceiving spiritual and soul aspects in all things in the environment, human beings perceived themselves as a part of this whole environment. They did not separate themselves from this environment as an independent self. If I wanted to speak comparatively, I could say: If my hand had consciousness, how would it think about itself? It would say to itself that it was not an independent being, but only had meaning in relation to my organism. In this way, the older human being could not see himself as an independent being, but as a member of the whole of nature, which he had to view as spiritual and soulful.
The yogi stood out from this view, which conditioned the dependence of the human ego. By linking his thinking, as it were, with the breathing process that fills the whole inner being of the human being, he came to an understanding of the human self, the human ego. What for us today, as adults, is self-evident due to our inherited characteristics and our upbringing, namely that we feel ourselves to be a self, an I, had to be achieved in those ancient times by means of exercises. As a result, however, the experience of this self, this I, was quite different from what we have today. It is quite different whether one has to accept something as a natural experience — and for us the sense of self, the sense of ego, is a natural experience — or whether one first has to achieve it in such ways, through paths of knowledge, as was the case in an older Oriental culture. People lived with what was powerful and pulsating and weaving in the universe, whereas today, even if one experiences the same thing on a certain level, one no longer experiences anything of the universe. Therefore, through his exercises, human selfhood, human ego, the human soul revealed itself to the yogi. And we can say: as that which could be found on this path of knowledge passed into the general cultural consciousness as revelations, it became the content of the most important spiritual products of earlier times.
Once again, I would like to highlight one thing from among many. We have the wonderful song Bhagavad Gita, shining down on us from the ancient Orient. In this Gita, in a wonderful way, from the deepest human lyricism, we have described the experiences of the human self: how this self, when the human being recognizes it through experience, leads him to empathy with the universe, revealing to him his true humanity and his connection with a superworld, with a spiritual, with a supersensible world. In ever new and wonderful tones, the Gita describes this experience of one's own self in its devotion to the universe. For those who, as I said, know how to immerse themselves in these older times with an unbiased view of history, it is clear that the wonderful sounds of the Gita emerged from what could be experienced through such exercises in knowledge as I have described.
Such a path of knowledge was appropriate for an older Oriental cultural epoch. At that time, it was the general opinion of humanity that one had to retreat into a certain solitude and hermitage if one wanted to have contact with supersensible worlds. And in a certain sense, those who practiced such exercises condemned themselves to solitude and hermitage. For these exercises bring people to a certain sensitivity. They make them hypersensitive to the robust outside world. They must withdraw from life. In earlier times, it was precisely such lonely people who found trust among their fellow human beings. What they had to say was accepted as insights. Today, this is no longer appropriate for our culture. Today's humanity rightly demands that those whom they are to trust as knowledgeable individuals should be at the center of life, that they should be able to cope with robust life, with human work and human activity, as the demands of the times dictate. People today do not feel the same connection to those who have to withdraw from life as people did in earlier cultural epochs.
Anyone who thinks this through thoroughly must say to themselves: today's paths to knowledge must be different — and we will talk about such different paths immediately afterwards. But first, again only for the sake of understanding, not because I want to recommend it for people of the present, I would like to describe another path that was also appropriate for earlier times, the path of asceticism, according to its principle.
This path of asceticism was followed by paralyzing and suppressing bodily processes and bodily demands, so that the human body did not function in the same robust way as it does in normal life. Bodily functions were also paralyzed by subjecting the human external physical organism to painful conditions. All this led those who followed this ascetic path to certain human experiences that were indeed experiences of knowledge. I certainly do not mean to say that it is right to suppress the healthy human organism through which we are born into earthly life between birth and death when it comes to effectively integrating this organism into ordinary life. This healthy organism is entirely appropriate for the outer sensory nature that carries human life between birth and death. Nevertheless, it remains true that the ancient ascetics who had lowered this organization came to experience their soul life purely and to know themselves as standing within their soul life in a spiritual world.
It is precisely because our physical-sensory organism conceals from us what the spiritual world is, as the experiences of the ascetics have shown, that it is appropriate for life between birth and death. And it was simply an experience of the ancient ascetics that by lowering the bodily functions, one could consciously enter the spiritual worlds. This, however, is not a path for the present day. Those who lower their organism in this way make themselves unfit for working among their fellow human beings, and they also make themselves unfit for themselves. Today's life demands people who do not withdraw from it, who maintain their health or, if it is weakened, even strengthen it, but not people who withdraw from life. They could not gain trust, simply according to the mindset of our present time. Therefore, this path of asceticism, which certainly led to insights in earlier times, cannot be a path for today.
But both what the path of yoga and what the path of asceticism have provided in terms of insights into the supersensible world have been preserved in ancient, I would say sacred, traditions and are accepted by humanity today as something that satisfies certain spiritual needs. And people do not ask how what they accept as beliefs has nevertheless been sought on a real path of knowledge, even if it is no longer appropriate for our time.
Today's path to knowledge must be a completely different one. We have seen that one path, the path of yoga, attempted to arrive at thinking by way of a detour through breathing, in order to experience this thinking in a different way than it is perceived in ordinary life. For the reason already mentioned, we cannot take this detour through breathing. Therefore, we must try to transform our thinking in another way in order to arrive at insights that are a kind of continuation of insights into nature. Therefore, if we understand each other correctly, we assume today that we should not work on thinking through the detour of breathing, but rather work on it directly by doing certain exercises that make our thinking more powerful and energetic internally than it is in ordinary consciousness.
In ordinary consciousness, we indulge in a more passive form of thinking that follows the course of external events. If we want to follow a newer, supersensible path to knowledge, we place certain easily comprehensible ideas at the center of our consciousness. We remain within the realm of mere thought. I know that some people want to find what I am about to describe in the later path of yoga, for example in that of Patanjali. But as it is practiced today, it is not yet included in Eastern spiritual training; because even if a person were to perform the yoga exercises today, they would have a different effect than they did on people in earlier epochs, due to the changes that the human organism has undergone.
So today we turn directly to thinking, namely by practicing meditation, by concentrating on certain thoughts for long periods of time. We go through something mentally that can be compared to strengthening a muscle. If we use a muscle repeatedly in continuous work, regardless of the purpose and goal of this work, it must become stronger. We can do the same with thinking. Instead of always indulging in the course of external events with this thinking, we bring to the center of our consciousness, with a strong effort of will, manageable ideas formed by ourselves or given to us by someone knowledgeable in this field, in which no reminiscences of memories can live that we are not aware of, switching off all other consciousness, and concentrate only on such content of consciousness. I would like to say, in Goethe's words: It may seem easy, but the easy is difficult! For this must be done by some for weeks, by others for months. When consciousness learns to rest on the same thought content and to rest on it again and again, so that it becomes completely indifferent to us, and we turn all our inner attention and all our inner experience to the strengthening, to the spiritual energizing of our thought life, then we finally arrive at the opposite process to that which the yogi went through. Namely, we tear our thinking away from the breathing process.
Today, this still seems absurd to people, something fantastical. However, just as the yogi has, in a sense, driven his thinking into the inner part of his body in order to connect it with the rhythm of his bodily breath and thus experience his self, his inner spirituality, we also detach our thinking from the rest of the breathing process, which lives unconsciously in all our ordinary thinking. The more precise exercises, in all their details, which constitute a strictly exact system, are described in my book “How to Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds” or in the other, “Occult Science,” or also in “The Riddle of the Soul” and in other of my writings. - In this way, one gradually arrives at the point of not only withdrawing the thought process from the breathing process, but also making it completely free from physicality. Only now can one see what a great service the so-called materialistic, or rather mechanistic, worldview has rendered to humanity. It has made us aware that ordinary thinking is based on physical processes. This can stimulate us to seek a way of thinking that is no longer based on physical processes. However, this can only be found by strengthening ordinary thinking in the manner described. In this way, we arrive at a way of thinking that is free from the physical, a way of thinking that consists solely of soul processes. In this way, we learn to recognize what was previously only images within us, but as images that show us an independent life, independent of our physicality.
This is the first step on a path to knowledge that is appropriate for modern human beings today. In this way, however, we arrive at an experience that is hidden from ordinary consciousness. Just as the Indian yogi connected himself in his thinking with what was his inner breathing rhythm, and thereby also with his spiritual self, which lives in the breathing rhythm, just as he ascended inwardly, so we go outward. By detaching logical thinking from the organism to which it is actually bound as logical thinking, we penetrate with this thinking into the outer rhythm of the world; indeed, we now experience for the first time that such an outer rhythm exists. Just as the yogi brought the inner rhythm of his body to consciousness, so we become aware of an outer world rhythm in a spiritual way. If I may express myself figuratively: in ordinary consciousness, we stand there, putting our thoughts together logically and thus using thinking as a means of knowing the outer sensory world. Now we allow thinking to flow into a kind of musical element, which is, however, definitely an element of knowledge; we perceive a rhythm that is present at the basis of all things as a spiritual rhythm; we penetrate the world by beginning to perceive it in the spirit. Our thinking is transformed from abstract, dead thinking, from mere image thinking, into thinking that is alive in itself. This is the significant transition that can be made from abstract, merely logical thinking to living thinking, which we feel is capable of forming a reality, just as we recognize our growth process as a living reality.
With this living thinking, however, we can now penetrate deeper into nature than we can with ordinary thinking. How so? I would like to illustrate this with an example taken from today's life, albeit a much-contested example. Today, for example, we direct our abstract thinking life toward observing and experimenting with a higher animal. Through this thinking, we form a vivid inner picture of the structure of this animal's organs, its skeletal system, muscular system, and so on, and how the life processes flow into one another. We form a mental image of this animal. Then we apply the same thinking to human beings, again forming a mental image of them, again visualizing the structure of their bone system, their muscle system, the interflow of their life processes, and so on. Then we can compare externally what we have gained in terms of mental images in both cases. If we are more Darwinian in our thinking, we allow humans to evolve from animal ancestors in a real sensory process; if we are more spiritually idealistic, we imagine the relationship in a different way. We will not go into that now. What is important, however, is that we are unable, with our abstract, dead thinking, once we have formed the image of the animal, to move from our inner thought life to the human image: we must approach the outer sensory reality of the human being with our thought life, we must gain our ideas, our mental images, from sensory realities, and then we can compare them with each other. But once we have advanced to living thinking, we can also form a mental image, but a living mental image, of the skeletal system, the muscular system, the interflowing of life processes in animals, and because our thinking has now become living, we can then follow this thought inwardly as a living entity and arrive at the image of the human being in our thoughts. I would like to say: the thought of the animal grows into the thought of the human being. I can only indicate how to proceed here by means of an example.
When we have a magnetic needle in front of us, we know that when it is magnetized, it will remain at rest in only one position, namely when its direction coincides with the north-south direction of the magnetism of our earth. This direction is a particularly distinguished one; for all other directions, the magnetic needle behaves neutrally. Everything we have before us in this example becomes an experience for living thinking in relation to the whole of space. For living thinking, space is no longer the indifferent juxtaposition that it is for abstract, dead thinking. Space becomes internally differentiated, and we learn to recognize what it means that in animals the spine is essentially horizontal. Where this is not the case, we can prove the abnormality to be particularly significant precisely because of a deeper law; but essentially the spine of the animal lies horizontally, one might say: parallel to the surface of the earth. It is not indifferent whether the spinal cord line lies in this spatial direction or in the vertical direction, towards which the human being straightens up in the course of his life. Thus, in living thinking, we learn to recognize that if we wanted to straighten the main line of the animal, i.e., bring it into a different spatial direction, we would have to transform all the other organs. The idea comes to life simply through the 90-degree rotation from horizontal to vertical orientation. In this way, we are inwardly inspired to move from the animal form to the human form.
In this way, however, by first immersing ourselves in the rhythm of natural events and thereby arriving at the spiritual underlying nature, we penetrate further into the inner workings of natural events. We arrive at having something in our living thoughts with which we immerse ourselves in the growth and becoming of the outer world. We return to the mysteries of existence from which we have withdrawn in the course of human development through the unfolding of ego consciousness, of self-awareness.
Now, my dear audience, each of you may raise a very weighty objection. One could say, for example: Yes, certain personalities did have such thinking, which was apparently alive, but the present day, with its serious scientific attitude, has rightly turned away from such “living thinking” as developed, for example, by the philosopher Schelling or the natural philosopher Oken. I, too, completely agree with those who initially raise such an objection, because the way in which Oken and Schelling bring to life internally the image ideas gained from external processes and entities and then apply them to other natural facts and beings in order to see, so to speak, “in the sense of nature,” this way has something very fantastical about it, something that is distant from reality, that does not breathe reality in itself. As long as one does not move on to another element on the path of knowledge with this living thinking, as it is in itself, one does not arrive at a guarantee of reality through living thinking. Only when one adds exercises of the will to the exercises of the mind does one arrive at a guarantee of spiritual reality in living thought.
Exercises of the will can be characterized in the following way. Let us be completely honest with ourselves. In ordinary life, when we think back ten or twenty years, we must admit that in the actual content of our soul life we have often become different people; but we have become so by more or less passively surrendering ourselves as children to our inherited characteristics, our environment, our upbringing, and later in life to life itself. Those who want to attain knowledge of spiritual reality must take matters into their own hands, not in the full sense of the word, but more or less passively, through inner training of the will, discipline of the will, if I may use the crude expression. You will find the corresponding exercises, which are intimate soul exercises, described in the books mentioned above. I would just like to indicate in principle what is important.
Just as we have certain habits today that we may not have had ten years ago because life has imposed them on us, so we can also resolve with firm inner conviction: You will imprint these or those character traits on yourself. The best way to memorize such character traits, which take years of work to develop, is to repeatedly direct one's attention to the strengthening of the will that is associated with such self-discipline. When we take the development of our will into our own hands in this way, so that we ourselves, in fact, make what the world otherwise makes of us as human beings, then the living thoughts that we have found through meditation and concentration take on a very special significance for our experience. They become more and more painful experiences, inner experiences of suffering of the soul. And basically, no one can attain higher knowledge who has not gone through these experiences of suffering and pain. These experiences of suffering and pain must be gone through and then overcome, so that one incorporates them, as it were, and moves beyond them, gaining a neutral attitude toward them.
What happens in human beings can be visualized as follows: Take the human eye — what I am saying could be explained in great scientific detail, but I can only indicate it in general terms — take this eye. When light and colors act upon it, changes take place in the physical interior of this eye. If we were not so robust — older generations certainly experienced these changes as suffering, as a quiet pain — we would also have to experience these changes in the eye and ear as a quiet pain, if we did not, so to speak, remain neutral towards them through our constitution. All sensory perception is basically built on pain and suffering.
By permeating our entire soul life with living thoughts in this painful, suffering way, we permeate the body — not in the same way as the ascetic — with pain and suffering; we leave it healthy, allow it to develop in accordance with the demands of ordinary life, but we experience inner, intimate pain and suffering in the soul. Those who have attained a higher level of knowledge, so to speak, will always tell you: I gratefully accept the pleasures and joys that fate has brought me in life; but I owe my knowledge to what I have suffered, to my pain and suffering.
In this way, life prepares those who seek knowledge in a certain way for the fact that they must go through part of their true higher path of knowledge by overcoming suffering and pain. For when we overcome this suffering, this pain, we make our entire soul being into, if I may use the expression comparatively, a “sensory organ,” or rather, we must say, a spiritual organ, a soul organ. And now we learn to look into the spiritual world in the same way that we look and listen into the physical world through our ordinary senses. I do not need to speak about epistemological considerations today. I am, of course, aware of the objection that the external mode of cognition must also be examined; but that is not our concern today. I only want to say that in the same sense in which we find the external physical world guaranteed by our sensory perceptions in ordinary life, we find the spiritual world guaranteed by our soul, by our spiritual organ, which we have become as whole spiritual human beings, after overcoming soul suffering.
With this vision, which I would like to call modern, precise clairvoyance — in contrast to all the old, nebulous clairvoyant arts that belong to the past — we can also penetrate into what the eternal human being is. We can penetrate in a precise way into the meaning of human immortality. But that must be reserved for tomorrow's lecture, where I will talk about the special relationship between this worldview and the soul questions of human beings. Today I wanted to show how human beings, in contrast to older paths of knowledge, can arrive at a modern supersensible path of knowledge. The yogi sought to penetrate into the human being in order to find the self; we seek to penetrate outwards into the rhythm of the world. The ancient ascetic degraded the body so that, in a sense, the soul-spiritual experience could be squeezed out and exist for itself; the modern path of knowledge is not inclined toward asceticism, refrains from all forms of mortification, and turns intimately to the life of the soul itself. Both modern paths, therefore, allow the human being to stand fully within life. The old ascetic and the old yogic paths, however, drew people out of life.
So today I have tried to describe to you a path that can be taken by developing the powers of knowledge slumbering in the soul in a more spiritual and soulful way than they were once developed.
But in this way, too, one also gains a deeper insight into the nature of nature, as I would like to suggest in conclusion. The worldview I am talking about here is in no way opposed to contemporary science. On the contrary, it takes what is genuine research spirit within this scientific research and develops it through its exercises as a separate human ability. Contemporary natural science seeks precision and feels particularly satisfied when it can seek it through the application of mathematics to natural processes. Why is this the case? It is the case because the perceptions that external nature gives us through the senses for observation and experimentation are simply outside of us. We penetrate them with something that we develop entirely within our innermost human being; we penetrate them with mathematical knowledge. And Kant's words are often spoken, but even more often, I would say, practiced by those who think scientifically: In every real insight, there is only as much science as there is mathematics. This is one-sided if one takes ordinary mathematics. But by applying it to natural phenomena, to inanimate natural phenomena, and even today seeing a certain ideal in it, for example, being able to count the chromosomes in germ cells, one shows how satisfying it is to be able to apply mathematics to what otherwise stands outside or in front of us. Why? Because mathematics is experienced internally with immediate certainty, which we often have to symbolize through drawings; but the drawings are not essential for certainty, for truth. The mathematical is viewed and found internally, and what we find intimately within ourselves we connect with what we see externally. This gives us a feeling of satisfaction.
Anyone who sees through this process of cognition in its entirety must say to themselves: Only that which is based on something that humans can truly experience and perceive through their inner powers can satisfy them cognitively and lead them to science. With mathematics, one penetrates the facts and essential structures of the inanimate world, at most, I would say, primitively something in the animate world. But one needs an inner perception as precise as mathematical perception if one wants to penetrate the higher modes of action of the external world. Haeckel's school itself, in one of its most outstanding representatives, has expressly conceded that one must advance to a completely different mode of research and observation if one wants to ascend from the inorganic to the organic in nature. For the inorganic, we have mathematics and geometry; for the organic, for the living, we do not yet have anything that is internally structured like a triangle, a circle, or an ellipse. This can be achieved through living thinking: not with ordinary mathematics of numbers and figures, but with a higher mathesis, with a view that is qualitative, that has a formative effect, that — even if I have to say something horrible for many people — reaches into the artistic realm.
By using such mathematics to penetrate worlds that we cannot otherwise penetrate, we extend the scientific mindset into the biological realm. And one can be convinced that the time will come when people will say: older times rightly emphasized that as much science can be gained from inorganic nature as can be approached with mathematics in the broadest sense, insofar as mathematics is quantitative; that as much science can be gained from the processes of life as one is able to penetrate them with an inner, living thought formation, with an exact clairvoyance."
One would not believe how close this modern form of clairvoyance actually is to mathematical observation. And once we realize how spiritual knowledge can be gained from the spirit of modern natural science, we will find that the spiritual science referred to here is justified precisely by this field of modern natural science. For it does not seek to oppose the significant, magnificent achievements of natural science. It wants to try something else: just as when we have a person standing in front of us, we can observe their physical appearance with our outer senses, their gestures, their facial expressions, the peculiar look in their eyes, but we only recognize the outer appearance of the person if we do not look through all this to the soul within them, through which we only then have the whole person standing in front of us, in the same way, without taking spiritual paths, we look at the natural sciences only at the external physiognomy of the world, only, I would say, at the gestures of the world, the facial expressions of the world. Only then do we recognize something of what we ourselves are related to as the eternal in this world, when we penetrate beyond the outer physiognomy that natural phenomena present to us, beyond these facial expressions and gestures, into the soul of the world.
This is the aim of the spiritual scientific view, the methods of which I wanted to describe to you today by way of introduction. It does not want to be an opponent of triumphant modern natural science; it wants to accept it fully in its significance and essence, just as one fully accepts the outer human being. But just as one looks through the outer human being to the soul, so too, through the laws of nature, not with dilettantism and amateurism, but with a serious attitude, one wants to penetrate through the physiognomy of the laws of nature to what lies at the basis of the world as spiritual, as soul. And so this spiritual scientific view does not want to create any opposition to natural science, but wants to be the soul, the spirit of this natural science.