The Rudolf Steiner Archive

2. What is self-knowledge?

[ 1 ] The day before yesterday, we dealt with a topic that is occult in the most eminent sense, offering a glimpse into the higher worlds. Yesterday, in our public lecture, we looked at the methods and activities that enable human beings to awaken the abilities and powers that lie dormant in their souls, so that they gradually become capable of recognizing these higher worlds. The topic we will deal with today is closely related to both of these, and it also has a certain connection with all anthroposophical endeavors. Not only is it often said in theory that anthroposophical spiritual science is nothing other than a comprehensive, universal self-knowledge of the human being, a self-knowledge of the human being in such a way that the deepest reason, the deepest essence of one's own I becomes clear and, with it, knowledge of the world. But I am not only saying that you can often find this statement in theosophical literature and elsewhere, but that true, genuine self-knowledge is also something that must run parallel to all real research in the field of the higher worlds, parallel to all development of the inner soul forces. The ancient saying, “Know thyself,” means a great deal, very much indeed, especially to anthroposophists. Today we want to consider what can be called self-knowledge in the spiritual scientific sense at the various stages of human development. Let us start with the most ordinary, everyday self-knowledge and ascend to that self-knowledge which can be called world knowledge in the anthroposophical sense, and let us take into account, in all the individual things we have to discuss, what might be called the “occult” side, the occult aspect.

[ 2 ] Self-knowledge is all the more important to discuss within the anthroposophical worldview because, when properly understood, it can encompass the highest goal of anthroposophical striving, but when misunderstood, it can become something extremely dangerous. Misunderstood self-knowledge is what, especially at the beginning of spiritual scientific striving, tends to lead us away from the true path that is laid out for us in anthroposophy. Goethe, who was well versed in this field in many respects, once said that he had a certain distrust of the expression “self-knowledge,” that it meant something that people who had basically, in some way, through false melancholy or self-numbing, had strayed into completely wrong waters. And this is a perfectly correct way of putting it. In the field of spiritual science, we repeatedly have the opportunity to contemplate the complex nature of human beings when we remember what we all know: that, from an anthroposophical perspective, we divide human beings into the physical body, what we call the etheric body, the astral body, and the actual ego. And when we consider that what we call the self is fundamentally connected with all these members of human nature, we easily come to the conclusion that self-knowledge is something extremely complicated.

[ 3 ] To anticipate the simplest, lowest form of self-knowledge, let us remember that we must distinguish between these four members of human nature, depending on their current relationship, between the waking and dreamless sleeping human being, that we must say that in the sleeping human being, the physical and etheric bodies are abandoned by the astral body and the ego carrier, and that the latter two are outside the body. But we know at the same time that it is normal for the present human cycle that the human ego can only become conscious of itself when it uses the physical organs to make perceptions on the physical plane. So in a spiritual scientific sense we speak of an ego carrier that persists through those states we call unconscious sleep. But we must say of this ego carrier that it can only develop the present side of consciousness and self-consciousness, that is, bring it into the immediate field of observation, when it makes use of the physical organs, that is, when it re-enters the physical and etheric bodies in the morning. Here we have the self-consciousness that is normal for modern human beings, and we must ask ourselves: What is the essence of this self-consciousness at its lowest level? But the question is better defined if we say: How does man come to recognize that which dwells in his physical body from morning to evening and makes use of the physical organs? How does man come to a knowledge of the essence of the whole or of the self? It is easy to believe that man must now look within himself, that he must, so to speak, explore himself. This leads us to all kinds of self-knowledge that are practiced and recommended. For example, people should observe what they do, what their characteristics and faults are, they should brood over their inner selves and try to recognize how much they are worth, how capable they are of this or that action, and so on. This is where the dangers of misunderstood self-knowledge begin, and that is why we must speak of the dangers. We always keep in mind that man should try to ascend to the higher worlds. We also know that this ascent is something that makes man something completely different from what he is today, and therefore it is natural that certain obstacles stand in the way. Through false self-knowledge, the ascent becomes just as dangerous as it is made possible by true self-knowledge. This kind of self-knowledge, which one might rather call brooding over one's everyday ego, paying attention to one's mistakes, is false and dangerous, because it actually tends to throw people back, precisely because the comprehensive standard for judgment is lacking.

[ 4 ] When a person, through ordinary consideration of their merits and faults, says: You did that right, you did that wrong, you must improve there—this presupposes that they have a standard by which to judge themselves. This standard also becomes, so to speak, a measure of value for what the person will become in the future. And in this way, the person will never actually transcend themselves, and that is precisely what the anthroposophist must always tell themselves: do not stand still, but always, step by step, move beyond this point. - A saying that should be taken to heart is: Everything you do in relation to the development of the soul and everything that brings you forward on the path of life is well done; everything that keeps you at the same point is, in essence, a loss for your soul. - No self-knowledge that drives people to contrite repentance or leads them to self-satisfaction can bring them forward. If we want to gain an insight into what is important, we must ask ourselves: What does the real human being usually depend on? You will easily be able to put yourself in the following situation: What would happen to my ideas, my feelings and emotions if this individuality, which has passed from incarnation to incarnation and will continue to do so, had not been born, say, so many years ago in Vienna, but fifty years earlier in Moscow? What would this individuality then have as its content; what sensations, feelings, ideas, thoughts, and concepts would then permeate this individuality and give it its peculiar basic tone? Completely different ones! You can most easily imagine this if you reflect on how your ideas and feelings run from morning to evening, how much of them depends on when and where you came into the world. Try to calculate this precisely, subtracting from your inner soul everything that is conditioned by the when and where of your birth. Cast all these ideas out of your soul life. Try to think about what remains, and above all, try to think about how many of these ideas that pass through your soul from morning to night have any validity or value at all, apart from the place and time of your life between birth and death. You will see how important it is for the self to pay close attention to the extent to which it is influenced by the when and where. You will not learn to recognize this by brooding over your inner self, but by taking the poet's saying to heart: If you want to know yourself, get to know yourself through others! — through your surroundings. And so, in a strange way, we are led away from brooding over our souls and toward saying: In order to get to know our ego, we must create an open eye, an open mind for the uniqueness of the world in which we were born, in terms of when and where. The more we strive to have this open mind for the outside world, for what is around us, the more we come, in a spiritual-scientific sense, to what we can call self-knowledge in this lowest realm.

[ 5 ] Let us learn, through a free view, so to speak, the whole tone color of our own time; let us try to make clear to ourselves how the peculiarities of our age, of the place in which we live, are available to us in the most manifold ways. This self-knowledge, which points us from our self to our surroundings, is highly unique. If we get to know this external world of ours, if we try to penetrate its spirit, to explore what has crystallized us, then we will recognize our ego as a mirror image. This is an objective path. Looking inside oneself is dangerous. One should recognize the causes of why one is this way or that way. These can be discovered in one's surroundings; this distracts us from ourselves. So, first we have what gives us the ability to recognize ourselves, insofar as we are an I that uses physical organs to live with its environment.

[ 6 ] Now this ego makes use of the organ of the etheric body, the life body, that fine organism which is very familiar to anthroposophical spiritual scientists in terms of its nature, which permeates the physical body and is a constant fighter against the decay of the physical body. Now, when the self submerges into the physical and etheric bodies in the morning, it works in both bodies in the present human cycle, that is, also in the etheric body. What comes into consideration here is not what makes us what we are in terms of place and time, the when and where, but something more. Something else hangs on the etheric body, something that is even more deeply connected to our self, something that goes beyond birth and death. This brings us to what this self brings with it in a certain sense, something that comes from the past and extends into the future, something that this self already has when it is embodied in a physical body. Viewed externally, by simply looking at the human being superficially, what we call talents, predispositions, special abilities of the self are particularly evident in the etheric body, and here we are already in a certain sense in a more difficult area of self-knowledge. Although this is a relatively low stage compared to what self-knowledge is at the higher stages of development, human beings will not get very far if they brood over their inner selves and try to figure out: What are your talents and abilities?

[ 7 ] It would go too far today to give a reason for what I am about to say based on the nature of human beings. The worst enemies of self-knowledge lie in wait when human beings begin to try to become clear about their talents and abilities through self-contemplation. It is precisely here that they must shift their focus from themselves to their surroundings, from the personal to the impersonal. We must now direct our observations to the realm of the etheric body, to our connection with this or that race. We must ask ourselves: To which branch of humanity do you actually belong? And we should strive to explore the unique characteristics of the group of humanity to which we belong through family, race, and people, in comparison with the universal characteristics of the entire human race. Let us therefore learn about what runs through the line of inheritance, what develops from great-grandfather to grandfather and so on, and what gives the self its distinctive character within this line of inheritance, what is not directly related to when and where, but is connected with deeper fundamental laws of human existence. If we get to know these characteristics, we will in turn find the right background from which to see how our own self stands out from this background. But any brooding over the self before considering this background is harmful. So, although anthroposophy demands of us a more uncomfortable kind of self-knowledge than that which is often meant in phrases, there is no other way to arrive at true self-knowledge, because the standard is missing, because one broods only on one's own point of view and has no standard of comparison.

[ 8 ] Now I would like to tie this in with occult facts. We all know that the human body is surrounded by an aura, embedded in this astral aura, which is visible to clairvoyant consciousness as an oval cloud. The fact that a person is born into a specific time and place determines the extent of their aura in a certain way. A person who has a very narrow horizon, who can therefore only experience and judge what is within themselves and who wants to be guided solely by the impulses of their will, by what spurs them on unseen from their surroundings, who is therefore the product of when and where, shows the clairvoyant consciousness something compressed and depressed in their aura. In this case, the aura is not large and does not extend far beyond the physical body. The moment a person broadens their horizons, the moment they develop an open mind, an open eye for observing their surroundings, we actually see how the aura expands in all directions, how it becomes more comprehensive in relation to the boundaries of the physical body. Human beings thus become spiritually greater inwardly by expanding their horizons in relation to their conceptual and emotional worlds. For clairvoyant consciousness, this is strikingly evident in people who are an echo of their surroundings, whose aura is small. But when people begin to refine their judgment and become independent, so that they eventually distinguish themselves from the common view, then clairvoyant consciousness sees how the aura expands, how it becomes large, how the human being becomes finer and more comprehensive within themselves.

[ 9 ] As grotesque as it may sound to many, awareness of one's surroundings is the first step toward self-awareness. Awareness of one's family and race is the second step. In a person who, in their emotional and volitional impulses, tries to free themselves from what they have been placed in, in their people, race, family, and so on, clairvoyant consciousness sees not only how the aura expands, but also how it becomes more mobile within itself, how it acquires vibrations, whereas before it was dead, immobile. Now, this already indicates that what we call special characteristics and abilities are connected with this line of inheritance, though not directly, but in a certain way.

[ 10 ] How can we now rise above what are, so to speak, the determining factors, the causes of the inner structure of the self? Not much has been achieved for human beings when they recognize themselves in this way. As far as his talents and abilities are concerned, not much will generally be achieved if man merely forms an idea about his ancestry and hereditary line; he will not be able to move beyond that. Only spiritual scientific experience can speak here. It is a matter of spiritual scientific experience providing that which makes man independent of talents and abilities. This remedy does not resemble what it is intended to achieve, but it is the remedy: when a person tries to acquire a warm, heartfelt feeling for what initially interests them little, for what they find difficult to be interested in, and especially when they make their interests varied, then they will develop their individuality out of their inherited abilities.

[ 11 ] The first step, the recognition of one's surroundings, will be accomplished relatively quickly; the second—this self-education—only slowly transforms the talents. Yes, it must even be pointed out that sometimes, for the sake of this incarnation, one must refrain from transforming one's talents, but the path is initiated, and it is extremely important that we really try. Then the clairvoyant consciousness will very soon show how the aura becomes mobile within itself, how it becomes vibrating. At least in the early stages, we will see a transformation of our own nature. In this gradual self-education, what we can call impersonal self-knowledge will then arise quite naturally.

[ 12 ] Now we come to the third important area. We now come to consider that part of ourselves which lives out its existence by being enclosed in an astral body, the vehicle of pleasure and pain, of passions and so on. This astral body is lifted out of the physical and etheric bodies during dreamless sleep. The ordinary human being has never consciously separated the astral body from the physical and etheric bodies. Clairvoyant consciousness can do this, but normal consciousness cannot. What law of human nature will now express itself in the astral body? That which we call karma lives out in the self, that which is the peculiarity of the self or of individuality, that which not only develops in the line of inheritance, but which passes from incarnation to incarnation, that which is therefore connected with one's own deeds, with one's own experiences of the soul through incarnations. What a person experiences through their bodies, that is, what is lived out as a purely spiritual law of cause and effect, comes into consideration at the third stage of self-knowledge.

[ 13 ] The question now arises: Can a person do anything to attain self-knowledge in this area? In answering a question, I was able to indicate how difficult it is in the present cycle of humanity to even comprehend the effect of karma. I said, for example, that it is predetermined in a person's karma that he must take a trip in a certain period of time, say in fourteen days. But now he decides that he has to do something in three weeks because he does not see the karma, because he knows nothing about it. He then directs everything toward this until he receives the news that he must now undertake the journey. Now the two lines of direction collide with each other. What he has done comes into conflict with his karmic line. You can see from this that something new is always added to karma. This reinforces and links the lines of karma. This means that in their normal development, human beings find it difficult to assess the path of the self, of the I, insofar as this chain of karma is taken into account; for unless they have a highly developed clairvoyant consciousness, they cannot know what lies in their karma.

[ 14 ] Now the question is: Can self-knowledge be attained to this degree in normal life? Here I must immediately indicate the means which spiritual scientific experience gives us, which makes it possible for human beings, so to speak, not to overlook what is karmically right and to do the right thing at a certain moment. It is a completely false view that is sometimes encountered, namely that human beings are not free because of karma. Karma does not make us unfree. It is precisely because of their freedom that human beings can do something at every moment that creates karma. Karma does not therefore exclude the possibility that the karmic thread can be interwoven and linked back and forth. Can human beings do anything to place themselves in a certain relationship to their karma, in such a way that they do not counteract this karma too much and thereby create new causes that only bring them back instead of forward? There is one thing that has the effect of bringing people more and more into the direction that their karmic line wants to take them, and that is something that is always practiced and discussed in circles that cultivate the anthroposophical worldview. It is precisely that which arises as a disposition in the soul under the influence of a worldview such as the anthroposophical one. That is what draws people ever deeper into karma. We must adjust ourselves correctly in the anthroposophical way; the complacent people who only talk about how people should deepen themselves, should seek God within themselves, will lead people little further on their path. Rather, it is precisely that which leads them away from their own person, which gives them a worldview that makes a supersensible worldview possible for them, that leads them further. Everything that is offered to us in anthroposophy allows us to look into supersensible events. At first, human beings cannot be clairvoyant themselves; they must accept what clairvoyant researchers tell them. Nor is it absolutely necessary for them to be clairvoyant, any more than it is necessary for them to pick up a telescope or microscope. What researchers in this field communicate can be grasped entirely through unbiased logic. Human beings must, so to speak, make themselves into instruments in order to be able to research the supersensible realm; but everything can be understood without one having to become an instrument oneself.

[ 15 ] When the anthroposophist forms a picture of what the higher worlds look like, of what goes on behind the sensory facts, this does not remain without effect on his entire emotional and sensory life. We must take this to heart and not give in to the convenient excuse that it does not matter how much one learns, but rather that one has this or that moral principle. The fact is that in anthroposophical spiritual science, learning cannot be dispensed with, and anyone who says, “What do I care about theories of higher worlds and so on?” is on the wrong track. Certainly, the anthroposophical attitude is important; that is a self-evident condition; but just as a stove warms a room when it is heated because fuel has been put in it and lit, so it is with human beings. But if you only preach to the stove, saying, “Dear stove, your duty is to warm the room,” it will not warm the room. If you always preach to people that it is their duty to love and so on, little will come of it. It is of little use for us to stand there as moral preachers, because all moral preaching leaves humanity as it is. If you heat the stove, it warms the room. Give it fuel, and it will cause the room to warm up. Give people the worldview that anthroposophy can give them about supersensible facts, and then what is contained in the first principle of the Theosophical Society — universal brotherhood — will necessarily follow. An anthroposophical attitude is necessary, but repeating this over and over again does not help. It will surely emerge in the form in which it is effective for the world when knowledge of the higher world, supersensible knowledge of the world, becomes accessible. Just as plants open themselves to the one sun, so all who strive for this knowledge of the world strive toward the one central sun, and all other consequences follow of themselves. Such is the anthroposophical attitude as it arises from spiritual scientific knowledge.

[ 16 ] This is what enables human beings to live in accordance with their karma. It is now a matter of human beings coming to put the anthroposophical teaching into practice. If karma is not to remain an abstract idea, if it is to become effective, it is necessary to try introducing this idea of karma into life, at least on a trial basis, because the diversity and unrest of our everyday life make it impossible to remain constantly self-observed. It is necessary to ask ourselves what it means to think karmically.

[ 17 ] Let us take a radical case as an example: someone has slapped another person—me, for example. What does “thinking karmically” mean in such a case? I was there in a previous life, and so was the other person. Perhaps in that previous life, I caused him to act as he does now, pushed him to do so, trained him to do so, as it were. I don't want to theorize, I want to put forward a hypothesis that is intended to become a hypothesis about life. If I think this way, will he slap me? No, he won't slap me at all. I slap myself, because I myself put my hand there, I myself raised the hand that he raised against me.

[ 18 ] Now only experience can tell us what happens next, and it tells us the following: If a person seriously tries to grasp the idea of karma in this way, asking such questions from time to time, in all earnestness and dignity, he will actually see that he succeeds. No one can prove this to you. You must prove it to yourself by doing it. You will see that your inner life actually becomes completely different, you will have completely different feelings, impulses of will about life, and a completely different inner life will show its consequences; it will show itself in a completely different place. Where you would have experienced great pain and disappointment, you will calmly accept the pain; you are balanced because you have done and thought this way. The result is that a strange calm comes over your entire soul, a kind of lawful understanding of events, by no means fatalistic.

[ 19 ] This is also the path one must take if one wants to gradually develop the idea of karma and hold fast to this idea as a certainty. The idea of karma can be argued against. Those who wish to put forward reasons may do so. It is not possible to prove such a thing theoretically, but only through trial, and experience will give you the results. When it becomes intense, experience provides the means to understand karma in the first instance. Then you realize from the grouping of things that it is really something that lies in things, just as you realize whether you have a fantasy image or whether you have the reality of the steel bar when you touch it. Thus, experience itself must provide that summary of the facts of life through which we gradually integrate our arbitrariness, our inner impulses of will, into our karma. This work of our life, which is complicated, is one of the best means of reaching a third stage of true self-knowledge. Through it, you gradually learn to feel what is the residue of your past life in your present life.

[ 20 ] This insight is not as cheap as brooding over it, because it must first come to you from your surroundings. It is above all a matter of going out of yourself, even with the highest self-knowledge, which is knowledge of the world. Fichte said: Most people would rather consider themselves a piece of lava on the moon than an I. - There one learns to know the self more in its punctual existence, more than a point. This self is recognized as a punctual image of the whole world. In this sense, self-knowledge is, if you will, knowledge of God, not in the pantheistic sense, but as a drop of the same substance and essence as the whole sea. And just as this drop reveals the essence and nature of the whole sea, so man is of the same essence as the divinity he can know; but no one would think of explaining the drop as the sea. We can recognize the substance and essence of the divine as that of the sea from the drop, but no one would presume to say that knowledge of the drop is sufficient for them; and surely everyone would say that they are concerned with knowledge of the sea, and that happens when you sail around it. So you learn to recognize the divine in particular when you grasp the drop of the divine within yourself, in your inner being, but you cannot know that of which this is only a drop or spark within you in any other way than by immersing yourself selflessly in the great supersensible worlds in the highest manner. If we want to know ourselves, we must go completely out of ourselves and explore the supersensible worlds in the deepest way.

[ 21 ] For the third stage, what has been said about reincarnation and karma should suffice. For the highest self-knowledge, we must attain knowledge of the great cosmic connection of our Earth; for we are a part of our Earth, just as a finger is a part of the whole organism. The finger does not give itself over to the illusion that it is an independent entity; cut it off, and it is no longer a finger. If it could walk around on your body, it could give itself over to the illusion that it is an independent organism, just like a human being. Human beings do not consider that if you lift them a few miles above the earth, they are no longer human beings. Human beings are a member of the earth's organism, and the earth is in turn a member of the cosmos. We can only see this when we grasp the basis of the cosmic connection. All thinking about the self without comprehensive knowledge of the world, without understanding how the I needed all events that have ever existed, is futile; without this overview, we cannot arrive at any knowledge, not even of the I-self. We arrive at a knowledge of the daytime I when we examine the environment in terms of when and where. We find the knowledge of how the I lives out its life in the etheric body when we consider the line of inheritance. We find the knowledge of how the I lives out its life in the astral body when we live karma, and we find the final knowledge when we acquire knowledge of the world; for there is spread out what is compressed in the punctiform I of the human being. Knowledge of the world is self-knowledge.

[ 22 ] If you take to heart what is described in the essays “From the Akashic Records” about the development of the earth, which seems completely foreign to the soul, and how it ultimately leads to the present configuration, then you will have self-knowledge through knowledge of the world! In this way, self-knowledge leads us further and further out of ourselves, always toward the impersonal. Just as the application of karma in life makes the aura brighter and lighter, so the actual knowledge of cosmic connections makes the aura more powerful and capable of creating originally free impulses from within itself. This brings you to the solution to the question of freedom and bondage. For freedom is a product of development, and the more you attain self-knowledge, the more you attain freedom. Then, through such an exercise in self-knowledge in the sense described above, you come to understand many things in the field of spiritual science in the right sense and to feel your way into the anthroposophical spiritual current. Many things haunt the anthroposophical movement like childhood diseases, which must be eliminated, especially once such things have been understood as instructions for self-knowledge. The impersonal nature of anthroposophical knowledge will be recognized more and more. It has been achieved because it has been gained by researchers who have not only transformed their souls into instruments of self-knowledge, but have also developed them—as has just been explained—and have thus come to describe impersonally what the higher worlds offer. A first principle to be gained is the old, beautiful principle of the Greek sage: If you want to get to the truth, you can't trust your own opinion. That's why you'll find that people who've really learned through spiritual science say, “Yeah, opinions aren't helpful to me; I can describe experiences, but not rules or principles for how to act, and these descriptions should be part of spiritual science.” The spiritual scientist must wean himself of opinions and standpoints. He has no standpoint, because all views are like pictures that arise from different standpoints and are as different as the people who view the world from different sides. From one side, the picture is of a materialistic view, then from other sides of a spiritual, a mechanistic, a vitalistic view. These are all views. Not only to recognize them theoretically, but to live with a worldview in which all views appear as images from different sides, that is the inner tolerance that is at stake. Opinions should not fight each other. Then the inner tolerance arises, and from this the outer tolerance that we need if humanity wants to move toward its salvation in the future.

[ 23 ] Special emphasis must also be placed on the insight that the ideas flowing through the anthroposophical world current are a product of the impersonal. This will lead us to eliminate from the anthroposophical movement, in the sense in which it existed in earlier times and still exists today, authority in the negative sense. Do we call the microscope an authority? It is a necessity, a means to an end. In the same way, human beings must also become a means to an end, but we must rise to the impersonal, because only through human beings can what is to come into the world actually come into being. Belief in authority must be removed from the anthroposophical lexicon, and that is why people who live in this realization attain a freedom of mind that allows them to enter the impersonal realm of the world through the personal.