The Rudolf Steiner Archive

3. A Few Thoughts on the Inner Workings of the Human Soul and Its Relationship to the World

[ 1 ] This evening and tomorrow evening, drawing on Goethe, we will discuss various topics that may be of interest to students of spiritual science regarding the inner workings of the human soul, its development, and its relationship to the world. Since our task in these two lectures will be to consider the aforementioned questions solely in the spirit of Goethe, it seems appropriate to me that we now speak, independently of Goethe and as we are accustomed to doing, drawing from the sources of spiritual science, about the inner life of the human soul, its development, and its relationship to the world. I will need to assume that you are already somewhat familiar with the basic elements of human soul life.

[ 2 ] When we consider the human soul in its development, we must make a clear distinction between the soul of feeling, the soul of understanding, and the soul of consciousness. When we speak first of the soul of sensation, we do not mean only that part of our soul which, through perception and sensory impressions, is able to connect with the external world; rather, we also mean the seat of everything we can call instincts, desires, and passions, as well as the seat of all the impulses of the will within the human soul. In fact, the most effective way to gain a conception of what the sentient soul actually is within our spiritual life is to imagine that everything of a volitional nature—everything that impels us from within to seek a relationship with the external world—is the essence of the sentient soul, and how it is inherent in the sensory soul that it is also the most important mediator in the reception of external perceptual impressions. That is why it is called the sensory soul. When a person receives a sound or color impression, the sensory soul is at work. Even when passions arise—in the case of emotions, anger, fear, or anxiety—the sensory soul essentially prevails.

[ 3 ] What we call the intellectual or emotional soul first emerges from the sensory soul; in a certain sense, it is already somewhat more detached than the sensory soul. The intellectual soul already possesses the capacity to clothe in concepts what is felt in the sensory soul, and to refine what is experienced as instincts and emotions into a more human form of soul life. When, for example, emotions that would otherwise be directed solely toward self-preservation are refined into goodwill, or even into loving behavior toward the environment, we are already dealing with the intellectual or emotional soul. In the intellectual soul, the ego unfolds within us—the very center of our soul life.

[ 4 ] As the ego continues to develop, and we come to feel ourselves truly as inner beings centered within ourselves, we shape our perceptions and thoughts into grand ideas through which we comprehend nature, or into concepts of duty or moral ideas. In everything with which we relate in this way, we speak of the conscious soul. There are no dividing walls between the individual members of the soul, but it is necessary to distinguish these three members because each relates to the external world in a different way.

[ 5 ] If we begin with the conscious soul, this is, for us humans, the highest member of the soul for the time being, but at the same time the member of the soul that, in a certain sense, has separated itself most from the rest of the world. It is the most independent member of the soul.

[ 6 ] When a person immerses themselves in the conscious soul, they can feel the loneliest in their inner life and shut themselves off from the outside world. It is the soul element that, by its very nature, has erected the most boundaries against the environment, so that it is most prone to falling into error and mistake. It is the most detached from the universe. Yet this soul element can only fall into error to a limited extent. This is the most important aspect of what we call the conscious soul. It manifests itself primarily as logical thinking, as conceptual analysis, and also proceeds as mathematical thinking—as all that which, in a certain sense, is a unique human capacity and is not found in animals.

[ 7 ] The forces of the sensory and intellectual souls extend all the way up into the conscious soul. The drives, desires, and passions; the volitional impulses of the sensory soul; and the feelings and intellectual judgments of the intellectual soul all penetrate into it. But in the conscious soul, all of this is processed through logical thinking. That is why it is primarily in the conscious soul that we form our opinions. And because the conscious soul is the most isolated, people are so very divided from one another when it comes to opinions. When we speak of what we hold in common—because it has been formed within our national community or our family circle, because it is customary in our surroundings—we are speaking of things that reside in the intellectual or emotional soul. But even the things that are initially located in the conscious soul migrate into the intellectual soul; for example, an opinion we once formed can become a habitual opinion. Or a skill can transform into dexterity, into habit. Then they have descended into the intellectual soul.

[ 8 ] The consciousness soul is also the most isolated because it is through the consciousness soul that human beings directly extend their sensory antennae into their surroundings. When we consider what we want to do, we are living in the intellectual soul. When we look at what is around us, we extend the antennae of the consciousness soul directly through the senses and return to what makes us the most isolated beings. For through what our senses offer us, we become the most isolated beings. Thus, human beings isolate themselves precisely because, through the consciousness soul, they must relate to the external world in a wholly local and temporary manner. But opinions cling most intensely to the consciousness soul. An opinion first asserts itself and takes root in the consciousness soul. That is why human beings are isolated beings when it comes to opinions. When it comes to habits, people get along better. Human beings are most independent, but also most isolated, in the consciousness soul; therefore, we cannot really gain access to what constitutes the content of another person’s consciousness soul. After all, we do not even know whether everyone sees the color red or blue in the same way we do.

[ 9 ] But setting that aside, let us for the moment simply assume the content of the conscious soul, which consists of opinions. Let us take something that may seem incredibly logical, something about which we might imagine that we can justify these opinions in the most logical way conceivable; yet these logical reasons do not amount to much when presented to our fellow human beings. Logical justifications do not actually have an effect in external life at first, and it is even normal that they do not have an effect. That is why it is easy to convert people in their youth, in childhood, to our opinions. Later on, this is less and less the case. For the child confronts us not only with its conscious soul, but also with its intellectual soul and its feeling soul. It confronts us with its entire personality. And what enables us to persuade depends more on everything else than on the conscious soul. Here the will and the feeling come into play. If the direction of the will and the feelings differ from person to person, then the most diverse points of view can be justified in the most logical way. Nevertheless, in the present cycle of humanity, people are truly independent only in relation to the conscious soul, less so in relation to the other soul members. Consider how opinions are formed: a person is entirely free to form this or that conceptual framework as their opinion. They are less free when the content of the intellectual soul comes into play. There, a person does not feel free at all; otherwise, their feelings and sensations could not play so many tricks on them. We may be in complete agreement with ourselves in our opinions that this or that ought actually to displease us, but the mood speaks otherwise, allowing us to find pleasure in the matter after all. The fact that the mood can be at odds with our opinions can show us that human beings are not as free with regard to feeling as they are with regard to opinions. Human beings feel most unfree in everything that concerns the will and so on, in everything that is in the emotional soul. The conflict is sometimes very great between the noblest intentions, between the opinion that this or that is not good, and the impulse, the affect toward it. A striking example is the following: A teacher who has an angry child realizes in the intellectual soul that the anger must be driven out. Since he cannot succeed by peaceful means, he throws the inkwell at the child’s head; he himself becomes angry. There we have the most striking conflict.

[ 10 ] What, then, is happening in the life of the soul, what is going on there, that this conflict can arise? The fact is that we are actually only independent and isolated in our present state of development with regard to the conscious soul itself; but between the conscious soul and the boundary with the intellectual or emotional soul, an influence is exerted upon the soul—an influence from higher, superhuman beings. And again, at the boundary between the intellectual and the emotional soul, we have such an influence of external forces from superhuman beings, just as between the emotional soul and the emotional body.

[ 11 ] I am now describing the situation as it presents itself in our time, in our century. It is different in other eras. One can also very easily see that other forces come into play when the will is involved. When we think, we are alone with ourselves. We can sit in a corner and be alone with our thoughts. When a person has to exercise an impulse of will, they must move their hands and feet; they must bring about a physical action, a deed. When you move from one thought to another, your consciousness remains present. Today, people initially have no idea of the transition that takes place when, for example, they form the thought: “I want to pick up the clock”—and when they then carry out this thought. Here we have a completely different context than in the transition from one thought to another, where the entire sequence can be followed by consciousness. This is an example of how other forces intervene to come to our aid. At the boundary between the intellectual and the conscious soul, beings intervene whom we call angels or angeloi. It is they who condense what otherwise takes place in consciousness only as opinions and concepts, condensing them into what can be called sensations and feelings. The term “sensation” is somewhat vague. What is felt and sensed inwardly is already a condensation of thought. There are forces behind us that help us.

[ 12 ] Let us now turn to the other boundary between the intellectual and the emotional soul. Here we find even higher beings who intervene. It is they who stir the will within us, who imbue thought with the power of the will: they are the archangels, or Archangeloi. But when we relate to the environment of our own accord, it is the spirits of the personality; there we already feel the resistance of the world when we intervene in its structure. Thus, in the intermediate realms between the individual soul forces, there are spiritual beings who guide us and empower us, whose task is to translate into action and power what the human being, left to his own devices, can experience within himself only as thought.

[ 13 ] Indeed, as soon as we delve into these subconscious regions of the soul’s life, there is a possibility that the struggles taking place—and which must take place—within the spiritual world will also enter the realm of our consciousness. Where the angelic beings intervene, the Luciferic beings—who are the angels’ adversaries—are also immediately present. If only the angels were to intervene, our minds would be drawn to what is beautiful, to what is in keeping with our human dignity. The Luciferic beings lead us toward that with which we ourselves, in calm reflection, do not agree, but which nevertheless captivates us. Where the archangels intervene, the Ahrimanic beings may also intervene, leading us to the point where our judgment can be turned into error and our search for truth into a lie. Logical thinking is freely given to us as human beings. But the moment we turn to feelings and impulses of the will, other beings intervene, including those who work against the ascending beings. This is the point that, in essence, everyone who becomes acquainted in any way with occult research should learn about.

[ 14 ] In the context of human life today, things are already arranged in such a way that the forces of the Luciferic and Ahrimanic beings—which work against the angels and archangels—are nevertheless directed toward the good in all their effects. One need not presume to be wiser than the guidance of the worlds and ask: Why does humanity need the Luciferic and Ahrimanic entities? — Humanity could not be so free if these two forces did not provide a counterbalance to the angels and archangels. Human beings must have the capacity to lie so that they can arrive at the truth independently. As independent beings, they are to attain the truth; therefore, Ahriman must be present. Human beings are to resist Ahriman and take the path to the truth. Through this, human beings have become independent beings in whom the sense of truth is inherent. The highest rulers of the worlds have already arranged matters so that their adversaries, Lucifer and Ahriman, do not get too powerful. They are indeed there to drive human beings, for the sake of their freedom and the development of their consciousness, to a considerable degree of impure impulses, desires, and even erroneous judgments; yet these can be balanced out in the course of karma and cannot disrupt the earthly mission. This is one of the most beautiful and profound insights that humanity gradually attains through occult studies and esotericism: the realization that ultimately, everything untrue and evil can be transformed into good.

[ 15 ] The question that naturally arises—and one that everyone must ask—is this: Apart from this circumstance, is there a reason why human beings must go through all these incarnations and achieve perfection only through every possible error? Yes, there is a reason. It would take us too far afield to show that human beings have become, through their earlier earthly lives, such that they can only mature gradually. At present, they are independent only in regard to the consciousness soul. But a time will come when human beings, despite all their tendency toward error, will have a firm direction in their actions and deeds. If people did not possess this at all today, they would find themselves in constant strife and discord. As humanity is now, it is ripe to acquire freedom specifically for the consciousness soul, but people are not yet ripe to become free with regard to the intellect soul and the feeling soul. Progress arises from the fact that development can never take place in a completely straight line. We can see in all cultures how some souls rush ahead, take the lead, and anticipate what other souls will only be able to acquire in later times. Human souls today are only ripe to become free with regard to the conscious soul. But spiritual wisdom gradually leads to the liberation and isolation of the intellectual and emotional souls as well, so that human beings no longer have to look to tradition and habit to find the good, but rather the impulse toward the good flows from their own soul. This is also a necessary interpretation of Paul’s words: “Not I, but Christ in me.”—When Christ lives in people, they will also be allowed to be free with regard to the intellectual and emotional souls. People have, after all, already achieved a certain dispassion: with regard to the most trivial logical matters, with regard to the mathematical and computational. There, passion has already been driven so far out of the human heart that people can find the truth for themselves. But when it comes to what lies within the intellectual and emotional soul, people still very much rely on compromise; they even regard compromise as the essential thing, because Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces are at work there everywhere.

[ 16 ] You will understand that such a movement, built upon spiritual wisdom and intended to awaken the deeper powers of the human soul from their isolation, must be associated not merely with curiosity about the spiritual worlds—which, in fact, should not be the driving force behind spiritual research at all—but with a sense of responsibility. Through this movement, humanity’s capacity for the future is brought into our time; a seed of the future is awakened that is generally not yet ripe. We must keep this in mind and be clear about how carefully we must ensure that, even if the soul may be beautiful and sympathetic within the spiritual movement, we must nevertheless remain vigilant against the dangers threatening it and must awaken a sense of responsibility. When the soul approaches spiritual matters in an immature state, danger is present. Not everyone perceives this danger. Those who are somewhat deeper in the movement know—and must know, if they do not wish to collapse under the unbearable—how they must always be on guard to say only what has passed through their soul not once or ten times, but a hundred times! It is difficult, when it comes to spiritual matters, to choose words that are adequate. A certain conviction must take shape throughout the entire circle of anthroposophists: the conviction that they demand of those who represent the movement that they take the truth seriously in this sense. One must not believe that, as a speaker, one can simply stand there every evening without allowing these truths to pass through one’s soul again and again, so that they are properly shaped down to the very word. The difficulty of merely being able to speak of spiritual truths is one thing. The other is that those who are part of such a movement must, in a certain sense, even ensure that this feeling is present among the movement’s representatives. But even those who are not yet deeply immersed in it must ensure that this or that does not happen to their soul, and one should ask oneself again and again: Am I also ready to represent a spiritual movement? Must I not position myself within the movement in such a way that the things of the spiritual world have an even stronger effect on me? - No one should be discouraged, but everyone should awaken this feeling within themselves: Even if I have done what is good and right out of the compulsion of tradition and upbringing, there is a boundary where, in representing what is right, not only the angels, archangels, and spirits of the personality stand, but where Lucifer and Ahriman also stand. Time and again one can observe that people who were truth-loving begin to lie when spiritual-scientific truths affect them, because they have not sufficiently told themselves: Above all, you must make yourself ready, you must allow the spiritual truths to work upon you, you must not let yourself be spoken through! — One must be conscious of such responsibility. But it would be cowardly to say: Then I will not join the spiritual movement. One does not behave correctly by evading the duty to exercise caution, but by properly observing this duty. Much, much of what has always been a hallmark of the progressive spiritual movement is connected to what has been said.

[ 17 ] There are, of course, the great lights that are meant to guide humanity forward. But where there are strong lights, there are often very strong shadows as well. Hence the accusations—which are not always unfounded—against those who are supposed to bring the truths of the spiritual world down to the physical plane. In every such movement, alongside those who wanted nothing more than to let spiritual truths flow down into the physical world, there have been those who did not wish to practice self-criticism, who did not wish to tame pride and vanity. These have become the kind of people we see in such abundance within spiritual movements, and to whom one must say: Unfortunately, the outside world cannot always distinguish correctly between such bearers and those who are the true bearers. — The reverse also sometimes occurs. Precisely our spiritual scientific movement should call upon people to judge freely, should sweep away everything that prevails merely on the basis of belief in external authority. As long as the feeling still prevails in society that what matters is the mouth through which one speaks, our ideal has not yet been achieved. We should listen only to what this mouth speaks because the things make sense to us when we listen to it with a sense of truth and unbiased logic. Our movement is eminently suited to allowing the free judgment of human beings to take root and develop; but a powerful trend runs through our time that can be called: convenience in matters of belief. This convenience of belief creates great obstacles for the spiritual science movement. By believing something simply because this or that person has said it, free judgment is delayed, as is the free life of the human soul and the soul’s independence, even in relation to the intellectual soul. It is so convenient not to have to think, and simply to accept some truth because this or that person has said it; it is much more convenient to be able to believe the person than to examine what the person says.

[ 18 ] I have often said: At first, it is only possible to offer inspiration within the spiritual movement. But take everything we can find in history, for example, about Zarathustra: nothing of what is said here about Zarathustra will be refuted, provided one truly takes everything into account. It can be examined, and the more rigorously one examines it, the more agreeable it is to the one who wishes to represent the spiritual movement objectively. The will to examine is what he desires. But it is infinitely more convenient to simply believe and refer to it: this is what this or that clairvoyant said. — This is a danger for the real or so-called clairvoyant if he is not yet truly established. There is already a temptation to say what people believe. He easily slips into that into which one can easily slip at all when it comes to ascending into the supersensible world. One ascends into a world in which it really cannot be controlled as easily as in the physical world. If one wants to verify with the intellect that angels and archangels intervene at the borderlands, it takes quite a lot to test that. With faith, it often depends only on the impression one has gained of the person. How easily people can be influenced with regard to faith can be seen in mass suggestion.

[ 19 ] Mass suggestion is something about which the most wonderful discoveries can only be made in the future. In earlier times, it was something quite different, because the conscious soul was not yet so free. Today, human beings are in the process of liberating the soul of consciousness, but are still completely entangled in the bondage of the soul of the intellect. What causes suggestion? Not only what is likable or unlikable about a personality, but also, for example, the fact that someone has taken office, that they have five children to care for, and now feel compelled to remain in office. People today often prefer to listen to everything that is charlatanically extracted from the supersensible world rather than to what is based on sound research. For the former has two characteristics. First of all, it is incredibly trivial. What, for example, spirit mediums write down is usually such that one could just as well think of it oneself; it is only made credible to people by the way it is presented to them. People then believe that something from the spiritual world is at play. It is precisely because of their triviality that these things appeal to people. Or they have the other characteristic of being so incomprehensible that no one can understand anything about them at all. The things that are particularly incomprehensible are then often regarded as particularly mystical. At the boundaries between the supersensible and the sensible, charlatanism can become intertwined with what is based on serious research. It must be emphasized that only those who are vigilant regarding their own souls fulfill their duty—namely, those who pay attention to everything that can cloud the instincts, so that we believe we are promoting the affairs of humanity while we are only promoting our own, or that untruth, the lie, the temptation of Ahriman, creeps unnoticed into what we speak.

[ 20 ] Only those who remain constantly vigilant regarding all of this, only those who always tell themselves: “If you join a spiritual movement, there is a great danger that you will become vain and arrogant”—only they can make progress. That goes without saying. One should not yet reproach a person for this, only if the person in question does nothing at all to suppress these traits. There is a tremendous temptation not to stick entirely to the truth when dealing with people who believe you. You can tell people all sorts of things if they believe on the basis of authority. Then it is easy. - Nor should anyone be blamed for the fact that, when approaching the spiritual world, deceitfulness arises within them; but this should not serve as an excuse to themselves—rather, they should take every step to cast it out of their soul. That is the meaning of: “Know thyself.” One must seek out those solitary hours when one can say to oneself: “There is a danger looming again, so be on your guard.” - If one does not have these solitary hours, if it is unpleasant to admit to oneself something that is not good, if they are not the starting point for combating one’s faults with all one’s might, then one is on a slippery slope; then one rolls downhill instead of climbing upward.

[ 21 ] These are the kinds of things we must take into account if we wish to understand our position regarding occult research—research that is the highest gift of grace flowing into the physical world from the spiritual realms, toward which we should feel the greatest sense of responsibility.

[ 22 ] The duty to enter the spiritual world alongside a portion of humanity—because progress is possible only through this—and at the same time, a sense of responsibility must awaken within us: the feeling that, once I have come to know this matter, it is my duty to participate in it. Representatives of spiritual science are often accused of not taking moral considerations sufficiently into account. Such accusations are often made, as they are today, so that in the course of our spiritual movement—which is intended to lead us to the spiritual sources—we may also hear the impulses that come from those spiritual sources.