The Rudolf Steiner Archive

1. The Purpose and Goal of the Spiritual Science and Spiritual Seeking in the Present Day

[ 1 ] Anyone who wishes to attach any value to the form of spiritual-scientific worldview that I shall take the liberty of discussing today and the day after tomorrow will first have to familiarize themselves with the peculiar contradiction inherent in human development: that a spiritual current, an intellectual impulse, can be eminently contemporary in the highest sense from a certain higher perspective, and that this contemporary aspect is nevertheless initially sharply rejected by its contemporaries—rejected, one might say, in a thoroughly understandable way.

[ 2 ] The impetus toward a new conception of the universe, which Copernicus provided at the dawn of the modern era, was certainly timely from the perspective that the development of humanity at the very time of Copernicus made this impetus necessary. This impulse, however, proved to be thoroughly out of step with the times for a long time to come, insofar as it was opposed by all those who wished to cling to old ways of thinking and to prejudices dating back centuries and millennia. To the adherents of the Spiritual Science referred to here, this spiritual-scientific worldview appears timely in this sense, and it is untimely from the perspective from which it must still be judged by many of our contemporaries. Nevertheless, I believe I will be able to show in the course of today’s and tomorrow’s lecture that in the subconscious depths of the soul of present-day humanity there exists something like a longing for this worldview of Spiritual Science and something like a hope for it:

[ 3 ] As it initially presents itself, the Spiritual Science aims to be a true successor to the intellectual work of the natural sciences as it has been carried out over the past few centuries. And it would be entirely incorrect to believe that the Spiritual Science somehow developed, of its own accord, an opposition to the great triumphs, the immeasurable achievements, and the far-reaching truths that scientific thinking has brought about in recent centuries. On the contrary, what natural science was and is for the knowledge of the external world, this Spiritual Science aims to be for the knowledge of the spiritual world. Thus, it could truly be called a child of the scientific way of thinking, although this will still be doubted in the widest circles today.

[ 4 ] To offer a mental image—not a proof, but first and foremost a mental image intended to foster understanding—the following should be said about the relationship between the Spiritual Science referred to here and the scientific worldview: When we look at the great, tremendous development of scientific knowledge over the last three to four centuries, we tell ourselves that, on the one hand, it has brought immeasurable truths to the broad horizon of human knowledge, and that, on the other hand, this thinking has flowed into practical life. Everywhere in the technical and commercial spheres, we see the results of the laws and findings of natural science that have flowed into practical life. If one wishes to form a mental image of how the Spiritual Science referred to here relates to these advances, one can begin by drawing a comparison. One can look to the farmer who cultivates his field and reaps the fruits of the field. The greater part of these fruits of the field is brought into human life, used as food for people; only a small part remains. It is used for sowing new seeds. Only of this latter part can one say that it is allowed to follow the driving forces, the inner life- and formative forces, which lie within the sprouting grain, within the sprouting fruit itself. That which is brought into the barns is for the most part diverted from its progress according to its own laws of formation; it is, as it were, led into a side current, used for human nourishment, and does not directly continue what lies in the seeds, what constitutes their own driving forces.

[ 5 ] Thus, Spiritual Science—as understood here—appears to have yielded roughly the same body of knowledge as natural science has over the past few centuries. By far the greatest part of this has rightly been used to gain insight into external, sensory-spatial facts, and has been applied to serve human needs. But there may remain in the human soul, precisely from the ideas that the observation of nature has yielded over the past centuries, something that is not used to comprehend this or that in the sensory external world, something that is not used to build machines or cultivate industries—but which is brought to life so that it is preserved in its own direction, like the grain that is used again for sowing and is allowed to follow its laws of growth. Precisely when human beings thus imbue themselves with what natural science has yielded to us in the form of magnificent fruits of knowledge, when they allow this to live in their souls, when they have a sense of asking: How can the life of the soul be illuminated and understood through the concepts and ideas provided by natural science? How can one live with these ideas? How can one grasp, from them, where the main driving forces of human soul life lie? — if the human soul has a sense of raising these questions with the spiritual treasure that has been gained—raising them not in theory, but with the full richness of the soul’s life—then what can only now, in our time, since natural science has for a while been cultivated, so to speak, on its own ground, pass into human culture.

[ 6 ] In many other respects, too, the Spiritual Science can be described as a product of the scientific way of thinking; however, the spirit must be investigated in a different way than nature. Precisely if one wishes to approach the spirit on an equally secure, methodical, and scientific basis as natural science approaches nature, one must transform scientific thinking and shape it in such a way that it becomes a suitable tool for the knowledge of the spirit. How this can be achieved will be discussed in some detail in these lectures. Precisely when one stands firmly on the ground of natural science, one realizes that spiritual knowledge cannot be gained with the means by which it operates. Time and again, enlightened minds have spoken of the fact that, starting from the secure ground of natural science, human beings must recognize that their cognitive powers are limited. Natural science and Kantianism—to name just these—have contributed to fostering the belief that the cognitive powers of the human spirit are limited, that human beings cannot penetrate through their knowledge into the realms where the source lies with which the soul must feel connected; where human beings realize that not only do the forces that can be grasped by natural science come into play, but other forces as well. In this regard, Spiritual Science fully agrees with natural science. Precisely for the cognitive faculties that have made natural science great—and upon which natural science must also remain as such—there is no possibility of penetrating into the spiritual realm.

[ 7 ] But other faculties of knowledge lie dormant in the human soul—faculties that cannot be utilized in everyday life or in the workings of conventional science, but which can be drawn forth from this human soul; and when they are drawn forth—when they are, as it were, brought up from the subterranean depths of the human soul—they transform the human being: endowing them with a new kind of knowledge, a kind of knowledge capable of penetrating realms that are closed off to mere natural science. It is—I do not attach any particular importance to the term, but it clarifies the matter—a kind of spiritual chemistry through which one can penetrate into the spiritual realms of existence, but a chemistry that, admittedly, bears a resemblance to external chemistry only in terms of sound logic and methodical thinking: it is the chemistry of human soul life itself. — And from this point of view, to make ourselves understood, let me again offer the following comparison: When we have water before us, this water has certain properties. The chemist comes and shows that this water contains hydrogen and oxygen. Take hydrogen: it burns, it is gaseous, it is quite different from water. If someone knew nothing of chemistry, could they ever tell by looking at the water that it contains hydrogen? Water is liquid, does not burn, and even extinguishes fire. Hydrogen burns, is a gas—in short: could anyone tell by looking at the water that it contains hydrogen? — Yet the chemist comes along and separates the hydrogen from the water. The human being, as he stands before us in everyday life, as he stands before conventional science, can be compared to water. Within him are united the physical-bodily and the spiritual-psychic. External science and the worldview built upon it are entirely correct when they say: Yes, one cannot tell by looking at this human being standing before us that there is a spiritual-soul aspect within him; and it is understandable if a worldview completely denies this spiritual-soul aspect. But this is precisely like denying the nature of hydrogen.

[ 8 ] However, there is a need to prove that the spiritual-soul aspect can truly be separated from the human being and distinguished from the physical-bodily aspect in terms of spiritual-soul chemistry. This may be possible. That such a spiritual-psychic chemistry exists is what Spiritual Science has to say to humanity today, just as Copernicanism had to say to a humanity taken by surprise that the Earth does not stand still, but moves at breakneck speed around the Sun, while the Sun stands still. And just as Copernican writings remained on the Index well into the 19th century, so too will the insights of Spiritual Science, in a certain sense, long remain on the Index of other worldviews—those worldviews that cannot free themselves from centuries-old prejudices and ingrained habits of thought. And that Spiritual Science can nevertheless already touch hearts and souls to a certain degree, that it does not lie entirely outside the quest of our time—for this we have a small proof, of which I do not wish to boast, but which may be mentioned as a testimony to what I would call the contemporary relevance of Spiritual Science hidden within souls. For we are indeed in a position, even in our own time, to build a free college for the Spiritual Science on free Swiss soil; and can we not already glimpse, through the understanding of the friends of this spiritual movement, its emblem in the architecturally innovative, double-domed rotunda, which is to rise from the heights of Dornach, near Basel, as a first external monument to what the Spiritual Science has to contribute to modern culture. The fact that this building is already under construction, that the forms of its domes are already rising above the rotunda, allows us today to speak of Spiritual Science with even greater hope and inner satisfaction, despite all the opposition, despite all the incomprehension that it encounters and must still encounter today in wide circles.

[ 9 ] What I have referred to as spiritual chemistry, however, is not something that can be achieved through external methods visible to the eye or brought about by external actions. What can be called spiritual chemistry takes place solely within the human soul itself, and the processes involved are of an intimate soul-spiritual nature—processes that do not leave the soul as it is in everyday life, but rather act upon it in such a way that it is transformed, becoming a very different instrument of knowledge than it usually is. And it is not a matter of, one might say, miraculous acts, or acts derived from superstition, that are thus employed in spiritual chemistry, but rather thoroughly inner, spiritual-soul acts that build upon what is also present in everyday life: forces of the soul that are always present, that we need in everyday life, but which, in this everyday life, I might say, are used only incidentally; yet they must be immeasurably intensified, must gain strength to the point of the infinite, if the human being is truly to become a spiritual knower.

[ 10 ] The one force that operates more in the background throughout our entire spiritual life, but which must be immeasurably strengthened, is what we might call: attention. What is attention? Well, we do not allow life, which flows past the soul, to pass by just as it takes shape; we rouse ourselves inwardly to direct our spiritual gaze toward this or that. We pick out individual things, place them within the field of vision of our consciousness, and concentrate the powers of the soul on these details. And we may say: Only in this way is our soul life—which requires activity—possible even in everyday life, namely by developing an interest that singles out individual events, facts, and entities from the surging stream of existence. This attention is absolutely necessary in ordinary life. One will come to realize more and more, especially as Spiritual Science begins to penetrate the soul, that what people call the question of memory is, at its core, merely a question of attention, and this will shed important light even on all educational issues. One can even say that the more one strives to repeatedly engage the soul in the activity of attention—both in adolescents and in adults—the more memory is strengthened. Not only does it function better for the things to which we have been attentive, but the more often we can exercise this activity of attention, the more our memory develops, and the more intensely it takes shape. And one more thing: Who today has not heard of that sad state of the soul that one might call the discontinuity of consciousness? There are people today who cannot fully look back on their life up to this point, who do not know afterward: “You were present with your ‘I’ in this or that experience”; who do not know what they have gone through. It can happen that such people leave their homes because they have lost the coherence in their inner experience; that they leave their homes without reason or sense, that they go through the world as if having lost their own self, so that only after years do they find their self again and can reconnect with what their self has experienced. Such phenomena would never lead to the tragedy to which they often lead if one knew that this integrity, this full self-awareness, also depends on the proper development of the activity of attention.

[ 11 ] Thus, the exercise of attention is something we certainly need in everyday life. The spiritual researcher must build upon it, must develop it into a special inner spiritual strength, must deepen it into what might be called meditation or concentration. These are the technical terms for the process. Just as in ordinary life, prompted by life itself, we turn our attention to this or that object, so the spiritual researcher, through an inner spiritual method, directs all his soul forces toward a mental image, an image, a sensation, a volitional impulse, or a mood—one that he can survey, that stands clearly before his soul, and upon which he concentrates all his soul forces; but concentrates them in such a way that, as only happens otherwise in deep sleep, he has suppressed all sensory activity directed toward the external world, so that he has brought all thinking and striving, all the cares and emotions of life, to a standstill, as otherwise happens only in deep sleep. In relation to ordinary life, the human being does indeed become as he is otherwise in deep sleep; except that he does not lose his consciousness, that he keeps it fully awake. But all the powers of the soul, which are otherwise scattered across external experience, across the cares and sorrows of existence, are concentrated on the single mental image, sensation, or whatever else has been arbitrarily placed at the center of human soul life. As a result, the soul’s powers converge, and that which otherwise only slumbers, only contributes to this life as if between the lines of existence, emerges with force, imprints itself from the human soul; and it actually comes to pass that through this inner strengthening of the human soul in concentrated activity, in attention heightened to the immeasurable, this soul learns to experience itself in such a way that it becomes capable of consciously tearing itself away from the physical-sensory body, just as hydrogen is extracted from water by chemical means.

[ 12 ] However, it is an inner spiritual process that takes years if the spiritual researcher wishes to enable his soul, through such exercises in attention and concentration, to detach itself from the physical body. But then comes the time when the spiritual researcher knows how to attach meaning to the words—oh, to those words that sound so paradoxical to today’s world, to those words that seem so fantastical to this world: I experience myself as a spiritual-soul being outside my body, and I know that this body is outside my soul—just as the table is outside my body. I know that the soul, strengthened from within, can experience itself in this way, even when it has the body before it as a foreign object, this body with all the fates it undergoes in ordinary external life. The human being becomes, in what he otherwise is, a completely external entity, and he experiences himself as a spiritual-soul being separate from his body, and this spiritual-soul being then exhibits entirely different characteristics than it does when it is connected to the physical-sensory body and makes use of the intellect bound to the brain.

[ 13 ] First, the power of thought detaches itself from physical experience. Since I do not wish to speak in abstractions but rather to report on actual facts, please do not take offense at my desire to describe, unvarnished and without prejudice, what still sounds so paradoxical today. — When the spiritual researcher begins to associate a meaning with the words: “You are now living in your soul; you know that your soul is a truly spiritual being in which you experience yourself when you are outside your senses and your brain,” then he first feels, through his thinking, as if he were outside his brain, his mind enveloping and surrounding him. Yes, he knows that since, as long as one stands in the physical body between birth and death, one must return to the body again and again—the spiritual researcher knows exactly how to observe the moment when, after having lived with the purely spiritual-soul-life, he returns once more with his thinking into his brain. He experiences how this brain offers resistance, feels how he, as it were, submerges with the waves of his former, purely spiritual life and then slips back into his physical brain, which now, in its own activity, follows once more what the spiritual-soul life accomplishes. This experience outside the body and this subsequent immersion back into the body is one of the most profound experiences of the spiritual researcher.

[ 14 ] But this thinking, which experiences itself purely within itself and takes place outside the brain, presents itself differently from ordinary thinking. Ordinary thoughts are mere shadows compared to the thoughts that now stand before the spiritual researcher like a new world when he is outside his body. The thoughts are imbued with inner pictorialness. That is why we call what appears before the spiritual eye “imaginations”—not because we believe they contain only something fantastical or imagined, but because what is perceived there is actually experienced pictorially, is imagined; but this imagination is an immersion into the things themselves; one experiences the things and processes of the spiritual world, and the things and processes of the spiritual world present themselves to the soul in mental images. — Thus thinking can be separated from physical-bodily life, and the spiritual researcher can know himself to be in a world of spiritual processes and beings.

[ 15 ] But other human faculties can also be detached from the purely physical-bodily realm. When thinking is detached, then—in light of all that has now been described—the spiritual researcher first experiences himself in his purely spiritual-soul nature; but what he experiences there with the things and processes in the spiritual world is a completely different mode of perception than ordinary perception. When one usually perceives things, they are there, and one is here; they stand opposite one. This is not the case from the moment one, in spiritual-soul experience, has a spiritual world around oneself that truly arises with the same necessity as colors and light arise around the person born blind when he has undergone an operation. No, one does not experience the spiritual world in the same way as the outer world. This experience is such that one does not merely have the things and beings of the spiritual world before oneself, but rather one immerses one’s entire being into them. Then one knows: You perceive the things and beings by flowing into them with your being and perceiving what is within them in such a way that they are reflected in the images you behold. One feels that all perception is a reflection. One feels oneself in constant activity. Therefore, one could call this coming to life of the imaginative world of thought a spiritual mimicry, a spiritual play of expressions. One draws oneself out of the physical with one’s soul-spiritual being; but this soul-spiritual being is in constant activity and plunges into the processes of the spiritual world and imitates what lives within them as their own forces; and one feels so connected to these beings that one can compare this immersion to a situation where someone stands before another person, can sense what lives within that person, and experiences such an inner sharing that they must show the expression of sorrow in their own facial expression if the other is sorrowful, and must show the expression of joy in their own facial expression if the other is joyful. In this way, one spiritually and emotionally shares in what others experience; one becomes the very expression of it. In one’s spiritual expression, one expresses the essence of things. It is an active perception to which one is driven. One may say: Spiritual research places entirely different demands on the human soul than external research, which passively accepts things—the demands that the soul be in a state of inner activity and be able to immerse itself in things and beings, becoming the self-expression of what things present to it.

[ 16 ] Just as the power of thought, as a spiritual-soul force, can be separated from the physical-bodily realm through spiritual chemistry, so too can another power—one that human beings otherwise use only within the body, which, so to speak, pours itself into the body—be separated from that body. As strange as it may sound: this other power is the power of speech, the power we otherwise use in ordinary life when speaking.

[ 17 ] What happens when we speak? Our thoughts live within us; our thoughts cause our brain to vibrate; the brain is connected to the speech apparatus, and muscles are set in motion; what we experience inwardly flows out into words and lives in those words. Can we not say—and from the perspective of Spiritual Science in particular, we must say this—that in speaking, we pour out what is in our soul into our physical organs? — By increasing one’s attention as described, and adding something else—again, an activity that is usually already present and must also be heightened to the infinite—the power of speech becomes detached from the physical-sensory body. This power is devotion.

[ 18 ] We know it in those moments when we feel religious, when we are devoted in love to this or that being, when we can follow things and their laws in rigorous inquiry, when we can forget ourselves with all our feelings and thoughts. We know it, this devotion. It actually flows only between the lines of ordinary life. The spiritual researcher must increase this power to infinity; he must summon it without limit. He must indeed be able to surrender to the stream of existence just as he is otherwise only surrendered to this stream of existence—without himself contributing anything to what he experiences—in deep sleep, when all activity of his limbs is at rest, when all the senses are silent, when the human being is simply wholly surrendered and does nothing; but then he has fallen into unconsciousness in sleep. But if a person can summon the inner will to do this again and again as an exercise for the soul—suppressing all sensory activity, suppressing all movement of the limbs, placing his physical-sensory life in a state that otherwise exists only in deep sleep, yet remains awake, keeping his inner consciousness fully illuminated and developing the feeling, the sensation, of being poured into the stream of existence, desiring nothing other than what the world desires with him: if he evokes this feeling again and again, yet evokes it apart from attention, then the soul gains strength more and more.

[ 19 ] However, the two exercises—the one involving attention and the one involving surrender—must be performed separately, for they are contradictory. While attention requires the utmost concentration on an object—deep meditation—devotion, passive surrender to the flow of existence, requires an immeasurable intensification of that feeling we find in religious experience or in other forms of devotion to a beloved being. The fruits that a person reaps from such an immeasurable intensification of devotion and attention are precisely that they separate their spiritual-soul life from the physical-bodily. And so the power that otherwise pours into the word—which acts by not remaining within itself but by setting the nerves in motion—this power can be separated from the external act of speech and remain within the soul-spiritual realm. There the power of speech—as we might call it—is torn from its sensory-physical context, and the human being experiences what, in Goethe’s words, can be called spiritual hearing.

[ 20 ] Once again, it is the case that a person experiences themselves outside their body, but now in such a way that they immerse themselves in things and perceive the inner essence of things; but also perceives it in such a way that they re-create it within themselves, as with an inner gesture, not merely as with a facial expression, but with an inner gesture, as with an inner movement. The soul-spiritual element torn from the body acts in the same way as when we are tempted, through a special disposition regarding our talent for imitation, to express through our gestures what is occupying us. What is done there solely through special dispositions is done by the soul torn from the body in order to perceive. It dives into things, and it actively recreates the forces at work within them. All this perception in the spiritual world is an active engagement, and by perceiving the activity into which one must place oneself—because one is recreating the inner weaving and essence of things—one perceives these things. In the outer sensory world, hearing is passive; we listen. Speaking and hearing flow together, as it were, in spiritual hearing. We immerse ourselves in the essence of things; we hear their inner weaving. What Pythagoras called the music of the spheres is something the spiritual researcher can truly attain. He immerses himself in the things and beings of the spiritual world and hears, but hears by speaking. A speaking hearing, a hearing speaking as one immerses oneself in the essence of things—this is what one experiences. It is true inspiration that thus arises.

[ 21 ] And a third inner activity, a third kind of inner experience, can come to the spiritual researcher as he continues to develop his heightened attention and devotion. I would like to discuss what occurs in and to the spiritual researcher as he experiences himself outside his body in the following way.

[ 22 ] Let us consider the child. It is a peculiarity of human beings—I cannot speak about this at length; I merely wish to hint at what is important for the purpose of today’s lecture— it is a peculiarity of the growing human being that he must determine his own orientation in space, that he must determine for himself the manner in which he is situated within space, in the course of his childhood. The human being is born unable to walk or stand, and at first, as we say here in Austria, must make use of all fours. Then they develop those inner forces that I would like to call ‘forces of uprightness,’ and through this, what so many deeper spirits have sensed in its significance emerges in the human being, when they said: because the human being can raise themselves in the vertical direction, they know how to direct their gaze out into the vastness of the heavens; their gaze does not cling merely to the earthly. But the essential point is that through inner forces, through inner striving and experience, the human being develops, so to speak, out of his helpless horizontal life and into an upright vertical life. The natural scientist will already realize that what is present here in the human being’s inner activity is something quite different from the hereditary forces that give the animal its orienting powers in the world. The forces at work in the animal, which direct it in this or that direction toward the vertical, operate quite differently than in the human being, in whom a sum of forces is at work that pulls him out of his helpless state and acts inwardly to direct him toward that spatial orientation through which he is, in the true sense of the word, an earthly human being—through which he first becomes what he is as a human being on Earth. These forces work very much in secret. One encounters them only when one has already delved a little into Spiritual Science; but it is an entire system, a great sum of forces. They are not all exhausted during the human being’s childhood, when he learns to stand and walk. Forces of this very kind still slumber within the human being; but they remain unused in the outer sensory life and in the outer life of science.

[ 23 ] Through the exercises of heightened attention and devotion that the soul performs, the human being becomes inwardly aware of how these forces, which raised him up as a child, dwell within him. They become aware of spiritual forces of direction and spiritual forces of movement, and the result is that they are able to add inner facial expressions, inner expressions of the face, inner gestural ability, inner gestures, and even an inner physiognomy to their spiritual-soul life. When the spiritual-soul aspect has thus emerged from the physical-bodily, when the human being, as a spiritual researcher, begins to be able to attach meaning to the words: “You experience yourself in the spiritual-soul aspect”—then the time also comes when they become aware of the forces that have raised them up, that have placed them vertically upon the earth as physical-sensory beings. He now employs these forces in the purely spiritual-soul realm, and through this he is enabled to use these forces differently than he does in ordinary life; he comes to direct these forces in other directions, to fashion a different form out of himself than he did in his physical experience during his childhood. He now knows how to develop inner movements, knows how to adapt to all directions, knows how to give his spiritual self different physiognomies than those of an earthly human being; he is able to dive down into other spiritual processes and beings; he knows how to connect in such a way that the forces which otherwise transform him from a crawling child into an upright human being—he transforms these within the inner realm of spiritual things and beings, so that he becomes like these things and beings and thus expresses them himself and thereby perceives them. This is real intuition. For the true perception of spiritual beings and processes is a immersion into them, is an assumption of their own physiognomy. While one experiences what processes are within the beings through inner mimicry, while one experiences the mobility of the spiritual beings by being able to imitate their gestures; if one is now able to transform oneself into the things and processes, if one is able to assume the spiritual’s own form, one perceives it by having, so to speak, become it oneself.

[ 24 ] I did not wish to describe to you in general philosophical terms the manner in which the spiritual researcher immerses himself in the spiritual worlds; I wanted to describe to you as concretely as possible how this spiritual-soul experience breaks away from the physical, from physical-sensory perception, and plunges into the spiritual world by becoming actively perceptive within it. But it has become evident that every step into the spiritual world must be accompanied by activity, that with every step we must know that things do not reveal their essence to us, but that we can only know of the things and processes of the spiritual world what we are able to recreate and re-create by behaving in an actively perceiving manner. This is the great difference between spiritual knowledge and ordinary external knowledge: that this external knowledge passively surrenders to things, whereas spiritual knowledge must live in constant activity, and that the human being must become what he wishes to perceive.

[ 25 ] Even today—or one might say, once again today—people are willing to forgive you if you speak in general terms about a spiritual world. People still put up with that. But it still seems paradoxical in our time that someone can say: Human beings can detach themselves from all seeing, hearing, all sensory perceptions, all thinking bound to nerves and the brain, and can then—as everything experienced in physical existence vanishes completely before them—feel surrounded, know themselves to be surrounded by a completely new, concrete world, indeed, a world in which processes and beings are of a purely spiritual nature, just as here in the physical world processes and beings are of a physical nature. It is not a vague pantheism, not a general mishmash of spiritual life, that Spiritual Science has to speak of. From the perspective of Spiritual Science, speaking merely of a pantheistic spiritual being is like saying: I’ll take you to a meadow where something is sprouting—that is nature; then one leads them into a laboratory and says: This is nature, Pan-Nature! All the flowers and little beetles and trees and shrubs, all the chemical and physical processes: Pan-Nature! People would be far from satisfied with such a Pan-Nature; for they know that one can only make sense of things if one can truly trace the individual details. Just as external science does not speak of Pan-Nature, so too does Spiritual Science not speak of a general spiritual sauce; it speaks of real, perceptible, concrete spiritual processes and entities. It must not shy away from challenging the times by saying: Just as we, when we stand in the physical world, first see human beings as physical beings around us among the—one might say—hierarchies of physical beings, the minerals, plants, animals, and human beings—so does this fade from our spiritual horizon as we immerse ourselves in the spiritual world; but spiritual realms, spiritual hierarchies emerge: beings that are initially equal to human beings, beings that are higher than human beings; and just as, descending from human beings, we find animals, plants, and minerals in the physical world, so there are beings and creatures ascending from human beings into higher realms of existence, individual spiritual entities and creatures.

[ 26 ] How the human soul enters the spiritual world, what its life is like within this spiritual world according to spiritual research, as outlined in principle today; how the human soul must live in this spiritual world when it sheds the physical body at death, when it traverses the path after passing through the gate of death into a purely spiritual world—this will be the subject of the lecture the day after tomorrow. The lecture the day after tomorrow will deal with specific insights from Spiritual Science regarding this life after death.

[ 27 ] What Spiritual Science has already developed as its method—well, one notices it immediately—differs very significantly from what our contemporaries can still accept as such, based on habits of thought that have formed over the centuries and that are just as entrenched in relation to the Spiritual Science as the habits of thought of past centuries were entrenched in relation to the Copernican world system. But how must Spiritual Science think in relation to the quest of our time if it wishes to understand itself correctly and if it wishes to relate correctly to this quest of our time?

[ 28 ] The first objection that can so easily be raised from our present-day perspective is that people say: Yes, the person who practices Spiritual Science speaks of the soul first having to develop certain special powers; only then can it look into the spiritual world. But for someone who has not yet developed these powers—who has not yet mastered spiritual imagery, the separation of thought, the detachment of the powers of speech, the detachment of the powers of spatial perception, and the powers of perception of beings—the spiritual world would have nothing to do with them at all! Such an objection is just like saying: Someone who cannot paint has no business with pictures. — That would be terrible. Only those who have learned to paint can paint pictures. But it would be sad if only those who could paint were able to find images comprehensible and understandable. Of course, only the painter can paint; but when the image stands before a person, the human soul possesses the entirely natural powers to understand the image, even if it is unable to paint it. And the human soul possesses a language within itself that connects it to living art. So it is with Spiritual Science. Only those who have become spiritual researchers themselves can discover the facts, processes, and beings of the spiritual world and describe them; but when the spiritual researcher endeavors—as has been attempted today, for example, with regard to the method of Spiritual Science—to clothe what he investigates in the spiritual world in the words of ordinary thoughts and ideas, then what he thus conveys is comprehensible to every soul, even if it has not become a spiritual researcher; provided she is able to set aside all that which stems from contemporary education—from an education that presents itself as if it stood on the firm ground of natural science, but which in truth does not stand upon it at all, but merely believes it does. If the soul only casts off all prejudices, if it only truly devotes itself, as impartially as one might contemplate a picture, to what the spiritual researcher has to reveal, then the results of spiritual research are comprehensible to every soul. Human souls are predisposed to truth and to the perception of truth, not to the perception of untruth and error, if only they clear away all the debris that accumulates from prejudices. Deep within human souls lies a secret, intimate language—the language through which everyone, at every stage of education and development, can understand the spiritual researcher, if only they are willing.

[ 29 ] But this is precisely what the Spiritual Science scientist finds in the quest of our time. In centuries past, people believed that they could know anything about the spiritual world solely through religious beliefs;; in recent times, these souls have been able to believe that certain knowledge can be built only upon external facts; in our time, souls simply do not yet know this in their conscious awareness, so to speak—it has not yet taken root in what they can make clear to themselves in concepts, mental images, and feelings—but for the spiritual researcher it is clear: We live in a time when, in the depths of the human soul—in those depths of which these souls themselves do not yet know much—a longing for Spiritual Science is being prepared, a hope for Spiritual Science. More and more, people will come to realize that old prejudices must fade away. Particularly with regard to thinking, people will then come to realize many things. Even today, there will still be many people—especially those who believe they stand on solid philosophical ground—who say: Hasn’t Kant proven it, hasn’t physiology proven it, that human beings cannot delve beyond the sensory world with their knowledge? And now along comes this Spiritual Science, seeking to challenge Kant, seeking to show that what modern physiology so clearly demonstrates is not correct! Yes, Spiritual Science does not at all wish to show that what Kant says from his standpoint and what modern physiology says from its standpoint is incorrect; but the times, the search of the times that is still at work in secret today, will learn that there is another perspective on right and wrong besides the one to which we have become accustomed. Let us consider how real life practice—the life practice that is fruitful—relates to these things.

[ 30 ] One could use rigorous proof to demonstrate that humans are incapable of seeing, for example, cells with their eyes. Such a line of reasoning could be entirely correct—just as correct as Kant’s proof that humans, with the faculties known to Kant, cannot penetrate the essence of things. Let us assume that microscopic research did not yet exist, and that it had been proven that humans cannot see the smallest particles; that may be correct. The proof may hold up absolutely in every respect, and nothing could be objected to in the rigorous demonstration that humans, with their eyes, cannot initially see the smallest sub-organisms of larger organisms. But that was not what mattered in the actual progress of research; what mattered was to show, despite the correctness of this proof, that physical instruments—microscopes, telescopes, and others—can be found to achieve what is demonstrably unattainable if the abilities humans possess remain unassisted. Those are right who say: Human abilities are limited; but Spiritual Science does not contradict them; it merely shows that there is a spiritual strengthening and enhancement of the human powers of cognition just as there is a physical strengthening, and that despite the correctness of the opposing line of thought, fruitful spiritual research must position itself precisely beyond such notions of right and wrong. People will learn to no longer insist on what can be proven with the limited means of the powers of proof at their disposal; they will realize that life places different demands on human development than what is sometimes called immediately logically certain.

[ 31 ] And another point must be made if the actual—not merely the imagined—search for time is to be related to what spiritual research truly has as its task and goal. Once again, we must point to the truly tremendous advances in the natural sciences. Given these great, tremendous advances in the natural sciences, it is not surprising that there are minds today who believe they can erect a worldview on the solid ground of the natural sciences—one that, however, does not reflect on the forces discussed today. There is today a already widespread, I would say, materialistically tinged school of thought; but it calls itself something more noble, because the term “materialistic” has fallen out of favor, the monistic school of thought: this monistic school of thought, whose leader is Ernst Haeckel—who is certainly significant in his field of natural science—and whose field marshal is Wilhelm Ostwald. This intellectual perspective attempts to construct a worldview by expanding upon the insights that can be gained solely from the study of nature. The search of our time will arrive at the following conclusion regarding such an attempt: As long as natural science confines itself to investigating the laws of external sensory existence and to bringing to mind the interrelationships within this external sensory existence of the soul, natural science stands on solid ground. And it has truly accomplished a great deal; it has accomplished the great feat of thoroughly extinguishing the life-giving light of old prejudices. Just as Faust himself once stood before nature and resorted to an external, material magic, so today the one who understands natural science can no longer resort to such material magic. — But it is something else entirely that spiritual life itself, along the paths that have been described, imposes an inner magic upon the soul. — Against all those superstitious spiritual currents, against everything that seeks to explain external nature in the same way we might explain a clock—by saying, for instance, “There are little spirits inside”—and against every explanation of nature that posits this or that being behind natural phenomena, natural science has achieved its greatest feat in negation, even as a worldview. And let us take a look at how the so-called scientific view of nature works, as long as the minds can occupy themselves with eliminating the old, unhealthy concepts of all manner of spiritual beings that are imagined to lie behind nature. As long as a stand can be taken against such spiritual striving, a scientific worldview lives on through the struggle against that which had to be fought.

[ 32 ] But this struggle has, in a certain sense, already passed its peak; it has already done its good; and today the quest of our time is to ask: By what means can we construct a worldview in which there is room for the human soul? This scientific worldview, this Haeckel-Ostwald materialism, fails completely when human beings understand themselves correctly. It will become ever clearer to the quest of our time—one might say—that the adherents of the purely materialistic worldview are great as soldiers in the fight against old superstitions, but that they are like warriors who have done their duty and now lack the talent to develop the arts of peace, to develop industries, to engage in agriculture. Natural science should not be deprived of its greatness when it becomes a worldview in order to combat superstitious mental images. As long as such worldview thinkers can remain in the struggle, they still have something of the struggle in their souls that sustains them; but when a person then wishes to build a true worldview in which the soul has a place, he is like the warrior who has no talent for the arts of peace. There he stands before the question of his soul, let us say, in times of peace in the world, and a worldview does not take shape.

[ 33 ] Such a mood will increasingly make itself felt in people’s souls; the spiritual researcher can already perceive these moods in the depths of the soul. Even where these souls are still unaware of it, the longings for what spiritual research seeks to bring to the world are already at work. That is the secret of our time. But while this spiritual-scientific worldview is, so to speak, thoroughly contemporary when viewed from a higher perspective, it is out of step with the times for many of our contemporaries, who have not yet looked deeply into what they themselves actually want. Therefore, Spiritual Science initially presents a worldview that is viewed as if it were not grounded in solid scientific fact. The other worldview, that of so-called monism, seeks to be built solely on the foundation of external science. One can see today, on the flip side of this worldview, where it must lead if the soul truly wishes to see its hopes and longings fulfilled. In that activity of spiritual research of which we have spoken, what truly lifts the soul up to spiritual communion emerges for the soul; the spiritual world emerges in perceptible activity, in active perception. Through Spiritual Science, human beings can once again know of the true spiritual world, of spiritual reality. The so-called monistic worldview has nothing to say about this to the spiritual seekers of our time.

[ 34 ] This quest of our time, this quest of the human soul, cannot be suppressed; and so some of our contemporaries have already become accustomed to framing their thoughts about the spiritual within themselves in such a way that these thoughts proceed like those of the natural sciences: that the external is observed with passive devotion. What has become of this? It has led to the fact that some of our contemporaries—those who engage in this, who are aware of it—have essentially fallen into the habit of wanting to view the spiritual in the same way one views the physical. I am not saying that some things that are thoroughly true cannot come about in this way; but the method of such an approach is different from that of Spiritual Science. What is called spiritualism seeks to observe spiritual beings and processes externally and passively—without active inner perception, without rising into the spiritual worlds—just as one observes physical-sensory processes. Whose child is this purely external, we might say materialistic, spiritualism? It is the child of that spiritual current which stands on the so-called monistic standpoint and surrenders to the superstition of materialism, the mere efficacy of external natural laws. What—so will some contemporary say—is Spiritism, a child of genuine Haeckelian monism?—The search of our time will convince itself that it is precisely with this child as with other children. Many a father, many a mother has the most beautiful ideas about everything that is to develop in the child, and yet a real rascal can sometimes turn out. What monism dreams of as a true child of culture is not what matters; what matters is what actually comes into being. The mere belief in the material will generate the belief that spirits, too, can act and reveal themselves solely through material means. And the more pure monistic materialism were to grow, the more spiritualist societies and spiritualist views would flourish everywhere as the necessary counterpoint. The more the blind adherents of the Haeckelian and Ostwaldian schools succeed in pushing back true Spiritual Science in matters of worldview, the more they will see that they are fostering spiritism, the flip side of true Spiritual Science. Just as surely as the spiritual researcher stands on the ground of the investigable, the knowable, and the cognizable spiritual life, so little can he follow the method that seeks to materialize the spirit and passively surrender to what is spirit, while it can only be experienced actively.

[ 35 ] But I also wish to characterize the searching of our time, which is not yet capable of understanding itself in relation to another. A man who, as a philosopher, deserves a certain amount of respect, has written a peculiar essay in a widely read journal. In it, he writes, for example, that Spinoza and Kant are quite difficult for some people to read. One delves into them; but there the concepts just swirl and whirl about—; well, it should by no means be denied that for many people, when they try to delve into Kant or Spinoza, the concepts do indeed swirl around in their minds. But that philosopher offers advice on how this might be approached differently in accordance with the quest of our time. He says: We do, after all, have an apparatus today, a technical advancement, through which what is presented to the soul in the merely abstract thoughts of Kant and Spinoza—thoughts that confuse these souls—can be brought before the soul in a quite vivid way, so that one can passively surrender to it in perception. The philosopher wants to show, in a kind of cinematograph, how Spinoza sits there, first grinding glass, how then the idea of extension comes upon him—this is shown in changing images. The image of extension transforms into the image of thought, and so on. And in this way, Spinoza’s entire ethics and worldview could be vividly constructed in a cinematographic manner. The external search for time would thus be taken into account. It is curious that the editor of the journal in question even made the following remark: Thus, the age-old metaphysical need of humanity could be met through an invention that appears to some as a gimmick, yet is thoroughly contemporary.

[ 36 ] Now, from a certain perspective, it might well be in keeping with the spirit of our times—though only on the surface—if one could read Spinoza’s Ethics or Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason in front of the cinema. Why not? It would cater to the passive surrender that people love today. They love it so much that they cannot believe the spiritual must have a reality into which one can only find one’s way by taking every step along with it. Our time does not yet love the idea of expressing, in one’s own spiritual and soul life, what the essence of things is. Let us take a look at a notice board! Let us try to guess the thoughts of the people standing before it. Fewer people will attend a lecture where no slides are shown, but where the focus is merely on the fact that souls co-create the thoughts being presented, than a lecture where spiritual-psychic matters are supposedly demonstrated through slides, where one need only passively surrender oneself.

[ 37 ] Anyone who looks into the quest of our time, where it gives voice to its deepest, still unconscious hopes and longings, knows that deep within the soul lies the urge for activity; the urge to find oneself again as a soul in full activity. The human soul can only be free, endowed with a secure inner foundation, if it is able to develop inner activity. The human soul can find its way and orient itself in life only by becoming aware that it is not merely what the world passively bestows upon it, but rather when it knows that it is present in what it is capable of experiencing through activity; and from the spiritual world, it can comprehend only that which it is able to take hold of through activity. In reflecting on what Spiritual Science offers, comprehension will have to develop into a co-participation, a co-activity; but through this, Spiritual Science becomes a satisfaction of the deepest, the subconscious drives in the souls of the present, and through this it meets the most intimate seeking of our time. For in regard to the things touched upon here, our time is a time of transition. Oh, it is easy to say, indeed trivial to say: We live in a time of transition; for every age is a time of transition. Therefore, it is always correct to say that we live in a time of transition. But when one emphasizes that one is living in a time of transition, what matters far more is in what sense any given age is in a state of transition. If one wishes to describe our age in its transition, one must say: It was necessary—for only in this way could the natural sciences and what has grown great through them attain their achievements—that, for centuries, humanity underwent an education in passivity; for only in this way, through devotion to materialistic truths, could what had to be achieved on the ground of the natural sciences be attained. But the fact is that life unfolds rhythmically. Just as a pendulum swings upward and then downward again and swings to the opposite side, so must the human soul, if it has been rightly educated for a time in faithful, passive devotion, rouse itself again to find itself anew; to grasp itself within itself, it must rouse itself to activity. For what has it become through passivity? Well, what it has become through passivity—I will state it fearlessly with a radical-sounding sentence that will certainly sound far too paradoxical to many. But on the other hand, it is precisely the immersion in Spiritual Science that reveals—as is actually the case—that one does not rouse oneself to face the consequences of the scientific worldview if one does not emphasize this radical result. One lacks the courage to draw the real consequences, even those who claim to stand solely on the ground of what true natural science yields. If one had this courage, one would hear strange words murmured through the search of the times.

[ 38 ] At the heart of the Old Testament texts are words—I do not wish to speak today about their inner meaning; let everyone take the words for what they can take them to be; one may regard them as a metaphor, another as the expression of a fact: in what I have to say about these words, everyone can agree—the words are: “You will be like God and know—or distinguish—good and evil!” The word from the beginning of the Old Testament resonates with us. However one chooses to interpret it: one must admit that it expresses something significant for human nature and the human soul. It is attributed to the tempter, who approaches man and whispers in his ear: “If you follow me, you will be like a god and distinguish between good and evil.” One can surmise that the inclination toward good alone would not manifest itself in human beings without this temptation; that without this temptation, the inclination would have arisen only toward good, so that all human freedom is in a certain sense connected to what these words express. But they express that man was, so to speak, challenged by the tempter to look beyond himself and see himself as a different being than he is: to behave toward good and evil as a god would. As I said: Whatever one may think of these words and the tempter, I certainly do not demand today that one accept him immediately as a real being—although the saying holds quite true for those who see through things: “The little people never sense the devil, even if he had them by the collar.” He who is able to eavesdrop a little on the search of the times hears, in this search of the times, its murmur once again. It is drawing near. Call it a voice of the soul or whatever you will: there he is—and let it be said without any superstition. And for those who have the courage to draw the ultimate consequences of a purely scientific worldview, he brings forth words of great peculiarity, of a strange wisdom. It is simply that those who claim to stand on a purely scientific foundation lack the courage to accept the ultimate consequences. They nevertheless incorporate into their feelings and thoughts the belief in a distinction between good and evil, which they would actually have to deny if they wished to stand purely on the ground of science. The fact is that, as soon as one stands on the ground of mere natural science, not only does the sun shine equally on good and evil, but according to the laws of nature, evil is brought about just as much as good by human nature itself. And so the tempter, drawing the logical conclusion, whispers to people: “Do you not see it? You are merely like highly developed animals. You are like animals and cannot distinguish between good and evil. — This is what makes our time a transitional era: that the tempter speaks again in our time with a voice opposite to the one with which he spoke in the Old Testament: You are merely evolved animals and therefore, if you understand yourselves, must make no distinction between good and evil.

[ 39 ] If one had the courage to follow this through, it would be the expression of a pure worldview surrendered to passivity. That time may be preserved from this voice—to speak merely figuratively—that a knowledge of spiritual life may be brought into the search for time: that is the task, that is the goal of Spiritual Science. Those who still oppose this Spiritual Science today from the standpoint of some other science will have to convince themselves that this struggle is akin to the struggle against Copernicanism. Now that we are receiving greater attention in the world—which previously ignored us—through the construction of our free School of Spiritual Science in Dornach, the voices of our opponents are growing louder. And when I recently objected to this in the essay “What Is the Purpose of Spiritual Science and How Is It Treated by Its Opponents,” stating that the opponents of Spiritual Science today stand on the same ground as the opponents of Copernicus did, someone who felt rightly offended said: “Yes, the only difference is that what Copernicus said are facts, whereas Spiritual Science merely puts forward assertions.” The poor man does not realize at all that, for people of his mindset, the facts of Copernicanism were nothing more than assertions back then—empty assertions—and he does not realize that what he calls empty assertions today are, in the face of genuine research, precisely facts—albeit facts of spiritual life. And so one finds objection after objection raised against the Spiritual Science, both from the side of science and from the side of religious life. Just as people said in Copernicus’s time: “We cannot believe in the Earth’s revolution around the Sun, for it is not in the Bible”—so people say today: “We do not believe what Spiritual Science has to say, for it is not in the Bible.”—But people will come to terms with what Spiritual Science has to say, just as they came to terms with what Copernicus had to say.

[ 40 ] And time and again we must recall a man who was both a deeply learned scholar and a priest, who served at this university and who, when he delivered his inaugural address on Galileo, spoke these beautiful words: Back then, those who believed that religious mental images were being shaken stood against Galileo; but today—so said this scholar upon assuming his rectorship—today the truly religious person knows that with every new truth that is discovered, a piece is added to the original revelation of divine world governance and to the glory of the divine world order. — One would like to draw the attention of the opponents of Spiritual Science to something that might well have been, even if it was not actually so. Let us suppose that before Columbus, someone had stepped forward and said: We must not discover this new land—which he then discovered—for we live well in the old land, where the sun shines so beautifully. Do we know whether the sun also shines in the land yet to be discovered? — This is how those who believe their religious sensibilities are disturbed by the discoveries of Spiritual Science appear to the spiritual scientist in relation to his own mental images. One must have a wavering religious mental image, a timid faith, to believe that the sun of one’s religious sensibility will not shine upon every newly discovered land—even in the spiritual realm—just as the sun that shines upon the old world also shines upon the new world. And one who looks at the facts impartially could be certain that this is so. But as time goes on in its search, as it becomes more and more permeated by Spiritual Science, it will be touched by it in ways that many today cannot even dream of.

[ 41 ] Spiritual Science still has many opponents, understandably so. But in Spiritual Science, one feels in harmony with all those spirits of humanity who, even if they have not yet encountered Spiritual Science, have sensed those connections between the human soul and the spiritual worlds that are precisely revealed through Spiritual Science. Thus, particularly with regard to what has been said about the Tempter’s new word, one feels in harmony, for example, with Schiller and his forebears in relation to the spiritual world. Based on his own scientific studies, Schiller certainly gained the impression that he must elevate human beings above mere animality, and that the human soul has a share in a spiritual world. Just as one feels in deep harmony with a leading spirit of recent developments in worldview on the ground of Spiritual Science, so one can summarize—as if in a single feeling—what has been attempted here in broader terms, summarizing it with Schiller’s words: “/p”

Now the dull barrier of animality fell,
And humanity stepped onto the cloudless brow!
And the sublime stranger, the thought,
Leapt from the astonished brain!

[ 42 ] Reaffirming that animal nature has receded and that human beings belong to a spiritual world—reaffirming such truths—Spiritual Science stands today at the forefront of our era’s quest.

[ 43 ] And we may recall—at the very end—a spirit who was active here in Austria, who felt within his deeply inner soul, as a kind of dark impulse, what Spiritual Science is meant to elevate to certainty. He felt it, one might say, standing alone with his thinking and seeing, holding fast to spiritual visions, even though as a physician he can stand firmly on the ground of natural science. With him, with Ernst Freiherr von Feuchtersleben, he who was a healer and educator of the soul, let this be expressed as a profession of faith in Spiritual Science; let what has been presented in today’s lecture be summarized—summarized precisely with Feuchtersleben’s words, in which something resounds of what the soul can feel as its highest power; but it can feel this only when it is certain of its connection to the spiritual world. Ernst von Feuchtersleben says what can be put forward as a motto for all Spiritual Science: “The human soul cannot hide from itself that, in the end, it can attain its true happiness only through the expansion of its innermost possession and being.”

[ 44 ] The expansion, the strengthening, and the safeguarding of this innermost being—this spiritual inner being of the soul—is to be offered to the quest of our time through Spiritual Science.