The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Preliminary note: At the beginning of the evening's discussion, a question was asked about the third Copernican law. Rudolf Steiner's detailed answer is published in the volume “The Fourth Dimension”, GA 324a, pp. 177-189.

Rudolf Steiner: Now a series of other questions have been asked, to which I would like to refer only briefly, because some of them are nonsensical. Here, for example, this question:

What criteria can a non-clairvoyant use to distinguish whether communications from a clairvoyant originate from spiritual knowledge or from illusions?

Dear attendees, I would actually prefer to eliminate the word 'clairvoyance', which so many people use to do mischief with, like Count Keyserling recently. If such words do not give rise to mischief, then it does not matter if they appear in our literature, but with all that such people call 'clairvoyance', who would rather do anything than set out , which I also characterized in my lecture cycle on the “Limits of Knowledge”, I would rather use a different word for the real seeing of the spirit - seeing brightly, that is, seeing brightly. That is why I have tried to gradually eliminate this word everywhere in the newer editions of my books, which always causes confusion with all kinds of amateurish and charlatan-like stuff.

Now, if it is a single case of someone coming to you and saying that he is a psychic and telling you something he has seen, then you have no way of distinguishing whether he is telling you some kind of illusion or whether what he is saying is based on truth. You can't do that in an individual case; there is no universal guide for that. You can only, as a reasonable person, gain a judgment from the whole context of life, but also an almost completely certain judgment. You see, if some alleged psychic tells you all kinds of stuff and, when he talks about things of ordinary life, talks nonsense, then you can be pretty sure that what he tells you from the higher worlds is also nonsense. But if you find that a person has a healthy sense of external, physical reality, that he looks at external reality with a healthy mind, like other rational people, that he finds his way into it, that he orients himself to external reality, then when he speaks of things of the spiritual world, there is something that speaks for him, that is, not for him as a person, but for the correctness of his view. If, in addition, he presents what he says about the spiritual worlds in such a way that it is logical, then one can test the reality of the context without being clairvoyant. As I said, you cannot draw any conclusions from a single message, but from the context of a whole series of messages, you will, simply through an ability that every person has, even without being clairvoyant, come to understand what is meant by what someone says. Furthermore, a person who deserves to be called a clairvoyant today – but now in a higher sense – when a person speaks about the spiritual world as it must be done here in this place, then, my dear audience, he does not stop at telling things only from the higher worlds, but he always speaks at the same time about the things of this world, in which the higher worlds play a role. He speaks to you, for example, about how what one has experienced in the spiritual can be applied to medicine, to the kind of medicine that really needs to be studied. He does not speak of medical charlatanry, where a person is chosen by some Luciferic or Ahrimanic spirit and then dabbles and cures whatever comes to hand. It cannot be about anything like that. The only thing it can be about is the penetration of that which is physically real, but in which the spirit always lives, with the spirit. For materialism never understands the physical. And I believe that, for example, working in the social sphere could be one of the external reasons for proving the inner justification of what is being asserted here in spiritual terms.

So there is no externally abstract criterion, but only from the whole context of life can one know whether one is dealing with illusions or realities when it comes to the claims of the spiritual researcher. His spiritual research is certainly no illusion if he can descend into realities with them, if he is able to give something to the life that is allotted to man here between birth and death precisely through his spiritual science. For example, when I presented research results about higher worlds, people often objected to me, saying that I was starting from abstractions. Yes, but all that could be mere auto-suggestion, just as there are people who get a taste of lemon in their mouths just by thinking of lemonade, even if they don't get any lemonade. — I could only tell people: Of course, it is true that one can evoke all kinds of illusory hallucinations or visions through thought, but these are just illusions. You can indeed have the illusion through suggestion that you have a taste of lemonade, but whether the mere thought of lemonade will quench your thirst, I would doubt; you would still need the real lemonade for that.

Anyone who is completely involved in things, not outside of them, can distinguish between what is reality and what is merely thought, and for them it is clear that there are just as many differences in life for looking into the higher worlds as there are here in the physical world. I can even reveal to you, my dear audience, the criteria for determining whether something is a lie or the truth, which apply to the clairvoyant as well as to anyone else. The clairvoyant cannot test whether his observations are based on reality better or worse than the person to whom they are communicated, because he too must test them from the whole context of life, which one simply finds with common sense, even if one has common sense in ordinary life. Another person, if they have common sense, can always test the clairvoyant results.

We are not at all afraid of a scientific criticism of spiritual science, especially not if this scientific criticism is carried out with the utmost exactness and precision. What harms us is only the criticism of superficial people, those people with empty thoughts, with thought-shells. Such people, who are afflicted with mere thought-shells, like Count Hermann Keyserling, who has no will at all to go into the matter, then simply end up telling lies. In his latest book, Keyserling makes the very nice claim that Steiner's entire anthroposophy is actually just materialistic natural science elevated to the spiritual; this can be seen from the fact that Steiner started from Haeckel.

Now let us examine this utterly dishonest assertion in the light of what I wrote as a starting point in the introduction to Goethe's scientific writings. You see, dishonesty is actually always the height of mental dullness.

These things must be said, ladies and gentlemen. I always wait a long time before I am forced to say such a thing myself, and I actually only talk about these things when they have not been emphasized by others for a long time. Because after all, these things do not affect me at all. I cannot read Count Keyserling's books because I cannot find any thoughts in them. And I am used to people complaining. But today it is about something else. Today it is about the fact that we are indeed rapidly sailing into destruction if full clarity and courageous clarity are not established in this area. Today it is about the salvation or destruction of humanity, and today the pests must be sharply pointed out who try to drive out the necessary thoughts from people through such filth by saying that it is not necessary to undergo a spiritual development because what one can learn from something like the writing “How to Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds” is not needed by someone who is a gentleman and has a good upbringing.

Now, my dear attendees, at a time when such assertions can be made, the fire is burning, and it must be extinguished!

I would now like to quickly discuss another question:

What is anthroposophy's position on the use of hypnosis in medicine?

Well, dear attendees, all these things, hypnosis or suggestion and the like in therapy, always lead into an area that lies below that which we encompass with our ordinary day-consciousness. If I were to draw you a diagram quickly, it would look like this: (diagram missing)

If ordinary consciousness is here, the anthroposophical science in question strives upwards into a higher consciousness, into imaginative, inspired, intuitive consciousness. But one can also bring consciousness down to a lower level. This is already the case in ordinary dreaming; in deep sleep, in dreamless sleep, it is moved down even further. Now there are all kinds of intermediate states, and such a tuning down of consciousness actually transforms the human being into an Untermensch, in that his soul and spirit are so elevated that they cannot fully engage with the physical body and also cannot be conscious of themselves and the world, because the human being is not yet developed enough to have consciousness outside of the body. In this case, we are dealing with a demotion of the spiritual-mental to the etheric-physical plane, and then all the effects that can be brought about, which you are indeed familiar with, actually take place in a subhuman sphere. You downgrade the whole constitution of the person, the spiritual-soul-physical constitution of the person. And that is why such things are only to be applied when it comes to therapeutic issues. But even in the therapeutic area it is a matter of ensuring that they may only be applied by the person who understands the things – by which I do not want to claim that modern medicine, as it is practised today, is a good guide to understanding these things. But once these things are understood, they can of course be applied to the human organization in the same way as other poisons – because they are poisons.

So, in all these things, we are dealing with the fact that, therapeutically, we can resort to anything that can improve a person's state of health in a desirable way. However, we should not imagine that we are leading people into a higher sphere when we convey something to them where their consciousness, their ordinary consciousness, is completely shut out. Instead, we lead them into the subhuman, into the etheric-animalistic, not into the physical-animalistic but into the etheric-animalistic, if we put him into a state like hypnosis and if he is receptive to such a state. This lowering of consciousness is basically particularly loved today because the upward development into the spiritual worlds is perceived as something uncomfortable.

Here is another question: What is anthroposophy's position on healing magnetism?

Well, my dear audience, this can only be discussed if one can really treat things seriously. With a simple yes or no or with a simple sentence, such things cannot be treated if one has a scientific conscience. Today's healing magnetism – yes, one would not have to have learned about it in order not to know that there are a great many people working in it who have sought employment everywhere else, and when they have not found any anywhere else, they have become healing magnetizers. To demand spiritual-scientific explanations for such things is a bit much. But I would like to point out to you that these things must all be traced back to their elementary prerequisites. For example, there is the fact that for certain mental and physical conditions of the soul, the mere loving assurance contributes something to the healing process. Just think how much real therapeutic effect comes from genuine loving treatment of the sick person in one direction or another. Now imagine these things intensified, imagine loving treatment intensified to caressing treatment, and you have something that leads very strongly to what is healing magnetism. However, these are such imponderable things that they cannot be grasped in rough terms. It is entirely possible – depending on the case, it really depends on the how and not on the what – that the person who talks about these things, depending on whether he has the imponderables in mind or not, may just as well say something important or talk nonsense. So it is more important that one approaches these things only with a truly scientific conscience. And that is why I have always been careful to discuss these things publicly, for example, because some things are extremely colored when they are passed on.

Now, I would not want anything personal to come of it either, but anthroposophy must be something that really meets the necessary demands of our time, and one must not do anything that could in any way bring one into the danger of being a dilettante. It is very easy to fall into this amateurish neighborhood when dealing with these matters. One could say that healing magnetism is beneficial, depending on whether it occurs with knowledgeable, but now imponderable, genuine healers, or whether it occurs with people who are mere charlatans, who, after trying their hand at other fields, now also try their hand at the field of healing. Of course, as soon as the subject of healing magnetism was mentioned, before that it was suggestion, and now Christian Science is mentioned, which is asked about here:

How is it that Christian Science can heal if it merely suggests the mind?

Isn't it true that with Christian Science one must say approximately the same as with healing by magnetism, only in a somewhat different field. Whether a thing works or not does not depend on what we think about it. Because just imagine if you were to slap someone and you had the opinion that it was about some forces that don't even exist, the slap on the person's cheek will be exactly the same regardless of whether you have a false theory, a self-suggested theory, or something similar. When we speak of Christian Science, we are dealing with similar phenomena; you can also test these very similar phenomena in the field of education.

I have repeatedly spoken of the imponderables that operate from person to person and also applied them to the field of education. Suppose you want to explain the immortality of the soul to a child, the passing of the soul through the death of the human being, and you point to a butterfly pupa: that is, so to speak, the human body. The butterfly comes out: that is the soul. And you then apply this to the supersensible. You can now get two things. In your own state of mind, you can be a very clever, intelligent person who, of course, in this day and age does not believe that what you are describing with the butterfly chrysalis really has any other connection to immortality than as a symbol. The clever person makes it up; he does not believe in any connection himself, but says it to the child because the child is stupid and he is clever, because he makes something up that he presents as a comparison. That is one state of mind. The other state of mind is that of the spiritual researcher. He sees everywhere stages of an existence that is in polarity and intensification - words that Goethe already used. He looks at the chrysalis from which the butterfly crawls out, and he himself comes to believe that the butterfly crawling out is an image that the spiritual worlds are drawing for him. He is not a clever person in today's sense, he is not a clever person, but he is a person with a sense of reality. In reality, the deeds of the spirit are everywhere.

Now there is a difference in teaching: if you are a very clever person and want to make the child understand the matter through the invented symbol, you will generally achieve nothing. But if the picture lives in us, if we are imbued with the feeling that here the spirit of nature itself has drawn the image of the immortal soul in the emerging butterfly, then imponderables work from your soul to the soul of the child, then the child, because it receives something of life, also has something for life.

However, forces are at work from person to person that cannot be weighed with a scale or measured with a ruler, even though everything is set up according to measure, number and weight. And these things will still provide a rich contribution to what should enrich our lives, things that will be more meaningful for the salvation of humanity than some applications of science. If we look into these things, we will see that there are still quite other forces that will come to humanity precisely through the application of spiritual science. But for this to happen, on the one hand, true scientific conscientiousness must be taught, and on the other hand, the will must arise to penetrate into the spiritual worlds with this scientific conscientiousness.

I would like to conclude for today. We will then try, tomorrow, before you leave, my dear honored attendees, to present a summary in the evening, not so much in the form of questions as in the form of a lecture, as a farewell.

Preliminary remark: In connection with the significance of the individual senses, the participant in the discussion, Dr. Hehnel (?), had pointed out the impressive example of Helen Keller, who, despite her multiple disabilities, has undergone an amazing development.

Rudolf Steiner: Dear ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Hehnel has just raised an extremely important problem of a physiological-epistemological nature, and you will not consider it immodesty on my part if I interject a few words here, since I have to leave shortly - I would otherwise have done so at the end of the discussion. What Dr. Hehnel has said is something of eminent significance, and until these matters that have been raised here are thoroughly addressed, the problems at hand cannot be solved.

Now I would just like to point out that it was precisely this problem, which has now been pointed out in a commendable way, that compelled me, many years ago in Berlin, in lectures that I virtually titled “Anthroposophy”, to initially

AIR Art Sense Doctrine. And at the time I was obliged to abandon the book [I wanted to write about the sense doctrine], which had already been partially printed, because the material required further work. But I can say that work in this direction is in full swing within the overall anthroposophical endeavour. At the time, it was a matter of showing the different evaluation of that which is given on the one hand, I would like to say at the one pole of the human sense life, for which the sense of sight is of course particularly decisive, and how on the other hand something completely different is present - also in the experience of the human being - at the other pole of the human sense life, which now completely pushes into the motor life.

That is why I was obliged at the time to set the total number of our senses — which initially seems paradoxical — at twelve and not at the usual number that we otherwise have. If we go to the motor pole of sensory life, then we are indeed obliged not to limit this motor pole of sensory life to the sense of touch alone, but to carefully distinguish and analyze how touch, but also the sense of balance and the sense of movement, and so on, are incorporated into this motor pole of experience. These matters are still in the stage of, I would say, unstable research activity, and basically they must first be clearly formulated.

You see, my dear audience, if we stick to the one pole for which the sense of sight is particularly characteristic, we always enter a world for which we actually have no criterion of existence in our ordinary consciousness – concepts are always somewhat inadequate if we want to define them precisely. On the other hand, if you go to the other pole, you always come across certain experiences that at the same time carry the experience of being in the most eminent sense and actually, from certain physiological-psychological backgrounds, of which I have often, even very often spoken in my lectures, through preconditions that lie in all human nature, actually guarantee being.

As for those experiences that would never actually carry existence within them, at least not in the ordinary consciousness, and that lie at the other pole, I have once pointed out – it is indeed, I would say, compendiously formulated, which should actually be the subject of a [comprehensive] book – I have pointed out that only with a certain experience, which then takes place in that realm which I have called the imaginative realm, one is justified in speaking of concepts of being, that this only shows itself from the moment when one is able, in subjective experience, let us say, for example, in subjective experience of color, to carry the sense of equilibrium and movement up into the visual field, at least in suggestion. And on the other hand, it is again possible in a certain way in human experience to carry the experiences of the sense of sight down, if only, I might say, in a shadowy way, into those sensory areas that one must supplement only — as has rightly been emphasized — with one more sense: the sense of touch with the sense of movement and balance. Thus, for example, in the case of Helen Keller, when analyzed from a psychological point of view, the sense of balance comes into consideration in an outstanding way.

If these experiences are carried down, then it is possible that a case like that of Helen Keller will arise, and we will not arrive at an exhaustive characteristic of the so-called higher senses – I call them the visual senses or perceptual senses – if we are not able to carry the constructive elements that we obtain for the sense of touch into this area in a certain way. On the other hand, we must regain the ability to bring into what we call the will senses — I have often used this expression, and those who have heard my lectures will remember how I tried to extract the concepts from the human being — we must, on the other hand, bring into these will senses certain, I would say side effects from the image senses. We must be clear about the fact that without working on this field, which has been addressed here in such a commendable way, we would actually gradually come to develop a theory that would only take the pictorial out of the whole range of what is to be experimented on, and that we have to listen very carefully to precisely such things.

It is extraordinarily interesting to look at other cultural phenomena from this point of view. Consider, for example, what we produce in our pictorial art. In this age, when perspective has taken hold, the picturesque has been projected more or less solely through the sense of sight – this point in time can be easily identified in cultural history, it is not so far in the past. It was roughly in the 11th, 12th, 13th century that this transition became clearly apparent, that the painterly was first incorporated into the perspective, that is, into the ocular. If we go back further, we find that something much more universal, a human experience, underlies [the picturesque], that perspective recedes and that what man experiences, so to speak, when he immerses himself in the world with his naked senses, that is actually found in pictures. That is again a brief suggestion, and it would take a thick book to fully elaborate.

But it is interesting that someone – I can't remember his name at the moment – said with great justification: If you look at Japanese painting, you get the feeling that the vanishing point of perspective is assumed not outside but inside the human being. – In a certain way, if you paint in a more 'primitive' way, you actually do paint from the center. But then, of course, one can simply paint purely with one's eyes, and this will appear before us in a completely different way [from Japanese painting]. So one can say - and this is the crucial point that I want to emphasize very strongly in my lectures - that this object-consciousness, which I certainly do not find mentioned here as something that would be, say, a profanation, but on the contrary that this object-consciousness, which we have now finally arrived at in the course of the development of scientific research, should be taken into account everywhere, so that anthroposophy is actually founded on the condition that everything that modern science can give is taken into account. Otherwise, anthroposophy will enter into the realm of nebulous mysticism, because, on the one hand, in the development of human knowledge, we run the risk of getting lost in the senses of will, growing more and more into existence, but losing the possibility of gaining imagery from existence. On the other hand, we run the risk of living ourselves into the pictorial senses and then experiencing what Dilthey described as what would happen if we only perceived things in a fashioned way through the sense of sight. We would then have to live in a world of mere images, and we must guard against this danger by having an anthroposophy that is firmly grounded in reality.

You will have sensed that one thing emerged sharply – and rightly so – from the extraordinarily interesting words of the previous speaker: namely, that Helen Keller was able to undergo a certain spiritual and psychological development despite the fact that she lacked the sense of sight and the sense of hearing, and that the other senses, such as the sense of smell and the sense of taste, I believe, were atrophied. Nevertheless, it was possible to enable her to have a very extensive spiritual and emotional experience with the help of her sense of balance, movement and touch. And it was said that one should imagine that a person had only developed the sense of sight and the sense of hearing, but not the sense of balance, the sense of touch and the sense of movement – what would happen then? It was rightly said that what happened to Helen Keller could not happen to these volitional senses: it would not be possible, if the volitional senses were then absent, to transfer the experiences to the sense of sight.

But there is something else to be said about this, which seems to me to be extremely important and significant. It is precisely at the point, which is, so to speak, a point at an abyss, where one must pass from the pictorial to the real, where one must also pass with one's comprehension from this pictorial to the real, [and it is precisely this point that matters], and that is: A person like Helen Keller, who lacks the senses of sight and hearing and has the other senses by virtue of his or her physical organization, can exist in this world of air and soil, and even develop to a certain extent. But a person who only has the sense of sight and the sense of hearing, cannot develop on this earth in the air and on the ground, and cannot even come into existence at all – such a person does not exist within our earthly existence, it is unthinkable. This sharply defines the relationship – initially only conceptually – between the visual senses and the will senses, based on reality.

Thus an important problem has been raised in the most eminent sense, and I see it as my sole task to point out in a few words that this problem is felt within anthroposophy, and that we do not want to fall back into a nebulous mysticism by merely adhering to the higher senses, but that we want to work in full harmony with the justified spirit of scientific research of modern times.

Any one who speaks today about super-sensible worlds lays himself open at once to the quite understandable criticism that he is violating one of the most important demands of the age. This is the demand that the most important questions of existence shall be seriously discussed from a scientific point of view only in such a way that science recognizes its own limitations, has a clear insight into the fact that it must restrict itself to the sensible world of the earthly existence and would become the victim of a certain fantastic blunder if it should attempt to go beyond these limits. Now, precisely that type of spiritual-scientific conception in accordance with which I spoke at the last Vienna Congress of the Anthroposophical Movement, [West and East: Contrasting Worlds.] and shall speak again today, affirms with regard to itself not only that it is free from hostility toward scientific thinking and the scientific sense of responsibility of our times, but also that it does its work in complete harmony with what may be proposed as objectives by the most conscientious scientific demands of those very persons who take their stand on the platform of the most rigid scientific research. It is possible, however, to speak from various points of view in regard to the scientific demands of the times, imposed upon us by the splendid theoretical and practical results in the evolution of humanity which have come about in the course of the last three or four centuries, but especially during the nineteenth century. I shall speak, therefore, today in regard to super-sensible knowledge to the extent that this tends to fulfill precisely this demand, and I wish to speak in the next lecture about the super-sensible knowledge of the human being as a demand of the human heart, of human feeling, during the present age.

We can observe the magnificent contribution which has been bestowed upon us even up to the most recent time through scientific research—the magnificent contribution in the findings about interrelationships throughout the external world. But it is possible to speak also in a different sense regarding the achievements which have come about precisely in connection with this current of human evolution. For instance, we may call attention to the fact that, in connection with the conscientious earnest observation of the laws and facts of the external world of the senses, as this is afforded by natural science, very special human capacities have been developed, and that just such observation and experimentation have thrown a light also upon human capacities themselves. But I should like to say that many persons holding positions deserving of the greatest respect in the sphere of scientific research are willing to give very little attention to this light which has been reflected upon man himself through his own researches. If we only give a little thought to what this light has illuminated, we see that human thinking, through the very fact that it has been able to investigate in accordance with basic principles both narrowly restricted and also broadly expanded interrelationships—the microscopic and the telescopic—has gained immeasurably in itself, has gained in the capacity of discrimination, in power of penetration, the ability so to associate the things in the world that their secrets are unveiled, the capacity to determine the laws underlying cosmic relationships, and so forth. As this thinking is developed, we see it confronted with a demand—with which it is faced, indeed, by the most earnest research scientists: the demand that this thinking must develop as selflessly as possible in the observation of external nature and in experimentation in the laboratory, in the clinic, etc. And the human being has achieved tremendous power in this respect. He has succeeded in setting up more and more rules of such a character as to prevent anything of the nature of inner wishes of the heart, of opinions, perhaps even of fantasies regarding one's own being, such as arise in the course of thinking, from being carried over into what he is to establish by means of the microscope and the telescope, the measuring rule and the scales, regarding the interrelationships of life and existence.

Under these influences a type of thinking has gradually developed of which one must say that it has worked out its passive role with a certain inner diligence. Thinking in connection with observation, with experiment, has nowadays become completely abstract—so abstract that it does not trust itself to call forth anything of the nature of knowledge or of truth out of its own inner being.

It is this gradually developed characteristic of thinking which demands before everything else—so it appears at first—the rejection of all that the human being is in himself by reason of his inner nature. For what he himself thus is must be set forth in activity; this can really never exist wholly apart from the impulse of his will. Thus we have arrived at the point—and we have rightly reached this point in the field of external research—of actually rejecting the activity of thinking, although we became aware in this activity of what we ourselves signify as human beings in the universe, in the totality of cosmic relationships. In a certain sense, the human being has eliminated himself in connection with his research; he prohibits his own inner activity. We shall see immediately that what is rightly prohibited in connection with this external research must be especially cultivated in relationship to man's own self if he wishes to gain enlightenment regarding the spiritual, regarding the super-sensible, element of his own being.

But a second element in the nature of man has been obliged to manifest its special aspect, which is alien to humanity even though friendly to the world, in modern research: that is, the human life of sentiment, the human life of feeling. In this modern research, human feeling is not permitted to participate; the human being must remain cold and matter-of-fact. Yet one might ask whether it may not be possible to acquire within this human feeling forces useful in gaining knowledge of the world. If it must be said, on the one hand, that inner human willfulness plays a role in feelings, human subjectivity, and that feeling is the source of fantasy, it must be answered on the other hand that, although human feeling can certainly play no important role as it exists at first in every-day life or in science, yet, if we recall—as science itself has to present the matter to us—that the human senses have not always in the course of human evolution been such as they are today, but have developed from a relatively imperfect stage up to their contemporary state, that they certainly did not express themselves in earlier periods so objectively about things as they do today, an inkling may then come to birth within us that there may exist even within the life of subjective feeling something that might be evolved there-from, just like the human senses themselves, and which might be led over from an experience of man's own being to a grasp upon cosmic interrelationships in a higher sense. Precisely as we observe the withdrawal of human feeling in connection with contemporary research must the question be put as to whether some sort of higher sense might unfold within feeling itself if this were specially developed.

But very obviously do we find in connection with a third element of the being of man how we are driven by the altogether praiseworthy scientific view to something different. This is the will aspect of the life of the soul. Whoever is at home in scientific thinking knows how impossible it is for such thinking to proceed otherwise in grasping the inter-relationships of the world than in accordance with causal necessity. We connect in the most rigid manner phenomena existing side by side in space; we associate in the strictest sense phenomena occurring in succession in time. That is, we relate cause and effect according to their inflexible laws. Whoever speaks, not as a dilettante, but as one thoroughly at home in science knows what a tremendous power is exerted by the mere consideration of the realms of scientific fact in this manner. He knows how he is captivated by this idea of a universal causality and how he cannot then do otherwise than to subject everything that he confronts in his thinking to this idea of causality.

But there is human will, this human will which says to us in every moment of our waking life of day: “What you undertake in a certain sense by reason of yourself, by reason of your will, is not causally determined in the same sense applying to any sort of external phenomena of nature.” For this reason, even a person who simply feels in a natural way about himself, who looks into himself in observation free from preconception, can scarcely do otherwise than also to ascribe to himself, on the basis of immediate experience, freedom of will. But when he directs his glance to scientific thinking, he cannot admit this freedom of will. This is one of the conflicts into which we are brought by the condition of the present age. In the course of these two lectures we shall learn much more about these conflicts. But for one who is able to feel this conflict in its full intensity, who can feel it through and through—because he must be honest on the one side as regards scientific research, and on the other side as regards his self-observation—the conflict is something utterly confounding, so confounding that it may drive him to doubt whether life affords anywhere a firm basis from which one may search for truth.

We must deal with such conflicts in their right human aspect. We must be able to say to ourselves that research drives us to the point where we are actually unable to admit what we are every day aware of; that something else must somehow exist which offers other means of access to the world than what is offered to us in irrefutable manner in the order of external nature. Through the very fact that we are so forcibly driven by the order of nature itself into such conflicts, it becomes for us human beings of the present time a necessity to admit that it is impossible to speak about the super-sensible worlds as they have been spoken about up to a relatively recent time. We need to go back only to the first half of the nineteenth century to discover that personalities who, by reason of a consciousness in harmony with the period, were thoroughly serious in their scientific work called attention, nevertheless, to the super-sensible aspect of human life, to that aspect which opens up to the human being a view of the divine, of his own immortality; and that in this connection they always called attention to what we may at present designate as the “night aspects” of human life. Men deserving of the highest regard have called attention to that wonderful but very problematical world into which the human being is transferred every night: to the dream world. They called attention to many mysterious relationships which exist between this chaotic picture world of dreams, nevertheless, and the world of actuality. They called attention to the fact that the inner nature of the human organization, especially in illness, reflects itself, nevertheless, in the fantastic pictures of dreams, and how healthy human life enters into the chaotic experiences of dreams in the forms of signs and symbols. They pointed out that much which cannot be surveyed by the human being with his waking senses finds its place in the half-awake state of the soul, and out of such things conclusions were drawn. These things border upon what is the subject of study also today for many persons, the “subconscious” states of the life of the human soul, which manifest themselves in a similar way.

But everything which appears before the human being in this form, which could still give a certain satisfaction to an earlier humanity, is no longer valid for us. It is no longer valid for us for the reason that our way of looking into external nature has become something different. Here we have to look back to the times when there still existed only a mystically colored astrology. Man then looked into the world of the senses in such a way that his perception was far removed from the exactness which we demand of science today. For this reason, because he did not demand of himself in his sense life that complete clarity which we possess today, he could discover in a mystical, half-conscious state something from which he could draw inferences. This we cannot do today. Just as little as we are able to derive today from what science gives us anything else than questions in regard to the true nature of man, just so little can we afford to remain at a standstill at the point reached by science and expect to satisfy our super-sensible needs in a manner similar to that of earlier times.

That form of super-sensible knowledge of which I shall speak here has an insight into this demand of our times. It observes the form that has been taken on by thinking, feeling, and willing in man precisely by reason of natural science, and it asks on the other side whether it may be possible by reason of the very thing which has been achieved by contemporary humanity in thinking, feeling, and willing to penetrate further into the super-sensible realm with the same clarity which holds sway in the scientific realm. This cannot be achieved by means of inferential reasoning, by means of logic; for natural science justly points out its limitations with reference to its own nature. But something else can occur: that the inner human capacities may evolve further, beyond the point at which they stand when we are in the realm of ordinary scientific research, so that we now apply to the development of our own spiritual capacities the same exactness to which we are accustomed in connection with research in the laboratory and the clinic. I shall discuss this first in connection with thinking itself.

Thinking, which has become more and more conscious of its passive role in connection with external research, and is not willing to disavow this, is capable of energizing itself inwardly to activity. It may energize itself in such a way that, although not exact in the sense in which we apply this term to measuring and weighing in external research, it is exact in relationship to its own development in the sense in which the external scientist, the mathematician for example, is accustomed to follow with full consciousness every step in his research. But this occurs when that mode of super-sensible cognition of which I am here speaking substitutes a truly exact development of this thinking in place of the ancient vague meditation, the ancient indistinct immersion of oneself in thinking. It is possible here to indicate only in general principles what I have said in regard to such an exact development of thinking in my books Occult Science: An Outline and Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment, and other books. The human being should really compel himself, for the length of time which is necessary for him—and this is determined by the varying innate capacities of people—to exchange the role of passive surrender to the external world, which he otherwise rightly assumes in his thinking, for that different role: that of introducing into this thinking his whole inner activity of soul. This he should do by taking into his mind day by day, even though at times only for a brief period, some particular thought—the content of which is not the important matter—and, while withdrawing his inner nature from the external world, directing all the powers of his soul in inner concentration upon this thought. By means of this process something comes about in the development of those capacities of soul that may be compared with the results which follow when any particular muscles of the human body—for instance, the muscles of the arms—are to be developed. The muscles are made stronger, more powerful through use, through exercise. Thus, likewise, do the capacities of the soul become inwardly stronger, more powerful by being directed upon a definite thought. This exercise must be so directed that we proceed in a really exact way, that we survey every step taken in our thinking just as a mathematician surveys his operations when he undertakes to solve a geometrical or arithmetical problem. This can be done in the greatest variety of ways. It may seem trivial when I say that something should be selected for this content of concentration that one finds in any sort of book—even some worthless old volume that we know quite certainly we have never previously seen. The important point is, not what the content of truth in the thing is, but the fact that we survey such a thought content completely. This cannot be done if we take a thought content out of our own memory; for very much is associated with such a thought in the most indeterminate way, very much that plays a role in the subconscious or the unconscious, and it is not possible to be exact if one concentrates upon such a thing. What one fixes, therefore, in the very center of one's consciousness is something entirely new, something that one confronts only with respect to its actual content, which is not associated with any experience of the soul. The matter of importance is the concentration of the forces of the soul and the strengthening which results from this. Likewise, if one goes to a person who has made some progress in this field and requests him to provide one with such a thought content, it is not well to entertain any prejudice against this. The content is in that case entirely new to the person concerned, and he can survey it. Many persons fear that they may become dependent in this way upon some one else who provides them with such a content. But this is not the case; in reality, they become less dependent than if they take such a thought content out of their own memories and experiences, in which case it is bound up with all sorts of subconscious experiences. Moreover, it is well for a person who has had some practice in scientific work to use the findings of scientific research as material for concentration; these prove to be, indeed, the most fruitful of all for this purpose.

If this is continued for a relatively long time, even for years perhaps—and this must be accompanied by patience and endurance, since it requires a few weeks or months in some cases before success is achieved, and in some cases years—it is possible to arrive at a point where this method for the inner molding of one's thoughts can be applied as exactly as the physicist or the chemist applies the methods of measuring and weighing for the purpose of discovering the secrets of nature. What one has then learned is applied to the further development of one's own thinking. At a certain point of time, the person then has a significant inner experience. This consists in the fact that he feels himself to be involved not only in picture-thinking, which depicts the external events and facts and which is true to reality in inverse proportion to the force it possesses in itself, in proportion as it is a mere picture; but one arrives now at the point of adding to this kind of thinking the inner experience of a thinking in which one lives, a thinking filled with inner power. This is a significant experience. Thinking thus becomes, as it were, something which one begins to experience just as one experiences the power of one's own muscles when one grasps an object or strikes against something. A reality such as one experiences otherwise only in connection with the process of breathing or the activity of a muscle,—this inner active something now enters into thinking. And, since one has investigated precisely every step upon this way, so does one experience oneself in full clarity and sober-mindedness of consciousness in this strengthened, active thinking. If the objection is raised, let us say, that knowledge can result only from observation and logic, this is no real objection; for what is now experienced we experience with complete inner clarity, and yet in such a way that this thinking becomes at the same time a kind of “touching with the soul.” In the process of forming a thought, it is as if we were stretching out a feeler—not, in this case, as when the snail stretches a feeler into the physical world, but as if a feeler were stretched out into a spiritual world, which is as yet present only for our feelings if we have succeeded to this stage, but which we are justified in expecting. For one has the feeling: “Your thinking has been transformed into a spiritual touching; if this can become more and more the case, you may expect that this thinking will come into contact with what constitutes a spiritual reality, just as your finger here in the physical world comes into contact with what is physically real.”

Only when one has lived for a time in this inwardly strengthened thinking does complete self-knowledge become possible. For we know then that the soul element has become by means of this concentration an experiential reality.

It is possible then for the person concerned to go forward in his exercises and to arrive at the point where he can, in turn, eliminate this soul content, put it away, in a certain sense render his consciousness void of what he himself has brought into this consciousness, this thought content upon which he has concentrated, and which has enabled him to possess a real thinking constituting a sense of touch for the soul. It is rather easy in ordinary life to acquire an empty consciousness; we need only to fall asleep. But it requires an intense application of force, after we have become accustomed to concentrating upon a definite thought content, to put away such a content of thought in connection with this very strengthened thinking, thinking which has become a reality. But we succeed in putting aside this content of thinking in exactly the same way in which we acquired at first the powerful force needed for concentration. But, when we have succeeded in this, something appears before the soul which has been possible previously only in the form of pictures of episodes in one's memory: the whole inner life of the person appears in a new way before the eyes of his soul, as he has passed through this life in his earthly existence since birth, or since the earliest point of time to which one's memory can return, at which one entered consciously into this earthly existence. Ordinarily, the only thing we know in regard to this earthly existence is that which we can call up in memory; we have pictures of our experiences. But what is now experienced by means of this strengthened thinking is not of the same kind. It appears as if in a tremendous tableau so that we do not recollect merely in a dim picture what we passed through ten years ago, for instance, but we have the inner experience that in spirit we are retracing the course of time. If some one carries out such an exercise in his fiftieth year, let us say, and arrives at the result indicated, what then happens is that time permits him to go back as if along a “time-path” all the way, for instance, to the experiences of his thirty-fifth year. We travel back through time. We do not have only a dim memory of what we passed through fifteen years earlier, but we feel ourselves to be in the midst of this in its living reality, as if in an experience of the present moment. We travel through time; space loses its significance, and time affords us a mighty tableau of memory. A precise picture of the life of the person is now created out of that which appears in an episodic manner, even according to scientific thinkers, when anyone is exposed to great terror, a severe shock, at the moment of drowning, for instance, when for some moments he is confronted by something of his entire earthly life in pictures appearing before his soul—to which he looks back later with a certain shuddering fascination. In other words, what appears before the soul in such cases as through a natural convulsion now actually appears before the soul at the moment indicated, when the entire earthly life confronts one as in a mighty tableau of the spirit, only in a time order. Only now does one know oneself; only now does one possess real self-observation.

It is quite possible to differentiate this picture of man's inner being from that which constitutes a mere “memory” picture. It is clear in the mere memory picture that we have something in which persons, natural occurrences, or works of art come upon us as if from without; in this memory picture what we have is the manner in which the world comes into contact with us. But in the super-sensible memory tableau which appears before a person, what confronts him is, rather, that which has proceeded from himself. If, for instance, at a certain definite point of time in his life he began a friendship with a beloved personality, the mere memory picture shows him how this person came to him at a certain point of time, spoke to him, what he owes to the person, etc. But, in this life tableau what confronts him is the manner in which he himself longed for this person, and how he took every step at last in such a way that he was inevitably led to that being regarding whom he had the knowledge that this being was suited to himself.

That which has taken place through the unfolding of the forces of the soul comes to meet one with exact clarity in this life tableau. Many people do not like this precise clarity, because it brings them enlightenment in regard to much that they would prefer to see in a different light from the light of truth. But one must endure the fact that one is able to look upon one's own inner being in utter freedom from preconceptions, even though this being of oneself confronts the searching eye with reproach.

This stage of cognition I have called imaginative knowledge, or imagination.

But one can progress beyond this stage. In that which we come to know through this memory tableau, we are confronted by those forces which have really formed us as human beings. While confronting this tableau of life, we know: “Within you those forces evolve which mold the substances of your physical body.” Within you, especially during childhood, those forces have evolved which have plastically modeled approximately up to the seventh year the nerve masses of the brain, which did not yet exist in well ordered form after your birth. We then cease at last to ascribe what works formatively upon the human being within to those forces which inhere in material substances. We cease to do this when we have this memory tableau before us, when we see how there stream into all the forces of nutrition and of breathing and into the whole circulation of the blood the contents of this memory tableau—which are forces in themselves, forces without which no single wave of the blood circulates and no single process of breathing occurs. We now learn to understand that man himself in his inner being consists of spirit and soul.

What now dawns upon one can best be described by a comparison. Imagine that you have walked for a certain distance over ground which has been softened by rain, and that you have noticed all the way tracks or ruts made by human feet or wagon wheels. Now suppose that a being should come from the moon and see this condition of the ground, but should see no human being. He would probably come to the conclusion that there must be all sorts of forces underneath the earth which have thrust up these traces and given this form to the surface of the ground. Such a being might seek within the earth for the forces which have produced the tracks. But one who sees into the thing knows that the condition was not caused by the earth but by human feet or wagon wheels.

Now, any one who possesses a view of things such as I have just described does not by any means for this reason look with less reverence, for example, upon the convolutions of the human brain. But, just as he knows that those tracks on the surface of the earth do not derive from forces within the earth, he now knows that these convolutions of the brain do not derive from forces within the substance of the brain, but that the spiritual-psychic entity of man is there, which he himself has now beheld, and that this works in such a way as to cause our brain to have these convolutions. This is the essential thing—to be driven to this view, so that we arrive at a conception of our own spirit-soul nature, that the eye of the soul is really directed to the spirit-soul element and to its manifestation in the external life.

But it is possible to progress still further. After having first strengthened our inner being through concentrating upon a definite content of thought, and then having emptied our consciousness, so that, instead of the images we ourselves have formed, the content of our life now appears before us, we can now put this memory tableau out of our consciousness, in turn, just as we previously eliminated a single concept, so that our consciousness was void of this. We can now learn to apply the powerful force so as to blot out from our consciousness that which we have come to know through a heightened self-observation as a spirit-soul being. In doing this, we blot out nothing less than the inner being of our own soul life. We learned first in concentration to blot out what is external, and we then learned to direct the look of our soul to our own spirit-soul entity, and this completely occupied the whole tableau of memory. If we now succeed in blotting out this memory tableau itself, there comes about what I wish to designate as the truly empty consciousness. We have previously lived in the memory tableau or in what we ourselves have set up before our minds, but now something entirely different appears. That which lived within us we have now suppressed, and we confront the world with an empty consciousness. This signifies something extraordinary in the experience of the soul. Fundamentally speaking, I can describe at first only by means of a comparison what now appears to the soul, when the content of our own soul is blotted out by means of the powerful inner force we apply. We need only to think of the fact that, when the impressions of the external senses gradually die away, when there is a cessation of seeing, hearing, perhaps even of a distinct sense of touch, we sink into a state closely resembling the state of sleep. In the present case, however, when we blot out the content of our own souls, although we do come to an “empty” state of consciousness, this is not a state of sleep. We reach what I might call the state of being merely awake—that is, being awake with an empty consciousness.

We may, perhaps, be enabled to conceive this empty consciousness in the following way. Imagine a modern city with all its noise and din. We may withdraw from the city, and everything becomes more and more quiet around us, but we finally enter, perhaps, a forest. Here we find the absolute opposite of the noises of the city. We live in complete inner stillness, in soundless quiet. If, now, I undertake to describe what follows, I must resort to a trivial comparison. We must raise the question whether this quiet, this stillness, can be changed still further into something else. We may designate this stillness as the zero point in our perception of the external world. But, if we possess a certain amount of property and we subtract from this property, it is diminished; as we take away still more, it is further diminished, and we finally arrive at zero and have nothing left. Can we then proceed still further? It may, perhaps, be undesirable to most persons, but the fact is that many do this: they still decrease their possessions by incurring debt. One then has less than zero, and one can still diminish what one has. In precisely the same way, we may at least imagine that the stillness, which is like the zero point of being awake, may be pushed beyond this zero into a sort of negative state. A super-stillness, a super-quietness may augment the quietness. This is what is experienced by one who blots out his own soul content: he enters into a state of quietness of soul which lies below the zero point. An inner stillness of soul in the most intensified degree comes about, during the state of wakefulness.

But this cannot be attained unless it is accompanied by something else. This can be obtained only when we feel that a certain state associated with the picture concepts of our own self passes over into another state. One who senses the first stage of the super-sensible within himself, who views this, is in a certain state of well-being, that well-being and inner blissfulness to which the various religious creeds refer when they call attention to the super-sensible and at the same time remind the human being that the super-sensible brings to him the experience of a certain blissfulness in his inner being. Indeed, up to the point where we exclude our own inner self, there was a certain sense of well-being, an intensified feeling of blissfulness. At that moment, however, where the stillness of soul comes about, this inner well-being is replaced completely by inner pain, inner deprivation, such as we have never previously known—the sense that one is separated from all to which one is united in the earthly life, far removed not only from the feeling of one's own body but from the feeling of one's own experiences since birth. And this signifies a deprivation which reaches the degree of tremendous pain of soul. Many shrink back from this stage, lacking the courage to make the transition from a certain lower clairvoyance and, after eliminating their own content of soul, to enter into that state of consciousness where resides that inner stillness. But, if we pass into this stage in full consciousness, there begins to enter, in place of imagination, that which I have called in the books previously mentioned inspiration—I trust you will not take offense at these terms—the experience of a real spiritual world. After one has previously eliminated the world of the senses and has substituted an empty consciousness, accompanied by inexpressible pain of soul, then does the external spiritual world come to meet us. In the state of inspiration we become aware of the fact that the human being is surrounded by a spiritual world just as the sense world exists for his external senses.

And the first thing, in turn, that we behold in this spiritual world is our own pre-earthly existence. Just as we are otherwise conscious of earthly experiences by means of our ordinary memory, so does a cosmic memory now dawn for us: we look back into pre-earthly experiences, beholding what we were as spirit-soul beings in a purely spiritual world before we descended through birth to this earthly existence, when as spiritual beings we participated in the molding of our own bodies. So do we look back upon the spiritual, the eternal, in the nature of man, to that which reveals itself to us as the pre-earthly existence, regarding which we now know that it is not dependent upon the birth and death of the physical body, for it is that which existed before birth and before conception, which made of this physical body derived from matter and heredity a human being. Now for the first time does one reach a true concept also of physical heredity, since one sees what super-sensible forces play into this—forces which we acquire out of a purely spiritual world, with which we now feel united just as we feel united with the physical world in the earthly life. Moreover, we now become aware that, in spite of the great advances registered in the evolution of humanity, much has been lost which belonged inherently to more ancient instinctive conceptions such as we can no longer use. The instinctive super-sensible vision of the humanity of earlier ages was confronted by this pre-earthly life as well as human immortality, regarding which we shall speak a little later. For eternity was conceived in ancient times in such a way that one grasped both its aspects. We speak nowadays of the deathlessness of the human soul—indeed, our language itself possesses only this word—but people once spoke, and the more ancient languages still continue to show such words, of birthlessness as the other aspect of the eternity of the human soul. Now, however, the times have somewhat changed. People are interested in the question what becomes of the human soul after death, because this is something still to come; but as to the other question, what existed before birth, before conception, there is less interest because that has “passed,” and yet we are here. But a true knowledge of human immortality can arise only when we consider eternity in both its aspects: that of deathlessness and that of birthlessness.

But, for the very purpose of maintaining a connection with the latter, and especially in an exact clairvoyance, still a third thing is necessary. We sense ourselves truly as human beings when we no longer permit our feelings to be completely absorbed within the earthly life. For that which we now come to know as our pre-earthly life penetrates into us in pictures and is added to what we previously sensed as our humanity, making us for the first time completely human. Our feelings are then, as it were, shot through with inner light, and we know that we have now developed our feeling into a sense organ for the spiritual. But we must go further and must be able to make our will element into an organ of knowledge for the spiritual.

For this purpose, something must begin to play a role in human knowledge which, very rightly, is not otherwise considered as a means of knowledge by those who desire to be taken seriously in the realm of cognition. We first become aware that this is a means of knowledge when we enter the super-sensible realms. This is the force of love. Only, we must begin to develop this force of love in a higher sense than that in which nature has bestowed love upon us, with all its significance for the life of nature and of man. What I shall have to describe as the first steps in the unfolding of a higher love in the life of man may seem paradoxical.

When you undertake, with complete sober-mindedness as to each step, to sense the world otherwise than is customary, you then come upon this higher form of love. Suppose you undertake in the evening, before you go to sleep, to bring your day's life so into your consciousness that you begin with the last occurrence of the evening, visualizing it as precisely as possible, then visualizing the next preceding in the same way, then the third from the last, thus moving backward to the morning in this survey of the life of the day, this is a process in which much more importance attaches to the inner energy expended than to the question whether one visualizes each individual occurrence more or less precisely. What is important is this reversal of the order of visualization. Ordinarily we view events in such a way that we first consider the earlier and then the subsequent in a progressive chain. Through such an exercise as I have just given you, we reverse the whole life: we think and feel in a direction opposite to the course of the day. We can practice this on the experiences of our day, as I have suggested, and this requires only a few minutes. But we can do this also in a different way. Undertake to visualize the course of a drama in such a way that you begin with the fifth act and picture it successively through the fourth, third, toward the beginning. Or we may represent a melody to ourselves in the reverse succession of tones. If we pass through more and more such inner experiences of the soul in this way, we shall discover that the inner experience is freed from the external course of nature, and that we actually become more and more self-directing. But, even though we become in this way more and more individualized and achieve an ever increasing power of self-direction, yet we learn also to give attention to the external life in more complete consciousness. For only now do we become aware that, the more powerfully we develop through practice this fully conscious absorption in another being, the higher becomes the degree of our selflessness, and the greater must our love become in compensation. In this way we feel how this experience of not living in oneself but living in another being, this passing over from one's own being to another, becomes more and more powerful. We then reach the stage where, to Imagination and Inspiration, which we have already developed, we can now unite the true intuitive entrance into the other being: we arrive at Intuition, so that we no longer experience only our self, but also learn—in complete individualization yet also in complete selflessness—to experience the other being.

Here love becomes something which gradually makes it possible for us to look back even further than into the pre-earthly spiritual life. As we learn in our present life to look back upon contemporary events, we learn through such an elevation of love to look back upon former earth lives, and to recognize the entire life of a human being as a succession of earthly lives. The fact that these lives once had a beginning and must likewise have an end will be touched upon in the next lecture. But we learn to know the human life as a succession of lives on earth, between which there always intervene purely spiritual lives, coming between a death and the next birth. For this elevated form of love, lifted to the spiritual sphere and transformed into a force of knowledge, teaches us also the true significance of death. When we have advanced so far, as I have explained in connection with Imagination and Inspiration, as to render these intensified inner forces capable of spiritual love, we actually learn in immediate exact clairvoyance to know that inner experience which we describe by saying that one experiences oneself spiritually, without a body, outside the body. This passing outside the body becomes in this way, if I may thus express it, actually a matter of objective experience for the soul. If we have once experienced in actual knowledge outside the body—”clairvoyantly,” I mean—this spiritual element in existence, we know the significance of the event of laying aside the physical body in death, of passing through the portal of death to a new, spiritual life. We thus learn, at the third stage of an exact clairvoyance, the significance of death, and thus also the significance of immortality, for man.

I have desired to make it transparently clear through the manner of my explanation that the mode of super-sensible cognition about which I am speaking seeks to bring into the very cognitional capacities of the human being something which works effectually, step by step, as it is thus introduced. The natural scientist applies his exactness to the external experiment, to the external observation; he wishes to see the objects in such juxtaposition that they reveal their secrets with exactitude in the process of measuring, enumerating, weighing. The spiritual-scientist, about whom I am here speaking, applies his exactness to the evolution of the forces of his own soul. That which he makes out of himself for the purpose of causing a spiritual world and, with this, the eternal being of man, the nature of human immortality, to appear before his soul, he makes with precision, if I may use an expression of Goethe. At every step which the spiritual-scientist thus takes, in order that the spiritual world may at last lie outspread before the eyes of the soul, he feels obligated to be just as conscientious in regard to his knowledge as a mathematician must be at every step he takes. For just as the mathematician must see clearly into everything that he writes on the paper, so must the spiritual-scientist see with complete exactitude into everything that he makes out of his powers of cognition. He then knows that he has formed an “eye of the soul” out of the soul itself with the same inner necessity with which nature has formed the corporeal eye out of bodily substance. And he knows that he can speak of spiritual worlds with the same justification with which he speaks of a physical-sensible world in relationship to the physical eye. In this sense the spiritual research with which we are here concerned satisfies the demands of our age imposed upon us by the magnificent achievements of natural science—which spiritual science in no wise opposes but, rather, seeks further to supplement.

I am well aware that every one who undertakes to represent anything before the world, no matter what his motive may be, attributes a certain importance to himself by describing this as a “demand of the times.” I have no such purpose, neither shall I have such a purpose in my next lecture; [The second lecture in this brochure.] on the contrary, I should like to show that the demands of the times already exist, and the very endeavor of spiritual science at every step it takes is to satisfy these demands of the times. We may say, then, that the spiritual-scientist whom it is our purpose to discuss here does not propose to be a person who views nature in a dilettante or amateur fashion. On the contrary, he proposes to advance further in true harmony with natural science and with the same genuine conscientiousness. He desires truly exact clairvoyance for the description of a spiritual world. But it is clear to him at the same time that, when we undertake to investigate a human corpse in a laboratory for the purpose of explaining the life which has disappeared from it, or, when we look out into cosmic space with a telescope, we then develop capacities which tend to adapt themselves at first solely to the microscope or telescope, but which possess an inner life and which misrepresent themselves in their existent form. When we dissect a human corpse, we know that it was not nature that made the human being into this bodily form, but that the human soul, which has now vanished, made it. [That is, nature did not create the wonderful human body; it was created by the soul.] We interpret the human soul from what we have here as its physical product, and any one would be irrational who should assume that this molding of the human physical forces and forms had not arisen out of that which preceded the present state of this human being. But everything that we hold in the background while we investigate dead nature with those forces in connection with which we rightly deny our inner activity creates the potentiality, through this very act of holding in reserve, for a further development of the soul forces of the human being. Just as the seed of the plant lies out of sight under the earth when we have laid it in the soil, and yet will become a plant, so do we plant a seed in the soul in the very action of conscientious scientific research. He who is a serious scientist in this sense has within himself the germ of imaginative, inspired, and intuitive knowledge. He needs only to develop the germ. He will then know that, just as natural science is a demand of the times, so is super-sensible research likewise. What I mean to say is that every one who speaks in the spirit of natural science speaks also in the spirit of super-sensible research, only he does not know this. And that which constitutes an unconscious longing in the innermost depths of many persons today—as will be manifest in the next public lecture—is the impulse of super-sensible research to unfold out of its germ.

To those very persons, therefore, who oppose this spiritual research from a supposedly scientific standpoint, one would like to say, though not with any bad intention, that this brings to mind an utterance in Goethe's Faust all too well known, but which would be applied in a different sense:

The little man would not sense the Devil
Even if he held him by the throat.

Now, I do not care to go into that. But what is contained in this expression confronts us in a different application in that which exists today as a demand of the times: that those who speak rightly today about nature are really giving expression, though unconsciously, to the spirit. One would like to say that there are many who do not wish to notice the “spirit” when it speaks, although they are constantly giving expression to the spirit in their own words!

The seed of super-sensible perception is really far more widespread today than is supposed, but it must be developed. The fact that it must be developed is really a lesson we may learn from the seriousness of the times as regards external experiences. As I have already said, I should like to go into the details next time; but we may still add in conclusion that the elements of a fearful catastrophe really speak to the whole of humanity today through various indications in the outside world, and that it is possible to realize that tasks at which humanity in the immediate future will have to work with the greatest intensity will struggle to birth out of this great seriousness of the times. This external seriousness with which the world confronts us today, especially the world of humanity, indicates the necessity of an inner seriousness. And it is about this inner seriousness in the guidance of the human heart and mind toward man's own spiritual powers, which constitute the powers of his essential being, that I have wished to speak to you today. For, if it is true that man must apply his most powerful external forces in meeting the serious events awaiting him over the whole world, he will need likewise a powerful inner courage. But such forces and such courage can come into existence only if the human being is able to feel and also to will himself in full consciousness in his innermost being, not merely theoretically conceiving himself but practically knowing himself. This is possible for him only when he comes to know this being of his as coming out of that source from which it does truly come, from the source of the spirit, only when in ever increasing measure, not only theoretically but practically, he learns to know in actual experience that man is spirit, and can find his true satisfaction only in the spirit; that his highest powers and his highest courage can come to him only out of the spirit, out of the super-sensible.

The explanations which I took the liberty to give you, will have shown you that the acquisition of real super-sensible knowledge entails above all, with the aid of the exercises already characterized, that the two sides of human nature which are usually incorrectly designated as man's inner and outer being should be distinctly separated. Perhaps I may point out that in ordinary consciousness one does not carefully distinguish man's inner and outer being, when speaking of these. The way in which I characterized the exit of man's sentient and volitional being during sleep and the acquisition of conscious super-sensible knowledge outside the physical body, shows us that just this super-sensible knowledge enables us to separate distinctly those parts which are usually designated vaguely in ordinary consciousness as man's outer and inner being.

I might say that by this separation man's inner world becomes his outer world, and what we usually consider as his outer world becomes his inner world.

What takes place in that case? During sleep, man's sentient and volitional being abandons what we designated man's physical and etheric body, or the body of formative forces, and then this sentient-volitional being looks back objectively upon the physical body and upon the etheric body as if they were objects. We showed that in this retrospection the whole woof of thought appears outside man's inner being. The world of thoughts which fills our ordinary consciousness and which reflects the external world, does not go out with man's true inner being during sleep, but remains behind with the physical body, as the etheric body's real forces. In this way we were able to grasp that during our waking state of consciousness we cannot grow conscious of that part which goes out during sleep and which remains unconscious for the ordinary consciousness. (Self-observation can easily convince us that during our ordinary waking consciousness the world of thought produces this waking state of consciousness).

In that part of the human being which goes out of the physical and the etheric bodies during sleep, there is a dull twilight life, and we only learn to know this inner being of man when super-sensible knowledge fills it, as it were, with light and with warmth—when we are just as conscious within this inner being as we are ordinarily conscious within our physical body. But we also learn to know why we have an unconscious life during our ordinary sleeping condition. Consciousness arises when we dive down into our physical and etheric bodies at the moment of waking up. By diving down into the physical body, we make use of the senses which connect us with the external world. As a result, the sensory world awakes and we thus grow conscious of it.

In the same way we dive down into our etheric or life body; that is to say, into our world of thoughts, and we grow conscious within our thoughts. Ordinary consciousness is therefore based upon the fact that we use the instruments of our physical body, and that we make use, so to speak, of the etheric body's woof of formative forces. In ordinary life, man's true inner being, woven out of feeling and will, simply cannot attain consciousness, because it has no organs. By making the thought and will exercises of which I have spoken, we endow the soul itself with organs. This soul element, which is at first indistinct in our ordinary consciousness, acquires plastic form, even as our physical body and our etheric body acquire plastic form in the senses and in the organs of thought. Man's real soul-spiritual being therefore obtains a plastic form.

In the same measure in which it is moulded plastically and acquires (if I may use this paradoxical expression) soul-spiritual sense organs, the soul-spiritual world rises up around our inner being. That part of our being which ordinarily lives in a dull twilight existence and which can only perceive an environing world; namely, the physical world (when it uses the physical and etheric organs of perception), thus acquires plastic form and enters in connection with a world which always surrounds us, also in our ordinary life, even though we are not aware of it, a world in which we lived before descending into our physical being through birth or conception, as described the day before yesterday, a world in which we shall live again when we pass through the portal of death, for then we shall recognize it as a world which belongs to us and which is not limited by birth and death.

But there is one thing which rises up before us when we enter the soul-spiritual world. We cannot enter the soul-spiritual world in the same abstract, theoretical manner with which we can live in the physical world and in the world of thoughts or of the intellect. In the physical world and in the world of thoughts we use ideas and thoughts, which as such, leave us cold. With a little self-observation anyone can discover that when he ascends to the sphere of pure thinking, when he surrenders to the external sensory world without any special interest or a close connection with it, the external physical world, as well as the world of ideas, really leaves him cold. We must learn to know this in detail from single examples in life. We should note, for instance, how different are the inner feelings with which we consider our home, from these with which we look upon any other strange country which is indifferent to us. This will show us that in order to have a living interest for the environing world, our feeling and our will must be drawn in through special circumstances; we must include the feeling and the will which ordinarily dive down into the physical world only when we awake, obtaining from this physical world a connection with the senses and the understanding. The fact that love or perhaps hate are kindled in us when we encounter certain people in the physical world, the fact that we feel induced to do certain things for them out of compassion, all this demands the inclusion of our feelings and of everything which constitutes our inner being, when we come across such things in the external physical world. How conscious we are of the fact that our inner life grows cold, when we rise up to spheres which are generally called the spheres of pale, dry thought and of theoretic study!

The being which lives in a dull twilight state from the moment of falling asleep to the moment of waking up, must, as it were, connect itself during the waking daytime condition with our thoughts and with our sensory experiences through an inner participation in these processes, thus giving rise to the whole wealth of interest in the external world.

We thus recognize that in life itself feeling and will must first be drawn into the sensory world and into the world of thoughts. But we perceive this in the fullest meaning of the word only when super-sensible knowledge, which has become emancipated from the physical and etheric bodies, enables us to have experiences outside these bodies within our sentient-volitional being.

There we see that we simply must begin to speak of the world in a different way than is the case in ordinary life, during the ordinary state of consciousness. The dry ideas, the laws of Nature which we are accustomed to find in science and which interest us theoretically, though they leave us inwardly cold, these should be permeated with certain nuances and expressions which characterize the external world differently from the way in which we usually characterize it.

Our inner life acquires greater intensity through super-sensible knowledge. We penetrate more intensively into the life of the external world. When we try to gain knowledge, we are then no longer able to submit coldly to inner ideas. Of course, this gives rise to the objection that the objectivity may suffer through a certain inner warmth, through the awakening of feeling and of a subjective sense. But this objection is only raised by those who are not acquainted with the circumstances.

The things perceived through super-sensible knowledge make us speak differently of the super-sensible objects of knowledge. These do not change; they do not become less objective, for they are objective. When I look upon a wonderfully painted picture, it does not change through the fact that I look upon it with fire and enthusiasm; I would be a cold prosaic person if I were to face one of Raphael's Madonnas or one of Leonardo's paintings with a purely analytical artistic understanding, quite coldly and without any enthusiasm. It is the same when the spiritual worlds rise up in the super-sensible knowledge. Their content does not change through the fact that we connect ourselves with these worlds with inner feelings, far stronger than those which usually connect us with the external world and its objects.

When speaking from a knowledge of the higher worlds, many things will therefore have to be said differently, the descriptions will have to be different from those which we are accustomed to hear in ordinary life. But this does not render these worlds less objective. On the contrary, we might say: The subjective element which now comes out of the physical and etheric bodies becomes more objective and less selfish in its whole experience. The first experience which we have when going out of the physical body and experiencing our inner being consciously (whereas otherwise we always experience it unconsciously) is therefore the feeling of absolute LONELINESS.

In our ordinary consciousness we never have the feeling that by dwelling only within our inner self, independently of anything in the world pertaining to us, complete loneliness fills our soul, that we ourselves, with everything which now constitutes our soul-spiritual content, must rely entirely upon ourselves.

The feeling of loneliness which sometimes arises in the physical world, but only as a reflection of the real feeling, though it is painful enough for many people, becomes immensely intensified when we thus penetrate into the super-sensible world. We then look back upon that which reflects itself in the mirror of the physical and etheric body, as the spiritual environment which we left behind. We grow aware, on the one hand, of a complete feeling of loneliness, which alone enables us to maintain our Ego in this world … for we would melt away in this world of the spirit, if loneliness would not give us this Ego-feeling in the spiritual world, in the same way in which our body, our bodily sensation, gives us our Ego feeling here on earth. To this loneliness we owe the maintenance of the Ego in the spiritual world. We then learn to know this spiritual world as our environment. But we know that we can only learn to know it through the inner soul-spiritual eye, even as we see the physical world through our physical eyes.

It is the same when the human being abandons his physical and etheric bodies by passing through the portal of death, and in this connection I shall enlarge the explanations already given yesterday. It is true that in this case the physical body is given over to the elements of the earth and that the etheric body dissolves, as described, in the universal cosmic ether. But what we learned to know as our physical world, through our feeling and will, the world in which we experienced ourselves through the ordinary consciousness between birth and death, this world remains. The physical body filled with substance and the body of formative forces permeated by etheric forces, are laid aside with death, but what we experienced inwardly remains as a mirroring element.

From the spiritual world we look back into our last earthly life through death, through which we passed. Just because we have before us this last earthly life as a firm resistance which mirrors everything, just because of this, everything which surrounds us as we pass through the soul-spiritual world between death and a new birth, can also reflect itself. Through these experiences we perceive everything rising up in a far more intensive life than the one which we learned to know here in the physical world. And we first perceive as a soul-spiritual being everything with which we were in some way connected through our destiny, through our Karma. The people we loved, stand before us as souls. In our super-sensible vision we see all that we experienced together with them.

Those who acquire spiritual, super-sensible knowledge, already acquire the imaginative vision here in the physical world, through everything which I described to you. Those who pass through the portal of death in the ordinary way, acquire this faculty, though it is somewhat different to the spiritual vision on earth; they acquire it after having passed through the portal of death. From the sheaths of the physical and etheric bodies which were laid aside, emerges everything with which we were connected by destiny, or otherwise, in this earthly life—it undoubtedly arises in a different way, when those whom we left behind, still live on the earth, where the connection with them is more difficult, but when they follow us through death, this connection exists in the free, soul-spiritual life. Everything in our environment with which we were connected as human beings rises up before us. To super-sensible knowledge, the fact that people (if I may now express myself in words of the ordinary consciousness) who belonged together here in the physical world find each other again in the soul-spiritual world, after having passed through the portal of death, is not a belief to be accepted as a vague premonition, but it is a certainty, a fact just as certain as the results of physics or chemistry. This is something which the spiritual science of Anthroposophy can add to the acquisitions of modern culture.

People have grown accustomed to a certain feeling of certainty through the gradual popularization of a scientific consciousness. They strive to gain some knowledge of the super-sensible worlds, but no longer in the form of old presentiments handed over traditionally in the religious beliefs, for they were trained to accept that certainty which the external world can offer. In regard to that which lies beyond birth and death the spiritual science of Anthroposophy seeks to pave the way to this same kind of certainty. It can really do this. Only those people who tread the path already described, the path leading into the spiritual worlds, can lead the knowledge acquired in physics or chemistry beyond, into worlds which we enter when we pass through the portal of death.

Of course, not everything appears to us in this way when we look back upon our physical body through super-sensible knowledge outside the body. There is one thing which then appears to us very enigmatic, and this enigma can show us best of all that the spiritual science of Anthroposophy does not translate the truths which it includes in its spheres of knowledge into a prosaic, dry rationalism. It leads us to spiritual vision, or by communicating its truths it speaks of things which can be perceived through spiritual vision. But in being led to spiritual vision, we do not lose the full reverence towards the mysteries contained in the universe, towards everything in the universe inspiring reverence and which can now be clearly perceived, whereas otherwise they are at the most felt darkly. This enigmatic something which I mean and which appears to us, is that we now learn to know man's relationship with the earth, particularly his relationship with the physical-mineral earth.

I have already explained to you from many different aspects how our woof of thoughts, which is connected with the physical body, remains behind, and in addition to what has been described to you, in addition to what reflects itself and leads us to a knowledge of man's everlasting being, we can also recognize the true nature of this mirror which stands before us.

I might say: Even as in the physical world we face a mirror and in this mirror the environing world appears simultaneously with our own self, so in super-sensible knowledge the spiritual world appears through this mirror. And in the same way in which we can touch the material mirror with its foil and investigate its composition, so we can also investigate this super-sensible mirror; namely, our physical body and our etheric body, when our real soul-spiritual being is outside.

There we see that during his earthly life the human being constantly takes in substances from the external world in order to grow and to sustain his whole life. We absorb substances from the animal and vegetable kingdoms, but all these substances which we absorb from the animal and vegetable kingdoms also contain mineral substances. Plants contain mineral substances, for the plant builds itself up from mineral substances. By taking in vegetable nourishment we therefore build up our own body out of mineral substances.

By looking back upon our physical body from outside, we can now perceive the true significance of the mineral substances which we absorb. Spiritual vision reveals something of which our ordinary consciousness has not the faintest inkling; namely, the activity of thinking. We have left behind our thinking. Our thoughts continue, as it were, to glimmer and to shine within the physical body. Now we can observe the effect of thoughts in the physical body from outside, as something objective. And we perceive that the effect of thoughts upon man's physical body is a dissolution of its physical substances, which fall asunder, as it were, into nothing.

I know that this apparently contradicts the law of the conservation of forces, but there is no time now to explain more fully its full harmony with this law. The nature of my subject entails that I express myself in more popular terms. But it is possible to understand that the purely mineral in man, what he bears within him as purely mineral substances, must be within him because his thoughts must dissolve these substances. For otherwise his thoughts could not exist—this is the condition for their existence—his thoughts could not exist if they did not dissolve mineral, earthly substances, a fact also revealed by the spiritual sciences of earlier times, based more on feeling. This dissolution, this destruction of physical substances constitutes the physical intermedium of thinking.

When our sentient-volitional part, our true inner being, lives within the physical body and within the etheric body and is filled by the activity of thinking, we learn to recognize that this activity takes its course through the fact that physical substance is continually destroyed. We now learn to recognize how our ordinary consciousness really arises. It does not arise in such a way that forces of growth hold sway in us, forces which develop in the remaining organism through nutrition. For in the same measure in which the forces of growth are active within us, thinking is dulled. When we wake up, thinking must, so to speak, have a free hand to dissolve physical substances, to eliminate them from the physical body. To the spiritual science of Anthroposophy, the nervous system appears as that organ which transmits this elimination of mineral-physical substances throughout the whole body. This elimination gives rise to that thought activity which we ordinarily carry with us through the world.

You therefore see that the spiritual science of Anthroposophy not only enables us to recognize the eternal in man, but also how it works within his physical body; that, for instance, thought can only exist through the fact that man continually develops within himself the mineral substances; that is, something dead.

We can therefore say: If we learn to know man from this aspect, we also learn to know death from another aspect. Ordinarily death confronts us as the end of life, as a moment in life, as an experience in itself. But when we throw light upon man's physical and etheric body in the manner described, we learn to know the gradual course of death, or the elimination of physical-mineral substance—for death is nothing but the complete elimination of man's mineral-physical substance—we learn to know the continual elimination of a dead, corpse-like element within us.

We recognize that from birth onwards, we constantly pass through a partial process of death, and real death sets in when the whole body does that which we ordinarily do through the nervous system, within a small part of the body.

We therefore learn to look upon the moment of death by gaining insight on a small scale into its being through the activity of thinking in the human organism. Throughout the whole time after death, we can only look back upon our physical body because the following fact exists: Whenever a thought lights up within you during your ordinary life, this is always accompanied by the fact that physical matter is eliminated in the physical body, in the same way in which, for instance, physical substance separates from a precipitated salt solution. This lighting up of thought you owe to this obscuring, to this casting-off of physical mineral substance. When you abandon the physical body, you sum up in a comparatively brief space of time what lives in the continual stream of your thoughts. You confront the fact that in death there flares up all at once that which slowly glimmered and shone throughout your earthly life, from birth to death.

Through this strong impression, in which the life of thoughts illuminates the soul like a great flash of lightning, we acquire the memory of our physical lives on earth. The physical body may be cast off, the etheric body may dissolve completely in the universal ether, but through the fact that we obtain in one experience this powerful thought impression (to mathematicians I might say: this thought-integral in comparison with thought differentials, from birth to death), we always have before us, throughout the time after death, as a mirroring element, our physical life on earth, even though we have laid aside our physical and etheric parts—and this mirroring element reveals everything which we experience when the human beings with whom we were connected by destiny in love or in hate, gradually come up, when the spiritual Beings who live in the spiritual world and do not descend to the earth, whose company we now share, rise up before us.

The spiritual-scientific investigator may state this with a calm conscience, for he knows that he does not speak on the foundation of illusionary pictures; he knows instead that to super-sensible vision, when super-sensible vision arises through the organ of the physical and etheric bodies which are now outside, these things are just as real, can be seen just as really as physical colours are ordinarily perceived through physical eyes, or physical sounds through physical ears.

This is how the evolution of humanity forms part of the evolution of the world. If we study the development of the world, for instance the mineral life on earth, we understand why there should be mineral, earthly laws. They exist so that they might also exist within us, and thinking is therefore bound up with the earth. But in perceiving how the beings whose thinking is connected with the earth emerge from that which produces their thought, we also learn to recognize how man's true being rises above that which pertains only to the earth. This is what connects the development of the world with the development of humanity and unites them.

We learn to know the human being and at the same time we learn to know the universe. If we learn to know man's physical body and its mineralization through thinking, we also learn to know through man's physical body the lifeless mineral earth. This creates a foundation for a knowledge of the evolution of the world also from its spiritual aspect.

When we thus learn to know man's inner being, the development of the world appears in the same way in which the ordinary earthly experiences appear before us, the experiences through which we passed since our birth.

When you draw out of your memory-store an experience which you had ten years ago, this past event rises up before your soul as an image. You know exactly that it rises up as a picture. Yet this picture conveys a knowledge of something which really existed ten years ago.

How does this arise? Through the fact that in your organism certain processes remained behind which now summon up the picture. Certain processes remained behind in your organism and these summon up in you the picture, enabling you—as I once designated it—to construct what you experienced ten years ago. But super-sensible knowledge leads us deeper into man's inner being. We can perceive, for instance, that the physical body becomes mineralized during the thinking process; we perceive this in the same way in which we learn to know some past experience of our earthly life through the traces which it left behind within our being.

In the same way the development of the earth can be understood by envisaging the development of man; through the activity of the mineral in man we learn to know the task of the mineral kingdom within the development of the earth. And if, as already set forth, we learn similarly to know (I can only mention this, for a detailed description would lead us too far how the vegetable kingdom is connected with man, and how the animal kingdom is related with him (for this, too, can be recognized) the development of the world can be grasped by setting out from the human being.

Within the development of the world we can see something which is again of immense importance to those who are interested in modern civilization, just as interesting as the facts which I explained in connection with a knowledge of the human being, of the eternal inner kernel of man.

Modern civilization shows us that up to a certain point it is possible to consider man's relationship to the development of the world by linking up the human being with the evolution of the animals—even though the corresponding theories, or the hypotheses, as some people say, still contain many unclear facts, requiring completion and modification. We follow the development of the simplest organic beings up to the highest animals, and if we continue this line of observation we come to the point of placing man at the summit of animal development. One person does it in this way, and the other in that way; one more idealistically, and the other more materialistically in accordance with Darwin's theory of evolutionary descent, but methodically it can hardly be denied that if we wish to study man's physical nature according to natural-scientific methods, we must link him up with the animal line of descent (this has been done for some time).

We investigate how his head changed in comparison with the heads of the different animal species; we investigate his limbs, etc., and we thus obtain what is known as comparative anatomy, comparative morphology, comparative physiology, and also ideas on the way in which man's physical form gradually developed out of lower beings in the course of the world's evolution. But we always remain in the physical sphere. On the one hand people take it amiss today if the anthroposophical spiritual investigator speaks of the spiritual world as I take the liberty to do in this lecture; from many sides this is viewed as a pure fantasy, and although many people believe that it is well meant … they nevertheless look upon it as something fantastic.

Those who become acquainted to some extent with the things described by me, those who at least try to understand them, will see that the preparations and preliminary conditions for them are just as serious as, for instance, the preparations for the study of mathematics, so that it is out of the question to speak of sailing into a fantastic region. But just as on the one hand people take it amiss if a person describes the spiritual world as a real, objective world, so they take it amiss on the other hand if in regard to man's physical development one fully accepts those who follow man's development darwinistically, with a natural-scientific discipline, along the animal line of descent, as far as man. No speculations should enter the observations made in the physical sphere, as is, for instance, the case today in Neovitalism. This is full of speculations; the old vitalism was also full of speculative elements. But whenever we consider the physical world, we must remain by physical facts.

For this reason, the anthroposophical spiritual investigator who on the one hand ventures to speak in a certain way of the conditions after death and before birth, as I have done, does not consider it as a reproach (i.e., he is not touched by it) when people tell him that his description of the physical world is completely in the meaning of a modern natural scientist. He does not bring any dreams into the sphere which constitutes the physical world. Even though people may call him a materialist when he describes the physical world, this reproach does not touch him, because he strictly separates the spiritual world, which can only be observed with the aid of a spiritual method, from the physical-sensory world, which has to be observed with the orderly disciplined methods of modern natural science.

A serious spiritual-scientific investigator must therefore feel particularly hurt and pained at reproaches made to him on account of certain followers of spiritual science who sometimes rebuke natural science out of a certain pride in their spiritual-scientific knowledge and out of their undoubtedly shallow knowledge of natural science; they think that they have the right to speak negatively of science and of scientific achievements, but the spiritual-scientific investigator can only feel deeply hurt at their amateurish, dilettantish behaviour. This is, however, not in keeping with spiritual science. The spiritual science of Anthroposophy is characterized by the fact that it deals just as strictly and scientifically with the external physical world, as with the spiritual world, and vice-versa.

With this preliminary condition, the anthroposophical spiritual investigator entirely stands upon the ground of strictest natural-scientific observation in regard to the study of the world's development, but at the same time he turns his gaze towards the soul-spiritual world. And even as he knows that not only a physical process is connected with man's individual embryonic origin in the physical world, but that a soul-spiritual element unites with the human embryo, with the human germ, so he also knows that in the whole development of the world—though to the physical body it appears as a tapestry of sensory objects, and though it manifests itself to the woof of thoughts; i.e., to the etheric body, in laws of Nature—he also knows that the physical world is permeated and guided in its whole development by spiritual forces, handled by spiritual Beings, that can be recognized in their own appropriate way, as already described.

The anthroposophical investigator therefore knows that when he contemplates the external physical world in the meaning of genuine science, he comes to the true boundary, where he may begin with his spiritual investigation.

If we conscientiously trace the evolutionary development through animal descent up to man, as Darwin or other Darwinians or Haeckel did, and if we penetrate into the justifiable scientific aspects of the world development of man, we can continue this in a spiritual-scientific direction, after having reached the boundary to which we are led by natural science.

We now discover that a CONTEMPLATION OF THE FORM into which we penetrate through super-sensible knowledge, shows us all the SIGNIFICANCE OF FORMS, as they appear in the kingdom of man on the one hand, and in the animal kingdom on the other; we discover the whole significance of these forms.

Equipped with the knowledge supplied by super-sensible research, we see that the animal (this is at least the case with most animals, and exceptions can be easily explained) stands upon the ground with his four limbs, so that its spine is horizontal, parallel with the surface of the earth, and so that in regard to the spine, the head develops in an entirely different position from that of man. We learn to know the animal's whole form, as it were, from within, as a complex of forces, and also in relationship with the whole universe. And we thus learn to make a comparison: We perceive the transformation, the metamorphosis in the human form, in the human being whom we see standing upon his two legs, at right angles, so to speak, with the animal's spine, with his own spine set vertically to the surface of the earth and his head developing in accordance with this position of the spine.

By penetrating into the inner art of Nature's creative process, we learn to distinguish the human form from the animal form; we recognize this by entering into the artistic creative process of the cosmos. And we penetrate into the development of the world by rising from otherwise abstract constructive thoughts to thoughts which are inwardly filled with life, which form themselves artistically in the spirit.

The most important thing to be borne in mind is that when it seeks to know the development of the world, anthroposophical spiritual research changes from the abstract understanding ordinarily described—and justly so—as dry, prosaic, systematic thought, or combining thought, into concrete, real thought. Not for the higher spiritual world, in which concepts must penetrate in the manner described, but for the physical world, the forms in the world development should first be grasped through a kind of artistic comprehension, which in addition develops upon the foundation of super-sensible knowledge.

By thus indicating how science should change into art, we must of course encounter the objection raised by those who are accustomed to think in accordance with modern ideas: “But science must not become an art!” My dear friends, this can always be said, as a human requirement; people can say: I forbid the logic of the universe to become an art, for we only learn to know reality by linking up thought with thought and by thus approaching reality. If the world were as people imagine it to be, one could refuse to rise up to art, to an artistic comprehension of forms; but if the world is formed in such a way that it can only be comprehended through an artistic comprehension, it is necessary to advance to such an artistic comprehension. This is how matters stand. That is why those people who were earnestly seeking to grasp the organic in world development really came to an inner development of the thinking ordinarily looked upon as scientific thought; they came to an artistic comprehension of the world. As soon as we continue to observe with an artistic-intuitive eye the development of the world from the point where the ordinary Darwinistic theory comes to a standstill, we perceive that man, grasped as a whole, cannot simply be looked upon by saying that once there were lower animals in the world, from which higher animals developed, that then still higher animals developed out of these, and so forth, until finally man arose.

If we study embryology in an unprejudiced way, it really contradicts this idea. Although modern scientists set up the fundamental law of biogenetics and compare embryology with phylogeny, they do not interpret rightly what appears outwardly even in human embryology, because they do not rise to this artistic comprehension of the world's development. If we observe in a human embryo how the limbs develop out of organs which at first have a stunted aspect, how everything is at first merely head, we already obtain the first elements of what reveals itself in the artistic comprehension of the human form. It is not possible to link up the whole human being with the animals. One cannot say: The human being, such as he stands before us today, is a descendant of the whole animal kingdom. No, this is not the case. Just those who penetrate with genuine scientific conscientiousness into scientific Darwinism and its modern description of the development of the world, will discover that through a higher understanding it is simply impossible to place man at the end, or at the summit of the animal chain of development; they must instead study the human head as such, the head of the human being. This human head alone descends from the whole animal kingdom. Though it may sound strange and paradoxical, the part which is generally considered as man's most perfect part is a transformation from the animal kingdom.

Let us approach the human head with this idea and let us study it carefully. Observe with a certain morphological-artistic sense how the lower maxillary bones are transformed limbs, also the upper maxillary bones are transformed limbs, how everything in the head is an enhanced development of the animal form; you will then recognize in the human head that upon a higher stage it reveals everything which appears in the animals under so many different forms. You will then also understand why it is so.

When you observe the animal, you can see that its head hangs upon one extremity of the spine and that in a real animal it is entirely subjected to the law of gravity. Observe instead the human head; observe how the human being stands within the cosmos. The human head is set upon a spine which has a vertical direction. It rests upon the remaining body in such a way that the human being protects the head, as it were, against falling a prey only to the force of gravity. The human head is really something which rests upon the remaining organism with comparative independence. And we come to the point of understanding that through the fact that the human head is carried by the remaining body, it really travels along like a person using a coach; for it is the remaining body which carries the human head through the world. The human head has transformed limbs which have become shriveled, as it were, and it is set upon the remaining organism. This remaining organism is related to the human head in the same way in which the whole earth with its force of gravity is related to the animal. In regard to the head, the human being is related to his whole remaining body in the same way in which the whole animal is related to the earth.

We now begin to understand the human being through the development of the world. And if we proceed in this knowledge of the human form with an artistic sense and understanding, we finally comprehend why the human head is the continuation of the animal chain and why the remaining body of man developed later, out of the earth, and was attached to the human head. Only in this way we gradually learn to understand man's development.

If we go back into earlier times of the past, we can only transfer into these primordial epochs that part of man which lies at the foundation of his present head development. We must not seek the development of his limbs or of his thorax in those early ages, for these developed later. But if we observe the development of the world by setting out, as described by me, from the human being, if we observe it in the same way in which we would look upon some past experience, we find that the human being had already begun his development in the world at a time when our higher animals, for instance, did not as yet exist.

We can therefore say (let us now take a later epoch of the earth): In the further course of his development man developed his head out of earlier animal beings through the fact that his spiritual essence animated him. That is why he could raise his head above the former stage of development. He then added his limbs, which developed out of the regular forces of the earth. The animals which followed could only develop to the extent in which man developed with the exclusion of his head. They began their development later, so that they did not go as far as the human development of the head; they remained connected with the earth while the human being separated himself from it.

This proves that it has a real meaning to say: Man belongs to the development of the universe in such a way that he is related with the animal kingdom, but he rises above it through his spiritual development. The animals which followed man in their development could only develop as much as man had developed in his limbs and thorax … the head remained stunted, because a longer time of development should have preceded it, such as that of man, in order that the real head might develop.

Through an artistic deepened contemplation of the forms in the world's development the conscientiously accepted Darwinistic theory changes, insofar as it is scientifically justified today. We thus recognize that in the development of the world the human being has behind him a LONGER TIME OF DEVELOPMENT than the animals—that the animals develop as their chief form that part which man adds to his head. In this way man reaches the point of lifting one part of his being out of the force of gravity, whereas the animals are entirely subjected to the force of gravity. Everything which constituted our head with its sense organs is raised above the force of gravity, so that it does not turn towards ponderable matter but towards the ether, which fills the sensory world. This is the case above all with the senses; we would see this, could we study them more closely. In this way, for instance, the human organ of hearing depends upon an etheric structure, not only upon an air structure.

Through all this the human being forms part not only of the material world, of the ponderable physical world, but he forms part of the etheric world outside. Through the etheric world he perceives, for instance, what the light conjures up before him in the world of colours, etc., etc. Even through his external form he rises above heavy matter, up to the free ether, and for this reason we see the development of the world in a different way when we ascend from natural science to spiritual science.

But when we rise up to an artistic conception, we perceive the activity of the soul-spiritual in man, and we must rise up to such a conception if we wish to understand the human being. We should, for instance, be able to say: In regard to his soul-spiritual, sentient-volitional being, we must speak of loneliness and of a life in common with others, as if these were theoretical concepts, as described today; we must rise up to the moral world and finally we come to the religious world. These worlds belong together and form a whole.

If we study the human being in accordance with a natural-scientific mentality and in the meaning of modern civilization, we find on the one hand the rigid scientific necessity of Nature to which also the human being belongs, and on the other hand we find that man can only be conscious of his dignity—that he can only say “I am truly man”—if he can feel within him the moral-religious impulses. But if we honestly stand upon the foundation of natural science we only have hypotheses in regard to the beginning and the end of the earth, hypotheses which speak of the Kant-Laplace nebula for the beginning of the earth and of a death through heat for the end of the earth.

If in the face of the natural-scientific demands we now consider, in the meaning of modern civilization, the moral-religious world which reveals itself intuitively (I have shown this in my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, if we consider this world we must say: We really delude ourselves, we conjure up before us a fog. Is it possible to believe that when the earth passes through the death by heat, in accordance with the natural-scientific concept, that there should still exist anything besides the death of all ideals?

At this point spiritual science, or ANTHROPOSOPHY, sets in, and shows that the soul-spiritual is a reality, that it is active within the physical and that it placed the human form, the human being, into the evolution of the world; it shows that we should look back upon animal beings which are entirely different from the present animals, that it is possible to adhere to the methods of modern science, but that other results are obtained. Anthroposophy thus inserts the moral element into the science of religion, and Anthroposophy thus becomes a moral-religious science.

Now we no longer look upon the Kant-Laplace nebula, but we look at the same time upon an original spiritual element, out of which the soul-spiritual world described in Anthroposophy developed in the same way in which the physical world developed out of a physical-earthly origin. We also look towards the end of the earth and since the laws of enthropy are fully justified, we can show that the earth will end through a kind of death by heat, but at the same time we can envisage from the anthroposophical standpoint the end of the single human being: his corpse is handed over to the elements, but the human being himself passes over into a spiritual world. This is how we envisage the end of the earth. The scientific results do not disturb us, for we know that everything of a soul-spiritual nature which man develops will pass through the earth's portal of death when the earth no longer exists; it will pass over into a new world development, even as the human being passes over into a new world development whenever he passes through death.

By surveying the development of the earth in this way, we perceive IN THE MIDDLE OF ITS DEVELOPMENT THE EVENT OF GOLGOTHA. We see how this event of Golgotha is placed in the middle of the earth's development; before this event, there only existed forces which would have led man to a kind of paralyzation of his forces. We really learn to recognize (I can only allude to this at the end of my lecture) that in the same way in which through the vegetable and animal fertilization a special element enters the fertilized organism, so the Mystery of Golgotha brought something into the evolution of the world from regions outside the earth, and this continues to live; it accompanies the souls until at the end of the earth they pass on to new metamorphoses of earthly life. I would have to describe whole volumes were I to show the path leading in a strictly conscientious scientific way from what I have described to you today in connection with the evolution of humanity and of the universe, to the Mystery of Golgotha, to the appearance of the Christ-Being in relationship with the earth.

But through a spiritual-scientific deepening many passages in the Gospels will appear in an entirely new light, in a different way from what it has hitherto been possible through the occidental consciousness. Let us consider only the following fact: If we entirely stand upon a natural-scientific foundation, we must envisage the physical end of the earth. And those who continue to stand upon this scientific foundation, will also find that finally the starry world surrounding the earth will decay; they will look upon a future in which this earth will no longer exist, and the stars above will no longer exist. But spiritual science gives us the certainty that even as an eternal being goes out of the physical and etheric body every evening and returns into them every morning, so an eternal being will continue to live when the single human bodies shall have decayed. When the whole earth falls away from all the soul-spiritual beings of men, this eternal part of the earth will continue to live and it will pass over to new planetary phases of world development.

Now Christ's words in the Gospels resound to us in a new and wonderful way; “HEAVEN AND EARTH SHALL PASS AWAY, BUT MY WORDS SHALL NOT PASS AWAY,” and connected with these words are those of St. Paul: “NOT I, BUT CHRIST IN ME.” If a Christian really grasps these words, if a person who really understands Christianity inwardly and who says, “Not I, but Christ in me,” understands Christ's words, “Heaven and earth shall pass away but my words shall not pass away”—that is, “what lives within my everlasting Being shall not pass away”—these words will shine forth from the Gospel in a peculiar manner, with a magic producing reverence, but if one is really honest they cannot be understood without further ado.

If we approach such words and others, with the aid of spiritual science and in the anthroposophical meaning, if we approach many other sayings which come to us out of the spiritual darkness of the world development, of the development of the earth and of humanity, a light will ray out of them. Indeed, my dear friends, it is as if light were to fall upon words such as “heaven and earth shall pass away but my words shall not pass away”—light falls upon them, if we hear them resounding from that region where the Mystery of Golgotha took place, and the whole development of the earth only acquires its true meaning through such words!

Thus we see that spiritual science in the meaning of Anthroposophy strives above all after a conscientious observation of the strict methods of the physical world, but at the same time it seeks to continue these strict scientific methods into regions where our true eternal being shines out towards us, regions where also the spiritual being of the world development rays out its light towards us, a light in which the world development itself with its spiritual forces and Beings appears in its spiritual-divine character.

My dear friends, at the conclusion of my lecture (I thank you that you showed so much interest in it) let me express the following fact: Spiritual-scientific Anthroposophy can fully understand that modern humanity, particularly conscientious, scientifically-minded men, have grown accustomed to consider as real and certain the results of causal natural-scientific knowledge, the results of external sense observation, intellectual combinations of these sensory observations, and experiments. This gave them a feeling of certainty. And by acquiring this certainty, they acquired a certain feeling in general towards that which can be “sure.” Up to now no attempt has been made to study super-sensible things in the same way in which physical things are studied. This certainty could therefore not be carried into super-sensible regions. Today people still believe that they must halt with a mere thought at the threshold of the super-sensible worlds, that feelings full of reverence suffice, because otherwise they would lose the mystery, and the super-sensible world would be rationalized. But spiritual science does not seek to rationalize the mystery, to dispel the reverent feeling which one has towards the mystery: it leads to these mysteries through vision. Anthroposophy leaves the mystery its mystery-character, but it sets it into the evolution of the world in the same way in which sensory things exist in the sphere of world evolution.

And it must be true that people also need certainty for the spheres transcending mere Nature. To the extent in which they will feel that through spiritual science in the meaning of Anthroposophy they do not hear some vague amateurish and indistinct talk about the worlds, but something which is filled by the same spirit which comes to expression in modern science, to this same extent humanity will feel that the certainty which it acquired, the certainty which it is accustomed to have through the physical world, can also be led over into the spiritual worlds. People will feel: If certainty exists only in regard to the physical world, of what use is this certainty, since the physical world passes away? Man needs an eternal element, for he himself wants to be rooted in an eternal element. He cannot admit that this certainty should only be valid for the transient, perishable world. Certainty, the certainty of knowledge, must also be gained in regard to the imperishable world.

This is the aim pursued in greatest modesty (those who follow the spiritual science of Anthroposophy know this) by Anthroposophy. Its aim is that through his natural certainty man should not lose his knowledge of the imperishable; through his certainty in regard to perishable things he should not lose the certainty in regard to imperishable things. Certainty in regard to the perishable; that is to say, certainty in regard to the riddle of birth and death, the riddle of immortality, the riddle of the spiritual world developments, this is what Anthroposophy seeks to bring into our civilization.

Anthroposophy believes that this can be its contribution to modern civilization. For in the same measure in which people courageously recognize that certainty should be gained also in regard to imperishable things, and not only in regard to perishable things, in the same measure they will grow accustomed to look upon Anthroposophy no longer as something fantastic and as an individual hobby, but as something which must enter our whole spiritual culture, like all the other branches of science, and thereby our civilization in general.

As Anthroposophy spreads to fields where men usually seek their religious and, maybe, their moral impulses also, it encounters many persons who feel drawn towards such a spiritual stream. The modern spirit, which yesterday I allowed myself to call “the scientific spirit”, has, in many respects, shaken old, traditional beliefs, and although many people approach the anthroposophical line of research somewhat sceptically, there are, nevertheless, very many to-day whose souls have at least an inclination towards it. But it is correct to say that, in one respect, Anthroposophy encounters difficulties when it would enter the fields of the various sciences. That is the particular aim of this course, and it will be my task to present here, in the main, the general, more comprehensive principles and results of our research, while the other lecturers will deal with special scientific fields.

But precisely such an arrangement must arouse all the antipathies—I use this word more in a theoretical than in a moral sense—which Anthroposophy encounters from scientific quarters. I can only assure you that one who is engaged in anthroposophical research fully understands how difficult it is for a man involved in scientific work to-day to pass from the scientific attitude into Anthroposophy. Although Anthroposophy has certainly much to correct in present-day science, and, at the same time, when organic and spiritual fields are included, very much to add to the present material for research, it does not of itself come into conflict with current science. It accepts the justified results of science and deals with them in the way I have just described. The reverse, however, does not occur; at least, not yet—as one may well understand. Anthroposophy is rejected; its results are not regarded as satisfying the strictly scientific criteria that one feels entitled to impose to-day.

In a short lecture I shall not, of course, be able to go into all that Anthroposophy can itself bring forward to serve as an effective foundation for its results. But I should like in to-day's lecture to attempt to characterise the position of Anthroposophy among the sciences, and to do this in a way that will enable you to understand that Anthroposophy, in laying its foundations, is as conscientious as any science with its own precise technique. For this, however, I shall have to inflict upon you somewhat remote discussions—things which in ordinary life may be called difficult but which are necessary in order to provide a certain basis for what I shall have to offer in an easier and, perhaps, more agreeable form in the next few days.

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Many people to-day imagine that Anthroposophy starts somehow from the nebulous attitude of soul to be found in present-day movements that are really “mystical” or “occult”. But to ascribe to Anthroposophy such a very questionable foundation is a complete mistake. Only one who knows Anthroposophy only superficially, or, indeed, through its opponents, can do that.

The fundamental attitude of consciousness in Anthroposophy has been drawn from that branch of present-day science which is least of all attacked in respect to its scientific character and importance. I admit, however, that many of our adherents—and opponents too—fail to perceive correctly what I have now to characterise by way of introduction.

The position of mathematics among the sciences has already been mentioned. Kant's pronouncement, that in every science there is only as much real knowledge—real cognition—as there is mathematics, is widely known. Now I have not to deal here with mathematics itself, with its value for the other sciences and in human life, but rather with the mental attitude a man assumes when “mathematicising”—if I may use this word; that is, when actively engaged in mathematical thinking. His attitude of soul is then, indeed, quite distinctive. Perhaps we may best characterise it by speaking, first, of that branch of mathematics which is usually called geometry and, at least in those parts of it known to the majority of people, has to do with space, is the science of space.

We are accustomed to speak of three-dimensional space; we picture it so constituted that its three dimensions, as they are called, stand at right angles to one another. What we have before our mind's eye as space is, in the first place, quite independent of man and the rest of the world. And because man as an individual being orientates himself in accordance with spatial laws, he pictures space before his eyes, independent of himself. He can certainly say that he is at this or that distance from any selected point; thus he inserts himself into space, as a part of space. And by regarding himself as an earthly being and assigning to himself certain distances from this and that star, he inserts himself into cosmic space. In a word, man regards space as something objective, independent of his own being. It was this that led Kant to call space an a priori intuition (eine Anschauung a priori), a mode of intuition given to man prior to experience. He cannot ask how he comes to have space; he must simply accept it as something given; he must fit himself into it when he has attained full earthly consciousness.

But it is not so in reality. We human beings do actually build space out of our own being. More correctly: we build our idea (Vorstellung), our mental perception (Anschauung), of space from out of ourselves. Only, we do not do this consciously, because we do it at a time of life when we do not think about our own activities in the way that would be necessary if we were to come to a clear understanding of the nature of space in relation to our own being. Indeed, we should not have our intuition of space (Raumanschauung) if, in our earthly life, we did not first experience its three dimensions.

We do experience them. We experience one of them when, from out of our inability to walk upright from birth, we raise ourselves into the vertical position. We learn this dimension from the way in which we build it. And what we learn to know is not just any dimension, set at right angles to the other two. We learn to know this quite definite dimension of space—standing vertically, so to speak, upon the earth's surface—from the fact that we human beings are not born upright, but, in accord with the formative laws of our earthly life, must first raise ourselves into the vertical position.

We learn to know the second dimension of space in an equally unconscious manner. You will be well aware that man—to mention what pertains more to his inner than to his outer being—in developing the capacities which serve him in later life, learns to orientate himself from left to right, from right to left. One need only recall that we have our organised speech centre in a certain area of the brain, the so-called Broca convolutions, while the other side of the brain has no such organisation. One also knows to-day—and from accepted science—that the development of the speech centre on the left side of the human body is connected with the mobility, spontaneous at first, of the right hand. One knows, too, that an orientation from right to left develops, that this activity excited on the left by an activity on the right, or vice-versa, is experienced by us within the laws that form us—just as we experience our achievement of the upright position. It is in this co-ordinated orientation of right with left, or left with right, that we human beings experience the second dimension of space.

The third dimension of space is never really experienced by us completely. We first focus this so-called “depth-dimension” as we try to gauge it. We are constantly doing this, though deep down in the unconscious. When we make the lines of vision of our eyes intersect at a point and focus both eyes on this point, we expand space, which would otherwise have only two dimensions for us, into the third dimension. And with every estimate of spatial depth we build the third dimension unconsciously out of our own being and the laws that form us.

Thus one might say: we place, in a certain way, the three dimensions of space outside us. And what we conceive as space, the space we use in geometry—Euclidean geometry, at first—is nothing more than an abstraction from what we learn to know concretely, with our own organism, as the three dimensions linked to our own subjective being. In this abstraction the quite definite configuration of space is ignored; the definite directions—vertical, horizontal and depth—have equal value. (This is always done when we make abstractions.) And then, when we have constructed, by abstracting from the three-dimensional space experienced within, the external space we speak of in geometry, we extend our consciousness through this external space alone.

We now come to the important thing. What we have won from out of ourselves is now applicable to external nature; in the first place, to inorganic, lifeless forms, though it can also be applied to the spatial and kinetic relations between organic structures. Briefly, this fact largely determines the character of our external world. Having accomplished this transition (this metamorphosis of space) from one domain, which really lives in us, to space commonly so called, we now stand with our spatial concepts and spatial experiences within the outer world and are able to determine our position and motion by spatial measurements. We actually go out of ourselves when we construct space in this way. We lift out of our body what we have first experienced within ourselves, placing ourselves at a point of view from which we look back upon ourselves as filled with space. In thus objectifying space we are able to study the external movements and relative positions of objects with the help of ideas formed geometrically within space; we feel thereby that we are on firm scientific ground when we enter into objects with what we have formed so earnestly from out of ourselves. In these circumstances we cannot doubt that we can live within things with what has come from us in this way. When we judge the distance, or the changing distance, between two bodies in the outer world according to spatial relations, we believe we are determining something completely objective and independent of ourselves. It does not occur to us that this could be otherwise.

Now, however, a fundamental and important problem confronts us here. What we have experienced subjectively in ourselves, transforming it, in the case of space; simply by making from it a kind of abstraction, now becomes something permeating—to a certain extent—the outer world and appearing to belong there.

Anyone who considers impartially what confronts us here must say: In his subjective experience of space in its three dimensions and in his subsequent objectifying of this experience, man stands within the external world with his own experiences. Our subjective experiences, being experiences of space, are at the same time objective. After all, it is not at all difficult, but trivial and elementary, to see that this is so. For when we move ourselves through space, we accomplish something subjective, but at the same time an objective event occurs in the world. To put it another way, whether we see an automaton or a man move forwards, subjectivity does not come into consideration. What occurs when a human being lives spatially is, for the external disposition of the world, quite objective.

If we now focus attention on the human being as, in this way, he objectifies something of his subjective experience, moving himself in an objective domain by himself traversing space—for, in objectifying space, he really bears this space within himself also—we are led to say: If man could do with other experiences what he does when “mathematicising”, he would be able to transfer, to some extent, the mathematical attitude of soul to other experiences. Suppose we could shape other experiences—our mode of perceiving the qualities of colours and tones, for example—in the same way that we create and shape our experience of space from out of ourselves! When we look at a cube of salt we bring the cubical shape with us from our geometry, knowing that its shape is identical with the spatial concept we have formed. If we could create from out of ourselves, let us say, the world of colour, and then confront external coloured objects, we should then, in the same way, project (as it were) into the outer world what we first build up in ourselves. We should thus place ourselves outside our body and even look back upon ourselves. This has been accomplished in mathematics, although it remains unnoticed. (I have given a geometrical illustration; I could give others also.) Neither mathematicians nor philosophers have paid attention to this peculiar relationship that I have just put before you.

In regard to sense perceptions, however, science has become really confused. In the nineteenth century physiologists joined hands here even with epistemologists and philosophers, and many people think with them as follows:

When we see red, for example, the external event is some vibration which spreads itself out until it reaches our organ of vision, and then our brain. The specific sensation of red is then released. Or the tone C sharp is evoked by an external wave motion in the same way.

This confusion has arisen because we can no longer distinguish what lives in us—within the confines of our body—from what is outside. All sense qualities (colours, tones, qualities of warmth) are said to be actually only subjective, while what is external, objective is said to be something quite different.

If now, in the same way in which we build the three dimensions of space from out of ourselves and find them again in things (and things in them)—if we could, in the same way, draw from ourselves what appears in us as sensation, and then set it before us, we should likewise find in things what we had first found in ourselves. Indeed, looking back upon ourselves we should find it again—just as we find in the outer world what we have experienced within us as space, and, looking back at ourselves, find that we are a part of this space. As we have the space world around us, so we should have around us a world of intermingling colours and tones. We should speak of an objectified world of flowing colours and singing tones, as we speak of the space around us.

Man can certainly attain to this and learn to know as his own construction the world which otherwise only confronts him as the world of effects (Wirkungen). As we, albeit unconsciously, construct for ourselves the form of space out of our human constitution and then, having transformed it, find it again in the world, so we can train ourselves, this time by conscious effort, to draw from out of ourselves the whole gamut of qualities contained in the world, so as to find them again in things, and then again in looking back upon ourselves.

What I am here describing is the ascent to so-called “imaginative perception” (imaginative Anschauung). Every human being to-day has the same space-world—unless he be abnormally mathematical or unmathematical. What can live in us in like manner, and in such a way that we experience with it the world as well, can be acquired by exercises. “Imaginative perception”—a technical term that does not denote “fancy” or “imagination” in the usual sense—can be added to the ordinary objective perception of objects (in which mathematics is our sure guide), and will open up a new region of the world.

I said yesterday that I would have to expound to you a special method of training and research. I must describe what one has to do in order to attain to such “imaginative perception”. In this we come to perceive as a whole the qualitative element in the world—just as, in a sense, we come to perceive space (which has, at first, no reality that engages our higher interests) as a whole. When we are able to confront the world in this way, we are already at the first stage of super-sensible perception. Sense-perception may be compared to that perception of things in which we do not distinguish between triangular and rectangular shapes, do not see geometrical structures in things, but simply stare at them and only take in their forms externally. But the perception that is developed in “Imagination” is as much involved with the inner essence of things as mathematical perception is with mathematical relationships.

If we approach mathematics in the right frame of mind, we come to see precisely in the mathematician's attitude when “mathematicising” the pattern for all that one requires for super-sensible perception. For mathematics is simply the first stage of super-sensible perception. The mathematical structures we “perceive” in space are super-sensible perceptions—though we, accustomed to “perceive” them, do not admit this. But one who knows the intrinsic nature of “mathematicising” knows that although the structure of space has no special interest at first for our eternal human nature, mathematical thinking has all the characteristics that one can ask of clairvoyance in the anthroposophical sense: freedom from nebulous mysticism and confused occultism, and the sole aim of attaining to the super-sensible worlds in an exact, scientific way.

Everyone can learn from a study of “mathematicising” what clairvoyance is on a higher level. The most astonishing thing is that mathematicians, who of all people ought to know what takes place when a man is “mathematicising”, do not show a deeper understanding of what must be presented as a higher, qualitative “mathematicising”—if I may use this word—in clairvoyant research. For “imaginative” cognition, the first stage in this research, is only a perception that penetrates other domains of existence than those accessible to “mathematicising”; and it has been gained by exercises. In respect to human perception, however, much is understood differently once one is able to survey, in genuine self-knowledge, the whole inner nature of “mathematicising”. For example, one arrives at the following:

On looking back to the way in which we came to know in early childhood the structure of space—by walking and standing upright, by orientating ourselves to right and left, by learning to gauge the depth-dimension, by connecting all this with the abstractly perceived space of geometry (which the child learns to know from inner experience)—we realise the serious and important consequences that follow if we cannot look back to the living origin, within our own being, of space—of our conception and perception of space—but simply accept it in its already transformed shape, independent of ourselves. For example, in recent times we have come to regard this space (with its three dimensions) in such a way that we have gone on to postulate a fourth and higher dimensions. These spaces and their geometries are widely known to-day. Anyone who has once learnt to know the living structure of space finds it most interesting to follow such an extension of mathematical operations (applicable to three dimensions) and to arrive at a fourth dimension that cannot be visualised, and so on. These operations are logical (in the mathematical sense) and quite correct. But anyone who knows the genesis of our idea of space, as I have described it, will detect something quite special here. We could take a pendulum, for example, and watch it oscillate. Watching it purely externally, we might expect it to swing further and further out. But it does not. When it has reached a definite point, it swings back again to the opposite side. If we know the relation between the forces involved, we know that the pendulum oscillates and cannot go further because of the relation between the forces.

In respect to space, one learns to know (to some extent) such an interplay of forces in the constitution of our soul. Then one views these things differently. From the logical, mathematical standpoint one can certainly keep step with those who extend their calculations from three-dimensional to four-dimensional space. But there one must make a halt. One cannot pass on into an indefinite fourth dimension; one must turn back at a certain point, and the fourth dimension becomes simply the third with a minus sign before it. One returns through the third dimension. The mistake made in these geometrics of more than three dimensions is in going on abstractly from the second to the third, from the third to the fourth dimension, and so on. But what we have here, if I may express it in a comparison, is not simple progression but oscillation. Our perception of space must return into itself. By taking the third dimension negatively, we really annihilate it. The fourth dimension is the negative third and annihilates the third, making space two-dimensional. And in like manner we can find a quite real progression, even though, logically, mathematically, algebraically, these things can be carried further and further. When we think in accordance with reality, we must turn back at the fourth, fifth and sixth dimensions to the space that is simply given us. With the sixth dimension, we have abolished space and reach the point.

What really confronts us in the culture of our age? This—that its thinking has become abstract; that one simply continues along the line of thought that takes us from planimetry, stereometry, etc., whereas reality leads us back at the fourth dimension into space. But, in turning back then, we are by no means where we were when we found our way into the third dimension by gauging distances. We return spiritually enriched. If we can think of the fourth dimension (the negative third) in such a way that we return with it into space, then space becomes filled with spirit, whereas three-dimensional space is filled with matter. And we find space filled with ever loftier spiritual configurations when we pass along the negative third and second and first dimension and reach the point where we no longer have spatial extension but stand within the unextended—the spiritual.

What I am now describing is not formal mathematics, but the reality of spiritual perception. It is a path in real conformity with the spiritual and in contrast to the path that has adapted itself so closely to material appearances alone. This latter path, even though keeping close to mathematics—which does not, of course, work in a material way in the soul—leads nevertheless to an imperceptible world in which one can, at most, only calculate and construct imaginary mathematical spaces.

You see here that, by penetrating the mathematical domain completely, we are led to apprehend the inner nature of the spiritual present everywhere in the world. To understand the mathematical attitude of soul is to be led directly to the concept of clairvoyant experience. And then we raise ourselves to “Imagination” and, in the way I have still to describe, come thereby to a comprehensive survey of the spiritual that can be perceived, not in the ordinary way, but in the way I have put it here—that is: by going out of the third and into the fourth dimension, and so on, and coming to the domain of no-dimensions—that is, the point. This leads us spiritually to the highest if we apprehend it, not as an empty point, but as a “filled” point.

I was once—it made a great impression on me—regarded with astonishment by an elderly author who had written much on spiritual matters. Seeing me for the first time, he asked: “How did you first become aware of this difference between perceiving the sense-world and perceiving the super-sensible world?” Because I always like to express myself about these things with radical honesty, I replied: “In the moment when I learnt to know the inner meaning of what is called modern or synthetic geometry.” You see, when one passes from analytic to synthetic geometry—which enables us, not only to approach forms externally, but to grasp them in their mutual relationships—one starts from forms, not from external co-ordinates. When we work with spatial coordinates, we do not apprehend forms but only the ends of the co-ordinates; we join up these ends and obtain the curves. In analytical geometry we do not lay hold of the forms, whereas in synthetic geometry we live within them. This induces us to study the attitude of soul which, developed further, leads us to press on into the super-sensible world.

*

I have now described the extent to which Anthroposophy can be sure that it proceeds from “mathematicising” as strictly as the natural science of to-day—though from another point of view. Natural science applies mathematics as it has been elaborated to date. But anyone who wishes to understand clairvoyant activity must seek it where it is present in its most primitive form: in the construction of mathematical forms. If he can then raise this activity to higher domains, he will be developing something related to elementary, primitive “mathematicising” as the more developed branches of mathematics are related to their axioms. The primary axioms of clairvoyance are living ones. And if we succeed in developing our “mathematicising” by exercises, we shall not only see spatial relationships in the world around us, but learn to know spiritual beings revealing themselves to us, even with spiritual inwardness—as we learn to know the “cubicity” of a salt crystal. We learn to know spiritual beings when, in this way, we raise to higher domains what we develop by “mathematicising”.

This is what I wished to say, at the outset, about the basis of what must receive recognition as “clairvoyant research” in Anthroposophy. We shall go on to see how, with such clairvoyant research, one can enter different fields of knowledge—the natural sciences as well as therapy, medicine, history, etc. We shall see that the sciences are not to be attacked; they are to be enriched by the introduction of what can be known by super-sensible perception.

A consideration of the course of human evolution over a certain period—how it developed and led at last to the elaboration of our present scientific thinking—can help to a right understanding of what our aims here are.

Let us focus our attention upon scientific thinking to-day. It is able to see clearly the formalism of mathematics, while it nevertheless learns from mathematics inner certainty and exact observation, regarding natural laws as valid only if they can be formulated mathematically. This is, at least, a kind of ideal for scientific method to-day. But it was not always so. The scientific spirit, as acknowledged to-day, has been elaborated in the course of human evolution. I should like to draw your attention to three stages only—of which the present is the third—in this development, and I shall do so in a more narrative form. I shall also touch on some of the things that can be said in support of what I shall relate.

*

As we look back on human evolution, we do not, in fact, always find the same disposition of soul that man has to-day. He cultivates the scientific spirit as, in a sense, a most lofty thing. If we look back at the ancient Orient—not necessarily so far back as the most ancient Indian times, but to times more recent—we found much of what had been handed down as cognitive principles still retained. The path to knowledge was named quite differently then. In those ancient times—even the history of language can support this—man did not think of himself as he does to-day. Modern man has, on the one hand, his consciousness of self firmly established within him, and, on the other hand, a grasp, through observation, of what is mechanistic. But the man of the Orient, for example, could not have this feeling of himself. (As I have said, the history of language can prove this.) He felt himself, in the first place, as a breathing human being. To him, man was a breather. In self-contemplation he focussed his attention chiefly upon the respiratory process. He even related immortality to the respiratory process: death came to him as a kind of expiration of his soul.

Man a breather! Why did man in this former disposition of soul feel the human being as a breathing being? Because he did actually feel life in the respiratory process (which did not proceed so unconsciously as it does to-day). He felt the vibrations of life, life's rhythm, in his breathing; he felt breathing as one feels hunger and thirst to-day. But this was a continuous feeling in the waking state. When he looked with his eyes, he knew: the process of breathing now enters right into my head and into my eyes. He felt his perceptions permeated by the flow of the breath. It was just the same when the will stirred. He stretched out his hand and felt this movement as if it were something linked up with the respiratory movements. An expansion of the breath through the whole body was felt as an inner life-process. He even felt the more theoretical perception of the outer world through the senses to be ensouled with breath, just as he felt the breath ensouling the movements of the will.

Man felt himself a breathing being, and because he could have said: “My breath is modified in this and that way when I see through my eyes, hear through my ears and receive through the effects of heat”—because in his sensations of all kinds he “saw” differentiated, modified, refined respiratory processes—because of all this the path of knowledge was for him a systematic training of the respiratory process. And this systematic training was for those earlier epochs in the evolution of man's cognition what university study is for us to-day.

We study in a different way now. But in those times, when one sought religious satisfaction or wished to acquire knowledge, one “studied” by systematically modifying the respiratory process; in other words, by developing what was later called Yoga Breathing, Yoga Training. And what did one develop? If we investigate what was attained by one who practised Yoga Breathing in order to reach higher stages of cognition, we find something striking. Those who came to be “savants” through Yoga exercises—the word “savant” is not quite appropriate to these earlier conditions, but perhaps one can use it—required as long for this as we do for a university course. In the knowledge so acquired they had grasped in the disposition of their souls what, in a later age—the Graeco-Roman, for example—was regarded as a world of ideas and present of itself in the soul, thus making Yoga unnecessary.

*

This is really a very interesting thing—that what men had to strive for in earlier epochs through all kinds of exercises is present of itself in later epochs of evolution. It has then no longer the same significance as before. When Socrates, when Plato were alive, their philosophies had no longer the same significance as they would have had for the ancient pupils or teachers of Yoga, had they reached Socratic or Platonic truths. By this Yoga-breathing the pupil did not acquire exactly the same inner organisation as Plato, Aristotle or Scotus Erigena, but he came to the same disposition of soul [Seelenverfassung]. Thus we find systematic breathing exercises practised in ancient times, and we see that this cognitive path led to a certain vivid world of ideas.

One really gains a correct idea of what lived later in Parmenides and Anaxagoras if one says to oneself: What was given to men in this age as something self-understood, had been achieved in still earlier times through Yoga. It was always through exercises that men strove for the higher knowledge required by their own age. Thus in the perception of the world in later epochs, men were no longer aware of their breathing in self-contemplation, but they perceived as the Greeks perceived (I have given more details of this in my Riddles of Philosophy). At that time one did not construct for oneself isolated thoughts about the world, for ideas and sense-experiences were one. One saw one's thoughts outside, as one saw red or blue and heard C sharp, G or B natural. Thoughts were in the world outside. Without knowing this, nobody understands the Greek view of the world. But the Greeks perceived only spirit permeated with sense-perceptions, or sense-perceptions permeated by spirit, and no longer differentiations in the process of breathing.

*

Then once again men sought to attain a higher stage of cognition in all domains in which they were seeking higher knowledge. This stage was also gained through exercises. To-day we have rather vague ideas about the early Middle Ages and their spiritual life. A mediæval student did not learn so abstractedly as we do to-day. He, too, had to do exercises, and ordinary study was also combined with the doing of exercises. Inward exercises had to be carried out, though not so strenuously as with Yoga breathing; they were more inward, but still a set of exercises.

From this there remains a kind of deposit, little understood now, in what were called then the Seven Liberal Arts. They had to have been mastered by everyone who claimed to have received a higher education. Grammar meant the practical use of language. Rhetoric meant more: the artistic use of language. Dialectic was the use of language as a tool of thought. And when the student had practised these inwardly, as exercises, Arithmetic followed; but this, again, was not our abstract arithmetic, but an arithmetic which entered into things and was clearly aware that man shapes all things inwardly. In this way the student learnt Geometry through inward exercises, and this geometry, as something involving the human being, was the pupil's possession—a tool he could use.

All this then passed over into what was called Astronomy: the student integrated his being with the cosmos, learnt to know how his head was related to the cosmos, and how his lungs and heart resulted from the cosmos. It was not an astronomy abstracted from man, but an astronomy in which man had his place. And then, at the seventh stage, the pupil learnt to know how the Divine Being weaves and rules throughout the world. This was called Music; it was not our present music but a higher, living elaboration of what had been elaborated in thought-forms in Astronomy.

It was in this way that men of a later epoch trained themselves inwardly. The breathing exercises of earlier times had been replaced by a more inward training of the soul.

And what did one attain? In the course of the history of civilisation men came gradually to have thoughts apart from sense-perceptions. This was something that had to be acquired. The Greeks still saw thought in the world, as we see colours and perceive tones. We grasp thought as something we produce, not located within things. The fact that men came to feel this in the constitution of their souls, that we can feel this to-day—that is the result of the training in Grammar, Rhetoric and so on to Music. Thought was thereby released. Men learnt to move freely in thoughts. In this way was achieved what we take for granted to-day, possessing it without these exercises—what we find when we go to school, what is offered in the separate sciences (as described yesterday). And precisely as man in different epochs had to advance by means of exercises—in ancient times by breathing exercises (Yoga) which gave him the Graeco-Latin conception of the world as something he took for granted; in later times by exercises that went from Grammar to Music and gave him the scientific standpoint we have to-day—so to-day he can again advance. He can best advance by setting out from what is most certain: namely, mathematics, recognised as certain to-day.

My reply to that author was true, although it so astonished him. It was mainly through synthetic geometry that I became clear about the clairvoyant's procedure. Naturally, not everyone who has studied synthetic geometry is a clairvoyant, but the procedure can be clearly presented in this way. Though that author was so astonished at not being told the sort of thing that people who “prophesy” are wont to relate, it is nevertheless true that Anthroposophy, setting out from the firm base on which science stands to-day, seeks to extend this base; and from this base, which science itself has laid, to carry further, into super-sensible domains, what reliable science brings before us.

From here we must proceed more inwardly. And a still more inward procedure is the path to clairvoyant research which I had to describe in my books Geheimwissenschaft (“Occult Science”) and Wie erlangt man Erkenntnisse der Höheren Welten (“How to Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds”). But precisely such an historical survey as I have given can show you that anyone who stands to-day with full consciousness within Anthroposophy derives this consciousness from standing within the course of human evolution. My historical survey can also show you that I do not speak from personal predilection or subjective partiality when I assert that we need to undertake exercises in order to carry further the historical movement that has brought humanity to its present standpoint. Anyone who knows the course of history up to the present, and knows how it must continue, stands consciously within the whole historical process, and to this consciousness he adds the insight acquired by taking—inwardly, not outwardly—the spirit of modern science into the constitution of his soul.

Thus one may well say: Anthroposophy knows its position in respect to the science of to-day. It knows this in an absolute sense, because it knows the special character of contemporary science and rejects all that is dilettantish and amateurish. It builds further on genuine science. On the other hand, Anthroposophy knows the historical necessities; knows that man's path must go beyond present achievements—if we do not wish to stand still, unlike all our forerunners, who wanted to advance beyond the stage of civilisation in which they shared. We, too, must go forward. And we must know what steps to take from the present standpoint of the scientific spirit.

In the next few days I shall have to depict what this actually involves. The foundations I have laid to-day will then appear, perhaps, in a more understandable form. But I may have been able to show that Anthroposophy knows from its scientific attitude—from an attitude as scientific as that of science—what its aims are in face of the contemporary world, of human evolution as a whole, and of the separate sciences. It will get to work because it knows how it has to work. Perhaps its path will be very long. If, on the other hand, one sees, in the subconscious depths of human souls, the deep longings for the heights that Anthroposophy would climb, one may surmise that it is necessary for the welfare of humanity that the path Anthroposophy has to take should not be too slow. But whether the pace be slow or fast may be less important for Anthroposophy than for human progress. In many domains we speak of being caught up in the “rapid tempo” of our time. May all that mankind is intended to attain by cognition of the super-sensible be attained as rapidly as the welfare of mankind requires.

Translated by V. C. Bennie.

Translated by Luise Boeddinghaus

At present there is a general opinion that there are certain limits to human knowledge, not only temporary knowledge owing to the fact that one had not achieved everything in the time that has already passed, and one would have to leave some things for the future, but in quite a general sense one speaks today of limits of perception, limits to knowledge for humanity. One thinks that man is constituted in such a way that he can only know about certain things, while other things are above his ability to know about them; and that it is mainly the facts of the so-called supersensible world which man is supposed not to be able to perceive and for which he has to be satisfied with what is called a belief, an assumption arising out of obscure feelings and such like. Particularly the endeavours of the past centuries and of the present time, which have yielded the greatest successes in the field of natural science and which have also brought about the greatest practical results, are considered proof by contemporary humanity that one has to come to a halt at that which can be observed by the senses, which can be proved by experiments and so forth, namely the sense perceptible real world. This is, when one speaks of man, only that world which man traverses between birth and death, or conception and death.

Now it cannot be denied that natural science owes its great successes to the fact that it has limited itself to the exploration of every aspect of the sense world and does not in any way draw any conclusions from the sense world to the supersensible world. But on the other hand there is connected with this, as one believes, fully proven acceptance of limits to knowledge altogether, something inwardly immeasurably tragic for the sensitive human being, something tragic which today does not yet come to the consciousness of many people, but which lives in many human souls in vague feelings, in all sorts of subconscious sensations, making them unsure in life, even unsure and unable in outward actions, in relationships to their fellow human beings and so on. For it is gradually felt more and more that the limits at which one wants to stop in this way are not only those of an outward supersensible world, but that with these limits to knowledge, if rightly perceived, there is still something quite different involved. Man gradually feels that his own true being must be of supersensible nature, that his true being which as man gives him his value and dignity must be found in the spiritual, in the not-sensible. If one calls a halt to all knowledge before the supersensible, then one calls a halt before human self-knowledge. Then one renounces insight into the most precious, the most valuable in the human being himself.

But thereby one also undermines one's real inward self-confidence. Whereby does man feel himself to be part of the natural world which today has been so successfully explored? Only because he bears this world of nature within himself in his outer physical body. Everything that exists in our surroundings as natural substances and natural laws we carry within us, at least most of it. Through this we can feel connected with physical nature. We would not feel that we existed in this physical nature if we were not part of it with our own body, or if we could not explore ourselves as physical beings. But in the same way it is with the supersensible, with the as truly felt spiritual inner being of man, even though men do not as yet bring it to full consciousness. If we cannot feel ourselves as belonging to a spiritual world, as beings who take into themselves and bear within themselves the forces and substances of the spiritual, then we cannot accept ourselves as spiritual human beings at all. But then we must lack the self-confidence towards that which after all we feel to be our most precious, our most dignified, that by which we actually are human beings, indeed want to be human beings. This has another side to it. We feel that that which we call our moral impulses, which we call the content of our moral-spiritual forces, does not flow out of natural life, certainly not out of what takes place in muscles and bones. We feel them to be coming from a spiritual world, but we experience uncertainty about this whole spiritual world if we have to call a halt before the supersensible with our perception.

And in this way present day humanity cannot really build a bridge between that which in outer nature is to it a brutal - as I would like to call it—fact, and that which flows to it out of the most intimate spiritual inner life as the content of the moral world order. One does not have the courage to bring to full clarity what it is that the human soul has to contend with here. Natural science has worked thoroughly towards being able to say something, albeit hypothetically, about the present day creatures out of which man is supposed to have developed. One describes, at least hypothetically, how once upon a time our present world is supposed to have developed out of the world mist. Hypotheses are also made about the end of our planetary system or the system altogether to which we belong. One imagines this whole system which exists in time as somehow contracting, constituting itself out of natural substances and natural forces. One imagines physical man then emerging out of a part of these forces at a certain time. Electricity, magnetism, warmth and so on, they can be outwardly observed, there the thinking human being feels safe with the content of his consciousness. But when the need arises in him to think of that which does not come from his physical nature, the moral spiritual impulses as working in the world, when he must think of as working in the world what he brings about out of a spiritual elemental force, what now must also be in the world, when he must have experiences in the world which must not pass away together with that which passes away with the physical—then man has no stand to say to himself out of that which is accepted by the limits to knowledge: these moral forces are just as valid as that which comes out of the brute forces of physical nature.

From this there come to man today not only theoretical doubts but insecurity of the whole soul life, insecurity apparent everywhere even though people deceive themselves about this. For this is the very character of present civilization that one deludes oneself about the deepest questions of civilization. But in the subconscious these questions are nevertheless active, they express themselves—albeit not in theories, but in the whole tenor of soul, in the confidence and capability of the soul life. That is the inner tragedy which can actually be noticed in the depths of every soul, even of the most superficial. And this is where then that arises which can seem paradoxical in the present time, there arises the longing in many people just for supersensible knowledge! One might say in the spiritual realm it is just the same as with hunger and thirst. One doesn't long for food and drink when one is satisfied, but one longs for them when one is hungry. And from an inmost need present humanity longs for the supersensible because it doesn't have it. While on the one hand philosophers and natural scientists today want to prove more and more that there are unsurpassable limits and borders before the supersensible, we see on the other hand an insatiable thirst of already many human souls for supersensible knowledge, and the number of these people will get ever greater.

To come to this supersensible perception there is a point of view, or I could rather say a method of investigation of which I would like to speak to you today. But I do not want to speak to you of a method of investigation of the supersensible which today one often wants to achieve in a very easy way, but I shall speak to you of a method of perception which, although it is an absolutely intimate matter of the human soul, but in this just as scientific, indeed as exact, not only as an outer scientific result, but as the mathematical or geometric results of science itself.

But while one is striving towards such knowledge and just comes to a knowledge of that which is the supersensible in man, one immediately enters something which right from the start causes all kinds of doubts, causes uncertainties right from the start.

When we look outside we soon notice that the natural scientists and philosophers who speak of limits to knowledge are right as concerns the immediate outer perception. So we must look inside. But when we look inside and we remain within the ordinary consciousness, with that which we have in ordinary life and also in the usual science, then in the beginning nothing confronts us either than a kind of thought picture of the outer world again. When one is completely honest in one's striving for self-knowledge and asks oneself: What is there, when instead of looking out into the world you look back into yourself, what is there actually inside you?—Then one will have to realize that one finds the world inside again, albeit in a picture. What one has experienced has imprinted itself onto our life of concepts, of feeling. We experience as it were a thought picture and feeling picture of that which is outside as well. We have only directed our gaze backwards. This gives us at first nothing new, but only in a dimmed down way in picture form that which is outside too. Only as a general feeling man senses that he is present in these weaving thoughts, ideas and sensations as an I, as a self. But that is so general and undefined, that initially he cannot do much with it.

That is why in the Middle Ages, in the times when one approached self-knowledge, knowledge of the human soul, in a more intensive way, one didn't initially pay much attention to that which one can gain by a merely backward directed self-observation during the ordinary consciousness, but one tried to achieve knowledge of the soul in a different way. This different way is actually interesting, and I must start from this different, often much desired way of knowledge of the soul, so that we can understand one another about the knowledge of soul which I actually mean. But I mention beforehand that I only start from this other knowledge of soul in order to explain what I want to bring, but that I don't want to attribute a special value to it. Therefore nobody should believe that because I start from the dream I already give it value for knowledge. However, this dream life is immensely meaningful.

Those who at some stage have sought knowledge of soul through the dream life, will have noticed that in a certain sense the soul life appears much more characteristically in a dream than when one merely looks into oneself and, as one often says, wants to observe oneself. You have observed the dreams and have initially found two types of dream. As you know, the dream conjures up weaving pictures of a fantastic reality which is initially not as abstract as the thoughts we have in our day consciousness.

But the dream creates initially something which appears enigmatical, on the one side by its composition, on the other side by its content.

There are two things which man experiences as pictures in a dream. Initially pictures of experiences which we went through during our life on earth, reminiscences from life. This arises and shows us the one or other thing which we experienced many years ago. But what there asserts itself rises up next to other things in a connection with was not supplied by life. Occurrences which took place ten years ago are tied together with others which took place the other day. The most removed from one another comes together. By putting together fragments of life, dreams create impossible pictures, chaotic pictures. Everything which outer life gave to us by way of occurrences which we experienced is conjured up to us in dream in a chaotic fashion. That is one kind of dream. The other kind is that in which our own bodily condition is conjured up before us in a kind of symbolic image. Who would not have dreamt of suffering from the heat of a boiling hot stove? He has seen the flickering flames; he awakes and has strong palpitations of the heart. Or we dream that we are walking past a fence. We see how one or two poles are damaged and then we wake up with toothache. In the one case, when we dreamt of the boiling hot stove with its heat, it was a picture of our heart which was palpitating strongly. In the other case, when we dreamt of the fence, it was a picture of our row of teeth which somehow gave us pain. And someone who can penetrate more deeply into these things knows that a certain area of dreams is characterised by inner organs being shown to us symbolically in the dream. However, one must be quite knowledgeable about all the facts which come into play, if one wants to recognise in the symbols what actually expresses itself of the inner being of man in them. Then one will find that there is hardly an organ or an inner process which cannot be conjured up for us inwardly by dreams.

Now former psychologists who have worked with dreams have developed a very valid view about the relationship of man to dreams. They said to themselves: that which we bear within us, we can only feel, but we do not see it, we don't have it in front of us like an outer object. But when we have our own heart beat in front of us in the picture of a boiling hot stove, then we have at least a picture in our consciousness that we make for ourselves, that looks like the picture of an outer object. We have to be separated from the outer object if a picture of it is to arise in us. That which one is oneself, even if it is one's own body, one feels, one feels it sometimes painfully when something organic is not in order, but one does not look at it. When one looks at something in picture form one must be outside of it. And so the former psychologists, which still existed in the 19th century, argued: If I am dreaming in symbols about my own body and its processes, I cannot be in my body, for then I would not experience it. Therefore I must be outside my body in such a case. The picture in any case shows me something of an independent soul-spiritual life over against the body. And furthermore they argued: When I dream in any, however hidden way, of reminiscences of life, then the outer natural existence as it is would have to present itself to me. But there something is constantly changing; there the dream conjures up for me the most fantastic relationships. There again I must be inside, for nature as it usually surrounds me would not be able to show me the occurrences which I have experienced with it, nor the occurrences of human life which I have experienced, in quite a different order.

In this way something was put together of which one could say: It was a valid conviction for these former psychologists, that there they caught something of the soul in a condition where it is separated from the physical body. For firstly man cannot be united with his body if the occurrences of the body, even though only in symbols, in the dream appear to be separated. He must then be outside his body. But again, we must also be inside the reminiscences of our experiences, be together with them, when we have the second kind of dream, for nature does not alter the connection in which experiences have occurred. That we must alter ourselves. Therefore we must be outside, outside our body, when we have the first kind of dreams, and in the same way we must be inside our experiences in the second kind. That means we must actually be outside our physical body with our experiences of soul when we dream. In so far that which former psychologists said to themselves is absolutely indisputable, one cannot say anything against it.

But something else has to be said. The dream cannot give me any sure knowledge about the self. It can lead us to the way of how one can come to such a certainty. Because what we are inside during the time between going to sleep and awakening when we are outside the body: that, which the dream is showing us there, that we certainly are not; for those are on the one hand pictures of our bodily interior, even symbols of this bodily interior, thus that again which is taken from our bodily interior. How can we, when sleeping we are outside our body, be the same which we are in the interior of our physical body? So something else must be the case. We must be something outside our body, but that does not assert itself. We are initially not able to lay hold of the actual nature of the soul in the sleeping state. That conceals itself and masks itself at first; it surrounds itself with pictures of its own bodily nature and shows itself in relationship to its own life in arbitrary compositions of its experiences. The former psychologists have rightly deduced that we are outside our body when we dream, but that the dream shows us something about this being which is outside our body, that is not the case, although they believed it. Because it doesn't show us anything except what we have formerly experienced within the body, and our own body in symbols. Therefore if we are something outside our body, then this is masked in the dream, then the dream is wearing a mask in respect of this. If we want to discover our own being, then we must be able to take this mask off the dream, that is off the soul—for the dream is this mask.—Up to here a more intimate view of the dream leads us onto a path. As former psychologists realised that the dream ultimately doesn't show anything besides what it takes out of the sense world, they of course also had their doubts. And just as one could not believe to have certainty by means of an ordinary backward looking self-observation, so one was also not satisfied with that which the observation of the dream world could give one. Over against this there now appears that which I always call the anthroposophical world view or anthroposophical way of investigation. This initially maintains: If the dream shows us that we are something outside our body, then it proves itself to be too weak by itself to show, to reveal its own being. To reveal itself it uses bits and pieces of reminiscences of life, of symbols of its own bodily nature. Therefore we have to strengthen the soul life so that we come to that which in the soul life stands masked before us in the dream. This one can do. One can do it by copying the dream in full consciousness by a systematically exact so-called meditative life as I have described it in my book “Knowledge of Higher Worlds” and other writings. But not copying it by artificially creating dreams, but awakening in the soul in full consciousness that which in dream arises spontaneously from the subconscious. One comes to this by accustoming oneself to proceed in the same way as the dream proceeds spontaneously—to proceed by imagining things which one knows well symbolically in inner meditation. The dream conjures up symbolically for us our own bodily nature.

One now practices—as neither our own inner being nor outer nature give us symbols—strictly systematically to imagine symbolically. In this way concepts are by force of will brought into a symbol by us, just as the dream conjures it up or us spontaneously. It must be created by inner activity, but that means, the dream must be strengthened.

In outer life we give ourselves over to passive observations and perceptions. Then the inner activity is shadowy. Everyone really senses how shadowy the abstract concepts are, how the thoughts are given over to the outer world and then proceed in a shadowy way. Everyone speaks of the shadowy thought compared to concrete reality. But when one now rises to imagine symbolic things, one has to create these symbols.

And when one is a fully conscious human being and no fool, then one knows that one makes them oneself. Then one is by no means a dreamer but a normal waking person, nay even more than a normal waking person. To the dreamer the symbols come spontaneously, to the waking person the conceptual images come through outer stimulation. The waking person who makes alive within himself that which dreams give, who places before the soul symbols with all inner strength and imitates the dream in full consciousness, awakens himself as it were to a higher activity of thinking and imagining and with this to an altogether higher activity of soul than one has in ordinary consciousness. That however must then be really practiced quite systematically.

And likewise the other side of dream can be imitated. We take experiences from our life that can be separated from one another by years. We can combine them in such a way that the one stands next to the other, but now not chaotically as in dream but from a point of view which may perhaps be from fantasy, but which we quite consciously determine, which is not imposed on us by our inner being, but which we ourselves create inwardly. And in this way we gradually educate ourselves to remain in an inner life of soul; to remain strongly in a life of soul which proceeds totally from the inner activity.

Today one usually underestimates what actually happens there with the human being when he does such exercises, because one does not love the inner activity of thinking, because one already finds it very active when one lives in thoughts induced by outer observation. But he who in all seriousness becomes a true imitator of dream in full consciousness, experiences that he strongly intensifies his inner mobility of soul, that he definitely strengthens it. But he is, if he is no fool but a sensible human being, fully conscious that he himself is making all these pictures and life associations, that is, that he is living in illusion. With a dream one first has to wake up in order to realize the illusion of the dream from the point of view of waking life. The dream can only be unmasked from the point of view of waking; the dreamer imagines the content of the dream to be reality, although his feeling for reality is not such a fictitious one. He who becomes an imitator of dream becomes aware of how a living inner being, something active, quickening is awakened in him, but how he has a content which is absolutely self-image, illusion. Therefore he comes to the point of not bothering with that which is present in him as content, but to concentrate on that which works within him, is active within him. In short, that which we usually only have as a general feeling of ego or self becomes a strongly felt inner activity. If one wants to become a spiritual scientist and not a vague mystic, one must remain conscious and exact. But if one persists in this one will also come more and more to experience the nature of the illusionary. One knows: You imagine nothing, but you have an imagination. Through this one will also the possibility one day to develop the capacity of soul with which one truly doesn't imagine anything and is yet as active as one has learnt it in the imitation of dream.

I point you here to an activity of soul which must absolutely be cultivated by the investigator of spirit. One usually believes, and those who judge things superficially often say it: spiritual investigation is something where man gives himself up to his thoughts and fantasies—that is easy, while to do research in the laboratory, the clinic and the observatory is difficult, something where you have to renounce things.—But this is not so. Because that which one has to acquire as such an inner capacity of soul requires at least just as much time, nay sometimes much longer time of inner work than any outwardly acquired scientific ability as is common in natural science today. Those who want to gain knowledge about that which is here called spiritual investigation should not raise the objection: In natural science one must not be a dilettante if one wants to have a say, there one must really understand something.—What the spiritual investigator alleges is usually regarded as though it were gained effortlessly compared to that which in natural science is reached with much trouble. But it is only the path which is different. In natural science outer observations and facts are used to come to a conclusion, while the spiritual scientist must first develop his own inner capacity for observation. He develops it as an imitator of dreams but in such a way that in the meditative activity that which in dream is conjured up is overcome by him. In dream we do not become conscious of an activity, the images of the dream conjure it up for us; but on the first step of supersensible knowledge the illusion is totally perceived. One knows: you don't imagine anything—but one notices the inner strengthened, empowered activity and in the end learns by a lot of practicing how one can call up this activity without first needing an illusionary activity for this, without first having to imitate the dream. So it is in imitation that one develops this capacity of soul. Once the capacity is there, one knows what one can do with it. Because then one is in a state where one has an empty but very much awake consciousness, but also inner activity. After one has discarded the illusion of this activity, one has initially no content. But the state in which one lives just as one gets to the point of developing the capacity of inner activity without initially also having a content, this state demands a strong inner struggle. And actually this struggle which one needs for this is the touchstone and test whether this spiritual investigation is an honest and true one. For at that moment when one just gets ready to live with empty consciousness, with normal waking consciousness without this waking consciousness having a content, at this moment an unspeakable pain, an unlimited privation spreads itself over the whole soul life. All that one can otherwise experience as pain in the world is really insignificant compared with this spiritual soul pain which one experiences at this moment of cognition. And one has to overcome this pain. For it is this pain which is the expression of a force which has its physical counter image in all sorts of forms of deprivations: in hunger, which instructs us to eat, in thirst, which forces us to drink and so on. Now we feel something in the soul which has to come towards us and we feel it as an unspeakable pain. But when we live for a while in this pain, when we feel our inner being itself as one filled with pain, that is, when we are for a while pain, when our own human being is for our consciousness for a while nothing else but a conglomerate of pain, then this consciousness no longer remains empty, then this consciousness fills itself, and it now fills itself not with sense content which we receive through eyes, ears and so on, but it now fills itself with spiritual content. And we receive as the first thing which comes to us as spiritual content in this way our own spiritual being as a unified spiritual organisation—but living in time, not in space—as it extends from birth or conception up to the present moment to which we have lived the earthly life. Just as we can look into a spatial perspective and see objects which are far away again in perspective, so we can learn to look from the present moment of our life into our own past. We don't see the bodily at that moment, we only remember it, but we have to remember it, otherwise we are destroyed in our consciousness. But he who wants to become an investigator or spirit may not become a person inclined to fantasy nor a confused mystic, he must use his consciousness and his good sense just as a mathematician would for a mathematical problem. But just as we normally see objects of space in perspective, so we now look into a time perspective.

Everything that we have experienced in our existence now stands before us in a time tableau, but in a living time tableau. But not only that which we ourselves have experienced now stands before us thus, but also that which shows us how we have come into being, how inner spiritual soul forces have built up our body from birth or conception, how the sculptural forces are which have worked on our body. We see ourselves outwardly. But that which we see there, through which our own soul life stands before our soul, that now also differs qualitatively from the experience of this time tableau.

When one looks back on one's life in the usual way, one experiences the happenings as they come towards one: one experiences for instance how a person has come towards one, how he has approached one, lovingly or with hatred, how he did this or that as he came towards one. One experiences oneself in this memory picture in the way the outer world has come towards one.

In this other memory picture however, which now stands there in real pictures of which one knows that they reflect the own spiritual nature of the human being just as the usual memory pictures reflect the outer nature, in this other memory tableau is reflected to us how we have approached the outer world. There is shown how one was oneself when for instance one approached another personality. How in our soul forces unfolded which found their satisfaction, their delight, their happiness just through that personality. One really looks at oneself how one was as earthly human being. And then one sees how now in the reality both sides in which the dream was masked flow together.

Now the dream becomes a fully conscious reality. It even becomes more than the ordinary consciousness sees. One initially sees the spiritual entity which lives inside the body, which during sleep is independent of it, indeed which is the creator of the body. This one sees. And then one realises, this spiritual entity also contains, but in a spiritual way, metamorphosed, something like the laws of nature but—you are already protesting against it—in a spiritual existence. Into that which one here experiences the moral world is already entering. In this the moral laws are already present in such a way that one now knows: in the same way in which one's own spirituality works, the moral laws are working. There the moral laws begin to stand with equal validity next to the laws of nature.

But with this one only gets as far as the experience of man's own spiritual existence in earthly being. If one wants to go further one has to develop still other capacities in the soul.—The particulars about this you can read up in the above mentioned books, for this can only be achieved by the practicing of many details. Here only the principle shall be described.—Imagine that at a certain time of day you are remembering back to the morning when you got up, or woke up. If you try hard, the course of the day up to this moment can stand before your soul. Now if you don't place the course of the day in such a way before your soul that you start with the morning, then go on to the experiences of the forenoon and so on, but if you place the course of the day backwards before your soul, so that you start at the certain time and now trace it backwards, then you can also say that you get up to the night when you have slept. But there you then don't add anything, there something remains empty, and that which connects again with the backwards imagined happenings is the last experience before going to sleep, and then you can again place the course of the previous day before your soul.

In short, when the human being remembers in this way in ordinary life, there always remain gaps between the conscious experiencing—the gaps which we lived through unconsciously during sleep. Now in order to go further with the exercises which can link up with this backward experiencing, it is necessary to develop a very strong sense of reality. Such a sense of reality is initially not very prevalent among present day people. It is even something which is not all that easy to achieve, because in relation to remembering people usually remain with that which in some way is closely connected with their personality. In their thoughts they do not connect the threads towards the outer world so strongly, that these threads to the outer world connect with their memories. The human being usually has no inclination at all to live in the outer world, in reality in the outer world, with his memories. How much this is the case, of this one can convince oneself in daily life. I have known people who for instance have seen a lady in the morning who had interested them very much, and when one asks them: What colour was the lady's dress?—they don't know it. Therefore it is as though they had not seen the lady at all, for if they had seen her, they would surely also have seen the colour of her dress. How tenuously is one thus connected with the outer world, if in the afternoon one doesn't even know what colour the dress of a person was whom one had seen in the morning! Indeed, I have even known people who had been in a room and who didn't know afterwards whether there were pictures in the room or not.

One can have the most unbelievable experiences in this regard. Therefore he who wants to acquire a sense of reality must first train himself to live fully also in the outer sense reality, so that that which he passes by stands before him as it is out there in the real world. Truly, the investigator of spirit does not become a man of phantasy; he must acquire a sense of reality to the point that it cannot happen to him that he doesn't know in the afternoon what dress the lady was wearing to whom he was speaking in the morning. He must really be able to live with a sense of reality already in the sense world.

Only when one trains oneself to connect that which one remembers of things to the outer world of reality, then one develops the sense which can achieve a fruitful remembering back for such a spirit knowledge. Because for human beings' usual capacity of remembering the memory picture before the last going to sleep can very easily be joined to that after the last awakening. Without any difficulty people simply leave out that which lies between these two pictures as a night-abyss, they tie the picture of the first happening after waking up directly onto the last happening before going to sleep. They usually don't even notice with a lively consciousness that something lies between the two. But if one wants to acquire such a consciousness that one connects that which one has experienced inside with the picture which is there from the outer world, then one must realise that that which one experiences in the morning after waking up is connected with the whole of nature which makes an impression on us, is connected with the rising sun, with all the impressions one has through the rising sun and so on—and that which one has as the last happenings before the last going to sleep is connected with something which in nature doesn't belong together, namely with that which one experienced after the last awakening. There one will notice with the pictures that are standing next to each other: there is something missing!—But by practicing this, by awakening again capacities of soul that don't exist in ordinary life, one gains the strength that as one looks back to where one now has the first picture after the last awakening and wants to proceed to the last picture before the last going to sleep, one now does not see a stretch of darkness in between, but sees that this darkness is beginning to light up spiritually, that something places itself into this darkness.

Just as in the day waking states one only follows that which one has experienced, so there suddenly comes something in between the first experience after the last awakening and the last experience before the last going to sleep of which one now says: you remember something—only something which you haven't known before. It is just the same as in normal remembering, except that one hadn't known anything before of that which now surfaces. Now one begins to remember that which one has previously missed by sleeping through it, even while sleeping through it in dreamless sleep. The empty time which one is conscious of between the last experience before going to sleep and the first after waking up, this is now filling up. And just as our ordinary consciousness is filled with the experiences of natural existence, so our consciousness is now filled with that which surfaces like a remembrance, but of a remembrance of which one now knows that one has experienced it in the unconscious.

Our consciousness is now filled with the soul content which hasn't taken part in the outer experiences but has withdrawn from the outer experiences, has gone asleep. Now one learns to recognise how the sleeping soul is in reality when it doesn't have the strength to bring its experiences which it has during sleep in the spiritual world to consciousness in such a way as man in day waking life brings to consciousness the happenings of physical life. Now one really gets to know the inner being of man as spirit and soul, and at this moment one sees beyond the earthly life. And one will only now be able to connect that, which one sees in the described way like a great but concrete memory tableau of one's earthly life up to this point, to that which one was as a soul-spiritual human being in a purely spiritual world before one descended into this physical world through birth or conception.

And in the same way another experience joins this one. If one develops another capacity together with all this during one's practicing, a capacity which normally is not seen as a capacity of knowledge but which is one too, if one develops that which is love of soul, full devotion to that which meets one, so strongly that this love remains with one even when one now looks at one's own self, that one can love that which appears as something new in the soul with a truly devoted love—then the possibility develops to free oneself in the waking state in full consciousness in one's inner experiencing from the bodily. But at this moment when one has freed oneself from the bodily in one's inner experiencing, one knows how it is with the human being when he lives his life without his body. And in a picture the fact of the passing through the gate of death, of dying, stands before one's soul. If one has once realised what it means to experience oneself free of the body in one's spiritual forces, then one also knows what one is in the spiritual existence after one has left the body and has passed through the gate of death. And one also gets to know the environment which will then be there for man. One learns to know how together with the body when it has been laid aside that falls away which connects us to the sense world. But that remains, which formerly has fashioned us as a human being, the soul-spiritual of man.

In this way one gets to know the experiences which one has had with other people. But that which was within these sense experiences, how soul has found soul, what happened in the relationships with other people, those that were closer to one and those who were more distant, that which happened in space and time—the eternal-spiritual one gets to know, how it rids itself of the earthly form of experiencing.

And more and more the soul now experiences that which was spiritually present within it as relationships to other people. And that which otherwise is only the object of belief, certainty of knowledge. This human beings experience when they themselves have passed through the gate of death. That which the human soul usually longs for as immortality, only enters real human knowledge in this way. But only by recognising the truly eternal in man by exercising our forces to such an extent that we recognise this eternal in our existence in the pre-earthly, spiritual-soul existence, we also gain that for ourselves which gives us certainty about life after death. There is no longer a word for the pre-earthly as something eternal in the human soul in today's civilisation because we only know the one half of eternity, we speak of immortality. Older languages had the other side, the not-yet-being-born, that is, our existence before we entered earthly life. But only both sides—not-yet-being-born and immortality constitute eternity. And it is a fact that man has to pay for his longing for immortality, that it becomes a mere belief if he wants to forgo knowledge of not-yet-being-born, because he will only understand eternity when he recognises both sides of eternity, the not-yet-being-born as well as the immortality of his being in unity. With this then man has advanced to a real taking hold of that which he is, to a real self-knowledge.

I have to emphasise again and again on such occasions that such a spiritual investigation can indeed only be made by someone who has acquired the relevant capacities by exercising or in another way through destiny, but when the results of such an investigation are made known, they can be as plausible to everyone as for instance the results of astronomy. And just as one doesn't have to be a painter in order to experience the beauty of a picture—for if that would be necessary, only the painters would be able to experience it—just as little does one necessarily have to be a spiritual investigator oneself in order to take up the knowledge of spiritual investigation, although one can become one up to a certain degree, because man wants truth and not confusion and error. Just as one can stand before a painting and admire its beauties with one's healthy judgement, so one can experience that which is presented by spiritual investigation, if one does not oneself put obstacles in one's way, such as prejudices and the like. One can understand it when one dedicates oneself to it with one's sense of truthfulness, and the accusation of those who say of the adherents of spiritual science that they only believe blindly is absolutely unjustified. Especially in the present time Anthroposophy will be able to give human souls if by using their sense of truth or by investigation in the indicated way to come to a self-knowledge of the human being, that for which they pine as I have said in the introduction to today's lecture. Even though this demand of the times does not yet come to consciousness in many people, even if it only shows itself undefined or even just in unfitness in life—it is there in that which expresses itself so clearly in the civilization of the present time. Natural science and many philosophical word views speak of insurmountable borders of knowledge. With this the border which leads to man himself is insurmountable. But man cannot in perpetuity do without true self-knowledge.

In tomorrow's lecture I shall continue where I have left off today and depict the ethical-religious life, how it is enriched and made more inward within the human being. With this I shall then tomorrow give the application to the immediate practical life. In today's lecture I wanted first to show how this demand of our time, which as a demand of heart and soul appears in ever more and more people in the present civilisation with its boundaries to knowledge, can be met by a real spiritual knowledge, by a knowledge of that which man wants to know about his own immortality and that which is connected with it, nay must know, because only in this way a true self-knowledge can be achieved, and only with this true self-knowledge a getting hold of oneself and a feeling of self can be connected. Because only through this man will be able to stand before his own soul with its eternal nature, that he acquires knowledge of how he as spiritual-soul being is woven into the spiritual-soul sphere of the world, just as he has his existence in the physical world a physical being. Only when he has acquired a knowledge of himself as spirit amongst spirits, will he also be able to acquire true inner security. Only when the human being knows his worth and dignity in the world, he stands in the world with that consciousness of himself as man, which out of an undefined feeling he can acknowledge as the only right human consciousness. And only because human beings will seek again for such a light of self-knowledge and spiritual knowledge of the world, only through this the hunger of the present time for a true penetrating of the own human nature will be able to be satisfied. For humanity will not be able to manage with all the demands of the progressing civilisation unless it realises: self-knowledge of man cannot be anything else but knowledge of spirit, for man can only feel himself as true man if he recognises himself as spirit amongst spirits, just as he can feel himself in his transient earthly existence as physical being amongst physical beings.

As we are together for the last time during this Christmas Meeting which should be a source of strength and of vital importance for the Anthroposophical Movement, you will allow me to give this lecture as a supplement to the many vistas opened for us by the series of lectures just finished, while also giving tentative indications concerning the future of anthroposophical strivings.

When we look at the world to-day—and it has been the same for years now—destructive elements on a colossal scale are everywhere in evidence. Forces that are actively at work enable us to have forebodings of the abysses into which Western civilisation will continue to steer. When we think of those individuals who are outwardly the spiritual leaders in various domains of life, we shall perceive that these men are in the throes of an ominous, universal sleep. They think, or at least most of them were still thinking only a short time ago, that until the nineteenth century mankind was childish and primitive in respect of understanding and conceptions of the world. Then modern science appeared in its many branches and now—so it is thought—there exists something that must through all eternity be cultivated as the truth.

The people who think this are really giving way to extreme arrogance, only they are not aware of it. On the other hand there sometimes arises, even in men to-day, a premonition that things are not, after all, as I have described.

Some little time ago it was still possible for me to give lectures in Germany organised by the Wolff Bureau. They attracted extraordinarily large audiences so that the existence of a desire for Anthroposophy became obvious to many people. Among the many nonsensical utterances of opponents there was one voice which to be sure was not much cleverer than the others in respect of content but which nevertheless indicated a remarkable premonition. It consisted in a newspaper report of one of the lectures I had given in Berlin. The notice was to this effect: When one listens to something of this kind, one becomes attentive to the fact that something is going on not only on the Earth—I am quoting the notice approximately—but in the whole Cosmos something is happening which summons men to adopt a spirituality different from what existed previously. Now, the forces of the Cosmos—not only earthly impulses—demand something from men. A kind of revolution is taking place in the Cosmos, the result of which must be the striving for a new spirituality.

Such utterances were constantly to be heard and were very worthy of note. The fact of the matter is this: the impulse that must be working in what is now to go out from Dornach must—as I emphasised from every possible point of view during the Meeting itself—be an impulse originating in the spiritual world, not on the Earth. Our striving here is to develop the strength to follow impulses from the spiritual world. That is why, in the evening lectures during this Christmas Meeting, I spoke of manifold impulses at work in the course of historical evolution in order that hearts could be opened for the reception of the spiritual impulses which have yet to stream into the earthly world, which are not derived from that world itself. Everything for which the earthly world hitherto has rightly been the vehicle, proceeded from the spiritual world. And if we are to achieve anything fruitful for the earthly world, the impulses for it must be brought from the spiritual world.

This prompts the assertion that the impulses we ought rightly to take with us from the Meeting for our further activity must be connected with great responsibility.

Let us think for a short time of the responsibility laid upon us by that Meeting. Anyone with a sense of the reality of the spiritual world could encounter many personalities during recent decades, and observing them spiritually experience bitter feelings regarding the future destiny of humanity on Earth. One could encounter one's fellow men on the Earth in the way that is possible spiritually and observe these human beings during their sleep while they are in the spiritual world with Ego and astral body, having left their physical and etheric bodies. During recent decades, explorations connected with the destinies of Egos and astral bodies during the sleep of human beings have resulted in knowledge calling for great responsibility on the part of those who possess it. One often saw souls, who had left their physical and etheric bodies during sleep, approaching the Guardian of the Threshold.

In the course of evolution the Guardian of the Threshold has been brought to men's consciousness in very many different ways. Many a legend, many a saga—for it is in this form, not in the form of historical tradition that things of the greatest importance are preserved—many a legend tells of how, in earlier times, this or that personality met the Guardian of the Threshold and was instructed by him how to enter the spiritual world and return again into the physical world. Every legitimate entry into the spiritual world must include the possibility of being able at any and every minute to return into the physical world and to live there as a practical, thoughtful human being, not as a visionary or as an ecstatic mystic.

Fundamentally speaking, it was this that was demanded by the Guardian of the Threshold through all the ages of human endeavours to enter the spiritual world. But notably in the last third of the nineteenth century hardly any human beings who succeeded in approaching the Guardian of the Threshold in waking consciousness were to be seen. In our present time, when it is historically incumbent upon the whole of mankind to encounter the Guardian of the Threshold in some form, one finds how souls during sleep approach the Guardian of the Threshold as Egos and astral bodies, and the pictures that are revealed are full of significance. The stern Guardian of the Threshold has around him groups of human souls in the state of sleep, souls who in waking consciousness lack the strength to approach this Guardian of the Threshold. They approach him while they sleep.

When one watches the scene presented there, a thought connected with what I have called the seed of great and essential responsibility comes to one. The souls approaching the Guardian of the Threshold during the state of sleep plead with the consciousness then prevailing—in the waking state everything remains unconscious or subconscious—plead to be admitted into the spiritual world, to be allowed to cross the threshold. And in numberless cases one then hears the voice of the stern Guardian of the Threshold saying: For your own well-being you may not cross the threshold. You may not be allowed to enter the spiritual world. You must go back!—For if the Guardian of the Threshold were to permit such souls to enter the spiritual world, they would cross the threshold and enter that world with the concepts imparted to them by the schools, education and civilisation of to-day, with the concepts and ideas with which the human being is obliged to grow up from about the age of six to basically the end of his life on Earth.

The intrinsic character of these concepts and ideas is such that what a man has become through them in modern civilisation and education means that he enters the spiritual world paralysed in soul. Moreover, he would return to the physical world empty-headed in respect of thoughts and ideas. If the Guardian of the Threshold were not to reject many human souls of the modern age but allow them to enter the spiritual world, they would feel on awakening: I am incapable of thinking, my thoughts do not connect with my brain, I am obliged to go through the world void of thoughts. For such is the effect of the abstract ideas which man applies to everything to-day. With these ideas he can enter the spiritual world but not come forth from it again. And when one witnesses this scene which is experienced during sleep by more souls than is usually imagined, one feels: Oh! if only it were possible to protect these souls from having also to experience at death what they experience during sleep. For if the condition that is experienced in the presence of the Guardian of the Threshold were to be repeated for a sufficient length of time, if civilisation were to remain long enough under the sway of what current education provides, then the souls of men would pass through the gates of death into the spiritual world but would be unable to bring any mental vigour into the next earthly life. With the thoughts prevailing to-day it is possible for a man to enter the spiritual world but he can only come out of it again paralysed in soul.

You see, modern civilisation adopts the form of spiritual life that has for so long been cultivated, but real life does not allow this. Civilisation as it now is might continue to progress for a time. During waking life souls would have no inkling of the existence of the Guardian of the Threshold and during sleep would be rejected by him in order to avoid mental paralysis; and this would finally result in a race of men being born in the future with no understanding, no possibility of applying ideas in their future earthly life; and all thinking, all ideation would vanish from the Earth. A diseased, purely instinctive human race would people the Earth. Evil feelings and unbridled emotions without the guiding power of ideas would take hold of the evolution of humanity. It is not only through observation of the souls confronting the Guardian of the Threshold—souls which can gain no entrance to the spiritual world—it is not only through observing this that a sorrowful picture is presented to the seer, but in a different connection there is another factor as well.

If on the journey of which I have spoken, when the souls of sleeping human beings confronting the Guardian of the Threshold can be observed, one is accompanied by a human being belonging not to Western but to Oriental civilisation, a terrible reproach of the whole of Western civilisation may be heard from him, to this effect: If things continue as they now are, when the human beings living to-day appear on Earth in new incarnations, the Earth will become barbaric. Human beings will live devoid of ideas, in instincts only. You Westerners have brought things to this pass because you have abandoned the ancient spirituality of the East.

A glimpse into the spiritual world such as I have described may well give rise to a sense of great responsibility. And here in Dornach there must be a place where for those human beings who have ears to hear, direct and significant experiences in the spiritual world can be described. Here there must be a place where sufficient strength is generated not merely to indicate in terms of the dialectic-empirical mentality of to-day that here or there little traces of spiritual reality exist. If Dornach is to fulfil its task, actual happenings in the spiritual world must be spoken of openly. Men must be able to hear of the impulses in the spiritual world which then pour into and control the natural world and Nature itself. In Dornach men must be able to hear of actual experiences, actual forces, actual Beings of the spiritual world. Here there must be the High School of true Spiritual Science. Henceforth we must not draw back when confronted by the shallowness of the scientific thoughts of to-day which, as I have described, lead in the state of sleep to the stern Guardian of the Threshold. In Dornach the strength must be acquired to confront and experience the spiritual world in its reality.

There must be no dialectical tirades from here on the subject of the inadequacy of modern scientific theory. I was obliged, however, to call attention to the position in which human beings are placed when confronting the Guardian of the Threshold on account of these scientific theories and their offshoots in the orthodox schools of to-day. If what has been said at this Christmas Meeting is sincerely applied in the life of soul, the Meeting will be a forceful impulse which the soul can then apply in the activity that is needed in this age so that in their next incarnations men may be able to confront the Guardian of the Threshold in the right way. This will ensure that civilisation in its own right can enable men to face and hold their own when confronting the Guardian of the Threshold.

Just compare the civilisation of to-day with that of earlier times during all of which men's thoughts and concepts were directed primarily to the super-sensible world, to the Gods, to the world of productive, generative, creative forces. With concepts that were concerned primarily with the Gods, men were able to contemplate the earthly world and also to understand it in the light of these concepts and ideas. If with these concepts—worthy of the Gods as they were—a man came before the Guardian of the Threshold, the Guardian would say to him: You may pass, for you bring over the threshold into the super-sensible world thoughts that were already directed to the super-sensible world during your earthly life in a physical body. Thus when you return into the physical world of the senses you will have enough strength to protect you from being paralysed by the spectacle of the super-sensible world.

To-day man develops concepts and ideas which in accordance with the genius of the age he wants to apply only to the material world. These concepts and ideas are concerned with every possible aspect of weight, measure and the like, but they have nothing to do with the Gods and are not worthy of the Gods. Hence to souls who have completely succumbed to materialistic ideas that are unworthy of the Gods, the voice of the Guardian of the Threshold thunders when they pass before him in the state of sleep: Do not cross the threshold! You have squandered your ideas on the world of the senses. Hence you must remain with them in the world of the senses. If you do not wish to be paralysed in your life of soul you may not enter the world of the Gods as long as you hold such ideas.

These things must be said, not in order to be the subject of argument but because every individual should let his mind and soul be permeated by them and thus develop the attitude of mind that should have been generated in him by this solemn Christmas Meeting of the Anthroposophical Society. For more important than anything else we take with us is the recognition of the spiritual world which gives the certainty that in Dornach there will be created a living centre of spiritual knowledge.

Hence a really splendid note was struck this morning when Dr. Zeylmans spoke in connection with the sphere of medicine, saying that it is no longer possible to-day for bridges to be built from orthodox science to what it is our aim to found in Dornach. If we were to speak of what it is hoped to develop in the sphere of medicine here by boasting that our products can stand the test of all modern clinical requirements, then we should never reach any definite goal. For then other people would simply say: That is just a new remedy; and we too have produced plenty of new remedies!

It is of essential importance that a branch of practical life such as medicine should be taken in the real sense into anthroposophical life. That is what I certainly understood to be Dr. Zeylmans' wish when he said this morning that an individual who becomes a doctor to-day really longs for something that gives impulses from a new corner of the world. In the domain of medicine this is just what will be done from here in the future, together with many another branch of genuine anthroposophical activity. It will be worked out now, with Dr. Wegman as my helper, as a system of medicine based upon Anthroposophy. It is a dire need of humanity and will soon be available. It is also my intention to establish as soon as possible a close relationship between the Goetheanum and the Clinic in Arlesheim that is proving to be so beneficial. The work there will be orientated entirely towards Anthroposophy. That is also Dr. Wegman's intention.

In speaking as he did, Dr. Zeylmans also indicated what attitude the Vorstand in Dornach will adopt in all spheres of anthroposophical activity. In future we shall know exactly how matters stand. We shall not say: let us bring Eurythmy to this or that town, for if people first see Eurythmy without hearing anything about Anthroposophy, Eurythmy will please them. Then, later on perhaps, they will come to us, and because they have liked Eurythmy and have heard that Anthroposophy is behind it, Anthroposophy too may please them! Or again, it may be said: In the practice of medicine people must be shown that ours are the right remedies and then they will buy them; later on they may discover that Anthroposophy is behind them and then they will come to Anthroposophy!

We must have the courage to realise that such procedure is dishonest and must be abandoned. Anthroposophy will then find its way in the world. Our striving for truth here in Dornach will in the future be without fanaticism, will be advocated honestly and candidly. Perhaps in this way we can make reparation for principles that have been gravely sinned against in recent years.

We must leave this Meeting, which has led to the Founding of the General Anthroposophical Society, not with trifling but with solemn thoughts. But I think that nobody need have experienced any pessimism as a result of what took place here at Christmas. We had, it is true, to pass the tragic ruins of the Goetheanum every day but I think that all those who climbed the hill and passed the ruins during the Meeting will have become aware of what our friends have understood in their hearts and that the following thought will have become a reality to them: Spiritual flames of fire will go forth from the new Goetheanum that will come into being in the future, for the blessing of mankind, will come into being through our activity and devotion. And the greater the courage with which to conduct the affairs of Anthroposophy that we take with us from this Meeting, the more effectively have we grasped the spiritual impulse of hope that has pervaded the Meeting.

The scene that I have described to you—the scene that is so often to be seen of modern man with the results of his civilisation and education facing the Guardian of the Threshold—this scene does not actually occur among perceptive Anthroposophists. But it does sometimes happen that this warning is necessary: You must develop the resolute courage to become aware of and avow your obedience to this voice from the spiritual world, for you have begun to wake. Courage will keep you wakeful; lack of courage—that and that alone could cause you to sleep.

The voice of exhortation to unfold courage and wakefulness—that is the other variant for Anthroposophists in the life of modern civilisation. Non-Anthroposophists hear the voice which says: Remain outside the spiritual world, for you have misused the ideas which are coined for purely earthly objects; you have amassed no ideas that are worthy of the Gods. Hence you would be paralysed on your return into the physical world of the senses. To the souls who are truly anthroposophical souls, however, it is said: You have now to be tested in respect only of your courage to avow adherence to the voice which because of the trend and inclination of your souls and hearts you can certainly hear and understand.

Yesterday, a year ago, we were watching the flames that were destroying the old Goetheanum, but just as we did not allow ourselves then to be interrupted in our continuation of the work, so to-day we are justified in hoping that when a physical Goetheanum will again be there, it will be merely the symbol of our spiritual Goetheanum which we will bear with us as idea when we now again go out into the world.

Over the Foundation Stone laid here will be erected the building in which the single stones will be the work achieved in every one of our Groups all over the world. We will now turn our thoughts to this work and become conscious of the responsibility of the men of to-day when they are standing before the Guardian of the Threshold who is obliged to forbid them entrance into the spiritual world.

Quite certainly it will never occur to us to feel anything except, the deepest pain and sorrow for what happened to us a year ago. But of one thing we may be sure—everything in the world that has achieved some measure of greatness is born from pain. May our own pain be applied in such a way that a vigorous, light-filled Anthroposophical Society will come into being as the result of your work, my dear friends.

To this end we will ponder deeply on the words with which I began the Christmas Meeting and with which I want to end it. May it become for us a festival of consecration not only of a year's beginning but of the beginning of a turning-point of worlds, to which we will dedicate ourselves in selfless cultivation of the spiritual life:

Soul of Man!
Thou livest in the Limbs
Which bear thee through the world of Space
Into the ocean-being of the Spirit.
Practise Spirit-Recollection
In the depths of soul.
Where in the wielding
World-Creator-Life
Thine own I
Comes to being
Within the I of God.
Then in the All-World-Being of Man
Thou wilt truly live.

For the Father-Spirit of the Heights holds sway
In Depths of Worlds begetting Life.
Spirits of Strength!
Let this ring out from the Heights
And in the Depths be echoed,
Speaking:
From God, Mankind has Being.
The Spirits hear it in East and West and North and South:
May human beings hear it!

Soul of Man!
Thou livest in the beat of Heart and Lung
Which leads thee through the rhythmic tides of Time
Into the feeling of thine own Soul-being.
Practise Spirit-Mindfulness
In balance of the soul,
Where the surging
Deeds of the World's Becoming
Do thine own I
Unite
Unto the I of the World.
Then 'mid the weaving of the Soul of Man
Thou wilt truly feel.
For the Christ-Will in the encircling Round holds sway
the Rhythms of the Worlds, blessing the Soul.
Spirits of Light!
Let this be fired from the East
And through the West be formed,
Speaking:
In Christ, Death becomes Life.
The Spirits hear it in East and West and North and South:
May human beings hear it!

Soul of Man!
Thou livest in the resting Head
Which from the ground of the Eternal
Opens to thee the Thoughts of Worlds.
Practise Spirit-Vision
In quietness of thought,
Where the eternal aims of Gods
World-Being's Light
On thine own I
Bestow
For thy free Willing.
Then from the ground of the Spirit in Man
Thou wilt truly think.

For the Spirit's Universal Thoughts hold sway
the Beings of all Worlds, craving for Light.
Spirits of Soul!
Let this be prayed in the Depths
And from the Heights be answered,
Speaking:
the Spirit's Universal Thoughts, the Soul awakens.
The Spirits hear it in East and West and North and South:
May human beings hear it!

At the turning-point of Time
The Spirit-Light of the World
Entered the stream of Earthly Being.
Darkness of Night
Had held its sway;
Day-radiant Light
Poured into the souls of men;
Light that gives Warmth
To simple Shepherds' Hearts,
Light that enlightens
The wise Heads of Kings.

O Light Divine,
O Sun of Christ!
Warm Thou
Our Hearts
Enlighten Thou
Our Heads,
That good may become
What from our Hearts we would found
And from our Heads direct
With single purpose.

And so, my dear friends, carry out into the world your warm hearts in which you have laid the Foundation Stone for the Anthroposophical Society, carry out into the world these warm hearts which promote strong, health-giving activity in the world. And help will be vouchsafed to you, enlightening your heads in what you would fain direct with single purpose. We will set about this with all possible strength. And if we prove to be worthy of this aim we shall see that a good star will hold sway over what is willed from here. Follow this good star, my dear friends! We shall see whither the Gods will lead us by the light of this star.

O Light Divine,
O Sun of Christ!
Warm Thou
Our Hearts
Enlighten Thou
Our Heads.

Recently, many members of the Anthroposophical Society, especially those with a scientific background, have come to believe that a discussion should take place between what is given in Anthroposophy as world knowledge and what is given today as scientific world knowledge based on the assumptions of the second half of the 19th century. Yes, it is believed that if one, as it were, accommodates science in a certain way, responds to it as much as possible, this could result in something extraordinarily favorable for anthroposophy.

It is precisely because scientific activity has entered the Anthroposophical Society, which in other respects is to be welcomed as an extremely gratifying fact, that an extraordinary number of errors have arisen with regard to the point mentioned.

We must not forget that in the course of the 19th century, under the influence of what was gradually called and is still called science, general human knowledge has taken on a character in relation to which anthroposophical knowledge of the world is quite different. One must assume that anyone who has grown into present-day scientific life with their habitual way of thinking will find it impossible to switch to the anthroposophical view without further ado. Therefore, one must be aware that no kind of approval of the anthroposophical view of the world can come from this side in the near future.

Those people who either have not grown into today's scientific work with their habitual way of thinking or who, as young people, grow into it and then out of it again, will be the ones who will mainly recognize the validity of anthroposophical world knowledge.

To bring a little life into what I have just said, I would like to speak today about an initial perspective on the path of Anthroposophy through the world. I would like to structure these three lectures somewhat aphoristically so that friends who have come from far away can take as much with them as possible. I would like to tie in with all kinds of phenomena in the life of civilization today, but in the main I would like to seek the content for these lectures in purely anthroposophical discussions.

We know what the facts are that a person experiences when they pass through the gate of death. Today, in order to present the physical perspective of anthroposophy to our souls, so to speak, we will first consider only the very first period of life after passing through the gate of death. It has often been mentioned how, throughout their entire life on earth, human beings have such a close connection between their physical body and their etheric body or formative forces that this connection is maintained throughout their entire life on earth.

When a person interrupts the ordinary state of consciousness during their life on earth through the state of sleep and dreams, they carry the astral body and the ego out of the physical and formative forces. These, in turn, are so closely connected that they do not separate. Thus, in the course of a normal twenty-four-hour day, the separation that occurs in the course of a normal day is such that the physical body and the etheric or formative body on the one hand and the ego and the astral body on the other hand separate, while each side forms a closely knit whole.

When a person now passes through the gate of death, it is different. Then it happens that the physical body is discarded first and that for a very short time a connection is established between the I, the astral body and the etheric body, which was not present during life on earth. This connection gives the first experiences that a person goes through after death, which only last for days. What are these experiences?

They consist of the person, as if melting away from himself, seeing everything that he has taken in through his senses and also through the mind, which combines the perceptions of the senses, during his life on earth.

During our life on earth, we become accustomed to seeing colored things and processes that shine in colors in our view when we look out into the world. But we also retain the impressions of colors in our memory, albeit in a weakened form. We carry them with us through our memory. It is the same with the impressions of the other senses. And if we are honest in self-observation, then we say to ourselves: Actually, when we sit in the quiet chamber and let our memories, that is, our inner selves, play, what we experience from our inner selves is composed of the shadowy images of external impressions. In our ordinary consciousness, we live either in the immediate, vivid impressions of the external world or in the shadowy memories of it. We will talk tomorrow about what we have beyond that. Today we only want to call to mind very strongly that during our whole life on earth this consciousness is filled with colors and color processes that spread over things, with sounds, with sensations of warmth and cold, in short, with the impressions that we receive through the senses, and with their shadowy afterimages in the inner life of the soul, as one might also say, in memory. Let us consider this as a kind of starting point.

Everything we experience melts away when we pass through the portal of death. Within a few days, so to speak, everything that fills our soul from birth to death has dissolved into the greater cosmos. This can be called: The etheric body or formative forces of the human being separate from the I and the astral body, after first entering into a connection with them that did not previously exist in earthly life.

Now let us imagine more precisely what this experience is like. I will make a schematic drawing for this purpose. Let us assume that the physical body of the human being is characterized by this schematic drawing; the etheric or formative body is characterized by this schematic drawing (shaded in yellow). We only experience what I have characterized as this, this interrelated structure of physical and etheric bodies, when we are stuck inside after waking up. So we actually always experience it from the inside. And to help us recall this as accurately as possible, I would like to design the drawing in the following way. I will indicate green for the part of the etheric body that seems inward. The physical body is discarded at death anyway, so we need not consider it at this point. And I will indicate what is directed outwards from the etheric body with this red line.

I just said that we only experience this structure of the etheric body from the inside after waking up; so, in a sense, we only experience what shines inward in the green. We do not experience what shines outward in the red.

When we have passed through the gate of death and enter into a certain connection with the etheric body with our ego and our astral body, this connection happens in the following way. You must now imagine that the whole etheric body turns like a glove when you turn all the finger linings inside out, as you would normally do with the skin, turning the inside out. So that I now have to draw what is colored red on the outside in the earthly state as the inner part, and what is colored green on the inside, I have to draw green on the outside. The entire etheric body turns in on itself. But this turning around is connected with an immeasurably rapid enlargement of the etheric body. It grows, it becomes gigantic, it expands immeasurably far into the universe, so that I would now have to make the drawing something like this (large green board 8 circles).

And whereas we used to be in there with our ego and our astral body, we are now (red circle) facing the etheric body that expands into the cosmic, but we look at it from its other side. That which we previously carried with us without meaning, the red on the outside, is now turned inwards. What was previously turned inwards and what alone has meaning for us during our life on earth is now turned outwards, no longer of any concern to us, and disperses into the universe. But in this green – of course presented schematically – is contained everything that we have had within us during our life on earth as a colored, sounding, and so on world.

As green, so to speak, goes through the etheric body turning to the other side, we lose it completely and we get a very different world as an impression. We must not imagine that we can still have the same world that we had during our life on earth after death. This world goes away. To imagine, for example, that after death we could experience, for my sake, in a different edition, the content of earthly life, that is quite wrong, that does not correspond to the facts. What we experience through the turning of the etheric or formative body is indeed of a gigantic size compared to the content of earthly life, but it is something quite different. We experience the whole of our earthly education through the fact that the outside is now turned inwards, in powerful impressions that are different from the sensory impressions. We do not experience the blush of the rose, but we experience how we have formed the blush of the rose within us as an idea. That is where it begins to be not as calm as it is in physical life. There, in earthly life, the roses are so beautifully arranged in a rose garden, and each one gives peace, and one feels suspended in the peace. Now the rose garden becomes something completely different, now the rose garden becomes an event in time. And as we gradually let our gaze wander from one rose to the next, as we formed the image of the first rose, the second, the third rose and so on within us, this, as in a living becoming, in a lightning-fast rippling and weaving, one rose after the other arises, but not as roses, but as images that unfold, this now emerges as our inner life as if in a sea of events. And so we are confronted with something we have not seen during our life on earth: the becoming of this earthly life, the gradual development of this earthly life. We know how our soul has become from childhood on. That which we have left completely unnoticed during our earthly life is now playing out in us. It is as if we had stepped out of ourselves, had become a second person and were watching how we gradually formed the simple ideas of childhood, the more complicated ones of later years, and so on. We see the emergence of all this earthly life from its inner side. We see how this earthly life, this earthly existence, is formed from hour to hour. Yes, we gain the impression that this whole earthly life is actually formed from the cosmos. For everything we perceive grows into the immeasurable, into the cosmic, and by growing into it, we become clear about the fact that what has been formed in us in earthly life is also formed from the cosmos.

And now we are gradually getting a valid idea of what it is like to live this human life on earth. Let us take as our starting point what is more or less believed today with regard to this life on earth. Man eats, and in doing so he takes the substances that are outside into his own organism. This is an undeniable fact. He also changes these substances. He changes them in his mouth, and then all the more so in the rest of his organism. What is absorbed goes into the whole organism, really goes into the whole organism. Science will still come and say: But we are also constantly losing substances to the outside. We need only think of how you cut your nails and your hair if you are not yet bald. You can see from the dandruff and so on how the human being loses matter, loses substance. And it is common knowledge today that in this way, by constantly losing matter, the human being completely rebuilds itself over the course of about seven years.

So that, if I want to put it drastically, everything sitting here on the chairs, in terms of the material, was scattered all over the world eight or nine years ago. Let me put it this way: what is sitting here on these chairs could only have gathered over the last seven to eight years. If what was in all of you more than seven or eight years ago were still sitting here in muscle tissue and so on – you are already older, so you will have regenerated several times – you would not all be sitting here.

So, of what you carried as your muscle meat, blood and other things at home or elsewhere seven or eight years ago, nothing is sitting there; you have gradually cut it off, shed it and so on.

But if science is now materialistically oriented, then how does it answer? It says something like this: During these last seven years we have all been eating. That which we have eaten now is here, and that which we ate earlier is no longer here. For example, each of you sitting here has a heart, doesn't he? Now, the physical matter of this heart, so science tells you, has renewed itself in the last seven to eight years. So you definitely have a new heart compared to your condition nine years ago, let's say. Yes, you could say something like that, if you think in terms of the present.

But it is not so. This idea exists only because people do not know what I have just explained to you, do not include it at all in the realm of their scientific observation and thinking. They know nothing of that reversal of the ether or formative forces of the body, of what shows us, after we have passed through the gate of death, how the whole being has actually come into being bit by bit. Because if one knows this, then one is also able to look into the human organism quite differently. And only then does one learn to recognize the truth.

One can believe that the cabbage, potatoes, other vegetables, cherries, plums and so on that one has enjoyed over the past few years have gradually accumulated this heart matter. But it has not. Essentially – listen to me when I say this – the heart you carry within you has not much to do with the material you have taken in over the last seven to eight years. Rather, the heart you carry within you today has essentially arisen in a very mysterious way out of the ether of the cosmos, which you have drawn together into the density of the heart over the last seven to eight years. So it is not that your heart has been renewed out of physical matter of the last seven to eight years, but it has been renewed out of the cosmos. You have renewed your heart and your other organs out of the ether. You have actually made yourself into a new person over the past few years, not from the earth, but from the cosmos. This can be seen from the effects of the etheric body after death, how it has worked during the whole of life on earth, that we have always regenerated ourselves from the cosmos.

Now your materialistic conscience – after all, everyone has to have one of those – will say: But we did eat. We did absorb external matter, and internal processes took place as a result.

Yes, but these internal processes have less to do with your actual, deeper nature than you might think.

Now we can even state a fact that may seem somewhat grotesque to today's thinking: You are all sitting there now; what you have renewed in yourselves over the past seven to eight years did not live in the cabbage and on the potato fields, but lived out in the universe in the sun, moon and stars, coming down from there, and you formed yourselves anew out of the universe. In doing so, we have pointed out an error that simply has to arise from today's thinking. They seek only the relationships of human regeneration to physical earth matter, but not to ether. And the consequence of this is that once one has become accustomed to the ideas presented in current physiology, one cannot help but regard everything that is given from the anthroposophical point of view as a kind of fantasy. Therefore, we must be clear about how fruitless discussions are today, how only by mastering both fields, contemporary science and anthroposophy, can we shed light on them from both sides, but how we must not give ourselves over to the hope – because if we give ourselves over to this hope, it is actually to the detriment of anthroposophy! - that those who are accustomed to materialistic ideas can be drawn over to it so easily by a discussion. One must have very clear and precise ideas about this. Then one will realize that, first of all, the whole way in which one appropriates anthroposophy must be appropriated by people before they can even enter into this anthroposophical way of looking at and knowing things.

I said that essentially we actually regenerate our new human being from the cosmos. We do not find the substances in the cosmos that we then find in the heart, of course not, because there they are so thin that they cannot be detected by physical means on earth. There they are ethereal. But what appears as dense heart matter at a certain age has only just condensed from the cosmic ether. So what is there today was all still out in the heavens, in the stars, nine or ten years ago, and what has remained, what has pushed its way in from the matter that should actually have formed out of the ether, that is what causes illness. When we carry physical matter that is too old within us, then that is one cause of illness. And deep insights into the nature of disease are gained when one knows how matter, instead of being expelled, persists; for all matter that is taken up as physical earth matter is actually doomed to be expelled again. If it persists in the organism, then it becomes the cause of disease.

You can also see from this how this really real knowledge, which we can only gain by having an insight into what occurs in us as first experiences shortly after we have completely discarded the physical body, plays a practical role. So after death, everything that we have had in the way of sense impressions and the mind's processing of sense impressions melts away from us. We look at the world quite differently. Minerals, plants, and animals, as we previously looked at them, are not there at all. How people become, that is there.

We have passed through the gateway of death. We have thereby resigned from the scene of the earth. We have stepped onto the scene of the cosmos: Another world surrounds us. It is as if we had stepped out of a small chamber of earthly existence into the majestically vast chamber of the cosmos, and we feel spread out over the cosmos, would truly not fit into the small earthly chamber. So we have entered the scene of the cosmos. And on this scene of the cosmos we must now remain until we descend again to our earthly existence, only that we now enter into contact with completely new worlds, with worlds whose essence belongs to the higher hierarchies.

This consideration, which one gains so directly in connection with man, must, however, be extended to the whole of nature. And I would like to characterize to you what has to happen there in the following way.

Let us assume, for example, that we have gone back a very long time in evolution, in the evolution of the earth. We would encounter very different living creatures and very different events on earth. You know that there have been periods of time when giant animals of a lower kind lived that no longer exist today. The entire species has died out and is no longer present. The paleontologist and geologist search for individual remains in the formations of the earth. Let us assume that I would draw schematically this very old development, where, for example, ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, these strange beasts, would have lived here on earth. Yes, these creatures were not formed out of physical earthly matter, they were formed out of the cosmos, out of ether. And when the time approached when these creatures gradually died out, the entire etheric matter remained, if I may put it that way. (See drawing: yellow.) Now there were no more creatures. But all the etheric matter from which these creatures had formed remained behind, just as our etheric body remains behind. And this etheric matter was the cause that in later times, after this etheric formation had passed through the cosmos, other beings formed in earthly existence. Of these, in turn, the etheric remained behind. From these, other entities formed. And finally, the world of animals emerged as it exists today.

So if you have three consecutive periods here, first period, second period, third period, you have, let's say, consecutive animal forms. But for the following one to always arise from the previous one, a passage through the cosmos with the help of the ether is necessary, just as a passage through the cosmos between two earth lives is necessary for man. And if we finally have entities here (see drawing: red), then that can in turn pass into the ether, and there, formed out of the ether in a certain period, the human being can appear. But the influence has always happened in a roundabout way through the cosmos.

Now comes the purely materialistic observer. He sees all this, and now he believes that one thing has arisen out of the other. Certainly, on earth it also follows; but an etheric activity, a cosmic activity lies in between.

In the 19th century, it became common practice to look only at what follows on the earth, but not at what cosmic activity is beyond the earthly. Therefore, the consideration remained: ultimately man, before that simpler forms, still simpler forms and so on. This is what we can obtain as the development of organisms through natural science, which does not involve the etheric. This natural science could obtain nothing other than what it did obtain. If one admits its presuppositions, that one should not get involved in the ethereal, one poses the question in such a way that one should only consider that which belongs to earthly existence; yes, then there is no other choice than to present the physical evolutionary current. Darwinists have done this, Haeckel has done this, and to demand more as earth science or even to want to polemicize against what has come about as earth science is nonsense. Because only when one adds the knowledge of the ethereal world can that arise which belongs to it. So you see, there is no point in direct polemic; but if someone wants to remain on the ground of natural science, he can. And to the other, who speaks of some other principles of formation in what is on earth, he can always say: Yes, that has no significance at all. That is not there, he will say, when he has become accustomed to the merely earthly way of looking at things.

If one wants to speak differently, then one must first acquire knowledge of the ethereal world. So for a valid, reasonable polemic against today's science, the only thing left to do is to say: In your field, o naturalist, you are quite right, nothing else can come of it, we do not deny that, we fully admit that. But if you want to talk to us about what we mean, well, then you must first familiarize yourself with the elementary processes in the cosmic ether, then we can talk to each other. Otherwise you are not grounded in reality if you do not start from these things.

You see, a member sitting here has written a little book on botany from a spiritual scientific point of view. A very disparaging review of it appeared recently in a local paper. Well, what can one say about that! I said: Imagine you were the botanist who wrote this review, you had never heard of anthroposophy and this second edition of your little book came to your notice. It is only natural that you would write just like him! The fact that you do not do so, but on the contrary have written the little book yourself, is the very reason why you have taken up anthroposophy in the first place. You only have to put yourself in the other person's shoes for once, and then you can write all these opposing things yourself. But you see, if you want a person who has once put himself in one direction with all his habits of thought to be different, if you want him to be an anthroposophist, it seems to me almost like someone who has had a blonde daughter suddenly wants a black one. It doesn't work like that. What man has become through today's science is not something that can be changed in the twinkling of an eye. You have to think realistically.

The period that followed the mid-19th century gave the whole state of mind a very specific character. I will give you an example of this from a completely different angle.

You know that there is something today called analytical psychology, psychoanalysis. I have often said here that psychoanalysis produces some beautiful things; but, first of all, it arises from an incomplete, amateurish knowledge of human physiology, so it is amateurishness. Then it arises from an amateurish knowledge of the human soul, of human psychology. That is also amateurism. And because one usually follows the other, the things multiply, and psychoanalysis is actually amateurism squared. - If you multiply d by d, you get d?. But it does have an effect, even if only in an amateurish way, if it is pursued further. And one can also understand that this thing could gradually emerge from inadequate physiology and psychology. But it does rub off on people's minds, this way of thinking does rub off!

Today we have an enormous literature about it. You could fill a large library with psychoanalytic literature. People argue terribly in it, so that if you go into the polemics, it is sometimes quite interesting. Well, this psychoanalysis has also been mentioned here from time to time. One can really fill a library with what has been written about it. But if so much is written in this field, then there must be a lot of study in it, at least on the surface. This colors the state of mind of people.

Now there is something very peculiar. You see, in 1841, there was already a psychoanalytic literature in Central Europe. But it consisted of only fourteen lines. They read: “In our modern overcrowded consciousness, we throw many things around that we cannot develop because we lack the time. They remain in us in the form of tasks that we could work on. They are, to quote Tieck, unborn souls that, yearning for existence, hover in the background of our own soul as if in a limbo."

You see, in these fourteen lines - if you make the lines longer, there is even less - the principle of the whole of psychoanalysis is contained. At that time, it was called “unborn souls” that live in the background of the soul in a limbo, struggling for existence. Now it is called “hidden provinces in the depths of the soul,” “soul provinces,” and so on. In those days, however, it was considered such an insignificant thing that it was noted in a few lines. Today our civilization has come to write entire libraries about it. But everything essential, everything fundamental, is contained in those fourteen lines. But in those days, when it was all contained in just fourteen lines, the libraries were filled with different books than they are filled with today, and people who wanted to learn took in different material.

If today, as a young student, you somehow study psychology and are supposed to write a dissertation, you can't avoid psychoanalysis. You have to study it. Yes, it rubs off on the soul. In 1841, the essential was expressed in these fourteen lines. It was not considered something so important that could have such a tremendous significance for human thought. And so it has been with many things.

It means something tremendous, whether we look at any field of facts or whether we do not look. In those days, in 1841, people slept through psychoanalysis. This thought, which I read to you in the fourteen lines, only emerged in a single person, in Karl Rosenkranz. He dreamt about it once. Dreams pass quickly and do not have much influence on life. But people filled their waking hours with other things. Today, on the other hand, much is missed because one has to be awake for psychoanalysis and similar things.

This matter really needs to be looked at carefully, then it will be possible to say where to start in order to bring anthroposophy to bear in the world. In any case, polemics are not the answer. Polemics are almost like someone lying in a room and snoring terribly, and cannot be woken up at all, and someone else is watching, and now the person watching is trying hard to make the snorer, who is sleeping through everything, understand

what the other is saying. He cannot understand him. Nor is it possible for two fields of spiritual life to communicate with each other if each sleeps for the other's field and only watches for his own.

Now there will still be many who sleep for anthroposophy. They will not wake up so quickly for anthroposophy. But one would like the anthroposophists to wake up for the others, so that they know why anthroposophy is the all-embracing one, not only out of their blind faith but out of a real insight into the quality of the other and also encompasses what the others consider to be the only one, and how anthroposophy broadens the horizon because it goes beyond those areas that the others consider to be merely within a narrow horizon.

In this way I have presented one of the perspectives, the perspective that arises when we ask about the details of what surrounds us as the earth world and what melts away after death. It is the physical perspective. In order to be understood, it leads us into that which is immediately adjacent to it, into the etheric.

Later, we will look at the soul perspective, how the human being awakens to the soul perspective, and then conclude with a consideration of the spiritual perspective of anthroposophy. These will be the three perspectives of anthroposophy.

To speak from the point of view of Anthroposophy today still means, quite understandably, to have great opposition, for Anthroposophy wants to speak about things of life and reality in a way that seems to many in our time to be something quite outlandish. And in particular, when a subject is discussed, such as the one that has been chosen for this evening, the immortality of the soul, then very powerful voices immediately rise up from the more scientifically educated circles of our time, who believe that such things cannot be discussed at all from the point of view of knowledge, because these things must be left to the beliefs, the revelations of human feeling, which is not based on direct knowledge, and because in relation to them man has insurmountable limits to his knowledge.

Now, however, anthroposophy assumes that it can speak about precisely such things of life in the same way that today, with strict methods and with a discipline that is aware of its responsibility, it speaks from the point of view of the natural sciences. It is only a question of anthroposophy having to address itself to forces of knowledge which are certainly present in ordinary life and in ordinary science, but which are present only for the starting points of their development, not for the further steps. And these further steps must be taken in order to penetrate the spiritual realms of life precisely from the point of view of real knowledge, not from that of nebulous mysticism. The starting point must be what I would call a union of intellectual modesty on the one hand and absolute trust in the perfection of the human powers of cognition on the other. By seeking to unite these two soul impulses, anthroposophy is able to explore the so-called supersensible realm with the same certainty as the senses and the natural sciences are used today to penetrate the realm of the sense world, of physical existence, with such great success and certainty.

What should be called intellectual modesty in this context? We know that within our soul life we have started from the childlike state of soul. We can very well compare this childlike state of soul with dreaming, even in a certain respect with sleep. And just as we awaken every morning from ordinary sleep, so we have awakened from our childlike state of soul to that which is our capacity for knowledge for science and for the purposes of practical life. If we now take the standpoint of intellectual modesty, we say to ourselves: Those powers which you had then as a small child, you have perfected through education and through the influence of life and your surroundings, and you have developed to that point of view from which you today gain your knowledge and your impulses for human life. This is not said with full intensity without intellectual modesty. Rather, one says: From the point of view that I have once acquired, I must be able to say yes and no to all sorts of things, if only I apply the correct methods that are common today. I must also be able to decide what is recognizable and what is to be relegated to the realm of mere belief. -- Anthroposophy counters this by asserting that it is perhaps possible to go beyond the powers of the soul that one has acquired as an adult, just as one can go beyond the cognitive abilities of the dreamy soul of a small child. Of course, it depends entirely on whether such a progression really succeeds, and I would like to speak to you this evening about this progression with reference to the field of soul immortality.

On the other hand, however, anthroposophy has full and intense confidence that the powers of cognition attained by each person can be perfected more and more. Thus it ventures on such a path of perfection, and it begins by saying something like the following: Today we have achieved a certain concept of knowledge through the great successes of the natural sciences. But has this concept of knowledge really been taken out of the full depths of life? It is certainly justified for everything that we strive for in its field. But is it taken out of the full depths of life by considering precisely those questions of human existence that are connected firstly with the deepest longings of human life, secondly with everything that man calls the consciousness of his human dignity, thirdly with everything from which he derives the actual meaning of life: the moral impulses?

All this nevertheless leads us to take certain borderline areas and borderline phenomena of life into consideration when it comes to gaining insights into precisely these most intimate needs and questions, especially those of the soul's existence.

Not in order to say anything valid for knowledge from the outset, but to gain a comparative starting point, let me point out something that presents itself as a dark area and yet as an area that challenges many riddles in life. It is the area that man knows well, the area of dreaming as man experiences it while asleep. I would like to emphasize this explicitly: Nothing is to be made out for knowledge by my mentioning dreams and sleep, but only a starting point is to be gained for our present understanding. Let us imagine in front of our soul these manifold and colorful worlds of images that dreams conjure up for us. We can be sure that they come from the same depths of human life from which our 'daytime imaginings usually emerge. But even during waking we are quite aware that in this extraordinarily interesting 'dream world we are dealing at most with a relative reality, which we can only understand if we understand it from the point of view of waking life. After all, one can at first imagine hypothetically that man dreams throughout his whole life, that he has never experienced anything in his consciousness other than the colorful, manifold dream images. Couldn't life nevertheless proceed in the same way as it does today? We could be driven by certain forces of nature or spiritual powers, without having an awake consciousness, to our daily work and - even if it may seem reprehensible to some listeners - perhaps even to scientific activity; we could carry out this activity, as it were, sleepwalking. Within ourselves, however, nothing could take place except that which we know as the dream world; the outer world would then be completely different from that which we have in our inner consciousness.

If you think about it properly, you come to say to yourself: This world of dreams, we never know it when we are in it ourselves. We would regard the dream world as our reality, which we would dream from the beginning to the end of our lives in the manner described above. That we recognize the subordinate reality value of the dream depends on the fact that we go through the life-jolt from sleep to awakening, that we become conscious of it - I am not speaking now in philosophical consideration, but from the standpoint of popular consciousness - through this life-jolt. Through it we switch that which is our human nature, namely that which is of a volitional nature, into our physical body. Anyone who observes closely also knows that everything that is conveyed to us through the senses in waking life is based entirely on the unfolding of real life in the physical body during waking. Through this involvement of our will in the physical body we arrive at the point of view from which we distinguish the subordinate reality value of dreaming from that reality value which the sense world has for our awakening consciousness. We now know that we are in contact with an external reality through the will inserted into our body. Again, I do not want to speak about this in philosophical considerations, but entirely from the standpoint of popular consciousness.

Now the question arises: Could there perhaps be a second awakening, a second life-jolt out of this ordinary day-waking on a higher level, through which we switch on our life forces into a new element, just as we switch on our will when we come out of dreaming into ordinary wakefulness? - Of course, this is only a question, and the answer to it depends entirely on whether we can set out on a path that is, firstly, inwardly safe and, secondly, can be walked by every person through their own efforts. If we were to come to such a second awakening, then through this second awakening we would gain a point of view through which we would recognize the reality value of our waking life, observing it from a higher perspective, as we observe it in dreams from the higher perspective of ordinary consciousness.

In order to bring about a second awakening, anthroposophy turns first of all to soul forces as they are present in ordinary life, but which already indicate through their ordinary nature that they are capable of development. Now even philosophers admit that what we call human memory points to a more spiritual nature of the human soul; that we cannot treat memory in the same way as we treat those soul faculties which are directly bound to the impressions of the outer sense world. Again, let us not adhere to philosophical considerations, but, as we do in ordinary consciousness, to that which plays a role as memory in man. Through memory we can call up images of experiences we went through many years ago. Depending on our disposition, these images may be more vivid or more shadowy, but they are there before us. When we indulge in ordinary sensory observation, that which we imagine must be present; that which memory gives is not present, it may be long gone. Through our imaginative power we conjure up, as it were, from our own inner being something before our soul which was once there, but which is no longer there, which cannot have a present existence. In this way we gain the insight that we are able to drive out of the human inner being forces of cognition which imagine something that does not exist in the present. And the question arises: Can perhaps through a certain further development of the powers of the soul, as we have developed them since our first childhood, that which underlies our power of memory be further developed? Can it be developed in such a way that we not only imagine what is not there at present but was once there during our life on earth, but that we imagine something that is not there at all? Then we would make the leap of life into a higher reality, into a reality from which ordinary earthly life would appear as the dreaming life does to the waking consciousness.

Anthroposophy now makes such an attempt to develop that which underlies the ability to remember, in order to arrive at this second awakening through the inner practice of life. It addresses itself to the human powers of thought. After all, they are the ones who conjure up in our imagination what we have once experienced. And anthroposophical research proceeds in such a way that it does something with thought that is not actually done with thought in the present age. Today's thinking is - and rightly so from certain points of view - more oriented towards surrendering to the outside world. To allow the impressions of the external world to act first on the senses, to process them by counting, measuring, weighing, to combine them with thinking, is passive thinking, a thinking that man considers all the more secure with regard to knowledge, the more passive it is, the more it surrenders to what the external senses and organs say. Indeed, in order not to gain a fantastic knowledge as some philosophers do, anthroposophy turns to thinking in such a way that it seeks to develop this thinking further than it is in ordinary life. To this end, easily comprehensible ideas, which at first are not even considered in terms of what they mean, are placed at the center of ordinary consciousness and the whole life of the soul is concentrated on such ideas. The life of the soul is completely withdrawn from external impressions and external life by seeking more and more to make this life of the soul stronger and stronger on one or a series of manageable ideas. The result is something that lasts shorter for one person and longer for another, depending on their soul disposition. One person needs three months, another many years. If you repeat these exercises in rhythmic succession, after a while you will notice something in your soul life that I would like to compare with something in your outer life: If you strain a muscle again and again, it strengthens and becomes strong. In the same way, one feels the soul's imaginative faculty strengthening by always concentrating on an easily comprehensible idea; and finally one feels how the whole thinking becomes active, how real life, inner life in the true sense, moves into this thinking. One gradually feels the great difference, which is not only a figurative but a real one, between dead and abstract thinking and that towards which we strive and which we want to absorb into an inner life in the thinking element.

I said that one must start from a manageable idea. In what I am going to tell you today about the exercises of the life of the soul, it is a question of following each step with full human prudence, as otherwise only the mathematician follows his steps, or the geometer, who is aware, when he brings one out of the other, how figure follows figure, how number follows number. This consciousness, which the anthroposophical researcher feels like the strict mathematician: to be accountable as a researcher - this consciousness must prevail.

Of course, all self-suggestions, everything somehow subjective must be excluded. But this can never be ruled out if we take up arbitrary ideas from our mental life; they have many echoes of life in them, they often suggest something to us. But if we put together ideas that perhaps have no external meaning for us at all, such as “light - wisdom” - and concentrate again and again on such an idea, whose reality value remains indifferent to us, with the whole life of our soul, then the thinking ability in us strengthens. In this way we come to know - as I said, for one person it takes less time, for another it takes longer - what this means: life in thinking; for a kind of detachment of a higher person from the person we know lives in our physical body does indeed gradually take place. Just as we become aware in our physical body that it is something living when we move our legs, move our hands, so we become aware through such an exercise: It is something real, living, real, life-real, when I move in the strengthened thinking.

One could roughly say: We finally come to experience a higher person in us through these power phenomena, through which one gropes spiritually, as one otherwise gropes physically with one's fingers. In this way we gradually experience how a higher man, who is experienced in this thinking, is torn away from the physical man; and we have arrived at the supersensible experience, at the experience of the supersensible man, in so far as he passes through earthly life between birth and death. By the fact that one has risen to observation in the inner ability to think, one comes to the fact that one overcomes space through this ability to think, overcomes the present in general and comes to an experience in time. Yes, one feels that which one experiences as the second, detached human being, not actually as a spatial human being. This is the physical human being. One finds that one experiences the second in this way as a human being fluctuating only in time. And that which one experiences there is structured into a kind of tableau which, in a relatively short time, allows one to survey life on earth from earliest childhood to the point in time one has just reached.

There is a big difference between the two things: the life tableau and my memories. You could say: I can also put together this earthly life from my memories. I can put together from my memory what I experienced a short or long time ago. And if I make the effort and if I take my time, then I will have an overall memory of my life on earth. And it could be that I am deceiving myself that in such an examination I have something in my life tableau, which is manageable in a short time, which with the help of subconscious soul forces would bring something similar to a conscious memory picture before my mind. - But one gradually realizes that there is a great difference between what one puts together in one's memory and such a tableau of the soul's life, which stands before the soul as a first supersensible knowledge, initially as a self-knowledge. For when you compile your experiences as a memory picture, you actually always see in front of you what has had an effect on you from the outside. You see people, natural events, the external things that are of interest to you.

This life tableau is completely different. There you have much less of an eye on what has come to you from the outside, so to speak, and more of an eye on what has worked from within. If I have gotten to know a person in life, I remember much less through this life tableau how he or she came across to me, but rather what longings were aroused in my own breast in order to find something special about this person. If I have any natural phenomenon in this life tableau, it is not so much the interesting aspects of the natural phenomenon that make themselves felt, but those impulses from my own human life that follow this natural phenomenon with particular sympathy or antipathy. That which stands before my soul in this tableau is myself, how I have behaved in relation to what I have gone through. One could say, if one wants to draw rough comparisons: This memory tableau that I have described, which can only be obtained after such an examination, is as different from an ordinary memory tableau brought about by memory as the impression in the seal is from the impression in the sealing wax. It is like the negative image to the positive image of that which we can put together through the ordinary memory image.

Thus, when we have gone through the first stage of spiritual practice, we have come to a true self-knowledge of our earthly life. For such self-knowledge is there. There are always nuances mixed in. In this memory tableau you see what has brought you forward; then you say to yourself: “There is something that has made you imperfect, that has brought you back. -- One places oneself in this tableau of memory with human worth and human dignity, and through the realization that is first awakened one attains an idea of that which one is actually only now entitled to call the “ether” of the world in relation to external reality and the sensual forces. The ether of the world, which lives only in the temporal and which to a certain extent gives us a piece of what I have now described as the first form of the higher human being detached from the physical.

But one has not been long enough with this first step. If you want more, you must undertake to continue these exercises of the soul. The next soul exercises consist in using a strongly activated inner will to remove the ideas from the consciousness, just as one has used one's will to place such ideas into the consciousness to strengthen the being and to concentrate on them. As I said, there must be complete prudence, as with the mathematician. For it must be said: We are in a certain way taken in with our whole soul-life by the conception which soon moves into the center of consciousness. And especially when thinking has already become so vivid that we have only this idea itself in consciousness, and that not only such ideas are there, but that our own inner experience appears as in powerful pictures in the tableau described - then we are strongly taken in by what we have before the soul in such a picture heightened to vividness. A greater power is necessary to remove such images from the consciousness than is necessary to remove ordinary images from the consciousness. One knows, by the way, what it means to remove ordinary ideas from the consciousness. Try to admit this to yourself honestly.

When the senses are silent, moreover when the sensually perceived is silent, when the combination of thoughts is silent and the ideas and sensations are, as it were, removed from the consciousness, then man falls asleep. If there is no stimulation from the imagination, he does not have the strength to maintain the waking state. But if one has that strength of soul which is necessary for what I have described, then one also has the strength to take away the acquired ideas which come into us in this way through an inner strengthened life, to keep the whole consciousness empty of imagination and yet to remain awake. Just being awake, imagining nothing, that is what must be striven for as a second state: A waking consciousness empty of content! But this contentless waking consciousness, one can become aware of it inwardly, but it does not remain so for long. Once it has been established, however, the second stage of spiritual cognition occurs. Then one not only becomes aware of what has just been described, which lives in the human being, then the spiritual content of our world environment forces its way into this waking, content-free consciousness, into this empty consciousness. And the second human being, who has first detached himself from the physical, corporeal human being, who was conscious of himself in the course of his entire life on earth, will now not only be conscious of himself, but through this higher self-consciousness he will absorb a spiritual world of his surroundings. Again something appears before our soul which seems strange and foreign to the present man, but which is nevertheless contained in what I have called the second stage of man's spiritual knowledge, inspiration. An exact inspiration occurs there; just as everything I have described here must not be confused with what is often called clairvoyance in a nebulous mysticism. If one wishes to use this expression, one may only speak of an exact voyance, which is only based on the development of the soul forces, like mathematical thinking, which has no external reality in itself, but only one that is formed internally, and to which only mathematical thinking must be added when it extends to the sensory world, as in measuring, counting, weighing and so on.

To this, what one has conceived in an inwardly living thinking, which is modeled on the particular mathematical thinking, must be added what I have described to you here. And through this spiritual work one arrives at knowledge in the same way that we arrive at knowledge through measuring, counting and weighing. And that which occurs is a state of soul life which is not known in ordinary consciousness because it is not necessary. I would like to make clear what state of soul life occurs when awake, empty consciousness is reached.

First we think of ourselves in a modern metropolis, with all its noise, its din; we ourselves do not come to rest, we ourselves are absorbed in this noise, in this din. Then we move away from this cosmopolitan city - the din, the noise become quieter and quieter; if we move further away, even quieter. We imagine ourselves in the solitude of the forest. There is a silence that we can describe as zero in relation to the noise of the city. Silence around us, silence within us. But now something else can occur, although it is not observed in ordinary life. We have to use a second comparison. As you know, if someone has a certain amount of wealth, this wealth can be spent little by little; he owns less and less. If he earns nothing extra, if he continues to spend, then he is down to zero. If he has nothing at all and continues to spend, he is in debt; then he has less than zero. Mathematicians call this negative values, minus. Now imagine that: We have descended from the loud roar, the noise of the big city to silence zero and descend further, and it becomes quieter and quieter than silence and silence zero, so that we have less around us than mere silence, that it is quieter, quieter than quiet. This is the state of soul that gradually occurs when we pass through the empty but still awake consciousness. Little by little we feel quite clearly what I would like to call the deep silence of the human soul. This deep silence is not just silence, it is more or less, as you like, than silence. In terms of tranquillity, it goes below tranquillity zero. But then, when this deep silence of the soul is really experienced, everything that is of spiritual essence around us emerges from this deep silence of the soul. And the full inspiration occurs.

Then we are put into the position, when we have experienced this deep silence of the soul, to actually also now hear spiritually that what lives in the spiritual world. And the ordinary sensory world becomes a means for us to hint at what lives in this spiritual world. I would like to speak quite concretely of real spiritual knowledge. Something sounds out of the deep silence of the soul that makes an impression on me: it excites me, it strikes me with a certain liveliness. I say it is something that makes an impression on me, just as the yellow color of a lively soul life makes an impression on me. Then I have something in the sensory world through which I can express what I have experienced in the spiritual world. I describe this knowledge by saying: It has an effect on me like the yellow color of the sense world, or like the tone C or C sharp, like warmth or cold. In short, that which I have experienced in the sense world becomes for me a material, just as what appears to me in the spiritual world can be described in ordinary words. The whole sense world becomes something like a language to express what one experiences in the spiritual world. This is not understood by those who want to make progress too quickly and therefore stop at superficial judgment. The investigator encounters an experience that makes the same impression on him as the sensual color, and therefore he describes what he experiences spiritually through colors, sounds and so on. Just as one should not confuse the word “table” with the real table, so now one should not confuse it with that by which it is described, the spiritual world itself, which sprouts from the deep silence.

Once one has reached this point of view, one comes to extinguish this whole tableau of life, which one first conjured up, within oneself; not only to evoke empty consciousness towards individual ideas, but towards the whole earthly life of man, and indeed precisely in his inner form. One then, so to speak, extinguishes oneself as an earthly human being. But by now having the possibility to experience the deep silence of the human soul after the extinction of the earthly self, which is bound to the physical body of man, one now experiences that which one has become as a spiritual-soul man before one has descended from the spiritual world and has clothed the physical body around oneself. Out of the deep silence of the soul one experiences the spiritual-soul that one was in the pre-earthly existence. And just as one arrived at one's physical surroundings in the physical body, so, by placing oneself in that which one was in the spiritual-soul world, one arrives at recognizing how one was in the pre-earthly existence in the surroundings of spiritual-soul beings, even as a soul-spiritual being, as a similar being. One enters fully into that spiritual world from which one has descended to earthly existence.

You can realize that in ordinary life the eternity of the human soul is only explored in one direction, the immortality of the soul. But this immortality of the soul has another side, for which the older language still had a word, but no longer the modern language. This soul immortality has not only one side, that of immortality, but also that of unbornness, and it is only from unbornness and immortality that the full soul immortality is composed. Thus one does not arrive through metaphysical speculation, but by awakening the soul itself, and out of the deep silence of the soul to that which is eternal in the human soul, was eternal and was spiritually present before man descended to earthly existence, and remains eternal by dwelling in the physical human body between birth and death.

But we can only approach the eternal character step by step, also through anthroposophical spiritual research. As the third stage I must mention something that may cause a slight shudder, perhaps an inner mockery, especially for those who are sitting here with the usual scientific ideas. I can understand this very well, as I can understand all opposing objections to anthroposophy. Something that we already have in ordinary life can be further developed into a higher power of cognition, like the powers of a child into what we have developed in our adult state, and that is the power of love. Loving is something quite different when it is bound to the human body, when it surrenders to the passions that live themselves out in loving, than when, as I have described, after the physical ego, even the earthly ego from birth to death, has been stripped away, when the human being lives himself out of the physical existence into the state in which he faces the purely spiritual. When he thereby develops the powers of love, of complete surrender, then that which he has experienced in the pre-earthly state, which he now fully realizes, is transformed into knowledge. He experiences what it means to experience full consciousness with reality outside his physical body. And when he experiences this surrender to spiritual experience in this way, then his ego is returned to him in a new way. The ego, which in earthly life lives in selfishness and egotism, which is overcome by acquiring such self-knowledge as is acquired when this ego is twice extinguished, thus develops full love on a soul-spiritual level, and something then confronts you which at first appears to you like a complete stranger, like a completely alien personality. If you strive for this, it will happen in the least. One should strive for the love I have described. Then, because one can go completely out of oneself, one is confronted by what one is oneself, but like a foreign personality, and one only then realizes what this self was like in the past life on earth, which one went through before one came to this life on earth; one only then realizes how the ego was present in the earlier stage of existence on earth, when one is able to feel like a second person through increased, strengthened love. One looks back to a certain point in the development of time where the ego as ego had a beginning, where the repeated earth lives had a beginning. But we cannot speak of that now. We can only speak of the fact that we can look back on a series of earth lives, which are passed through to full human life, between which there are always lives in pre-earthly or post-earthly existence between death and a new earthly birth.

This is the one thing one experiences of the eternal and immortal character of the soul when one has made up one's mind to the recognizing view. The other thing, however, which one acquires through the love that has increased to knowledge, is to be able to experience the higher human being outside of his physical body. That which one acquires further is that one sees how this being is without a body, and the realization of how the body becomes a corpse in death, how this body falls away, how the human being enters the after-earthly life. Just as one has a view of the pre-earthly life, of the unborn, one now has a view into immortality, into the after-earthly life. The moral impulses one has acquired as an earthly human being, which one carries through the gate of death, and how one prepares a new earthly existence together with the spiritual world in order to descend to earth as an earthly human being, this now appears before the soul in vivid vividness, which is based on intellectual modesty, but also on a certain trust in the powers of the human soul.

This leads knowledge to that area of life which is so close to the longings and needs of man. We look at those whom we have loved in life, who are close to us through blood ties or soul ties; we look at the gate of death and ask: What will become of the ties that the blood has spun and of the ties that the soul and spirit have woven when a person has passed through the gate of death? If one has this insight, one knows how the outer physical shell of the physical body falls away from what man is as an eternal being, how man rises into the spiritual world with those laws and lives there with the forces which he has already brought down and with which he has lived in his physical life on earth. We then experience how that which we have in common with other people as blood ties, as bonds of friendship, as bonds of love, falls away from our communities just as the physical body of man itself falls away; and we know from the realization that we meet again the souls with whom a bond has connected us, in pure communion of the spiritual world, because the physical obstacles are no longer there. That what men do not demand to know out of a curious instinct, that what was human dignity, the fate of the souls, that becomes in this way a real knowledge.

And still other things become a real knowledge. The reality of the outer physical world eludes the dream because the will is not involved in the physical body. In dreams man takes the world of images for reality; thus we take much for reality before we awaken in the manner described to the deep silence of the soul, to the spiritual life. When we wake up to the waking spiritual life, after we have gone through the second life-jolt and the physical reality experienced awake appears to us as mere dreaming, then many things that were reality to us in the physical-bodily life appear to us in the higher sense, in the sense of the physical-spiritual life, as a dream. Just as the dream reality is captured by the physically tangible reality, so that which we experience in physical life as moral or religious people is now captured by that to which we awaken through the second life pressure. And we become aware of what was actually meant by people like Knebel, Goethe's friend, who said as an old man: “When one has grown old, one finds that in the face of the decisive events of existence everything seems as if it had been prepared long ago. Everything seems to have been planned by man himself, which has had a profound influence on him as a man or as a youth. And all his steps as a youth seem to point to this experience. - This idea continues to develop and becomes true in the process of formation. If one penetrates this idea further with the knowledge that one gains in the way described, one sees that this is indeed the case in life. One experiences something quite decisive. One is led to a person with whom the further course of life is to be walked together. You look at the steps that have led you to this person. They come from the longing to experience precisely what you can experience with this person until you reach the goal that corresponds to a longing of the soul, a test of the soul in the right way. That which lives in man, through which he conjures up his destiny as if out of himself, must be connected to the view of the earthly lives lived through, in which one was a morally such and such a person, did this and that. And one sees that what one does now seems instinctive in this life, like chance; it is fatefully linked to what one was in the previous earthly life.

This seems to be a devastating thought. But just as little as the fact that we have blond or black hair, blue or brown eyes, lean or full hands affects our freedom, dignity and full responsibility as human beings, so little does it affect what we are as free, responsible human beings when we know that it is the soul that configures us, that as free human beings we have to carve out our life's destiny on a fated basis. But life becomes comprehensible when man learns to look at it, imbued with this idea of destiny, which is quite compatible with freedom, that he does not stand in life in such a way that every moment is like chance to him, but that he feels himself placed in the world of natural necessity, as in the world of a real spirituality, in which he stands as a higher man with his moral, fateful powers. In this way, such knowledge leads man from outer life to the immortality of the soul.

One can still object: Yes, individual spiritual researchers can indeed recognize this, but what does it mean for the ordinary person? - It means just as much as an artistically painted picture to someone who has not become a painter. It would be sad if you had to be a painter to understand a work of art. You only need a certain healthy feeling to experience the artistic, and only healthy human judgment to experience what the spiritual researcher describes. Only if one throws the unfortunately so numerous prejudices in one's own way, then one places oneself before the pictures which the anthroposophical spiritual researcher sketches, as one places oneself before a picture in which, instead of seeing a world, one sees nothing but splashes of color placed side by side. This world is also fully comprehensible to those who live a simple, ordinary life from the description of the anthroposophical spiritual researcher, although he is always able to understand it through books such as “How does one attain knowledge of the higher worlds? “ he is always able to go so far on the path of spiritual research without influencing his outer life that he can check what the anthroposophical spiritual researcher tells him, that he can check whether this anthroposophical spiritual researcher is speaking out of fantasy or whether his view is something that has been firmly acquired, just as mathematical judgments, measuring, counting, weighing and so on are themselves firmly acquired.

This is what spiritual science wishes to introduce into the present spiritual life of mankind. It is that which it must believe corresponds to the numerous innermost needs of the soul. For it is so that today many people instinctively, unconsciously, precisely through what one has become through education, out of the natural scientific prerequisites, gain the longing to know something in a similar way, encompassing the experiences, about that which is so close to the soul and of which I have only spoken today as an example of the immortality of the soul and that which is connected with immortality.

But of course this puts something into the world that is like the Copernican world view compared to the one we were used to at that time. But it is so that what appears to be a human “folly” gradually becomes a matter of course. The Copernican world view even had to wait a very long time before it became self-evident. Anthroposophy can wait. But it must say, out of an obligation to culture and civilization, that it is fully understandable to it when ordinary natural science, which considers itself sovereign with its means, has arrived at a doctrine of the soul without a soul through an ordinary pursuit of the life of the soul with the external means of calculating, counting, weighing, and that it finds an ideal in it. Anthroposophy, however, would like to add to that which it does not deny the justification of on the one hand, to a doctrine gained from natural science, through developed full comprehension of the innermost essence of the human soul, what is soul-spiritual in man as eternal life, what is soul-spiritual in the whole world, in the whole cosmos as eternal life, so that man can recognize himself as eternal, intimately connected with the eternal in the cosmos, as immortal in the cosmos. Anthroposophy therefore wishes to give knowledge of the present human life and the human life of the near future, so that it meets a necessity of the time by adding to the present teaching of the soul without soul a teaching of the soul awakened vividly out of the human soul, which then follows from such a teaching again a teaching of the world permeated by soul, permeated by spirit. And this will be needed more and more.

Dear attendees,

At the invitation of the local Free Student Body, I would like to speak to you today about the nature and task of the anthroposophically oriented worldview. In a few introductory words, I would like to point out, above all, that this anthroposophically oriented worldview seeks to be in full harmony, firstly, with the most essential cultural demands of the present and - as far as one can recognize them - of the near future. Above all, however, this world view also seeks to be in complete harmony with what has emerged over the last three to four centuries for the development of humanity through what is called the scientific world view. It is fair to say that this anthroposophically oriented worldview, which is still viewed by many people today as nothing more than a sect, the quirk of a few unworldly people, seeks to listen very carefully to what is most deeply moving our time, and to grasp very intensely, so to speak, a matter of conscience for our time, and even more so for the near future.

May one not say, esteemed attendees, that for about three to four hundred years, through that which is scientifically oriented world view, many of the old ways of thinking that satisfied the human heart and mind have been has brought man into conflict with man himself, that much that was sacred to centuries, to millennia, has had to be discarded, that science has shown as illusion what older worldviews had counted among their most valuable possessions? And is it not clear from the hardships and catastrophes of our time that the moment has come, the moment in world history, when this scientific world view must now, so to speak, also fulfill what many have expected of it for a long time: that it must once again open up a path to those spiritual heights without which man cannot live after all and from which the old path has taken him? With this question, ladies and gentlemen, the anthroposophical world view would like to be taken very seriously. Now, I am certainly under no illusion that in the short time of a lecture I could convince anyone in this hall of what anthroposophy actually strives for. In a sense, I will only be able to hint at some of the paths that are being taken in this field. And I will be able to suggest a few things regarding the way in which research and questions should be asked in this field of anthroposophically oriented world view.

In its essence, anthroposophy is completely different from all other current scientific knowledge. And because its fundamental nature is different, especially from what is usually regarded as the only scientific knowledge today, it is misunderstood in many circles and, one might say, treated badly. In ordinary science, as in life in general, what can be experienced through the senses and what the mind, the intellect, can gain from this sensory world through observation of natural laws and the like is regarded as the sources of human knowledge. In this way, an attempt is made to gain an overview of what is in man's world environment. In this way, one tries to gain insights into man's own position and task within the world order. In a sense, one looks at the human being as he is born into the world, as he can be educated and taught in the ordinary sense of the word, and how he can then, on the basis of this being born into the world, look around scientifically or otherwise in life, solely on the basis of his abilities and qualities inherited as a human being, on the basis of what ordinary education produces.

Anthroposophy does not take this view. It appeals to something in the human being that is still actually a rarity in human nature today and that, when humanity fulfills its next cultural task, will have to assert itself in human culture in a completely different way than it is present today. Anthroposophy appeals to what I would call intellectual modesty. I often use a comparison to make clear what I mean by this intellectual modesty – this immediately leads us into the essence of what anthroposophy actually wants to be. If we have a five-year-old child and we give this five-year-old child a volume of Goethe's poems, for example, what will he do with this volume of Goethe's poems? It will probably play with it at first and then tear the book apart; in any case, it will have no idea of what this volume of Goethean poems is actually intended for. If we teach the child, if we bring it up, we will bring it to the point where, as an adult of 17, 18, 19 years of age, it will make a completely different use of this volume of Goethean poems. We can say that the five-year-old child had precisely the same relationship to the book as the seventeen- or eighteen-year-old. However, the relationship of the seventeen- or eighteen-year-old to the book is quite different from that of the child, because something has been cultivated in him, something has been drawn out of the depths of his inner being, and this also determines a different relationship to the book than before. Applied to the human being's relationship to nature, to the whole world, what emerges is what I would call intellectual modesty, namely, when the human being decides to say to himself, simply as a human being: however old I get, however I am educated and taught in ordinary life, I stand in relation to the whole of nature and to the whole of the environment in such a way that I relate to it as the five-year-old child relates to the volume of Goethe. And in order to behave differently, I must first bring up from the innermost part of my being something that lies deep within me. Then something will reveal itself to me that cannot be offered to me through ordinary sensory observation, not through the ordinary combining mind, as it is active in conventional life and becoming. That is the essence of anthroposophical world view: that one does not approach the investigation of things as one is, but that one first brings out something that is hidden in the human interior. And only after one has taken one's own development into one's own hands in a certain sense, after one has brought oneself further than one is by being born, by being educated and taught in the usual sense, after one has made oneself a different person, only then does one approach the investigation, the research of things. So, the transformation of the entire human soul life before the exploration of things, that is what initially constitutes the essence of what underlies the striving for an anthroposophically oriented world view.

And here I must say that an anthroposophically oriented world view is based on two cornerstones - namely, of scientific life. One cornerstone is the limits of knowledge of nature. In relation to the knowledge of nature, anthroposophy is based on conscientious research, which sets very definite limits to natural research itself, just as an anthroposophically oriented world view seeks to be in full agreement with everything that science legitimately brings to light. But we do, of course, necessarily come up against limits, not by dabbling in some area of natural science, but by immersing ourselves in it objectively and professionally.

And we must, after all, set ourselves certain concepts at these limits, of which I would like to present the two concepts of the atom or matter and force today, just to cite one example; many other examples could be cited. We then come to work scientifically with such concepts as force and matter, force and substance. Much philosophical thinking has been linked to such concepts as force and substance. In more recent times, people have even gone so far as to want to found a philosophy of “as if”, that is, they said to themselves, one cannot, after all, gain any very clear, luminous concepts of force and matter, and so one should conduct research in the wide sphere of phenomena, of perceptions, “as if” such concepts corresponded to a reality that one does not know, “as if” they had some justification. It may well be said that it is a desperate world view, this philosophy of “as if”, however plausible it may appear to some people today. We have arrived at one of the cornerstones of human knowledge when we come to this concept, to this borderline concept of knowledge of nature. In our knowledge, these concepts, when pursued only intellectually, become a kind of cross, a crux.

The spiritual researcher, the anthroposophist, now tries to deal with this concept in a completely different way than the ordinary philosophers. Ordinary philosophy seeks to continue the intellectual process even at the points where one has arrived at the boundaries of natural science. Spiritual science, as I mean it here, tries to start something completely different in the human soul. Once we have arrived at this borderline concept, one part of the methodology of spiritual science and spiritual research becomes apparent. This part consists not at all of confused or bad mystical meditation, but of systematic, well-structured, thoroughly strict and conscientious meditation. I would like to describe this meditation to you at least in principle. You can find more details about it in the literature, especially in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds”. It is about the fact that one must practice again and again - and I emphasize explicitly, patience and energy are needed for these things. To do research in the chemical laboratory or in the observatory may seem difficult to some; it may seem easy to achieve something by systematically transforming the soul. But anyone who adheres to the truly strict method in this field knows that all research in the laboratory, in the clinic, in the observatory is relatively easy compared to those procedures that are imagined to be easier than they are, and that consist in a transformation of our soul life.

It begins with the fact that one initially places strictly comprehensible, simple concepts – let us say, for the time being, those that one has formed oneself, some symbols or the like – at the center of one's mental life. It does not matter, my dear audience, that these concepts, these ideas correspond to a truth, because what matters is what is effected in our soul life by these ideas. What matters is that, to a certain extent, we carry out a strict self-education, a strict self-discipline with these ideas in our intellect. We therefore place such concepts, which we can strictly survey, those that we have formed ourselves or that we have been advised to use by experienced spiritual researchers, at the center of our soul life. We try to shut out everything else from our consciousness and to concentrate solely on these clearly defined concepts. The danger is that at the moment we concentrate on such concepts, our bodily images and memories may indeed fly in from all sides, as if we were in a swarm of bees and the bees were flying towards us, and actually destroy our inner methodology. We have to expend ever greater and greater strength. And what matters is the expenditure of this strength; what matters is that we drive the will, with all our might, into the life of imagination, into the act of imagining, so that we actually grow stronger in this driving of the will into the life of imagination.

That is one side of strictly scientific meditation, or rather of meditation that leads to science: that we drive the will into the life of imagination. Such exercises cannot be completed in a few days. Such exercises require years of effort. One must return to them again and again. It is not a matter of completing these exercises in one day. One might say that a few minutes are enough for a day. But to return to them again and again, that is what it is all about. Then one finally experiences how the soul summons up quite different powers from its lowest regions than are summoned up in ordinary life and also in ordinary science. If one applies it by concentrating all possible volitional effort on such self-made volitional content, then after some time, as I said, I can only hint at the principle, the exact You can read more about this in my books. The possibility of approaching the boundary concepts of natural science, such as matter and force and the like, in a way that is not merely intellectual. I could also mention others.

Then the following happens: one no longer speculates, one no longer philosophizes at these boundaries of natural knowledge, but one experiences something at these concepts. Something takes place in the soul in the face of these concepts that encompasses experiences that we otherwise only experience when we love outwardly or when we are otherwise immersed in the struggles of our external lives. What matters, my dear audience, is that, by disregarding the external world, we undergo something within ourselves that leads us into a reality that is just as intense for us, that presents itself to our consciousness just as intensely as the external reality that we justifiably touch and work with our hands and feet is otherwise. And when we have worked our way through to a consciousness that is inwardly, in the intellect, willfully strengthened, through concentration and meditation, then what one can characterize as follows finally occurs: Just as one otherwise recognizes red as a color through external observation, just as one recognizes blue, just as one hears C-sharp or C, so, when one has worked one's way through in this way, no longer , no longer using the nervous system or the like as a tool, but by experiencing it at the merely mental level, one recognizes that there is a soul in itself - one knows this in direct consciousness.

At this moment, my dear audience, it is where one says the following to oneself through direct experience - I would like to suggest it through a comparison. Let us assume that we are walking along a path that is soaked, we see ruts in the path from carts, we see footprints. If we are reasonable people, it will not occur to us to say: These ruts in the soaked path are caused by forces below the surface that bring the earth into such a configuration that these ruts, these footprints arise. We will say to ourselves: There comes something to the earth's surface that is indifferent to this earth's surface as such, that comes to it from outside; carts, human feet have indeed gone over it, which are indifferent to what the earth forms out of itself. If we really come to know the inner configuration of soul life in the way I have described, then we will see everything that is the physical organization of the brain in such a way that we can say: This is not at all shaped by the inner forces of the bodily constellation, but rather the soul, which we have only just come to know, has worked from the outside in the same way as human footsteps or carts have worked in the softened soil.

In other words, dear attendees, one does not get to know the soul through speculation; one only gets to know it by gradually working one's way up to experiencing the soul, by leaving what ordinary life and ordinary science would like to consider the end — the intellectual, the concepts of perception — by leaving that to be the beginning. Once you have reached the point where you have experienced this soul life in this way in direct perception, then, through this method, through this kind of anthroposophical methodology, you are on the threshold of an experiential, tangible grasp of what I human preexistence, the spiritual-soul preexistence of the human being, because this kind of beholding does not lead to speculation about what is called human immortality, but to an immediate insight into preexistence. In the spiritual vision, one sees inwardly, in the soul, that which works in the body and configures the body. One beholds it, and in beholding it, one can also trace it back to before birth or, let us say, before conception. Thus, in its essence, Anthroposophy pursues the idea of immortality differently than ordinary philosophy. Ordinary philosophy seeks to deduce from what is experienced between birth and death that which extends beyond birth and death. Anthroposophy regards even the work of deduction as only a preparation; it seeks to live completely in the process of deducing the borderline concepts, so that it can experience what figures as the immortal in the human being, what is active in him. What fills the human consciousness becomes more active subjectively than we otherwise have it in consciousness. And that is what is really important – I will have to come back to this in the later part of the lecture – that above all, through this methodology of anthroposophy, the human being becomes more and more active. He actually ceases to passively surrender to the course of events, at most to what he has produced in the course of recent times through the arrangement of the experiment, whereby, however, he again passively surrenders to what the experiment tells him. All of this is certainly justified, and it is the last thing that spiritual science would dispute. But beyond that, anthroposophically oriented methodology elevates itself to active thinking, to a thinking that, in the very act of thinking, directly grasps the immortal essence of the human being. I know how much can be said against this experience, which must take the place of ordinary discursive reasoning, but only to the extent that this can be justified philosophically - I will come back to this briefly. I just wanted to show, on the one hand, how this part of anthroposophical methodology, which is based on an evaluation of thinking and on the will's effect on the intellect, actually leads to a truly essential knowledge of the preexistence of the human being. That which is immortal is grasped, which exists in spiritual worlds before conception, before birth, and which cannot be explained from the physical, because it proves itself to be that which works on the physical, and because precisely the physical, the bodily, results - as I will also show in an example in a moment - as that which is shaped out of this spirit.

The second important part of the anthroposophical method consists in approaching one's own self in a different way than is usually the case. People usually approach their own self through what is called mysticism in the ordinary sense of the word. Just as the anthroposophist must no longer entertain illusions regarding the limits of knowledge of nature, and must see this knowledge of nature in its true form through the experience just described, so anyone who truly wants to become an anthroposophical researcher must also have no illusions about the deceptions and illusions of ordinary mysticism. Anyone who believes that they can look into the human soul in the way that mystics of all times have described it, and as is often hinted at in religion, will not truly come to know the human self. My dear audience, there is no way to get beyond the element of deception in this way.

How much does a person really know of what he has heard here and there, say, in childhood? He needs only to have once lain in a meadow and heard a distant peal of bells. No sooner has this fact entered his consciousness than he has forgotten it again. Decades later, as a man, as an adult, he encounters some event in the world. Something appears quietly within this series of events, something that echoes the almost unnoticed peal of bells. And a whole series of images that one believes to have welled up from within are nothing more than a reminiscence of what we went through in early youth. Anyone who really endeavors to explore the human soul in a more rigorous way than is usual today knows how much human self-knowledge is subject to deception. He knows to what extent what the mystics of all times believed they were drawing from their inner being as some kind of power is nothing other than the transformed, perhaps nebulous, but in any case metamorphosed experience of an earlier age. Just as one must go through what I have just described in order to approach the limits of knowledge of nature without deception, one must not indulge in nebulous mysticism in the usual sense, but one must—again in a different way—systematically train the soul at the other cornerstone of human knowledge. And this can only be done by approaching something that one otherwise pays little attention to in life.

We experience our existence between birth and death from decade to decade, from year to year. We passively surrender to many things. We actively and willingly put ourselves into few things. Anyone who wants to become a spiritual researcher in the sense meant here must consider what I would like to call strictly systematic self-discipline as the second link in the path of knowledge. You have to resolve again and again – that is why the path of knowledge takes years, many years – you have to resolve again and again: You want to incorporate these or those qualities – as Nietzsche called it – “into yourself”. You want to make this or that out of yourself. — If I thus acquire the possibility of building a bridge, as it were, between the present and a point in time that may have been five, ten or fifteen years in the past, if I have incorporated something into my soul through my own activity for five, ten or fifteen years, then I am in a position to see the effect of what I have incorporated over the past five, ten or fifteen years – something that I have made my own through self-discipline. In other words, I then perceive how something has become something else today, how it appears as a new element.

If I succeed, dear readers, in bringing that which otherwise functions only as will into intellect, concept, representation – as I have thus brought the will into the intellect – then I must now bring the intellect into my life, into that volition which otherwise usually flows past me, as I passively surrender to life. I take my life into my own hands. In this way I try, as it were, to walk beside myself, to look at myself - you just have to do it with the necessary naivety, then you won't lose your naivety of life either. Through such processes one thus becomes, as it were, one's own double. And one arrives at making the life of the will something that one observes, as one otherwise merely observes external nature. If you manage to duplicate yourself in this way, to make yourself into a spectator and an actor at the same time, you have achieved something that manifests itself in a very peculiar way. What you previously only saw as memory now becomes clear to you in a new way. The memory images bring what one experienced ten, fifteen, twenty years ago, and so on, into the present. Now one experiences something quite new, which seems like a transformation of memory.

But lest I be misunderstood, I wish to state explicitly: Of course – in all other respects one retains one's ordinary memory; only for spiritual research does one experience the transformation of memory that is to be described. One experiences something like this that one otherwise only experiences in space. In space, let us say, one walks along an avenue. One turns around: you see not only the images of the trees you have passed, no, you see – albeit from a different perspective than before – the trees themselves. In the same way, it rises in consciousness. You look back on your life, but now not just by having the images, the phantasms of the past, but you recognize - just as when you look around in an avenue in space - from the different perspective that you survey life in the immediate present, as if time had become space. What is otherwise memory becomes a completely new mental power, a looking into time. And only now, in a certain sense, do we gain real insight into that mysterious element in our own being, which is just as little known to us as the content of sleep, of dreamless sleep, is known to ordinary consciousness. We gain such insight into the nature of the human will, and we actually gain the opportunity to see this nature of the human will at work in the physical body. And by getting to know the will in this way as transformed memory, one gains an immediate insight into the other end of life, into the post-existence, into that in us which carries us out through the gate of death and into a spiritual world. Again, it is through the development of a very special soul element into an immediate experience that anthroposophically oriented spiritual science wants to penetrate to a comprehensive world view.

Now, my dear audience, by dealing with the two cornerstones of human knowledge in this way, knowledge of nature on the one hand, knowledge of the self on the other, by entering on the one hand into the soul itself through the limits of knowledge of nature – not through speculation, but through direct experience -, into the soul itself, and on the other hand, by entering into the element of one's own will - not by dabbling in mysticism, but by methodically developing one's memory through strict self-discipline - one awakens in the depths of the human being that which is immortal in that person. And that seems to me to be a continuation of what, although it is not the external scientific method of the present, is scientific education.

I may well confess that it seems to me that the one who, out of blind authority or out of complacency, does not stop at what science has to offer today - this admirable science - but who allows himself to be guided by science in the great question that science imposes on the soul, must, as I have described in my “Riddles of Philosophy”, feel impelled not only to speculate, to philosophize, beyond what science provides, but he must seek to further develop what he applies by experimenting, to a more active intellect, to a more active will. Then he attains to that intensity of soul life of which I have just spoken, where immortality is not speculated but directly beheld. And then, my dear audience, what is described in my book “Occult Science” or in some of my other books, and which to people today still seems like a wild fantasy, will gradually come about as a matter of course, I believe, precisely because of the enigmatic nature of science itself. How do we go about understanding natural science? By strict methods! And anyone grounded in anthroposophy will be the very last to fail to recognize these strict scientific methods. But you see, for example, we are faced with the following. We say to ourselves: We are developing certain geological ideas; and we are trying to gain a picture of the geological stratification of the earth in the present day, based on the starting points of Lyell and other geologists. We then try to gain a picture of the past from this picture, using the well-known methods, by going back millions of years – more or less, of course, the time periods are disputed. Other researchers go millions of years forward by prophetically anticipating this or that about the end of the earth from a physical or geological point of view. We do indeed form a picture of the development of our Earth, and with the Earth, the human being has developed. Now, however, I cannot give a complete insight into the results of spiritual scientific research in the short time available in a lecture. If you look through the relevant literature, you will see that certain things are available. I can only suggest and hint at the way in which things are being sought.

Take the example of the human heart examination. We get a picture of how this human heart transforms in the organism over five, ten years and so on. We can then deduce what the human heart was like thirty years ago and can also do this for a person who is forty years old, but not for someone who is only twenty years old. However, we could take the mere deduction further and could proceed similarly, using a very strict mathematical method. We could ask ourselves: What was this heart like thirty years ago? We would not be using a different method from that used by today's geologists if we were to say about this or that layer of rock what it was like millions of years ago, because we forget that the Earth may not have existed before these millions of years, just as man was not there as a physical being at that time. And when we today, according to some laws of physics or geology, assume something prophetic about some end of the earth after millions of years, it is as if we now calculate, according to the degree of change that the human heart has undergone in five years, what that heart was like in a person three hundred years ago.

At first glance, this appears to be something tremendously paradoxical. And yet, my dear audience, there is something quite justified for the one who does not delve into the present-day admirable science with his intellect or with what authority has brought him up to, but with his whole soul and with an unbiased human nature. And this science of the present itself can benefit greatly from the kind of approach I have suggested, for it is indeed still the case today that one has few co-workers in the field of spiritual science. Those who one would wish to have as co-workers are truly not laymen or dilettantes – the matter is much too serious for that. As co-workers I would most like to have those who have immersed themselves for years in some field of science, who have learned to work scientifically and who have retained in this scientific work all the impartiality necessary to then reshape the human powers of knowledge and soul forces in the way I have indicated, so that one can then enter into that which leads to a much more concrete, truly realistic knowledge, for example, of human nature itself. Anthroposophy will be the best foundation for an anthropology that can be used for medicine and also for social science.

That is why it gave me such great satisfaction – and I mention this because it is very relevant to the matters I would like to discuss today – when I was able to hold a week-long course for forty doctors and medical students in Dornach, where we have established the School of Spiritual Science with an anthroposophical orientation in the Goetheanum. The course was about way in which the bridge between pathology and therapy can be built, which so many people, including doctors, long for today: how this bridge can be built through such an insight into the human being, which can be gained when we no longer think in abstract terms about the relationship between body and soul, but when we come to look into the concrete. I would like to give a small example of this, albeit a somewhat more remote example, but it will be able to point to the concreteness with which spiritual science wants to treat specifically scientific problems.

It is now the case that speculation is taking place about the relationship between body and soul; parallelist theories, interactionist theories and so on have been put forward. However, what is missing is a real insight into the soul and spirit on the one hand, which can only be achieved in the way I have described today, and into the physical on the other. The more materialistically oriented worldview suffers from the tragic fate of not being able to master matter. We cannot look into material processes since we have materialism, because the inner workings of material processes are spiritual, and one must first see the spirit in order to recognize material processes.

So I would like to show you, so to speak, more as a result of what one comes to in terms of knowledge of a developmental moment of man when one proceeds in a spirit-scientific way. We see how man grows through birth into physical existence. We then see how there is an important conclusion in a certain respect when the human being undergoes the change of teeth around the sixth, seventh or eighth year. This change of teeth is only understood in the right sense if we take into account the whole bodily, spiritual and soul life of the human being, as it changes in this important epoch of life. And we see – I can only hint at it – when we consider the soul, firstly that which I have already dealt with here in lectures that I have given more for lay people. We see how the child, who develops as an imitator until the change of teeth, becomes the being who likes to educate himself under the influence of the authority of his surroundings, how, with the change of teeth, the principle of imitation passes over into the principle of authority. But leaving that aside, if we are able to really look at this human soul life, if we have learned to deepen our observation of the soul - and one truly learns to deepen when one develops everything within oneself that I mentioned today as will and intellect training today, if we look at everything that happens to a person around the time of the change of teeth, then it is noticeable how what first grows in a person as the ability to remember undergoes a certain change with the change of teeth. It is noticeable how, from this period on, our imagination begins to take shape, how it begins to become continuously memorable ideas. And I could show many examples! But I would have to talk for a long time if I wanted to show how the transformation of the whole intellectual soul element shows itself purely empirically around the period of the change of teeth.

If one then pursues further what can be investigated in this field, pursuing it with that concrete empiricism that arises precisely from having sharpened one's soul eye through the method I have described , then one finds that the ability to push out the second teeth, so to speak, reveals something that works in the human being throughout the first seven years of life, finally pushing itself out and reaching a climax, a culmination, with the change of teeth. Now, as the teeth change, the soul becomes different. Concepts take shape. The entire ability to remember, which is of course present earlier, is transformed, and by extending the concepts of Goethe's metamorphosis theory to such developments, one recognizes how the soul-spiritual life has emancipated itself from the physical-bodily , how the same thing that later works in the realm of imagination, that is, in the intellectual, has worked in the body - has worked in a formative, plastic way - has reached its culmination in the change of teeth and, after the teeth have been pushed out, shows itself spiritually and mentally. In this way, one follows concretely, no longer abstractly, as one otherwise speculates about body and soul, this formative power, which one later looks at, directly at, when the person brings sharply contoured concepts, not phantasms, out of memory. One follows how it forms, how it drives the forces into the change of teeth. By extending the observation over time, one sees how the spiritual-soul works in the bodily-physical.

Then again, when one approaches the human being in the period of life when sexual maturity occurs, one notices how the will element in particular consolidates during this time from the change of teeth to sexual maturity. But it is still active in the body, and one can see from what occurs – in boys it shows in the change of voice, in girls it shows in a different way, but still – namely, how the will takes possession of the human organism between the change of teeth and sexual maturity. While the intellectual emancipates itself, becomes free with the change of teeth, and works independently, the will becomes free by puberty. I would like to say that a purely spiritual element connects with the body, so that this change, which occurs in the boy during the change of voice, clearly shows how the life of the will manifests itself in the body.

From these two elements that I have given, you can see how one approaches the human being through concrete observation with spiritual empiricism. But what I have shown there then leads from the human being out into the cosmos, and one learns to recognize it as one otherwise gets to know the external sensory content through sensory perception. Through this spiritual vision, one learns to recognize a deeper, but also a more essential element of the cosmos. For example, one learns to recognize what consists in the cosmic forces in which the human being is embedded, which is effective up to the change of teeth on the one hand, and up to sexual maturity on the other. In one case, it acts as an intellectual force, shaping the body until the teeth change, then it emancipates itself and acts on the other side as a volitional force, which takes hold of the human body intensely at sexual maturity.

Now one learns to recognize how that which, as it were, drives out the teeth, what works in the human organism so that it then passes over into the sharply contoured concepts of memory, is the same as what one can only call light in representation. But actually it is all that which bears the same relation to sensory perception as light bears to the eye. One learns to recognize how light is that which actually works in the human organism, and how through the power of light, which thus works in looking with the eyes - but actually it is only the representation, we could speak of the same element for all the senses - that which is otherwise experienced as heaviness is overcome. We see light and heaviness, light and gravitation fighting each other. The cosmic light, the cosmic gravitation is effective in the human being until the permanent teeth have come through. And then again one sees how from the permanent teeth coming through until sexual maturity, gravitation gains the upper hand, how the light-filled, which in turn only represents the rest of perception, is the content of sensory perception, but how gravitation achieves a victory , an inner victory, over this light-filled element and thereby forces the will into the human nature and thereby configures the human being inwardly with what then makes him sexually mature, and guides his organization towards his center of gravity.

This insight into human nature, dear attendees, this direct, concrete, empirical connection between the spiritual and the material, is what the anthroposophically oriented worldview offers. It is truly not some nebulous mysticism, but a rigorous method of research, not only as strict as that otherwise usual in science, but much more rigorous, because each individual aspect approached is accompanied by what the soul has made of itself, so that it sees something new in the old. In this way, what is recognized in man in an anthropocentric way is extended into the cosmic, without becoming anthropomorphic. It will be seen that it is a strict scientific method when something like this is developed, as I have been able to sketch out in my “Occult Science”.

It is easy for those of you, dear readers, who laugh at such a book because you do not understand all the effort that has been expended and all the paths that have been taken to achieve something like this. But something like this must be said in the present time. The materialistic orientation has led to the inability to recognize matter, but only to speculate about the connection between spirit or soul and body or matter. Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science should teach us to recognize the human being – to truly grasp him as spirit, soul and body – and from there open up the paths into the cosmos, because the human being is something that encompasses everything else in the cosmos. We can conjure up an event that occurred long ago but which we have experienced and which we carry within us in the form of an image — the event is no longer there — from what is in our soul, as an image in us. Because I was once with my mind, with my intellect and feelings and with my perception at this event in life, I can conjure it up. Man was present in all that has ever happened in the cosmos, and thus, when he grasps his whole being, he can really grasp something cosmic - and in a different way than if he had to achieve it externally. As I have described it, inner knowledge also provides a certain cosmology, so that anthroposophy expands into a true cosmology, as I have tried to present it in my “Occult Science”, which may still seem ridiculous to our contemporaries today, but which is based on a strict scientific method, only it has emerged from the nature of anthroposophical orientation.

Dear attendees, what may be described as the essence of anthroposophy can, in a sense, be justified philosophically. And anyone who has followed my writings from the beginning, as I tried to do in the 1880s, commenting on Goethe, working out an epistemology, as I tried to do in my little book “Truth and Science”, to establish the relationship between what human inner life is and what is outside in the cosmos, as I then tried to do in my Philosophy of Freedom, to extend this to a complete world-view for the human being, will find that a great deal of effort has already been expended, as far as has been possible to date, to philosophically justify what I would call higher, spiritual empiricism as spiritual science, as anthroposophy.

I must say that for decades I had to wage a stubborn battle against Kantianism – a stubborn battle against Kantianism, which, in my opinion, has misunderstood the epistemological problem and thus the fundamental philosophical problem of my conviction. I don't have enough time to go into Kant's philosophy or epistemology, but I can say a few words about what it is philosophically that is at stake when we really want to understand the human being. We can start by looking empirically at how man reaches this limit of knowledge of nature, how he comes to a cornerstone at this limit of knowledge of nature that has not yet been expanded anthroposophically, where he stakes the concepts of matter, force and so on. Yes, the point is that the one who is now able to investigate this limit of knowledge of nature by experiencing it, also comes to why man - and I ask you to forgive me the “why” at this point, it is to be understood as merely rhetorical, not teleological —, why man is organized in such a way that he must, at a certain point, impale concepts that are, as it were, obscure, inscrutable to ordinary consciousness.

If we were always able to look into the things of the world, to make them intellectually transparent, including human beings, we would not be able to develop in our human nature what we absolutely must have and develop for ordinary life, especially for ordinary social existence between birth and death: we would not have what lives in us as the element of love. Anyone who studies the connection between knowledge and love in depth will notice that this separation from things that have become intellectually opaque to us, which presents itself to us through the limitations of knowledge of nature, is necessary. It is necessary so that we can develop the power of love within us, in our entire human organization. Not what Kant raised in the “Critique of Pure Reason” and the like, but what we develop within us as the power of love, that is what prevents us from making things transparent in an intellectualistic way. We only attain intellectualistic transparency through the paths I have described today. The human being is organized in such a way that he must buy the power of love around the limits of knowledge of nature. But the human being is the being who, through the power of love, receives his true value and human dignity between birth and death.

And on the other hand, we have the other cornerstone, which some people so lightly want to overcome through a nebulous mysticism and which can only be methodically overcome through the self-discipline that I have described today: that cornerstone lies in self-knowledge. Yes, my dear audience, if we could always look into ourselves, if we could gain the knowledge that, as it were, turns time into space, that, in a changed time perspective, makes earlier events experienceable in a supernatural way in a spiritual vision, that tore away the veil of memory, as it were, and allowed us to look into the past and thereby also into the future in a certain sense, if we always had that, then we would see through it, but we would not have the power of memory, of recollections. We need this power of memory just as we need love in our ordinary human lives. Those who know what disruption of memory means for the continuity of the self, who know that this self is based on the power of unimpaired memory, will also be able to appreciate how this other cornerstone must be placed. The power that makes us a remembering being between birth and death is the only thing that makes it possible for us to tear this veil of memory using the spiritual-scientific anthroposophical method and to look into our own inner being in self-insight. So anyone who understands this organization, who, with real psychology, compares what occurs in memory with what is self-knowledge, knows that we must also have this other cornerstone in ordinary human knowledge and life. It is therefore due to our organization – in a somewhat different way than Kant described it – that we must first grow beyond what organizes us in ordinary life if we want to penetrate into the depths of nature that can be aspired to and longed for.

But then, my dear attendees, for this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, if it is inwardly alive on this path, something arises that is very daring today, very daring to express. But what use is it to leave such things unspoken when it depends on them? Anyone who looks at how we have to imagine the world today in terms of the thoughts and ideas that have emerged over the last three to four centuries can never bridge the gap between what arises in the soul as an ethical, moral, social and religious ideal and what arises from knowledge of nature.

On the one hand, there are natural phenomena. They lead us, albeit hypothetically or in the philosophy of “as if”, to a beginning, to an earlier state of the physical universe; they then lead us to metamorphoses of this physical universe, showing us how one law, or let us say two laws, but which are actually one, prevails in this physical universe. If these laws prevail in the way that today's knowledge of nature can imagine, then no bridge can be built to the other, to the ethical, to the social, to the religious ideal. And these two laws are the law of the conservation of energy and the indestructibility of matter. If the world in the universe outside, in nature, changes in such a way that matter is indestructible and force, in eternal preservation, only transforms itself, then - then our ethical ideals, our religious ideals, are nothing but smoke that rises, then they are our great illusions. And when the world has long since transformed its substance and its forces in a certain way, then those world experiences that we enclose within our moral ideals, within our religious ideals, and so on, will be carried to the grave, sunk into nothingness. These things are usually not pointed out. But what splits many souls inwardly in the present, what tears many souls inwardly in the present, that is more or less unconsciously present as a result of this complete failure to bridge the gap between knowledge of nature and spiritual grasp of the moral, of the religious, as a mood of the soul.

But, my dear attendees, if we experience our own intellect at the limits of knowledge, as I have described it today, then we see how our intellect also belongs only to a certain part of external existence , and that we cannot grasp the beginning of earthly existence with the intellect that we are only really getting to know in the experience described, because this intellect belongs to that which lies only after this beginning and which lies before the end. If we apply this intellect to the whole process, if we go back millions of years or millions of years forward, as geologists and physicists do, then we do the same as if we thoughtlessly talk, for example, about the transformation of the heart as it appears in humans before or after three hundred years. We must be clear about the nature of this intellect: that it does not come close to the other powers of knowledge that we have to acquire in the way described today.

With anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, no Rickert or Windelband theory of value is established, where values are supposed to assert themselves out of the blue, without reality. Rather, it opens up for us what we survey in the intellect. We feel obliged to somehow integrate value into the currents of being. But this will be completely impossible as long as we do not overcome the crushing law of the conservation of energy and matter. We must come to think of matter and force as transient. It is only an illusory world that has arisen from our intellect and that leads us to believe in the indestructibility of matter and the conservation of force. It is certain that 19th-century science could lead to nothing else. But for those who see through the world as it has been presented today, what substances and forces are, something that perishes like this year's plants, and what lives in us as an ethical ideal, as a religious idea, is something that we experience as a germ, like the germ in the flower of the present plants. We look at this germ, which is perhaps just a mere point at present; we know that it will be a plant next year when what is surrounding it now as a flower or as leaves has vanished. We see this outer world in a spiritual vision when we apply our intellect to it. We do not get to know it under the principle of the indestructibility of matter and the conservation of energy, but we get to know it as a dispersing one, and the germs in it are what prevails in our souls as a moral element, as a religious idea. What surrounds us today in a sensual way will be dispersed! What grows and thrives within us will be the world of the future, the cosmos of the future. In my opinion, only anthroposophically oriented spiritual science can lead to this bridge between spirit and nature, under today's conditions.

Dear attendees, I was allowed to speak these few stimulating sentences here at the request of the “Free Student Body”. I know that they cannot be conclusive or convincing, but they are intended only as a stimulus. However, because I have been given the opportunity to speak on behalf of the student body today, for which I am very grateful, I would like to point out that it is particularly natural for someone who has to look at the world today, who is himself at the end of his sixth decade, to look towards today's youth. In the hearts and souls of today's youth, one really sees the seeds of the future, for one looks back to one's own youth. Four decades ago – and this I would like to say to the esteemed young friends who invited me today – was when people of my age were young. We looked into the world back then, but we were dependent on it, in a sense, we looked into a world of illusions. We were dependent on it back then. It is true that many of the great achievements of external life still awaited people, but the civilized Europe that was present for us at that time also looked different than it does now. Now a man of spirit, Oswald Spengler, is writing about the decline of Western civilization. Back then, three or four decades ago, ladies and gentlemen, was the time when the motto “How did we get it so good?” was perhaps most prevalent – a time, however, when people were very much wrapped up in illusions. The strength of these illusions only dawned on some of those who were of that age when this modern civilization rolled into a terrible catastrophe in 1914. At that time, an infinite pain settled on the souls of the thinking, the waking elders, and they looked back on that time when they were not allowed to say - because the illusions were too great -: We need something that is not just a renaissance, but that is a naissance, that is the birth of a new spiritual life.

Now, after years of pain, now, my dear audience, I believe that life is different in youth. Now the great need is here, and now it is evident in all areas that one cannot indulge in the illusion that we have come so gloriously far. But now, I believe, there is something in every waking person, or in the one who can awaken, that leads him to the inner admonition: Use your will! In the external, objective world, everything points to decline. But the Spenglers, those who only speak of decline and even want to prove this decline, will be wrong if that fire asserts itself in today's youth, if that strength asserts itself in youth that wants to awaken the soul to create and to will, because only through the creativity and will of people who are fully aware of themselves can there be improvement today, not through speculating about forces in which we are supposed to believe. No, it must lie in activating the forces that can be found in our own will, in our own ability.

Therefore, I would like to end this lecture, for which I am very grateful to the esteemed student body for inviting me, with Fichte's words, which read: “Man can do what he should; and when he says, I cannot, he will not.” If we become aware of the spirit that shines towards us from the universe through spiritual vision, that wages its battles with gravity within us, then this spirit will inspire us to create, and then precisely from the present youth will emerge that which every alert person today must hope for, that which every alert person today must long for. Yes, we need not just a renaissance, we need a naissance of the spirit. It will come to us when today's youth understands and honors their task.