The Rudolf Steiner Archive

1. Where and How Can One Find the Spirit?

[ 1 ] For several years now, we have been discussing aspects of spiritual life here. Today marks the beginning of a new series of lectures. Anyone who has picked up a program will already know that the topics of this year’s lectures on spiritual science cover a wide range. On the one hand, you will find lectures that delve deeply into our spiritual life; but we also aim to show how spiritual science, in particular, is called upon to delve deeply into the subjects of broader practical life. Today, however—and let this be explicitly emphasized in the introduction—we will establish our point of view; today we want to focus specifically on the spirit as such. Today’s lecture is therefore intended to be introductory, programmatic, and orienting.

[ 2 ] When the word “spirit” is spoken, it refers to something that, as long as human longing and human hope exist, is the goal of all people—both primitive humans and the most highly developed humans. Nevertheless, one cannot say that the very meaning of the word “spirit” is met with a deeper understanding in our day. The science of the spirit appears today as both the most desired and the most perplexing, for human beings cannot approach spiritual inquiry with cool detachment and objectivity. What a storm this question stirs up in our souls—the deepest emotions, the most intense passions! People are not indifferent to the answers to these questions from the outset. If a person looks just a little deeper into his or her soul, he or she will realize that he or she has a view—albeit an unspoken one—of what the answer should be, in his or her opinion. All questions of this nature affect people in such a way that one can say: one answer may offend some people in one way, while another may offend others in another. One person feels hurt precisely by a sober assessment, while another believes that the freedom of research and science is under attack as soon as one goes even slightly beyond exact research.

[ 3 ] The nature of human development—especially since the rise of the natural sciences—has led to the greatest possible confusion regarding the concept of the spirit, particularly in those circles that should be cultivating precisely such a discipline as the science of the spirit. If one wishes to gain insight into the spirit, such a complex web of subtle and intimate concepts is required that conceptual confusion here is highly significant and proves detrimental. People today are right to turn first to the foundations of science, even if they wish to know something about the spirit. Then they must first turn to psychology. It should be “the science of the soul.” Precisely to those who approach what is called the doctrine of the spirit without prejudice, it will soon become clear what is understood today by the science of the spirit. There is hardly anyone today who speaks of these things without confusing soul and spirit. I wish to build upon actual phenomena.

[ 4 ] Some time ago, a book titled *Psychology* was published by someone considered an authority in his field. It is an example of how the science of the soul is practiced today. But that is not what I wish to take as my starting point now to show the confusion that has arisen regarding the concepts of soul and spirit. On one of the first pages, we read: When the brain is deprived of blood, the result is fainting, for then mental capacity ceases or is at least diminished. Mental exertion, on the other hand, causes blood to flow to the brain. Stimulants act on the brain through the nervous system, and so on. — First of all, it must be pointed out that someone who intends to present a “science of the soul” here uses the terms “soul” and “mind” as essentially synonymous, and is unaware that they are different things. This is precisely where the problem lies. Spiritual scientists would say that in cases of blood loss and fainting, only the soul’s activity is paralyzed; there is no reduction in mental activity. Likewise, an influx of blood to the brain is brought about solely by the soul’s activity. Here, Goethe’s words apply: “No matter without spirit.” — In the case of fainting, a different kind of mental activity is at work, so that, as it were, the soul withdraws from the brain and yields the field to a different mental activity than when it is present.

[ 5 ] Modern psychology, therefore, makes no distinction between soul and spirit. That is why it is important to first form a clear understanding of what spirit is. This is very difficult. People today, as if driven by some force, believe that everything is determined by material processes and wish to view the spirit merely as an effect, a consequence of matter. The researcher of the spirit seeks the spirit not only in human beings, but everywhere around us. In everything, it appears as an inner physiognomy. It is spread throughout the entire universe. No human, no animal, no plant, no stone can exist without the spirit being the foundation of that being. I like to use an image to illustrate this. Imagine a container of water in which the water is gradually cooling down. This might result in something like the partial formation of ice chunks, so that we have a few ice chunks floating in it. Now let us assume that some being lacks the ability to perceive water, but only ice. In that case, only the ice would emerge from the water, but the water itself would be denied by this being. “There is only ice everywhere, but no water,” this being would say.

[ 6 ] Human beings relate to spirit and matter in a similar way. Just as, in our illustration, ice hardens from water, so matter arises from the Primordial, from spirit. Matter is nothing other than condensed spirit. To the one who can see, it emerges from spirit; to the one who cannot see, however, it emerges from nothing. Everything in the universe is condensed spirit. When the materialist comes along and says, “What you call spirit does not exist,” his logic is flawed, for he should really only admit that he cannot perceive spirit. And someone with sound logic should, by that very logic, speak only of something whose existence he has acknowledged—that is, of matter. When we speak of the soul, we must never separate it from the concept of inner life, which we see most clearly in the human soul.

[ 7 ] The difference between mind and soul is best illustrated by an example. Let’s imagine we are witnessing an event that makes us tremble, that fills us with fear and dread—for example, a shotgun being fired at us. A third person who sees this feeling of fear in us can only say that the other person has this expression on their face, but that it depends on the person’s nature. A person who has perhaps forgotten how to be afraid would face the danger fearlessly. That person, however, faces the event with fear and dread. We describe as “psychic” that which is thus stirred within us by an external perception. For the spiritual, however, there is no “outside” and no “inside.” What is outside is also inside. If you examine your inner self, you will notice that there is a transition from the psychic to the spiritual, but that there is indeed a difference between what we refer to as the psychic and the spiritual. There is no disputing the feelings that arise within us, for they differ from person to person. In one person, the sight of a Raphael painting might evoke a world of emotions, while a primitive person might feel nothing at all. In between, there are all manner of gradations. Here we are dealing with something psychological. Something spiritual, however, is given to us, for example, in mathematics. No one can grasp through experience what a circle is. This requires an inner intuition. It is that simple, but people do not understand it. We know that everyone can experience what is spiritual just as we do, provided they create the necessary conditions for it. To the same extent that we realize we are moving from an inner experience to one that is accessible to all, to that same extent we should realize that we are then transitioning from the psychological to the spiritual.

[ 8 ] Let us suppose that a person rises to such a height that he is truly able to say something about an object in the external world—something on which people can agree—then he rises to the concept, to the idea of that object. Then we must realize that this is exactly the same thing that existed before the thing itself, according to which the thing was created. Only someone who imagines he can extract something spiritual from a world in which there is no spirit can believe that he can gain the spiritual from a glass in which there is no water. When we contemplate a stone, a plant, or any being in the external world—allowing not only the uplifting, the beautiful, and the magnificent, but also the sorrowful to take effect upon us—when we allow the very essence of things to take effect upon us, we must become open to letting that which existed before the thing—from which it arose—shine forth within us. Thus, the physical appears to us as a condensation of the spiritual.

[ 9 ] Many prejudices stem from the habit of conceiving of the external world as something devoid of spirit and of portraying the spiritual as something that human beings bring into being. Human beings can only have in their consciousness that which is the effect of the external world upon them. Let us recall what is so often said in this context: One can only know that a table exists—that is, the table in and of itself, which exerts its given effects upon one. —The fact that such a judgment can be made is an example of how, in wide circles, there is no understanding of the nature of the spirit. There is a simple illustration that can show us what centuries of research simply overlook when it is claimed that human beings know nothing about the thing-in-itself. When such a thing is said, it seems entirely plausible. Physics—and science in general—will repeatedly point out that, for example, you do not actually perceive “yellow” at all, but only movements of the ether. These trigger the yellow color within you, just as the movements of the air trigger sound. You cannot step outside of yourself; you see only what is within you. — This entire line of reasoning is completely dispelled by a simple image. Imagine you have a seal and sealing wax. The name “Müller” is pressed into it. Not a trace of the seal’s brass has passed into the sealing wax. But what matters—the name—has been completely transferred to the sealing wax. Now the sealing wax might also say: “I know nothing of the seal, for nothing from the outside can pass into me.”—It is exactly the same with science. The name “Müller” is transferred entirely to the sealing wax. Anyone who claims that such an influence is not possible fails to understand that there is no boundary between the material and the spiritual, that one passes into the other. And so we must become ever clearer and clearer about the fact that the spirit has nothing to do with what is within us, but rather that it is both external to us and within us. We must, of course, distinguish between soul and spirit. Then we will have laid the foundation for knowing that all the foundations of life are foundations of the spirit. Psychology is increasingly seeking to reduce the spiritual to the purely physical. We have even had to witness the spiritual being derived from physical and purely mechanical processes! The sciences that are not consciously materialistic today are so unconsciously.

[ 10 ] Let’s go back one more time! Let’s consider how a loss of consciousness arises due to a lack of blood in the brain, thereby paralyzing the soul. We must approach this process through spiritual science. It shows us that the human being is not merely this material entity that we can perceive with our external senses, but rather a complex being. The physical body is a densification, a coarsening of something more spiritual, something finer that underlies it—first and foremost, a coarsening of the etheric or life body. We can picture the human being as a sphere of water that has partially condensed into ice, so that the lump of ice floats in the water from which it was formed as if from a finer mother substance. So it is with the physical and etheric bodies. Matter is a different form of the spirit than the spirit itself, just as ice is a different form of water. The etheric body, however, is not yet the finest. It is the condensation of the astral body. We now have the human being as a threefold entity. The human being shares the physical body with all beings of the physical world. The etheric body can first be recognized purely logically in the following form: If we take a rock crystal, its form remains intact until it is destroyed from the outside. That is the essence of the mineral. This is not the case with plants, animals, and human beings. We do indeed have the same substances in the human being, but here they are so intricately composed that the human body would immediately fall apart if it did not carry within itself a force that combats the decay of the physical body: this is the etheric or life body. Only when the etheric body is outside the physical body—as after death—does the physical body begin to decay. But what prevents decay between birth and death is the etheric or life body. Humans share this with plants and animals, but the astral body is shared only with animals. With the astral body, we are already entering the realm of increasingly subtle spiritual members; we are already entering the realm of the soul.

[ 11 ] Spiritual science has spoken of three aspects of the human being: body, soul, and spirit. But if we examine these more closely, we distinguish between the physical body, the etheric body, and the astral body. When we imagine a human being standing before us, we first perceive the physical body, insofar as it can be seen physically. But we also perceive the etheric body, which fights against decay. Yet this is not the whole of the human being. Even the most primitive human being knows that joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain dwell within them. The vehicle for all that takes place within is what we call the astral body. Materialists might object: “But that is merely an effect of physical processes; it is not real.” — If that were the case—if these processes were merely an outgrowth of physical processes, such as blood circulation—then speaking of an astral body would be mere wordplay. But what we call the astral is not a consequence of physical processes; rather, the opposite is true: nervous processes are consequences of the astral. That which arouses joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain, existed before the physical body. We can see, after all, how the last remnants, so to speak, of the direct effect of the spiritual on physical processes manifest themselves within us today. The feelings of shame and fear have been pointed out many times before. A person turns pale out of fear and anxiety. What has happened there? Or when a person feels: “There is something within me that I would like to hide”—and he blushes. Feelings of shame and fear are psychological processes, psychological experiences. Yet they express themselves through physical processes. In the case of fear, one wants to gather all one’s inner strength to hold one’s ground; the blood, as it were, contracts inward. Here we can see it clearly: an approach that is unconsciously materialistic has turned the entire process upside down.

[ 12 ] Pragmatism, which originated in America, has expressed the view that when we are faced with a loaded shotgun, it is not fear that makes us tremble, but rather something emanating from the shotgun that causes us to tremble at first. The result of this is the onset of fear. A person does not cry because they are sad; rather, they are sad because they are crying. Materialism plays such tricks on you. Spiritual science, however, shows us that everything that happens—the flow of water, a process we observe under a microscope, a human being, an animal, or a plant—is just as much an outflow of the spiritual as a soul-spiritual force is the cause of feelings of fear and anxiety. Thus we find the spirit all around us, if only we are accustomed to viewing everything as the physiognomy of the spirit. This is the way in which everyone can attain the spirit. Or one could say: In this way, the human being sees the spirit through the veil of the material world. But is it also possible to see the spirit directly? This requires that the human being take the word “initiation” very seriously. Goethe made so many statements that are important for spiritual science, such as: “Thus the eye forms itself in the light for the sake of light.” Human eyes have gradually developed from indifferent organs. Goethe shares with all spiritual scientists the certainty that humanity looks back on a long, long evolution. If there had been no light, there would never have been eyes. Just as animals lose their eyesight in dark caves, so has light formed the eye.

[ 13 ] Just as it is true that without the eye the world is dark and gloomy for human beings, so it is also true that the eye is formed by light for the sake of light, and that without light there would be no eyes. In the same way, sounds bring forth the ability to hear, smells the ability to smell, and so on. This is how it has been in the past, and this is still the case today with regard to the physical organs of human beings. But the same is true for the spiritual organs. One can speak of light and color only when the organs for them are present; yet the light has been there long before. The same is true of the spirit. It, too, is already present beforehand and is capable of awakening the dormant spiritual faculties within human beings, which then perceive the spirit just as the eyes perceive light. The spirit forms the spiritual organs, just as light forms the eyes. In this way, human beings can develop the spiritual organs that are formed by the spirit for the spirit.

[ 14 ] When something appears to us as the physiognomy of the spirit, we can grow into a spiritual world if we have the patience to develop and educate ourselves. This is how spiritual science speaks of the spirit in yet another way. And just as we learn from botanists, physicists, and so on about what they discover regarding the mysteries of the physical world, so there is—and always has been—a spiritual science. Only today, the majority of people know nothing of the hidden worlds of this spiritual science. At first, this science was cultivated unnoticed by the rest of the world; it was cultivated within the mysteries. Today, spiritual science must step forward and publicly proclaim what it has to say, just as physical science publicly announces its findings. But just as physical science uses external instruments, so must the spiritual researcher be an instrument in and of themselves. Such researchers have always existed. Only those who develop the necessary faculties can describe what the spiritual world is like. But once it has been expressed, simple, sound common sense is sufficient to understand it. Only for the purpose of research is a different kind of development necessary. Let me give just one example of how spiritual development proceeds through inner processes. This path is not tumultuous. Many a person becomes a citizen of the spiritual world without their fellow human beings having the slightest inkling of it. But vast, vast is the realm that reveals to us how we must work on ourselves if we wish to gain insight into the spiritual world. An example shall be given of how intimate this work is.

[ 15 ] There are three levels of knowledge: first, knowledge of the physical world; then imagination, which, however, has nothing to do with fantasy; in a certain sense, it leads into the spiritual world. The third level consists of the inspired and intuitive world. The imaginative level of knowledge is attained by having the patience to engage in certain inner exercises for a long, long time—exercises that do not detach one from the outer world, but rather make one more capable and practical. But at the same time, they lead into the higher worlds. Here, for example, is a piece of guidance from the teacher to the student: Take a look at a plant. It grows out of the ground, develops leaves, flowers, and fruits; observe the entire development of the plant—how it produces chlorophyll, and so on. The plant can serve as a model for human beings. Just as the plant is permeated by the green pigment, so is the human being permeated by red blood. Although the plant stands on a lower level than the human being, it nevertheless has something over him. In its substance, in its matter, in the chlorophyll, it is not permeated by base instincts, desires, and passions. The human being is no longer chaste and pure, but he has his higher

[ 16 ] Development came at the price of absorbing instincts, desires, and passions. The symbol for this is red blood. Imagine these two side by side, and then think of Goethe’s words, which are the words of all spiritual teachers throughout the ages:

And as long as you don’t have that,
This: Die and Be Reborn!
You are but a gloomy guest
On this dark earth.

[ 17 ] This means that the substance, which has been ravaged by desires and passions, must be purified and cleansed once more, so that—though it stands on a higher level—it is raised above itself and becomes chaste and pure again. The blood must once again be the expression of this chastity and purity. Imagine the red rose; there you have the chaste plant sap before you, red. Of course, it is still plant sap, but you may see in that red plant sap something that can be to you like the dawn of a higher development of humanity, represented in a symbol: the black cross with red roses. Immerse yourself in this symbol, excluding all other thoughts, and experience within it how human beings must once again evolve upward toward the purity of the red rose petal. If you experience this, then you will experience a first trace of the Spirit.

[ 18 ] Thus, this is an image to which ever new ones are added. These images serve to conjure up the spiritual organs within the soul. Then the human being experiences the fulfillment of finding all peace and help in the spiritual world. That is why spiritual science is of such immense importance for the outer world as well. It is true what Novalis says: Human beings are the most perfect instruments—if only they are willing to be so. And: Human beings live in a spiritual world that they can perceive if only they are flexible enough to develop the necessary faculties within themselves. And it is true what Goethe has Faust say:

The spirit world is not closed off;
Your mind is closed, your heart is dead!
Come, bathe, disciple, undaunted
Your earthly breast in the morning glow!

[ 19 ] Thus spoke one who had come to know the spirit through the spiritual organs, and thus he spoke when he sought to establish a guiding principle for all researchers of the spirit.