The Rudolf Steiner Archive

7. How Does One Gain Insight into the Spiritual World?

[ 1 ] Before I begin today’s topic, I would like to point out that today’s discussion will be the first in a whole series of such discussions, and that, essentially, all of the subsequent topics for this winter could bear exactly the same title as today’s topic. Drawing on the most diverse aspects of human life and scientific life, as well as on the most diverse cultural figures of humanity as a whole, the next series of lectures will explore the path that a person must take if they wish to gain insight into the spiritual world.

[ 2 ] Although this topic—this reflection—is intended to lead, so to speak, into the realm of the most impersonal, of objective spiritual science, allow me nevertheless to begin the introduction with something personal, for the path into the spiritual world is one that must lead from the most personal to the impersonal. Therefore, despite the impersonal nature of the subject, the personal will often serve as a symbolic hallmark of this path, and one thus gains the opportunity to point out various significant matters precisely by starting, so to speak, from the more intimate, immediate experience. To the observer of the spiritual worlds, many things in life will be symbolically more important than they may initially appear. Many things that might otherwise pass before the human eye without particularly catching one’s attention may appear deeply significant to those who wish to engage intensively with the kind of contemplation that is also intended to underlie today’s discussions. And I can say: the following—which will at first seem to you like a trifle of life—belongs for me to the many unforgettable things that, on my life’s journey, on the one hand, characterized the genuine yearning of people of our time for the spiritual world, but on the other hand, the more or less acknowledged impossibility of gaining any kind of access to the spiritual world through the means provided not only by the present but even by the past few centuries, insofar as these are externally accessible to human beings.

[ 3 ] I was once sitting in Herman Grimm’s cozy apartment. Those of you who are somewhat familiar with German intellectual life will associate the name Herman Grimm with a number of things. You may know him as the insightful, eminent biographer of Michelangelo and Raphael, and you may also be aware of how, in a sense, the sum total of the cultural heritage of our time—at least in Central Europe, or, to put it more narrowly, in Germany—was united in the soul of Herman Grimm. During a conversation with Herman Grimm about Goethe—who was, of course, so dear to him—and about Goethe’s worldview, something occurred that, though seemingly trivial, ranks among the most unforgettable events of my life. In response to a remark I made—we shall see later how this remark can be significant, particularly with regard to humanity’s ascent into the spiritual world—Herman Grimm replied with a dismissive gesture of his left hand. What lay in that gesture—that is what I count, so to speak, among the unforgettable experiences of my life. The intention was to speak, drawing on Goethe, about how Goethe, in his own way—we will discuss Goethe’s path into the spiritual world in the course of these lectures—sought to find this path into the spiritual world. Herman Grimm gladly followed Goethe’s paths into the spiritual world—but in his own way. It was completely foreign to him to approach Goethe in such a way that one might regard Goethe as the representative of a person who truly—even as an artist—draws spiritual realities down from the spiritual world in order to embody them in his works of art. It was much closer to Herman Grimm’s nature to say to himself: “Ah, with the means we have today as human beings, we can only ascend into this spiritual world through the imagination. The imagination does indeed offer things that are beautiful, grand, and mighty, and that can fill the human heart with warmth; but knowledge—firmly grounded knowledge—was something that Herman Grimm, that such an intimate observer of Goethe, did not wish to find even in Goethe.” And when I spoke of how Goethe’s entire fundamental nature was based on his desire to embody the true in the beautiful, in art, and then tried to show that there are indeed paths outside of imagination—paths into the spiritual world that lead on firmer ground than imagination—it was not a matter of rejection on the part of someone who would not like to take such a path. It was not the rejection of such a path that Herman Grimm conveyed with that hand gesture; rather, in a manner known only to those who understood him more closely, he conveyed roughly the following with that gesture: There may well be such a path, but we humans cannot feel called upon to determine anything about it!

[ 4 ] As I said, I do not wish to present this here in an intrusive manner as a personal matter, but it seems to me that such a gesture embodies the attitude of precisely the best people of our age toward the spiritual world. For I later had a long conversation with Herman Grimm himself on a journey that took us both from Weimar to Tiefurt, during which he explained how he had completely freed himself from any purely materialistic view of world events—from the notion that, in successive epochs, the human spirit brings forth from within itself what constitutes humanity’s true spiritual wealth. In a grand plan—which, as those familiar with Herman Grimm know, was never realized in a work he had intended to write—Herman Grimm spoke at that time of his intention to write a “History of German Imagination.” He had in mind the reign of the imagination, like a goddess in the spiritual realms, which brings forth from within itself that which human beings create for the benefit of the world’s progress. I would like to say: in that lovely region between Weimar and Tiefurt, upon hearing these words from a man whom I, after all, recognize as one of the greatest minds of our time, I had a feeling that I would like to express in the following words:

[ 5 ] Many people today say to themselves: One must feel deeply unsatisfied with all that external science has to say about the sources of life, about the mystery of existence, about the riddles of the world; but there is no way to step powerfully into another world. What is lacking is the intensity of the will to know—to recognize this world of spiritual life as something other than merely a construct of the human imagination. Many people, in fact, are happy to enter this realm of the imagination, because for them it is the only spiritual realm. I happened to recall, precisely in connection with this personality—this trip to Tiefurt was perhaps seventeen years ago now—that more than thirty years ago, among many much that Herman Grimm had already impressed upon me through his writings—my gaze fell upon that passage in his “Goethe Lectures,” which he delivered in Berlin during the winter of 1874–75, where, drawing on Goethe, he speaks of the impression that a purely external, spirit-deprived observation of nature must make on a mind such as his own. It was the same thirty years ago, when Herman Grimm struck me as the archetype of a person in whom all feelings and sensations surge upward into the spiritual world, but who cannot find that spiritual world in reality, only in the imagination—in its reign and workings—and who, on the other hand, —precisely because he was like that—refused to admit that Goethe himself sought the sources and mysteries of existence in a realm other than merely that of the imagination, namely in the realm of spiritual reality.

[ 6 ] There is one passage that should influence our soul today as the starting point of our reflections, where Herman Grimm speaks of something that I have already alluded to—something whose significance cannot be denied by spiritual science, but which, as it is taken by external natural science or by that worldview that seeks to stand on the firm ground of natural science, represents an impossibility—not only for sensation and feeling, but also for a truly self-understanding form of knowledge. I am referring to the Kant-Laplace theory, which explains our solar system as if it consisted solely of lifeless, inorganic substances and forces and had coalesced from such materials out of a gigantic ball of gas. I would like to quote the passage from Herman Grimm’s lectures on Goethe that shows you what this worldview—which is so fascinating today and makes such a profound impression—meant to a mind like Herman Grimm’s.

[ 7 ] “Yet, just as much as Goethe here forbids the intellect from taking as truth anything more than what can actually be grasped with the five fingers of the hand, so much more does he grant the poet’s imagination the right to create, out of an unconscious, dreamlike power, images of what the spirit wishes to behold. Yet he strictly maintains the boundary between these two activities. Long ago, even in his youth, the great Laplace-Kantian vision of the formation and eventual demise of the Earth had taken hold. From the self-rotating cosmic nebula—children already learn this in school—the central protoplanet forms, from which the Earth subsequently emerges, and, as a solidifying sphere, passes through all phases over inconceivable periods of time—including the episode of human habitation—only to finally plunge back into the sun as burnt-out slag: a long process, yet one that is entirely comprehensible to the audience, the occurrence of which now requires no further external intervention other than the effort of some external force to maintain the Sun at a constant temperature.

[ 8 ] No more fruitless perspective for the future can be imagined than the one that is being imposed on us today as scientifically necessary in this expectation. A scrap of carrion that a hungry dog would go out of its way to find would be a refreshing, appetizing morsel compared to this final excrement of creation, as which our Earth would ultimately fall back to the Sun, and the thirst for knowledge with which our generation accepts such notions and presumes to believe them is a sign of a sick imagination—one that scholars of future eras will one day devote much ingenuity to explaining as a historical phenomenon of our time.”

[ 9 ] I felt it necessary to point out such a passage because, essentially, little of this happens today. Today, when the ideas of those worldviews that seem to be so firmly grounded in the natural sciences appear so fascinating, little attention is paid to the fact that there are, after all, spirits who are deeply connected to the cultural life of our time and yet, out of the very nature of their souls, relate in such a way to what countless people now say: “It goes without saying that things are this way, and anyone who won’t admit that things are this way is actually a fool!” Yes, we already see many people today who have the deepest longing to build a bridge between the human soul and the spiritual world. But on the other hand, outside of those circles that deal more deeply with what we call spiritual science, we see only a few who are engaged with the means that could lead the human soul to what one might at least call the land of its longing.

[ 10 ] When we speak today, therefore, of the paths that are meant to lead people into the spiritual world—and speak in such a way that what is said is not intended for a narrow circle but is addressed to all those who are equipped with the mindset of our time—we still encounter considerable resistance in a certain sense. Not only may what is presented be regarded as daydreaming and fantasy, but it may also very easily be the case that what is presented actually annoys a great many people today, that it is a source of irritation to them, because it deviates so greatly from what—as the suggestive and fascinating ideas of those who consider themselves the most educated — is accepted by the broadest circles today.

[ 11 ] It was already hinted at in the first lecture that the ascent into the spiritual world is, in essence, an intimate matter of the soul, and that it stands in stark contrast to what is currently the norm in both popular and scientific circles regarding the life of the imagination and feeling. Scientists, in particular, are quick to insist that anything to be considered scientific must be provable at any time and to anyone, and they then point to their external experiments, which can be demonstrated at any time and to anyone. It goes without saying that spiritual science cannot meet this requirement. — We will see shortly why not. — Therefore, spiritual science—that is, the science that speaks of the spirit not as a sum of abstract concepts and ideas, but as something real and consisting of actual entities—must inevitably violate the methodological requirement that science and worldviews today so readily impose: that it must be provable to everyone, everywhere, and at all times. In popular circles, spiritual science very often encounters resistance for the simple reason that in our time—even where people harbor a longing to ascend into the spiritual world—their sensations and feelings are permeated and saturated by a materialistic worldview. Even with the best of intentions, and even if one longs for the spiritual world, one cannot help but think of the spirit in some way as material again, or at least to conceive of the ascent into the spiritual world as linked to the material. That is why most people will prefer it when they are told about purely external means—for example, what they should eat and drink, or what they should not eat and drink, or what else they should do in a purely external sense in the material world. They will much prefer this to being asked to introduce intimate moments of development into their souls. But this is precisely what the ascent into the spiritual world is all about.

[ 12 ] Now let us—entirely in accordance with how spiritual science itself views this—try to briefly outline how this ascent of the human soul into the spiritual world can take place. The starting point must always be what the human being initially lives within. Now, as human beings are placed in the world in our present time, they live entirely and firmly within the outer, sensory world. Just try to realize for a moment how much remains in the human soul when one turns one’s gaze away from what the external sensory impressions of the physical world have kindled within us as images—what has entered us through external, physical experiences, through the eyes, ears, and the other senses, what is also stirred within us through the eyes and ears in the form of suffering and joy, pleasure and pain, and what our intellect has then synthesized from these impressions of the sensory world. Try to erase all of this from the soul, to think it away, and consider for a moment what would then remain. Those who can approach this simple self-observation honestly will see that, especially in the case of modern human beings, very little remains in the soul. But this is precisely the point: the ascent into the spiritual world cannot initially proceed from what is given to us by the external sensory world; rather, it must be undertaken in such a way that the human being develops within their soul powers that usually lie dormant there. It is, so to speak, a fundamental element for all possibilities of ascent into the spiritual world that a person becomes aware that they are capable of inner development, that there lies within them something other than what they initially perceive with their consciousness.

[ 13 ] This is indeed an irritating notion for many people today, because—let’s take a very specific example from contemporary academia—what does a philosopher today do, for instance, when he sets out to determine the full meaning and essence of knowledge? Such a person will say: I want to try to see how far we, as human beings, can go with our thinking and our spiritual powers, and what we can grasp of the world. In his own way—to the extent that he is currently able—he seeks to grasp a worldview and set it before himself, and he will then usually say: We simply cannot know the rest; that lies beyond the limits of human knowledge! — It is, in fact, the most common phrase one can find in contemporary literature: “We cannot know that!”

[ 14 ] However, there is another point of view that takes a completely different approach from the one just described, stating: Certainly, with the powers I now possess in my soul—which may well be the normal human soul powers at this stage—I can perceive this or that; but here within the soul lies a being capable of development. This soul may possess powers within it that I must first draw out of it. I must first guide it along certain paths, must lead it beyond its current state; then I will see whether I was not at fault when I said that this or that lies beyond the limits of our knowledge. Perhaps I only need to go a little further in the development of my soul; then the boundaries will expand, and I can penetrate deeper into things.

[ 15 ] When using logic to judge this, one does not always take it entirely literally; otherwise, one would say: What we perceive depends on our senses. That is why, for example, someone born blind cannot judge colors; he can only do so if he has regained his sight through a successful operation. Likewise, it could be—I do not wish to speak here of a “sixth sense,” but rather of something that can be drawn purely spiritually from the soul—that it might be possible to draw “spiritual eyes” or “spiritual ears” from our soul. Then the great event might occur for us—the same event that occurs on a lower level when a person born blind is fortunate enough to undergo surgery—so that our assumption might initially become truth: There is a spiritual world around us, but to look into it, we must first awaken the organs within ourselves. That would be the only logical conclusion. But—as I said—people don’t always take logic too seriously, for in our time, when people hear about a spiritual world, they have needs quite different from finding their way into that spiritual world. I have already recounted that in a city in southern Germany, when I was once there to give a lecture, a respectable man who writes cultural columns began his column with the words: “What strikes one most about theosophy is its incomprehensibility.” We’re happy to believe this man when he says that, for him, theosophy’s most striking characteristic is its incomprehensibility. But is that really a valid criterion? Let’s apply this example to mathematics: suppose someone were to say, “What strikes me most about mathematics is its incomprehensibility.” Then everyone would say: “Certainly, that may be true; but if he wants to write feature articles, he’d better learn something first!” — It would often be better to appropriately apply what holds true for one particular field to another. Thus, people have no choice but to either deny—which they can do only by an arbitrary declaration—that there is such a thing as the development of the soul—namely, when they refuse to undergo it themselves—or to immerse themselves in the development of the soul. Then the spiritual world becomes for them a matter of observation, a reality, a truth. But in order to ascend into the spiritual world, the soul must become capable—not for physical life, but for the knowledge of the spiritual world—of completely transforming itself, in a certain sense, from the form it initially possesses, and in a certain sense, of becoming a different being.

[ 16 ] This can certainly draw our attention to what has been emphasized time and again here: that anyone who feels the urge to ascend into the spiritual world must, above all, be clear—again and again—as to whether they have first gained a firm foothold here in this world of physical reality, and whether they are capable of standing firm here. For in all the circumstances that unfold in the physical world, we must possess security, willpower, and sensitivity; we must not lose our footing if we wish to ascend from this world into the spiritual world. This is a preliminary step: to do everything that can lead our character toward standing firm in the physical world. Then it becomes a matter of bringing the soul to a different way of feeling and willing for the spiritual world than what is customary in the soul. In a sense, our soul must become, inwardly, a different organism of feeling and willing than it is in normal life. This brings us to what spiritual science, on the one hand, can initially place in a kind of opposition to what is recognized today as “science,” yet, on the other hand, places spiritual science directly alongside this science with the same validity that external science possesses. When one says that everything that is to be considered science must be provable at all times and for every human being, one means that what is regarded as science must not depend on our subjectivity, on our subjective feelings, or on what we carry within ourselves only individually—such as volitional decisions, volitional impulses, feelings, and sensations. Now, however, anyone who wishes to ascend into the spiritual world must first take the detour through the innermost depths of their soul; they must reorganize their soul and, as a first step, turn their gaze completely away from what lies outside in the physical world. After all, in normal life, a person turns their gaze away from what lies within the physical world only when they sleep; then, through their eyes, ears, and the entire organization of their senses, they allow nothing to enter their soul—but in return, they also become unconscious and are unable to live consciously in a spiritual world. It has now been said that one of the fundamental elements of spiritual knowledge for human beings is to find within themselves the ability to transcend themselves. But this means nothing other than first making the spirit active within oneself. In today’s normal human life, we all know only a turning away from the physical world when we enter the unconsciousness of sleep. Now, our consideration of the “nature of sleep” has shown us how the human being is actually present in a real spiritual world, even though he is unaware of it. For it would be absurd to believe that what constitutes the center of the human soul and spirit disappears in the evening and is recreated anew in the morning; no, it actually endures through the states from falling asleep to waking up. But what constitutes the inner strength for the average person today to remain conscious—even when no stimulus for consciousness flows in through sensory impressions or the work of the intellect—is absent during sleep. The life of the soul is so subdued during sleep that a person is unable to stir and awaken what the soul allows itself to experience inwardly. When a person wakes up again, experiences flow in from the outside, and because a person is thus gifted with the content of the soul, they become conscious of this content. They cannot become conscious of it unless they are stimulated from the outside. Otherwise, a person’s own strength is too weak for this when they are left to themselves during sleep. The ascent into the spiritual world thus means kindling within our soul those forces that enable the soul to live, as it were, in real consciousness within itself, when it becomes, in relation to the outer world, what a person otherwise is in sleep. So, fundamentally speaking, the ascent into the spiritual worlds first requires a stirring up of inner energies, a drawing forth of forces that are otherwise dormant—as it were, paralyzed within the soul—so that a person cannot wield them at all. All those intimate experiences that the spiritual researcher must undergo within his soul ultimately lead toward the goal that has just been described. And today I would like to give you a summary of the path upward into the spiritual world. These matters are described in detail—in their fundamental elements, so to speak—in the book I published under the title *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?*. But I do not wish to repeat myself today by presenting an excerpt from that book; rather, I want to describe from a different perspective what the soul must do to ascend into the spiritual world. Those with a deeper interest can read the details in the aforementioned book. However, no one should assume that what is explained in detail there can be presented here in such a way that, when summarized briefly, the same words and sentences can be used. Those familiar with the book will therefore not find this to be a summary of what is said there, but rather a characterization of the subject from a different perspective.

[ 17 ] It is of the utmost importance that, for the spiritual researcher who wishes to take steps into the spiritual world, much of what leads other people directly to insight and a goal simply becomes a means of education—an intimate means of educating the soul. Let me illustrate this with an example. Many years ago, I wrote a book: *The Philosophy of Freedom*. — It is currently unavailable because it has been out of print for years, but hopefully a second edition will be published in the near future. — This *Philosophy of Freedom* is structured in such a way that it differs entirely from other contemporary philosophical books, which—more or less through their content—aim, so to speak, to present a picture of how the world looks or should look according to the authors’ conceptions. That is not the primary aim of this book; rather, it is intended to provide those who engage with the ideas presented there with a kind of mental exercise, so that the manner of thinking—the particular way of immersing oneself in these ideas—is one that sets the soul’s sensations and feelings in motion—much like, if I may draw a comparison, the way one sets one’s limbs in motion during gymnastics. What is otherwise merely a means of knowledge is, in this book, at the same time a means of spiritual and emotional self-education. This is extraordinarily important. That is why, in this book—which is, of course, irritating to many contemporary philosophers who associate philosophy with something entirely different from what can help a person make progress, since they would prefer that people remain as they are, with the normal cognitive faculties they are born with— in this book, what matters is not so much whether one can argue about this or that, or whether something can be interpreted one way or another, but rather that the thoughts, which are woven together into a unified whole, can truly train our soul and help it progress a little further.

[ 18 ] This is also the case in my book *Truth and Science*. And so it is with many things that are initially intended to be basic elements for training the soul to ascend into the spiritual world. Mathematics and geometry teach people about triangles, quadrilaterals, and other figures. But why do they teach all this? Because it is meant to give people an understanding of how things are arranged in space, what laws govern them, and so on. The spiritual ascent into the higher worlds essentially works with similar figures as symbols. For example, it presents the student with the symbol of the triangle, the quadrilateral, or other symbolic figures—not so that the student may gain direct knowledge through them (which he can acquire in other ways as well)—but so that he may find in them the opportunity to train his spiritual faculties in such a way that, through the impressions these symbols evoke, his spirit ascends into a higher world. So this is a matter of training the mind—or, please do not misunderstand—of mental gymnastics. That is why much of what constitutes dry, external science, dry, external philosophy, mathematics, or geometry becomes a living symbol for spiritual training that leads us up into the spiritual world. When we allow this to take effect on our soul, we learn to understand what, fundamentally speaking, no external science understands—namely, that the ancient Pythagoreans, under the influence of their great teacher Pythagoras, spoke of the universe as consisting of numbers because they grasped the inner laws of numbers. Now let us consider how numbers confront us everywhere in the world. After all, nothing is easier than refuting spiritual science or anthroposophy, for one can easily say from a standpoint that considers itself very lofty: “Here come these spiritual scientists emerging once again from their mystical darkness with their symbolism of numbers, claiming that there is an inner lawfulness in numbers, and that, for example, the true foundation of the human being must be viewed in terms of the number seven.” — But this is precisely what Pythagoras and his disciples meant when they spoke of the inner laws of numbers. If we allow those wondrous connections inherent in the relationships between numbers to act upon the spirit, we can thereby train it so that it awakens where it would otherwise remain asleep, and develops stronger powers within itself to penetrate the spiritual world.

[ 19 ] So it is a form of training through this other science. This is also what is actually referred to as the study of one who wishes to penetrate the spiritual world. And little by little, everything that is crude reality for other people becomes, for such a person, more or less an external image, a symbol. If a person is able to allow these symbols to take effect within them, they thereby not only free their spirit from the external, physical world, but also imbue it with powerful forces, so that the soul can be aware of them even when there is no external stimulus. I have already mentioned that when a person allows a symbol such as the Rose Cross to take effect upon them, they may receive an impulse to ascend into the spiritual world. We envision the Rose Cross as a simple black cross with seven red roses arranged in a circle at the intersection of its arms.

[ 20 ] What is it meant to tell us? One allows it to truly take effect on one’s soul by imagining the following: I am observing, for example, a plant; I say of this plant that it is an imperfect being—and I place a human being alongside it, who is, in his own way, a more perfect being, but only in his own way. For when I consider the plant, I must say: Before me is a material entity that is not permeated by passions, drives, or instincts that would drag it down from the height where it might otherwise stand. The plant has its innate laws, which it follows from leaf through flower to fruit; thus it stands there, free of drives, chaste. Beside it lives the human being, certainly a higher being in its own way, but steeped in drives, instincts, and passions through which it can stray from its strict regularity. It must first overcome something within itself if it is to follow its inner laws just as the plant follows its innate laws. Now a human being can say to himself: The expression of the drives and instincts within me is the red blood. In a certain sense, I can compare this to what the chaste plant sap—chlorophyll—is to the red rose, and I can say: When a person has become so strong within himself that the red blood is no longer an expression of what pulls him down, but rather of what lifts him up—when it is the expression of a being as chaste as the plant sap that has become the red of the rose, or in other words: If the red of the rose expresses pure inner life, the purified essence of the human being in his blood, then I have before me the ideal of what a human being can achieve by overcoming external nature, which presents itself to me under the symbol of the black cross, the charred wood. And the red of the rose symbolizes the higher life that awakens when the red blood has thus become a chaste expression of the human being’s purified instinctual nature, which has transcended itself. If we do not allow what is depicted to remain an abstract concept, it becomes a vividly felt idea of development. Then a whole world of feelings and sensations comes alive within us; we sense within ourselves an evolution from an imperfect to a more perfect state. We perceive evolution as something entirely different from that abstract concept that external science presents to us in the sense of a purely external Darwinism. There, evolution becomes something that cuts deep into our hearts, something that permeates us with warmth—the warmth of the soul—and becomes a force within us that sustains and upholds us. Only through such inner experiences can the soul develop strong forces within itself, so that in its innermost being—in that being which otherwise becomes unconscious when it withdraws from the external world—it can be illuminated by consciousness.

[ 21 ] Of course, it is child’s play to say: “Then you are recommending the idea of something entirely imaginary, something entirely conceived in the mind.” But the only ideas that have value are those that are a reflection of an external reality, and an idea of the Rose Cross has no external counterpart! — But that is not the point: it is not that the idea through which we train our soul is a reflection of an external reality, but rather that the idea awakens powers within our soul and draws out from the soul what lies hidden and dormant within it. When the human soul is devoted to such pictorial imagination—when, as it were, everything that is otherwise of value to it as reality becomes the source of images that are not arbitrarily drawn from the imagination but are based on reality, just as the symbol of the Rose Cross is now—then we say: The human being is striving to ascend to the first stage of knowledge of the spiritual world. — This is the stage of imaginative knowledge, which leads us beyond what is immediately concerned only with the physical world.

[ 22 ] Thus, the person who wishes to ascend into the spiritual world works within their soul using very specific concepts and a very specific way of allowing external reality to affect them. They work within this soul itself. When a person has worked in this way for some time, the situation is such that the external scientist can say to them: “This has only a subjective, only an individual value for you.” But the external scientist does not know that, through such rigorous, law-governed training of the soul, there is a stage of inner development where the soul’s ability to give voice to subjective feelings and sensations ceases entirely—a stage where the soul arrives at a point where it must say to itself: “Now inner images arise within me that appear to me just as trees and rocks, rivers and mountains, plants and animals of the external world do; they are as real as external physical things, and my subjectivity can neither add to nor take away from them.”

[ 23 ] Indeed, there is an intermediate state for anyone who wishes to ascend into the spiritual world, where the human being runs the risk of carrying into the spiritual world their subjective experiences—those that apply only to them. But a person must pass through this intermediate state, and then reaches a stage where what is experienced by the soul becomes just as objectively provable—for anyone who has the capacity to do so—as all things in external, physical reality. After all, the principle that applies to external science is this: What is to be considered scientific must be provable at any time to anyone—even if only to those who are sufficiently prepared for it. Or do you believe that you can teach the law of “corresponding boiling points” to an eight-year-old child? I doubt it. You won’t even be able to teach them the Pythagorean theorem. So this principle already implies that the human soul must be appropriately prepared if one wishes to prove anything to it. And just as one must be prepared—although it is possible for every human being—to understand the Pythagorean theorem, so too must one be prepared through a certain training of the soul if one wishes to experience or recognize this or that in the spiritual world. But then what can be recognized is experiential and observable in the same way for every person who is prepared for it in the necessary manner. Or when reports are made based on the observations of spiritual science by those who have prepared their souls so that such a person can look back on repeated earthly lives, so that these become a fact for them, then people will likely come and say: “Here he is again, presenting us with dogmas and demanding that we believe them!” Yet the spiritual researcher does not present his insights to the world so that people are expected to believe them.

[ 24 ] If people think that what is being said are dogmas, let them ask themselves: Is the fact that whales exist a dogma for someone who has never seen one? Certainly, one can explain it this way: it is a dogma for someone who has never seen a whale. But spiritual research does not approach the world solely through revelations. Nor does it do so when it understands itself; rather, it clothes what it brings down from the higher worlds in logical forms—the very same logical forms that permeate the other sciences as well. Then anyone can verify, through a sound sense of truth and unbiased logic, whether what the spiritual researcher has said is true. It has always been said: the process of discovering spiritual facts for oneself requires a training of the soul—it requires that the soul has undergone what is now being described—but this is not necessary for understanding what has been communicated; for that, a sound sense of truth and unbiased logic are sufficient.

[ 25 ] When the spiritual researcher has allowed such symbolic concepts and images to influence his soul for some time, he notices that his life of sensations and feelings becomes quite different from what it was before.

[ 26 ] What is the nature of human sensory and emotional life in the ordinary world? It has actually become somewhat trite these days to use the term “selfish” everywhere and to say that people are selfish in normal life. I would not put it that way, but would rather say: In everyday life, people are initially closely bound to their own personality—for example, when something brings us joy, and especially in relation to the very things that bring us joy, such as the finest spiritual creations, works of art, and beauty. This is already expressed by the proverb “There’s no accounting for taste”—that much is tied to our personality and that it depends on how we subjectively relate to things. Consider how everything that can bring you joy is connected to your upbringing, to the part of the world where you live, to the profession in which your personality is engaged, and so on, to see how sensations and feelings are closely linked to our personality. But when one engages in exercises of the soul such as those described, one notices that sensations and feelings become entirely impersonal. It is a profound and powerful experience when the moment arrives in which our life of sensations and feelings becomes, so to speak, impersonal. This moment will come—it will surely come—when, in the course of their spiritual journey, people are inspired by those who serve as their spiritual guides to allow the following things, in particular, to truly take effect upon their souls. I would now like to list a few things which, if a person allows them to work on their soul for weeks or months on end, have an educational effect on our entire life of sensations and feelings.

[ 27 ] The following may be worth considering. If we focus our attention on what you find at the center of philosophical consideration—the spiritual center of the human being, the “I”—if we have learned to rise to the concept of the “I”—which accompanies all our ideas, that mysterious center of all experience; and if we continue to deepen that respect, that reverence, and that devotion that can be linked to the fact—though for many it is not a fact but a chimera—that an “I” lives within!—if it can become the greatest, the most profound experience to tell ourselves again and again that this “I am” is the very essence of the human soul, then powerful, intense feelings develop around the “I am”—feelings that are impersonal and aimed precisely at recognizing how, as it were, everything that surrounds us in the world’s secrets and mysteries is condensed into a single point—the “I” point—in order to grasp humanity from that “I” point. The poet Jean Paulin, for example, describes this becoming aware of the “I” in his autobiography: “I will never forget the experience within me—one I have never told anyone—of standing at the birth of my self-awareness, the place and time of which I can specify. One morning, as a very young child, I stood beneath the front door and looked to the left toward the woodpile, when suddenly the inner realization—‘I am an “I”’—shot before me like a bolt of lightning from the sky and has remained shining ever since: there, for the first time and forever, my “I” had seen itself. It is difficult to imagine any distortions of memory here, since no external narrative could have added anything to an event that occurred solely in the veiled innermost sanctum of the human being—an event whose novelty alone ensured its permanence amidst such mundane circumstances.”

[ 28 ] That is already a great deal—to feel, even with all the shivers of awe and all the sense of the grandeur of this fact, the devotion to the concentration of the world’s essence at a single point. But if a person experiences this again and again and allows it to take effect within them, it may be that—while it does not enlighten them about all the mysteries of the world—it nevertheless gives them a direction that is entirely focused on the impersonal and entirely on the innermost human being.

[ 29 ] This is how we cultivate our emotional and sensory life through the “I.” And once we have done this for a while, we can direct our feelings and sensations in a different direction; we can say to ourselves: This “I” within us is connected to everything we think, feel, and sense—to our entire soul life—and it permeates and illuminates our soul life. Then, without focusing on ourselves or becoming personal, we can study human nature with the “I” as the center of thinking, feeling, and willing. Humanity becomes a mystery to us, not ourselves. There, our feelings expand from the “I” out into the soul. Then we can move on to other feelings; we can, in particular, make our own that beautiful feeling without which we cannot lead our soul further into spiritual knowledge—that is what one might call: the feeling that in every thing that comes before us, access to the infinite, as it were, opens up to us. This is the most wondrous feeling when we allow it to arise in our soul again and again. It can be present when we go out and witness a marvelous spectacle of nature: mountains shrouded in clouds amid thunder and lightning. There, it has a grand and mighty effect on our soul. But then we must learn not only to see the grand and mighty there, but perhaps to take a single leaf, examine it closely with all its veins and all the wondrous details it contains, and in doing so perceive and feel just as much of the grand and mighty—which reveals itself like an infinity from the smallest leaf—as we do in the greatest spectacle of nature. It may seem strange, but there is something to it, and one is compelled to express it in a somewhat grotesque way afterward: It may make a great impression when a person sees the glowing mass of lava emerging from the earth. But then we imagine someone looking at warm milk or the most ordinary coffee, seeing something like small crater-shaped formations there, and observing a similar spectacle unfolding on a small scale. Everywhere, in the smallest as in the largest, lies the gateway to the infinite.

[ 30 ] And even as we continue to explore, and even though so much has already been revealed to us, there is still more hidden beneath the surface that we may have already explored. This is precisely how we perceive what can emerge at every point in the universe as a revelation of an intensely infinite reality. This fills our soul with sensations and feelings that are essential to us if we wish to attain what Goethe calls “spiritual eyes” and “spiritual ears.” In short, it is a full expression of our emotional life—which is otherwise the most subjective aspect of our being—to the point where we feel ourselves to be nothing more than the stage on which something is unfolding, where we no longer even count our feelings as part of ourselves. Our personality is silenced. It is roughly like stretching a canvas and, as a painter, painting a picture on it; in the same way, we stretch out our soul when we train ourselves in this manner, and allow the spiritual world to paint upon this soul. One begins to sense this from a certain point onward. One must then simply understand that, in order to recognize the true nature of the world, it is necessary to regard a certain stage of soul life as the sole decisive factor.

[ 31 ] Thus, what a person acquires through the fervent striving of the soul does indeed become the basis for determining the truth. It is within the soul itself that the decision must be made as to whether something is true or not. No external factor can decide this; rather, by transcending himself, a person must find within himself the authority to perceive or discover the truth. Yes, we can essentially say: We cannot, after all, distinguish ourselves entirely from other people in this regard. Other people seek objective criteria, something that provides us with confirmation of the truth from the outside. The spiritual researcher, however, seeks confirmation of the truth from within. In other words, he does the opposite. If that were the case, one might perhaps say, for appearances’ sake: It is a bad thing if spiritual scientists, in their perversions, want to turn the world upside down. For in truth, natural scientists and philosophers do nothing other than what spiritual scientists do; they just do not realize that they are doing it. I want to give you proof of this, taken from the immediate present.

[ 32 ] At the last meeting of natural scientists, Oswald Külpe gave a lecture on the relationship between natural science and philosophy, in which he argued that when humans look out into the sensory world and perceive it as sound, color, warmth, and so on, they experience only subjective qualities. This is just a slightly different way of putting it than when Schopenhauer says, “The world is our representation.” But Oswald Külpe points out that what we perceive through our senses—in short, everything that appears to us as an image—is subjective, whereas what physics and chemistry describe—pressure, forces of attraction and repulsion, resistance, and so on—must be characterized as objective; so that, in this way, our worldviews deal partly with something purely subjective and partly with what is objective, such as pressure, forces of attraction and repulsion.

[ 33 ] I do not wish to delve further into the criticism that has been voiced on this subject, but only to address the line of reasoning. This seems so terribly easy for today’s epistemologist to prove: since we could not see without eyes, light would be merely something brought about by our eyes. But what happens in the external world—so it is said—when one sphere strikes another, the forces, resistance, pressure, and so on that are at work there, must surely be located in the external world, in space. Why do people think this? Oswald Külpe gives himself away very clearly at a certain point where he speaks of sensory perceptions. Because he regards these as images, he says: They cannot collide or attract one another, nor can they press against one another or warm one another; nor can they be separated by a certain distance in space such that they send light through space at such-and-such a speed; nor can they be arranged in the same way that a chemist arranges the elements. Why does he say this about sensory perceptions? Because he regards sensory perceptions as images that are produced solely by our senses.

[ 34 ] Now I would like to present a simple idea that shows that the nature of the image does not change anything at all. Things repel and attract one another. But when Mr. Külpe considers sensory perceptions—this world that could neither attract nor repel—it appears to Mr. Oswald Külpe not as reality, but as a reflection. There, of course, he has images before him. But impact, pressure, resistance, and everything else that is posited in the world as distinct from the others—the sensory perceptions—can be objectively explained in no other way than through the image-like nature of the sensory perceptions. Why is this so? Because when a person perceives pressure, impact, and so on, they make what lives within things into the sensations of those things. When a person says, for example, “One billiard ball strikes another,” they should reflect on the fact that in doing so, they are projecting into the things themselves what they experience as the force of the impact! And anyone grounded in spiritual science does nothing different. What lives within the soul, they make the criterion of expression for the world. There is no other principle of knowledge than that which can be discovered through the development of the soul itself. Thus, the others are doing the same thing as spiritual research. Spiritual research is simply aware of it. The others do it unconsciously; they have no idea that they are doing the same thing at an elementary level; they merely remain at the very first stage and deny what they themselves are doing. Therefore, we may say: Spiritual science is in no way opposed to other forms of truth-seeking; the other researchers are doing the same thing, only they take the first step without realizing it, whereas spiritual science consciously takes these steps as far as a particular human soul, according to its stage of development, is capable of going. Once we have reached the point where our feelings have, in a certain sense, become objective, then what I have already hinted at—and which is a necessary prerequisite for progress into the spiritual worlds—truly comes to pass. This is that human beings learn to live in the world in such a way that they assume an all-encompassing spiritual lawfulness is at work and alive in the spiritual world. In everyday life, people are far removed from such a way of thinking. They become angry when something happens to them that they do not like. This is quite understandable, for adopting a different perspective is a difficult feat. This different perspective consists in saying: We come from a previous life; we have brought ourselves into the circumstances in which we now find ourselves; we have led ourselves to what confronts us from the bosom of the future. What confronts us there corresponds to a strictly objective spiritual law. We accept it, for it would be absurd not to. Whatever comes to us from the bosom of the spiritual worlds—whether the world rebukes or praises us, whether joyful or sorrowful things appear to us—we accept it as the wise unfolding and interweaving of the world. This is something that must once again, slowly and gradually, become the very foundation of our being. When this happens, our will begins to be trained. Whereas previously our feelings were to be reorganized, now our will is reorganized; it becomes independent of our personality and thereby becomes an organ for perceiving spiritual realities.

[ 35 ] Then, following the stage of imaginative knowledge, what can truly and genuinely be called inspiration—fulfillment through spiritual realities—begins for the human being. However, we must always be clear about this: a person can only achieve the training of the will at a certain level if their feelings have already been purified to a certain extent, so that their will can connect with the laws of the world, and they exist as a human being solely so that those realities and beings that wish to appear to them may find in their will a screen upon which they can project themselves, so that they may exist for him.

[ 36 ] I have been able to describe to you only a few of the things the soul must go through in quiet, patient devotion if it wishes to ascend into the higher worlds. In the following lectures, I will describe to you much of what the soul must undergo, as seen through the development of world history, in order to ascend into the spiritual worlds. So please regard what has been said today merely as an introduction to the idea that, through such training, our emotional and volitional lives—and our entire life of imagination—develop in such a way that they become vehicles for new worlds, so that we actually enter a world that we recognize as a reality just as we recognize the physical world as a reality in its own way. I have already mentioned on another occasion: When people say, “You are merely imagining what you think you see,” one must reply that only experience and observation can reveal the difference between reality and illusion, between the real and the fantastical—just as in the physical world. It is through reality that one must discern the difference. For example, anyone who approaches reality with sound reasoning knows how to distinguish a red-hot piece of iron in reality from one that exists only in the imagination, and no matter how many Schopenhauerian followers may come along, they will still be able to tell the two apart—what is truth and what is imagination. Thus, a person can orient themselves by reality. In the same way, they can orient themselves in the spiritual world only by reality. Someone once said that when a person merely thinks of drinking lemonade, they also sense the taste of lemonade on their tongue. I replied to him: Imagination can be so powerful that someone who has no lemonade in front of them at all might, through a vivid mental image of lemonade, actually sense the taste on their tongue; but I’d like to see if anyone has ever quenched their thirst with a lemonade that existed only in their imagination. That is where the criterion begins to take on a more concrete form. And so it is with a person’s inner development: the person not only comes to know a new spiritual life and new ideas, but also encounters another world within their soul and knows: You now stand before a world that you can describe just as you can describe the outer world. — This is not mere speculation, which could only be compared to a development of thought, but rather the formation of new sensory organs and the opening up of new worlds that truly stand before us just as real as our outer, physical world. What has been hinted at today is the necessary indication, given our current circumstances, that spiritual research is possible. This is not to say that everyone must immediately become a spiritual researcher. For it must always be emphasized: If a person with a sound sense of truth and unbiased logic allows the teachings of spiritual science to reach them—even if they cannot themselves look into the spiritual worlds—then everything that comes from such teachings can become a source of energy and a sense of strength for the soul, even if they initially believe in Haeckelism or Darwinism. What the spiritual researcher has to say is well-suited to speaking more and more to people’s healthy sense of truth, all the more so because it is connected to the deepest interests of every human being. There may be people who do not consider it necessary for their spiritual well-being to know how amphibians and mammals relate to one another, or the like. But what can be said on the basis of spiritual research, which rests on a secure foundation, must inspire all people: that the soul—insofar as it belongs to the spiritual world, descending through birth into sensory existence and re-entering the spiritual realm through the gate of death—belongs to the sphere of eternity. This must be of the deepest interest to all people—this power that sinks ever more deeply into their souls, a power such that the soul gains from it the assurance to stand firmly in its place in life. A soul that is unaware of what it is and wills, of what it signifies in terms of its essence, can become desolate, can ultimately despair, and feel barren and empty. A soul, however, that fills itself with the spiritual achievements of spiritual science cannot remain empty and desolate, provided it does not accept the findings of spiritual research as dogmas, but rather as a living reality that flows warmly through our soul. This offers solace for all suffering in life when we are lifted up from all temporal sufferings to that which can become a source of comfort for the soul—the share of the temporal in the eternal. In short: spiritual science can give people what they need today—given the intensified demands of modern life—during the loneliest and busiest hours of their lives, or when their strength begins to fail, providing them with what they need to look into the future and face it with vigor.

[ 37 ] Thus, spiritual science—as it arises from spiritual research and from those who wish to take steps into the spiritual world—can continually affirm what we wish to summarize in a few words that intuitively express the nature of the path into the spiritual world and its significance for people today. What we wish to summarize in this way is not to be a reflection on theories of life, but rather a reflection on remedies, on sources of strength, on tonics for life:

The spirit world—it remains closed to you,
Do you not recognize within yourself
The spirit that shines within the soul
And, bearing light, can guide you
In the depths of the world, to the heights of the world!