The Rudolf Steiner Archive

1. Human Beings in Their Relationship to the Supersensible Worlds

[ 1 ] Just as I have done over the course of several winters, I will also be giving lectures in the coming months on topics and areas of interest in spiritual science, the science of the supersensible worlds. When we speak today of knowledge or a science of the supersensible worlds, we still encounter numerous prejudices and resistance. This is only too understandable. For anyone familiar with the intellectual development of recent years or decades will readily admit that this intellectual development has generally been quite averse to accepting research into the supersensible world in any sense. When, moreover, the claim is made—as was the case in the past winter lectures and as will continue to be the case—that these lectures, in their entire presentation and tone, possess a scientific character and lay claim to standing alongside other scientific considerations, then these prejudices are all the greater. Admittedly, however, it must be acknowledged that, in recent times, a need has grown within our spiritual life to turn our gaze upward toward the supersensible worlds—to draw meaning and understanding of the whole of human life from this knowledge of the supersensible world, and to gain strength in our complex lives to meet the demands of the outer world. There is an ever-increasing longing for knowledge of the supersensible world.

[ 2 ] On the other hand, however, one cannot deny that modern people, when imbued with what is otherwise regarded in our time as the standard for forming views of life, also make a scientific claim regarding spiritual science and, in a certain sense, demand a scientific justification for it. Now, it must be acknowledged that there are numerous circles in our time who, from the standpoint of contemporary science, completely reject any claim to scientific validity in the study of the supersensible worlds. If we look around to see how this denial takes place, we may notice that two quite different positions are taken in this regard, both of which, however, find numerous advocates precisely in our present time among those who have the impulse, the longing, to grow beyond the old traditions that exist to satisfy supersensible needs. Some say: what external science in its various branches can provide today—and in particular what the truly admirable natural sciences provide—is sufficient to give human beings a satisfying picture of the world, one that must satisfy any longing for a worldview or philosophy of life. Only a worldview that simply synthesizes the findings of the natural sciences or other results recognized as scientific, in order to form a comprehensive picture of the solution to the world’s mysteries from their totality, can be valid, so it is said in these circles. Others, however, say: We can indeed form a picture of the world if, on the basis of today’s sciences, we develop thoughts and ideas about what may underlie external phenomena, but this picture is not sufficient to satisfy the human soul’s inextinguishable need for knowledge. Everything we can know about the world through external science alone actually proves to us just how inadequate this external science is for answering, in any way, the truly great mysteries of existence. Everywhere, a precise and thorough understanding of external science points to the underlying foundations of what this science itself provides. —- Within these circles, there are again those who, while admitting that there are indications of a supersensible realm everywhere in the world, and that external science is never sufficient to provide a satisfactory picture of the solution to the world’s mysteries, nevertheless maintain that human beings are limited in their cognitive capacity and in their knowledge, and that, in scientific terms, he would exceed the limits of his capabilities and his understanding if he were to attempt to penetrate this supersensible world.

[ 3 ] Thus we see that it is precisely from the very spiritual life with which spiritual science seeks to harmonize that prejudices and resistance against it itself arise. Therefore, at the beginning of this lecture series, it will be necessary to engage in a certain programmatic examination of the possibility of a relationship between human beings and the supersensible worlds. That human beings must have such a relationship to the supersensible worlds—and that they may simply be unable to penetrate these supersensible worlds with their powers of cognition—is something that, fundamentally speaking, more cautious minds have always acknowledged, even during the recent golden age of natural science. When, in response to discussions such as those to be conducted here in this lecture series, one often hears today—and this is not meant as a criticism—that this is essentially an impermissible fantasy regarding the supersensible worlds, and while one must find such a view understandable, it may also be pointed out, on the other hand, that at least one fact has always been acknowledged by more cautious thinkers and researchers: that it is not an arbitrary act of the human soul to draw one’s own conclusions from what external science can provide—namely, that everything in our surroundings ultimately points to supersensible worlds.

[ 4 ] From the numerous facts, let me point out one older and one more recent one, and thereby introduce what will then be clarified in the subsequent lectures through spiritual scientific research itself. Let me begin by noting that, for those who truly understand it, the science of recent decades has not led to a denial of the supersensible worlds, and that, on the other hand, for those familiar with the current scientific standpoint, it can already be said today that our external science has advanced to the point where it feels compelled, in our immediate present, to acknowledge—at least to a limited extent—a certain knowledge of the supersensible worlds. Thus, this rigorous science refutes in the most serious sense what is advocated today in many popular worldviews as a materialistic or monistic—or whatever one wishes to call it—worldview.

[ 5 ] Let me first draw your attention to an older fact: a researcher who was right in the thick of what might be called the glittering world of modern natural science, who achieved a great deal in a narrowly defined specialized field, but who also kept his mind open to everything that external science cannot offer. This researcher once spoke the following memorable words: “The picture that natural science can provide of what underlies material effects and natural forces—as expressed in the theories of numerous atomic interactions that natural science espouses today—is admirable. But,” says this researcher, and I would simply like to emphasize this as a fact—it would be a fateful delusion to believe that in all that natural science can offer in its views and theories there lies anything that would rule out a metaphysical need—that is, a need that the human soul has for knowledge of the supersensible world, or at least for the acceptance of the existence of the supersensible world. It would be a fatal error to believe that everything natural science can offer is, after all, merely something—even if it penetrates as far as the atomic world—that corresponds to external perception. This perception must always have a foundation that transcends itself. — This natural scientist’s statement was made at a time when the less rigorous thinkers—that is, if I may use the term, the “daredevils” of modern natural science—were celebrating ideas that sought to exclude any human conception of a supersensible world. — I am not recounting the statement of a natural scientist who was, say, influenced by some form of mysticism, or who was philosophically biased, or who might have made such a statement at a mystical gathering. The statement I have just cited was made in 1867—at the dawn of the materialist natural science of the past century—at the Vienna Academy of Sciences by the famous clinician and pioneer of medical science, Karl von Rokitansky. And whatever else the trailblazers of this worldview may have accomplished, anyone who understands the entire nature and innermost essence of natural science will have to admit the truth of what he said.

[ 6 ] There is yet another fact I would like to mention. Who could believe that any science today owes its greatness more to purely external experimental research—conducted by those thinkers who founded it on such external research and experiments—than physics does? And what could be cited more than the physical achievements of our time—on the one hand, as characteristic of contemporary scientific thinking, and on the other hand, brought up time and time again whenever the possibility that human beings might be dealing with things of the supersensible world is to be refuted? But what if a physicist were to come forward today and say: We must bid farewell to contemporary physical thinking, or at least numerous facts and research results suggest that we must bid farewell to a concept on which so many hopes—particularly for the purely scientific approach—have been pinned in recent decades? — Namely, to bid farewell to a concept such as that of the “world ether,” conceived as a material substance, which for many years was regarded, so to speak, as a kind of magic remedy for all external natural phenomena. For phenomena such as light, heat, electrical phenomena, and so on were supposed to be explained solely by hypothetically positing, behind what our eyes see and what our senses perceive, the so-called “world ether” as the finest substance from which, so to speak, everything could be explained. And by conceiving of this “world ether” as material, people had no qualms about attributing to it the idea that the spiritual and supersensory experiences of human beings must also have their origin in certain processes of that material ether which fills us ourselves. For everything else that is otherwise attributed to a supersensory, spiritual world, this material “world ether” became a sort of magician and explainer. Now, what if a physicist were to come along and say that certain findings in physical research compel us to assume a connection among the forces of nature that makes it possible for light rays to travel through space without the presupposition of a material world ether? Or if this physicist were to say that, based on certain facts, we must already assume today that light waves propagate through space without a material medium? And if this physicist were to go on to say: Well, yes, this does indeed contradict every kind of mechanical explanation of nature, but if the physical facts demand it, then the mechanical view of nature is simply beyond redemption. - And if he were to go even further and say: What, then, is to take the place of what science has long assumed to be the “world ether” in a materialistic sense? Then something must be put in its place to which, above all, no material property need be ascribed. Something very peculiar must now take the place of this “world ether.” — And I must emphasize this again and again: In the sense of modern physics, something very peculiar must take the place of the universal ether. Namely, in place of the ether, which until now was supposed to propagate light through space, pure equations in the mathematical sense are now to be substituted. These are thoughts, mental constructs. And what propagates there in the sense of thought-constructs is not to propagate through matter, but—as scholars say—through the vacuum, through empty space. With regard to light, which is not bound to any material substance, physics designates this as necessary.

[ 7 ] If someone had said this some time ago, during the height of materialism and monism, people would probably have assumed that he was just another eccentric proponent of a spiritual worldview, since only such a person could claim that light flows through space without a material medium. But this was not said by a mystic, nor was it said at a gathering where one can feed people all sorts of ideas; rather, it was stated by Max Planck, a physicist at the University of Berlin, in September 1910 at the 82nd Congress of Natural Scientists in Königsberg. This is a fact that is even more significant than the one mentioned earlier, for the reason that here we have not merely acknowledged what we heard from the clinician Karl von Rokitansky: that nature itself points everywhere to a supersensible world—but that the physicist’s thoughts, which he actually writes down on paper using mathematical symbols, contain something that is not bound to any material medium. That is to say, we have not only acknowledged that somewhere in the unknown there are pure thoughts—that is, spiritual effects—but that physics, in its actual findings, must recognize what carries through space not merely the material, but the supersensible.

[ 8 ] We thus see science having reached that threshold where it can no longer be content merely to say: There may be a supernatural world, but human knowledge cannot penetrate it. — Rather, it now acknowledges that the concepts science itself formulates do not relate solely to the external world—which consists only of matter and is permeated by it—but that the insights we have pertain to the spiritual, to the supersensible! Given the circumstances of our time, this provides proof—for anyone who truly understands the development of science—that it is now backward to claim that supersensible knowledge has no place within science. And perhaps it should not be regarded as so fanciful after all when someone grounded in spiritual science feels compelled to say: It is precisely through such concessions that science begins to find a path that must lead ever further and further, for things develop, starting from their beginnings, toward the recognition of the reality of that which human beings can comprehend through their cognitive faculties in relation to a supersensible world.

[ 9 ] If a person wishes to penetrate the supersensible world, he turns first—and has always turned, within certain fields—to what is called the contemplation of the world through thought. We do not even need to use the word “philosophy”; what a person essentially needs is contemplation. For it soon becomes clear to a person that through mere external observation—no matter how scientific it may be—one cannot reach the depths of things. Thus, a person turns to intellectual contemplation and seeks, within the realm of thought, to form a picture of the solution to the world’s mysteries. Even those who wish to construct a picture of the world based solely on materially given facts are dependent on forming such a picture of what underlies the world. Everything that Ernst Haeckel, for example, contributes to a worldview has also sprung from thought, even though he bases his views on external scientific knowledge. Whether one relies more or less on what external science provides, or whether science arrives at an idealistic or spiritual worldview, in both cases one must resort to thought. And this thought has a peculiarity when we devote ourselves to it. The nature of this peculiarity is revealed by the fact that many people find the exploration of thought—philosophical reflection—unappealing or at least uncomfortable.

[ 10 ] There have always been philosophers, ever since ancient Greek times. But it is not only that students, by the sweat of their brow, are compelled to delve into what reflection on the mysteries of the world has sought to provide; it is also the case that people who, out of the very warmth of their hearts—perhaps out of a deep, religious need to maintain peace and harmony in their souls and strength for life, or out of a vital need for enlightenment— insight into what can shed light on life—it is the case that many such people find what is presented in theoretical books and in philosophy regarding the solution to the world’s mysteries to be quite dry, sober, abstract, and off-putting. Those who are truly filled with life, who stand right in the midst of it as practitioners and feel drawn to what life offers directly, will easily feel repelled by the dryness and abstractness of many writings and lectures that seek to ascend into supersensible worlds through intellectual effort. This is something that is likely experienced in the widest circles. But as dazzling as philosophical systems concerning the mysteries of the universe may at times be for those who, due to the circumstances of their lives, are able to pursue them, so unpalatable are such paths for people who are fully immersed in life, in their creative endeavors, and in their work. Nevertheless, those who, driven by a serious thirst for knowledge, have created such systems of thought in order to penetrate the mysteries of the world have felt so strongly that they said: This intellectual work provides a picture of what actually underlies the world as supersensible realities. - And anyone who is able to admire what thinkers of both recent and earlier times have accomplished in this regard knows what has been achieved not only in terms of human acumen but also in terms of human devotion in order to penetrate the world along this path of thought. And such a person also knows the deep satisfaction one can feel, under certain conditions, in solving the world’s mysteries through the philosophical constructs and systems of ideas developed by great thinkers. These are by no means merely abstract; rather, even if they appear abstract, they are written with great passion and all the warmth of the soul.

[ 11 ] But one thing cannot be denied when it comes to such philosophical systems—something that, admittedly, is not felt by those who are born philosophers or who can find joy and contentment in abstract thoughts, but which can be felt by those who cling to such a system of thought with warmth of heart, with their whole humanity, and with a deepest need to penetrate the supersensible world. I would like to illustrate what such a person feels using the example of a thinker who, admittedly, met a tragic fate, but who, at the time he spoke the words we are about to discuss, engaged with the great questions of the intellectual solution to the world’s mysteries in a most astute and, at the same time, compelling manner. I am referring to Friedrich Nietzsche. We can completely set aside what became of him later on. What is to be characterized here lies in the early years of his career, when he prepared lectures at the University of Basel that were later published in his posthumous works—lectures on the Greek thinkers under the title Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, that is, before Socrates, where we are particularly interested in the towering thinkers such as Thales, Heraclitus, and Parmenides. They interest us for this reason: because we can see how, out of a thinking full of life—out of the Greek worldview and Greek culture, which were truly rooted in life— and was imbued with immediate life, a body of thought such as that of Parmenides arose—one that strove to ascend into the supersensible worlds, but in such a way that Parmenides, the giant thinker of ancient Greece, rose from the very heart of the ancient, vibrant Greek world to the abstract idea, to the idea of primordial Being and primordial Non-Being. It is not only people who are otherwise immersed in practical life who may feel a slight shiver, something like goosebumps, when someone, in order to ascend to the supersensible worlds, resorts to such strained concepts, to such abstractions as “Being,” “Primordial Being,” and “Primordial Non-Being.” Even those who are otherwise accustomed to engaging philosophically with the questions of existence say to themselves: it makes one’s blood run cold to realize how a person ascends to such thoughts, from which all life seems squeezed out like juice from a lemon—thoughts that are far too sober, dry, and abstract for other people. - And this chapter particularly interested Nietzsche because it shows how a thinker rises directly from life itself to an abstract world of thought. Nietzsche found these thoughts—as Parmenides had conceived them back then—to be so colorless, soulless, and so utterly stripped of what the heart longs for. And yet, anyone who now engages in spiritual science—as it is to be presented here—with a view to gaining insight into the supersensible world will understand when such a person speaks of how one’s blood might run cold at the sight of these parched abstractions, these thoughts taken to the extreme of abstraction, and when such a person shows that even in the most marvelous edifice of thought—such as that of Hegel, for example—there is something that strikes us with sobering clarity, where the feeling overwhelms us: How can you grasp the foundation of this world—which, as we know from everyday life, approaches us so full of life—with the spider’s web of thought you are spinning? Yet it is precisely in such a feeling that lies the seed of what must be present in the human soul if the relationship between human beings and the supersensible worlds is to be established.

[ 12 ] The person—even if he is the greatest philosopher and the greatest thinker—who spins out systems of thought with a certain complacency, who is capable of ascending to abstractions and tells himself: in these abstractions you have the truth about the things of the world—this person ends up, in such thoughts, no matter how gossamer-thin and abstract they may be, paint nothing more than an image, in the face of which one must say to oneself: It is an image—an image that can never, however, exhaust the full richness of what must underlie the world. A thinker who constructs such a worldview in his mind may find a certain satisfaction, a certain comfort, and fulfillment in it—but the person living life to the fullest has every right to say to himself: Such a structure of thought can never exhaust the fullness of life and thus can never exhaust the foundations of life.

[ 13 ] This conceptual framework must be developed in a very special way by anyone who wishes to find the path to the spiritual worlds; it must be strengthened and pursued to its ultimate conclusions. You will find more detailed and specific information in my book How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?. Here, the aim can only be to outline the most essential aspects of the path a person must take if they wish to attain genuine insights into the supersensible world. It must be said: Anyone who engages in mere intellectual constructs can feel that they grow spiritually cold, that they feel as though they have not drawn closer to the world but have distanced themselves from the full vitality of existence, as though they had truly squeezed the very life-juice out of existence as one would from a lemon. But one must also be able to feel something else—how one can once again feel passion and enthusiasm for the crystalline clarity and the marvelous architecture of a conceptual edifice; how one can, in a certain sense, say: What appears to be so abstract is nevertheless the greatest intellectual achievement a person can experience within themselves, and it shows them how intellectual creation reigns throughout the world. - Thus, one must carry enthusiasm, feeling, and sensibility up into the worlds that can seem so empty because of their abstractions; one must be able to be inspired by what appears to us as a light of thought when we rise to meet it. A thinker who merely thinks and cannot feel enthusiasm for the thoughts weaving through the world can, in fact, never penetrate the supersensible world.

[ 14 ] But that is only one aspect of what one must feel when seeking to establish a connection with the supersensible. The other aspect is an experience shared by those who have become spiritual researchers: namely, that one has risen to the level of thought, yet feels as if one has lost solid ground beneath one’s feet, as if standing over an abyss. As long as one finds comfort in one’s thoughts, as long as one feels secure within them, one cannot ascend into the supersensible world. Only when, in the course of following one’s thoughts, one feels something that involves a twofold comparison—as if the ground were being pulled out from under our feet and we were forced to float in the void, or as if we were to see the blue vault of heaven spreading out above us and then realize that the blue vault of heaven is not a blue vault of heaven at all, but rather you yourself—whose vision does not extend that far—surround the universe with a blue vault of heaven, and in truth it extends into infinity, and you must in truth ask: where is a fixed point? Only when one simultaneously feels, along with an inner uncertainty, that which blocks one’s view while at the same time evoking a sense of the infinite—and then imagines this sensation intensified—can one begin to sense something of what must be felt with full intensity by one who conceives thoughts about the interconnections of worlds, but who seeks to penetrate, through those very thoughts, into the living sense of spiritual realities and spiritual beings—and who then experiences something akin to blocking his own path with his thoughts to the realm where spiritual beings dwell and where the spirit is at work.

[ 15 ] What I have told you is not some fantastical construct, nor is it something conjured up from my imagination: it is an experience shared by all those who have sought the path to the supersensible worlds. This can become an experience, as described in the book How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?. What I have characterized as a sensation intensifies in a certain way—and in those who walk the path of knowledge in the true sense of the word, it intensifies to a feeling akin to what people in everyday life know as fear, as a sense of insecurity, and which could be described as not knowing where one stands, not knowing where one is flying, or not knowing where one is. But this feeling must not be allowed to fully develop; it must, as it were, remain in the depths of the soul; only then can we penetrate the supersensible world. This feeling must immediately be overshadowed by what can be compared to the feeling of courage, energy, and the unfolding of the will. A person must become aware of something within themselves that they can cultivate through self-education in slow, patient progress, if they frequently remind themselves: You do not merely do something—or set out to do something—because of an external impulse or because you have received this or that request; rather, you set for yourself the ideal of doing this or that out of your own thoughts, and of not losing sight of that thought or the unwavering will to act upon it. - If we do this more often in life—indeed, if we develop it systematically—it gives us a perception that we cannot receive from any external world or external viewpoint, one that we can draw from the deeper recesses of the soul. If we can develop this feeling at the very moment we rise to pure, senseless thoughts—thoughts not drawn from the external world—where we do not fixate on what our eyes, ears, and so on provide us, if we surrender to this feeling again and again, then something forms within us that must be experienced—but which can be experienced just as a physical or chemical experiment can be experienced. Through the soul’s self-experiment, one can experience a liberation from any perception or insight that can be attained only through the tools of physicality—a liberation from the physical body and a penetration into that world about which we can otherwise only spin webs of thought. And what is present then is truly not what many people know solely from such a state of being “out of oneself”—what they know from an experiment that destroys human consciousness—but rather a liberation from everything that constitutes sensory existence and sensory perception. The human being penetrates, with his own being—which he knows possesses an independent reality distinct from physicality—into the world that must be called supersensible, because it is experienced as such. And if someone says, “You’re just imagining that”—well, of course, one could not give anyone a conception of what is experienced in the supersensible worlds, or of what a human being is as a supersensible being, through anything other than logical possibilities and reasons. But whoever enters the supersensible world knows that, by the path described, they arrive at a reality of a supersensible nature that is just as clear to them in its reality, and of which they know just as surely that it contains nothing fantastical as they know this to be true of the external sensory world.

[ 16 ] What I have described about the supersensible world is only one direction we must take if we wish to establish a relationship with the supersensible worlds. There is something else as well. What I have described is the path through thought—what we call, in the language of spiritual science, meditation: silent, calm meditation, yet imbued with feeling and sensation—the deepening into the soul’s inner thought experiences. That is one direction. The other direction is the one through which a person can experience something that differs from all thought experiences. All thought experiences are such that, when we cherish them, they have something dry, abstract, and impersonal about them—something that causes us to feel a kind of numbing of the blood because it makes us so alienated from immediate life. One must feel this in order to carry such feelings—as they have just been characterized—into the depths of thought, into meditation; and one will become aware that when one ascends through thought, beyond thought, to the spiritual being, one enters the supersensible world. But the question must arise: Can human beings enter into reality, into the actual world, only through the path of thought?

[ 17 ] To answer this question, we must turn to another aspect of humanity’s relationship to the supersensible worlds. Just as human beings wander through the vastness of the worlds, through the spheres of space, along the path just described, so too can they penetrate into their own being. Then, however, they arrive at something that leads them away from thought just as the path described above led them toward it; for both materialistic cognitive science and the one I am about to discuss lead away from thought. Materialistic cognitive science shows that thinking is bound to brain processes, that nowhere in the world is any form of thinking found other than that which is bound to the brain. But when a person turns from thinking back to themselves and gains clarity about themselves, seeing how thoughts and their entire spiritual life bubble up like foam from the depths of the sea of their soul life, then there is an experience to be had in which thought emerges. However, this gives rise to the deep dissatisfaction felt by those who have an understanding of the question of the true meaning of life, if thoughts were to be nothing more than a frothy formation on the surface of the surging sea of the soul’s life; for if they were, then the world would be meaningless. This is an emotional experience for those who have an understanding of the meaning of life. But we shall now describe how, by taking a different path, one arrives at something that is free from abstract thought—something that is rich and full, that leads us back to ourselves, and that is free from thought—something that lacks all that has just been described as the abstract, sober, and dry nature of intellectual knowledge, the science of thought.

[ 18 ] What points us in the other direction is what we call mystical experience. The person who immerses themselves in their own emotional world, who strives for true self-knowledge, and who is able to turn their gaze away from what surrounds us in the world—that person arrives at the same place as the great mystics. When we look to these mystics, we hear from them that they experience within themselves the highest reality—which they conceive of as a divine force that reigns and surges through the world. A divine spark also lives within the human being. This is what, for example, recurs time and again in such mystical explorations as we find in Meister Eckhart, Johannes Tauler, and many others. This is a direct mystical experience. But there is something characteristic that such a mystical experience always points beyond, and this is precisely what its opponents always raise as an argument against the significance of such a mystical experience for humanity. This mystical experience has something individual about it, something entirely personal. And whoever delves into what can be experienced in the depths of the soul—the divine spark that enlightens us about the world and its innermost reasons—and especially the one who experiences this most intensely, will say: It is an inner experience of such depth, such breadth, that human concepts—such as those we might otherwise accept for other matters—are incapable of conveying what is experienced in this way. — The deepest mystics will agree precisely that this experience cannot be expressed in thought, let alone into words; that all mental life is powerless in the face of the depths of the Divine that one can undergo in the depths of one’s own experience when one feels at one with that which, as the Divine, pulses through the world, when one is clear, out of inner conviction, about what weaves through the world. “One can experience it,” the mystics will say, “but one cannot put it into words.” Therefore, it cannot be conveyed to others through conventional concepts; rather, the mystery of the universe can only be experienced personally by each individual.

[ 19 ] One thing stands in one’s way here: namely, what one believes in one’s thoughts to be one’s own. But this is linked to what prevents one from truly accessing the divine content of the world—something you can read about in all the mystics who have described it. This is where the soul encounters inner enemies. Then a person can no longer say: When I feel this or that rising within me, when I feel this or that passion, when I experience this or that, and so on—then that is within my own control. - No! Then a person feels as if they were seized by inner enemies, over whom they cannot initially gain mastery, but over whom they must gain mastery if they wish to break through what separates them from their innermost being and thus from the inner world-being. That is when one begins to feel within oneself—as something that is more than what we know through thought—that which rises up from within us, that which pours out over this self, and one comes to the necessity of seeking, in relation to everything one finds worth knowing, the powers through which to overcome it. Once again, certain feelings must permeate the mystic. For if the mystics were to emphasize only: “You need only penetrate within yourself, and then you will experience God”—then that would again be a kind of self-satisfied withdrawal into oneself, just like the self-satisfied life lived in thoughts and ideas.

[ 20 ] But if one wants to get to the heart of reality, one must experience something that is a very specific kind of feeling, which can be defined as follows. Some of you may have already found this confirmed in your own everyday lives. We are all familiar with pain and suffering. Let us begin with a form of suffering that is easiest to recognize. Everyone knows how excruciating physical pain and suffering can become. But one may also know that, as the pain intensifies more and more, there comes a point where it can transform into a certain state of bliss, even pleasure. This was exploited in places where people—whom one sought to bring closer to the sources of existence—were tortured to the point where the pain became so intense that it turned into its opposite. There are such stages in which, amidst the pain, one experiences something that emerges as a kind of pleasure and bliss. Something similar—though not exactly the same—must be felt by those who plunge into their innermost being, where they overcome with all their might everything that stands in opposition to them. One gets a sense of this when reading the mystics who describe how they strove to fight against all temptations of passion and selfishness. In the process, selfishness and passion grow to immense proportions. This is still a superficial descent into oneself if one does not sense how passion and selfishness grow as our enemies. When one then finds the strength to disperse and shatter these inner states of temptation, one penetrates into the depths of the soul, where the sub-sensory life of the soul begins—a life that also transcends mere sensory existence. But the things described here must not be understood in a trivial sense. It is then easy to say: These are subjective experiences through which one cannot attain true knowledge. — But if they are taken as they are meant here, one knows: When one descends into one’s own inner being and must summon the powerful forces of self-mastery, one arrives at something that applies not merely to one person or another, but which everyone can experience by entering the supersensible world.

[ 21 ] Once people have entered the supersensible world through such a path, they know with absolute certainty that human beings have a connection, a relationship, to a world that lies beyond what the senses, ordinary understanding, and reason can provide, and that human beings, with their entire existence, are rooted in a world that does not come into being and pass away like the sensory world, but is, in contrast to it, an eternal one.

[ 22 ] Today, the focus was on describing humanity’s relationship to the supersensible world. In the next lecture, we will need to discuss how humanity can attain such scientific knowledge regarding the most important matters—all our longings and everything that is close to our hearts in life—as well as death and immortality. And as the lectures progress, it will become clear to us that such paths—such relationships between human beings and the supersensible worlds, as described today—are scientific in exactly the same sense as a physical, chemical, or biological science. For what is usually raised as an objection when the impossibility of such knowledge of the supersensible is alluded to is the claim that: If we examine the faculties that human beings possess for science and for cognition, this examination shows that human cognitive abilities are limited, that human beings cannot penetrate into a supersensible world. — But no serious scholar of the humanities who asserts that the supersensible worlds are knowable in the same sense as the sensory world will claim that what is usually understood by the “faculties of cognition”—when speaking of the inaccessibility of the supersensible world to human beings—could lead into the supersensible world. As for what philosophers, natural scientists, and monists mean by “faculties of cognition” when they say, “Human faculties of cognition must keep their distance from a world that could only lead to fantasy”—even the true spiritual researcher must say of these: These faculties certainly cannot lead into the supersensible world! — And no matter how rigorously one examines, from a philosophical standpoint, what a human being is capable of achieving with the ordinary powers of cognition at their disposal, one will still always have to answer: These powers of cognition are unsuitable for leading into the supersensible world,

[ 23 ] But if you consider, by contrast, the entire course of today’s debate, you will see: nowhere has it been claimed that human beings can penetrate into supersensible worlds using what are called “powers of cognition” in philosophy or the natural sciences. Rather, it has been said that a person must first travel a path from the standpoint where they stand to another standpoint, and that they must ascend from the powers of cognition—of which it is rightly said that they cannot lead into a supersensible world—to others that are then capable of reaching into the supersensible world. Just as it would be incorrect to claim that a blind person can see colors without eyes, so it is correct that a blind person, once operated on and able to use his eyes again, can then also perceive the world of colors. Just as Kantianism is correct in stating that the ordinary cognitive faculties of human beings are insufficient for the knowledge of the supersensible, so it is true that human beings can acquire cognitive faculties through which they are then able to penetrate the worlds that are often believed to be so distant. Spiritual science does not proceed from the use of ordinary cognitive faculties, but from those that one must first acquire. And this is at the same time a process of the human being growing into the supersensible world.

[ 24 ] Human beings can find their way out into the far reaches of the universe and the depths of space—and come into contact with the supersensible worlds—both through deep concentration and meditation, and through what lies deeper than ordinary consciousness, through his own spiritual nature—by, so to speak, piercing through the ordinary layers of soul life—he can enter into what is supersensible or subsensible, which then coincides with what he finds in the external world. For what a person finds in this way reveals itself—and the remaining lectures are intended to serve as proof of this—as intimately connected with the human being. When a person finds the way out through deep thought into the vastness of space and the remoteness of worlds, and takes with them such sensations and feelings as have been described, they do indeed encounter foreign spiritual worlds, but they encounter ones with which they are related and from which they have their origin. And when they find the path through themselves, they enter spiritual worlds that cannot be encompassed by ordinary consciousness, but which exist in reality as their spiritual foundations. There, too, they find themselves. And when he compares what he finds through deepening his inner life with what he finds by expanding his consciousness outward, it is the same thing: the true spiritual essence of the human being, the human being’s true origin. It is the opening onto worlds that are spiritual, and in which, to use the words of an ancient mystic, the human being is reborn.

[ 25 ] Then, if a person opens these worlds to his understanding, he can find the deepest satisfaction there to satisfy the highest longings in his soul—longings that arise from the urge to find the meaning of life, from the urge to answer the question: What is the best part of myself, which must exist in an entirely different sense than what surrounds me as the material world? — But then a person also finds what they need for the strength to work, for a zest for life, indeed for the very possibility of life and for physical well-being. For this follows from such a deep immersion into the world, when we imbue ourselves with forces drawn up from the deepest depths of our soul’s being, forces drawn from the vastness of the worlds, so that we may stand firmly on the ground where we work and recognize a meaning to our existence. And if I may summarize what today’s reflection is intended to convey—what is meant to resonate as a fundamental tone throughout the entire lecture series on the supersensible worlds—I would like to do so with the words:

In the vast distances of the universe
Recognizing human beings,
In the depths of the soul
Experiencing the forces of the universe,
Thus does humanity attain
True knowledge of the universe
Through genuine self-knowledge.