The Rudolf Steiner Archive

5. The Hidden Depths of the Soul's Life

[ 1 ] When an earthquake is felt in any region—that is, when the earth itself begins to shake beneath people’s feet—most people who experience such an event are likely to feel a certain fear and anxiety, a sense of dread. If one investigates the causes of such a shudder, they are likely to be found primarily in the fact that we can say that a person is not merely confronted with the unknown—with something that comes from somewhere without being able to fully explain it, or without having expected it—but this sense of dread stems from something else: from the feeling people have at that very moment, while the event is still unfolding, about how far it might go and what else might rise up from the unknown depths.

[ 2 ] Such a feeling—even if people may not always perceive it this way in everyday life—can often arise within them in response to what lies in the depths of the soul, beyond all conscious existence, all conscious imagination and sensation, and which at times surges up from the hidden depths of our souls with the force of an earthquake. Faced with what surges up there—instincts, desires, but also inexplicable moods and inhibitions of being—and with what often intrudes into our conscious life as destructively as an earthquake, a person will almost always, no matter how much they believe they know themselves, be confronted with the vague expectation: What else might yet surge up from the depths of my soul? — For the person who delves a little deeper into his nature soon realizes that, in fact, the entire life of the imagination that unfolds in consciousness—namely, that which dominates him from the moment of waking until the moment of falling asleep— — is something like the waves rippling on the surface of the sea, which, however, must ultimately trace the power of their upward surge—even the very manner in which they play out their dance—back to depths unknown to ordinary perception. So it is with the human life of the imagination. That alone should give pause to those who, time and again, raise objections—based on what they call “empirical science”—against the descriptions presented here in these lectures from the perspective of spiritual science. If spiritual science is compelled to view human beings as beings that are not as simple as people so often wish to see them, then life itself could serve as external evidence of this complexity of human nature, which people can perceive in their everyday lives.

[ 3 ] Spiritual science must not conceive of the human being solely in terms of what the external eye initially sees, or what external anatomical and physiological science can perceive and dissect in the human being, and what can be mastered through scientific methods; rather, spiritual science must contrast everything that can be established and mastered in this way through external perception and external science that is, the physical body of the human being, with its higher, supersensible aspects. It must be said of these that they can only be perceived through that knowledge which has already been touched upon here in the lecture on “Death and Immortality” and in other sketches, and which will be discussed further in the lectures to follow. Here, spiritual science must, on the basis of its direct observations and drawing upon those research findings that cannot be obtained in the sensory world but are accessible only to what may rightly be called clairvoyant consciousness, set against the outer, visible physical body — let us not take offense at a word that is intended merely to serve as a designation, just like the others — with what may be called the etheric body or life body, as the next supersensible member of the human being.

[ 4 ] And if spiritual science stands firmly on the ground of external science—that is, that within the human physical body there are forces and substances that are also present in the physical environment and are just as active within the physical body as they are in the physical environment— then spiritual science must also emphasize that the intrinsic activity of these physical forces and substances actually only manifests in this physical human body once the human being has passed through the gate of death, whereas throughout the entire lifetime that a human being spends in the physical world, these forces and substances are enveloped within the higher forces of the etheric or life body, which acts, as it were, as a bulwark against the decay of the physical forces and substances—a decay that sets in immediately when, at the moment of death, the etheric body detaches itself from the human physical body. As we shall soon see in today’s reflection, it is by no means a paradox in light of the universal, true experience of life to speak of such a higher body of the human being in contrast to the physical body, for in life, separations are evident everywhere, and the twofold nature of the human being is evident everywhere, insofar as the human being has this physical body, which contains everything that the rest of the physical environment contains, and insofar as this physical body is separated from the etheric body or life body.

[ 5 ] But then this spiritual science must be clear that everything that takes place within our conscious life must be sharply distinguished from all those forces and activities that remain present in the human being even when consciousness has ceased, as in the case of a sleeping person in normal life. For it would be logically absurd to claim that everything—in the way of drives, desires, perceptions, and ideas—that unfolds in the ebb and flow of the soul’s life from the morning onward, when a person wakes up, and continues throughout the day, arises only upon waking and vanishes without a trace every evening upon falling asleep. In what we see before us in a person once sleep has set in, we certainly have the physical body and everything that sustains it in the physical world—that is, the physical body and the etheric or life body—but we have strictly separated from this what we now call the astral body, the actual bearer of the phenomena of consciousness. Within this, however—that which is the bearer of the manifestations of consciousness—we must, if we wish to understand the life of the soul correctly, again distinguish that which is, so to speak, continually within our control, that which can continually be governed by the power of our inner life of thought and our acts of will. We must sharply distinguish this from that which could be said to well up from the underlying depths of our soul life, imparting temperament, coloration, and character to our soul life—over which we have no control, yet which is not dominated by us. Thus, we must distinguish between all that fills our soul life in the broader sense—that which indeed lives within us continuously from our earliest childhood days right through to our oldest days; that which makes us gifted or ungifted, good or evil; that which makes us people who possess an aesthetic sense and a sense of beauty, or who have no sense of beauty—but which is not connected to we can conceive of as being encompassed by our intellectual consciousness, our world of sensation, and our world of will: we must distinguish it from the rest of our conscious inner life. Therefore, when speaking in terms of spiritual science, we first distinguish two aspects of our soul life: an expanded—or, as has become customary in recent times, since it can no longer be denied—subconscious soul life, and that which constitutes our conscious soul life, which already plays a role in what we control through thoughts, impulses of the will, and judgments of taste and other kinds.

[ 6 ] Whatever one may think about other reasons for dividing human beings into these four aspects of their being, one must at least admit that it is necessary for the study of life—because experience supports this—to first distinguish these four aspects of the human being. If one approaches what life presents in a comprehensive and unbiased manner, one finds evidence everywhere for what has just been stated by spiritual science—and which may at first sound like a mere assertion. This becomes particularly evident when one examines the more detailed evidence provided by spiritual science. Above all, one finds that, based on its findings, spiritual science must attribute to the etheric or life body not only those forces that permeate the organism from within in such a way that it transforms from a mere physical structure into the body that is the bearer of our soul life. In this etheric body, we find not only these organizing forces, but—as the findings of spiritual science show—we also find anchored within it everything that we must count as part of our memory, everything that constitutes our recollections. For we are not to seek the bearer of memory within what was previously called the astral body, but rather in the etheric body, which is less closely connected to our soul life, which is more closely fused with the physical body, and to which it is so strongly bound in ordinary life that it remains with the physical body even when, in ordinary life, the human being, together with the “I” and the astral body, steps out of the physical body and sinks into the subconscious as if in sleep. Thus, in the sense of spiritual science, we must seek memory and everything we carry within us—things that are not always truly present in our consciousness but must be drawn up from the hidden depths of our soul life—in an etheric body underlying our physical body. If this is the case, then one would have to assume—if there were any justification for conceiving of the etheric body as the bearer of memory, in a certain sense independent of the physical body—that it would have to demonstrate its independence in ordinary life, for example, the independence of memory from the physical body.

[ 7 ] If the assumptions of spiritual science just described are to be correct, what would this imply regarding how we relate to the external world, and how our “I” perceives the conscious impressions of soul life and the external world? With regard to all of this, as human beings in the physical world, we must first rely on our sense organs—which are external physical organs—and on our intellect, which is bound to the instrument of the brain. Therefore, we can say: Everything that a person has as their worldview—as the sum of what they experience in their everyday consciousness—is bound to the physical body, to the health and illness of this physical body, but above all to healthy, well-developed sense organs and a well-developed brain. — Is it correct to say that what lies within us, as in the hidden depths of the life of the soul, and which can only be brought to the surface through memory, that is, belongs to memory, is not bound to the external organism to the same extent as everyday conscious life, but rather rests more within, beneath the threshold of what is bound to the senses and to the instrument of the brain? Is there anything that justifies speaking of an independence of memory? If so, one could with some justification also say that within the physical body, the human etheric body has an independent existence—an existence that can remain internally undamaged because it is independent of external damage to the physical body. An interesting question we can pose regarding life is: Do the ordinary processes of consciousness—in which we are bound to the health of the brain—run entirely parallel to the processes of memory, or does memory, in a certain sense, stand apart as independent, so that when the physical body can no longer serve as the vehicle for perceptions, memory proves to be independent in and of itself? Let us ask life what answer it offers. This brings us to a remarkable fact that anyone can verify, since it can be found in the literature. All insights of spiritual science are first drawn from clairvoyant consciousness. At first, however, they are merely hypotheses for other people. Yet life itself can be asked whether the findings presented can be substantiated by life itself.

[ 8 ] Let us cite as an example a figure known to all for his tragic fate: Friedrich Nietzsche. After the final catastrophe of his illness had been long in the making, he experienced the rapid onset of madness; he was picked up from Turin by his friend Overbeck—who was a professor in Basel at the time and died a few years ago—and initially brought to Basel under difficult circumstances. Now, Bernoulli’s interesting book tells us the following. I will skip over the individual episodes of the transfer from Turin to Basel and focus only on the fact that particularly struck Overbeck. Nietzsche had no particular interest in what was happening around him, and what, as such, fell within the sphere of his ordinary consciousness, he scarcely directed any attention or volitional impulses toward what was taking place. He also allowed himself to be taken to the hospital without resistance and met an old acquaintance there who was, at the same time, the director of that hospital. When Nietzsche—who no longer had any interest in the external world—heard that name, something stirred within him, and he began—to the great astonishment of his friend Overbeck—to immediately resume a conversation he had had with that very doctor many years earlier. He picked up the conversation exactly where he had left off seven years earlier! So faithful was his memory, even though the instrument of external perception—the brain, the intellect, ordinary consciousness—had been destroyed, so that he passed by indifferently and inattentively what he could have perceived and observed had everything pertaining to everyday consciousness remained faithfully intact. Here we see tangibly how, in contrast to the destroyed organism, that which we must now rightly attribute a certain independence to continues to function. But let us go further. Here, through an experiment that nature itself has so faithfully presented to us, we can recognize how things stand, provided we possess the ability to observe from all angles. When Nietzsche was then transferred to Jena, and Overbeck and others visited him, it also became apparent that one could speak with him about everything he had researched and experienced in earlier years, but never about what was taking place around him in the immediate present—the observation and perception of which is bound to that for which the physical body serves as the instrument. In contrast, what must be called—in spiritual science—the independently functioning etheric body, which is the bearer of memory, had remained intact to a high degree and in an autonomous manner. And one could now add countless examples to this one. Certainly, it is true: anyone who insists on thinking in strictly materialistic terms can say that certain parts of the brain—which are precisely the bearers of memory—simply remained intact. However, anyone who raises such an objection will see that it does not hold up in the face of real experience or an unbiased observation of everyday life. Thus, we see, as it were, the etheric body—or life body—standing behind the physical body, which we recognize through spiritual science as the bearer of memory.

[ 9 ] If we look at human beings from another perspective—that of their inner life—we see that in everyday life people are truly aware of how waves surge up from unknown depths; waves of which they are otherwise not as conscious—when surveying their inner life—as they are of what they control with their intellect, feelings, and impulses of will. Among the things that show us how unknown depths of our soul—insofar as this soul extends beyond our consciousness—work their way up into consciousness is the life of dreams, already alluded to here, which is so important for a comprehensive understanding of the human being. Dreams, in their chaotic nature and in their ebb and flow, which seems entirely lawless, possess a subtle inner, intimate regularity; and they are, as we shall soon see, part of what takes place in the subconscious regions of the soul’s life—a force that, as it were, merely surges upward, touches the upper regions, but cannot be brought under human control. It will never be my practice in these lectures to present anything that is merely contrived, but only—as is also done in the natural sciences—what is drawn from life, experience, or the experiment of the spiritual sciences. The fact that there is a science of dreams, just as there is physics and chemistry, is hardly known to people in wider circles; yet this science of dreams has brought to light countless insights into the things that exist in the hidden depths of our inner life. Let us first recount a very simple dream, which may seem comical to us, but which is characteristic of those who wish to penetrate deeper into the hidden depths of the soul.

[ 10 ] A farmer’s wife once dreamed that she was on her way to town and on her way to church. She dreamed in great detail how she arrived in town, how she entered the church, and how the pastor stood in the pulpit and preached. She could clearly hear the pastor’s sermon. She found it truly wonderful how fervently and deeply the clergyman preached, touching her heart. But what made a particularly deep impression on her was the way the clergyman spread his hands. This gesture of the indefinite—which makes an even deeper impression on many people than the definite—made a very deep impression on the woman. Then something remarkable happened. In the dream, the preacher’s appearance and voice suddenly changed, and finally, after the dream had gone through many intermediate phases, it became clear that nothing remained of the preacher’s beautiful earlier words. He no longer spoke as he had before; instead, his voice had transformed into the crowing of a rooster—indeed, he himself had become a rooster with rooster’s wings. The woman wakes up: out there, outside the window, the rooster is crowing!

[ 11 ] This dream reveals many things to us when we examine it closely. First, it shows us that we cannot rely on our usual concepts of time if we wish to interpret the dream. What our concepts of time express when we look back on our waking lives cannot be considered authoritative for the dream. For it is beyond doubt—as will be very clear to you from your own dream experiences—that the dreamer must conceive of the dream as having stretched out over a long period of time, since she dreamed of walking step by step toward the city, entering the church, the preacher ascending the pulpit, listening to the sermon, and so on. In the physical world, this would take a long time. The rooster certainly did not crow for that long. But she was awakened by the rooster’s crow. What the rooster’s crow triggered in the woman’s inner life complements the unfolding dream sequence, the dream images. She looks back on a world she believes she has lived through. This world is filled with images she has drawn from her ordinary life. But the trigger, the external cause—the rooster’s crow—happened very quickly. If we consider it from an external perspective, we would identify a period of time as the cause of what the woman experienced in her soul, a period that would be very brief in comparison to the time over which the woman conceives of her dream experiences as extending.

[ 12 ] If spiritual science tells us that from the moment a person falls asleep until they wake up, they are not in their physical and etheric bodies, but rather, with their astral body and their “I,” are outside of them in a world that is invisible to the physical eye—a world that is supersensible—then we must concretely imagine that this woman was torn away from that life by the crowing of the rooster. It would be a completely unfounded notion to think that a person, in that world in which they exist from the moment they fall asleep until they wake up, does not have experiences just as they do in the physical world. But these experiences must be of a purely soul-related nature. As the woman wakes up, the crowing of the rooster plays a part in her awakening, and as she wakes, she looks back on what she has experienced. We need not at all regard the images she experiences—everything the dream leads her to believe—as something she actually experienced during sleep; rather, we must understand it this way—and only then can we come to terms with the entire phenomenon of dream life—that the woman is actually incapable of looking into what she experienced up until morning, up until the moment of waking. But when the moment of waking approaches, the clash between her sleep life and her waking life makes it clear to her that she has experienced something—not what she has experienced. And this prompts her to insert into her sleep life images that are now symbolic, allegorical experiences from her waking life. It is as if the woman were to combine something she has often seen in waking life into images, place them there, and thereby, as it were, cover up her sleep experiences. Consequently, what appears to unfold over time is not what actually took place, but rather these mental images—which are pushed in front of the dream life like a curtain—appear to unfold in their own temporal sequence, endowed with the time that the images must possess if they are to be experienced as external physical perceptions. We must therefore say that the images of the dream are, in many respects, more of a concealment, a veiling of what a person experiences in sleep, than a revelation of it. It is important to note that, although the dream world—through the images that a person places before their sleep life—is something that happens, it is not a representation of what happens, but merely points to something experienced during sleep. Evidence of this is that the dreams a person experiences vary greatly depending on their inner life. A person who is tormented by this or that—whether stemming from their daily actions or a guilty conscience—will experience different dream images than someone who, during sleep, can immerse themselves in what their soul, upon entering the supersensible world, can take with it in terms of satisfaction and bliss—whether from something accomplished in a positive sense or from things that give their life meaning. It is the qualities—not the experiences themselves—that indicate that these are phenomena occurring in the hidden depths of the soul’s life. In particular, however, the dream becomes a revealer of the soul’s hidden depths when we observe it manifesting in the following way. Let us consider a dream—one I have already mentioned here in connection with other matters—as a revealer of the hidden depths of the soul’s life. This dream has recurred rhythmically and periodically in a person’s life, triggered by an experience from their youth.

[ 13 ] When he was still a student, the young man had shown a certain talent for drawing; for this reason, just as he was about to leave school, his teacher had given him a particularly difficult drawing to complete. While the student would normally copy several drawings within a certain period of time, he was unable to finish this one in the entire year because he paid such close attention to the details, so that he drew and drew and could not finish it. Thus, the decisive end of the school year approached, and of the work—to which much else should have been added—only a relatively small portion had been completed. One can imagine that the student, knowing he would not finish his work, experienced a certain anxiety or fear. But this anxiety he felt at the time was nothing compared to the states of anxiety that now regularly resurfaced as dream experiences after a very specific number of years had passed! After a number of years during which the dream had not appeared, the person in question dreamed that he was still a student, that his drawing was not getting finished, and that he became anxious about it. The anxiety in the dream grew greater and greater until he awoke. And once the dream had occurred, it might repeat itself after a week. Then the dream would disappear again for years, return, repeat itself after a week, then disappear again, and so on, many times over.

[ 14 ] One can only begin to understand this strange dream experience by examining the rest of this person’s life. As a student, the person in question had a certain talent for drawing, which developed only gradually throughout his entire life, in stages, step by step. If one observed closely, it always became apparent that this person made progress in his ability to draw and was able to do more each time such a dream experience had preceded it and had foreshadowed the increase in his drawing abilities. So one could always say: The dream experience occurred, and afterward this person felt, in a very special way, imbued and filled with greater abilities to express themselves through drawing. — This is an extraordinarily interesting experience that can play a role in a person’s real life. How, then, can spiritual science explain such an experience?

[ 15 ] If we draw upon what has already been said here in the previous lectures—namely, that within the human being lives a supersensible central core of being that is constantly at work transforming inner forces, but also at the transformation of the outer physiognomy, if we take into account that such a central core of being exists in human beings as a supersensible entity and underlies them, then we must say: Throughout a person’s entire life, this central core of being works on the human body, on the entire physical organization, for this is necessary if one wishes to continually develop new abilities that are, so to speak, connected to external skills. — This central core of being transformed the physical organization in such a way that human beings became increasingly skilled and increasingly capable of grasping forms—that is, all those abilities that enable one to perceive something visually and express it through form.

[ 16 ] The central core of a human being’s being works its way into the body. As long as this inner core of being works within the body—as long as its activity pours into the body—it cannot rise into consciousness. For all its powers are poured into the transformation of the body’s organization, which then manifests as abilities—in this case, as drawing. Only when a certain stage is reached, and the human being has been reorganized to such an extent that he can bring this reorganization up into consciousness—that is, when he becomes capable of consciously exercising his newly acquired abilities—only at that very moment, when his central core of being rises into consciousness, can the human being know what is happening within him, what is at work down there in the hidden depths of soul life. But in our case, there is a transition. When a person is still completely unaware that, during periods when he makes no outward progress, his central core of being is working on his drawing abilities, everything remains down in the hidden depths of the soul life. But when the time comes for the central core of the being to rise into consciousness, this becomes apparent in a peculiar dream experience, which takes this form precisely because it is meant to announce that the inner core of the being, through the drawing abilities, has reached a certain conclusion. Thus, this “dream” is always proof that something has been achieved. Up until the point where the dream occurs, the soul forces have been working deep within the body, in hidden depths, to gradually crystallize this ability. But then, before these forces can reveal themselves through consciousness—once they have been sufficiently consolidated and the physical organism is ready for this ability—a transitional phase is created. At first, it does not fully emerge into consciousness, but instead pours into the semi-consciousness of the dream. Through the dream, the hidden aspects of the soul life break into the conscious parts of the soul life. Hence, after the dream, there is always further progress for the human being with regard to this ability, which finds such characteristic symbolic expression in the dream.

[ 17 ] Thus we see, in fact, how the central core of a human being’s being can at one time be at work in the depths of the sensory and supersensory organization of the body; but then, when the human being has, to a certain degree, succeeded in raising it into consciousness, and the inner core of the being has completed its work, how this is then expressed only in a dream experience, and how this activity is transformed into the forces that manifest in conscious life. Thus, we have a correspondence between what is below and what takes place above in conscious life, and we also see why so much cannot rise into conscious life, for that which a person still needs in order to first develop the organs—so that he or she can transform the faculties that must then become the tools for conscious life—cannot rise into consciousness. Thus we can say that throughout the whole of life, we can observe how the central core of the human being works upon the organism. As a person gradually develops during childhood, from the inside out, it is this same inner core of being that works within them—before ego-consciousness emerges—up to that point in time which the person can later recall; it is this same core of being that continues to work within them even later. The human being’s entire being is in a state of constant transformation. What a person experiences in their soul life, they sometimes experience in such a way that they are unaware of it, yet it is creatively active within them; at other times, the creative activity ceases, but instead rises into conscious activity. This connection exists between what we have in the higher regions of consciousness and what lies within us in the subconscious, in the hidden depths of our soul life.

[ 18 ] These hidden depths of the soul often speak in such a way that they truly use a completely different language and reveal a completely different wisdom than anything a person could even dream of in their conscious mind. We can infer that human consciousness must not be equated with what we call the “reason of things”—which human consciousness, as it were, mirrors—from the fact that rational activity, the workings of reason, confronts us even where we cannot assume an illumination by reason in the same sense as is the case with human beings. If we compare humans with animals in this regard, we find that humans do not have a rational activity that precedes that of animals, but rather a different illumination of this rational activity through consciousness. When we observe the beaver or the wasp building their nests, we see in what the animals accomplish—and in doing so we can survey the entire scope of animal creativity—that reason is at work there, and that it is, in essence, the same reason that human beings apply when they illuminate, from within their consciousness, a fragment of this rational activity in the world. Human beings can shed light on only a small part of the world’s rational activity from within their consciousness, but a far more comprehensive rational activity pervades our subconscious inner life. There, reason not only carries out the subconscious inferences and conceptualizations that even a natural scientist like Helmholtz has pointed out, but—without human intervention—artful, wise acts are performed by reason.

[ 19 ] I would like to draw attention here to a chapter I have already alluded to, which I would like to call “On the Philosopher and the Human Soul,” whereby I am thinking in particular of those philosophers of the nineteenth century who were predominantly pessimistic. The philosopher is primarily concerned with what we call reason—conscious intellectual activity—and he admits nothing other than what he can examine through intellectual activity. If we consider philosophers such as Schopenhauer, the Mainlanders, and Eduard von Hartmann, we find that they proceed from the idea that, in contrast to what human beings know—namely, their ability to survey the world through the manifest life of the soul—evils, pains, and sufferings far outweigh joys and happiness. And Eduard von Hartmann conducted an interesting thought experiment in which he demonstrated, in a truly ingenious way, how pain and suffering predominate in the world. He summarized in a subtrahend everything that human beings must experience as suffering and pain, and set as the minuend everything that human beings can experience as joy and happiness. When he subtracts suffering and pain from happiness and joy, pain and suffering outweigh the rest in his calculation. Thus, based on this intellectual exercise, the philosopher naturally asserts—with a certain degree of justification—that if pain and suffering predominate in the world, life can really only be viewed pessimistically. — The intellect thus performs this mental calculation within the philosopher and, based on conscious experience, reaches the conclusion that the world must, to a certain extent, be regarded as a bad one.

[ 20 ] Now, in my Philosophy of Freedom, I pointed out that this calculation of the intellect, this “subtraction,” is not applicable at all. For who performs it—even if it is not the philosopher, but rather the person living their life? It is always the manifest, conscious life of the soul. But, strangely enough, the conscious, manifest life of the soul does not determine the value of existence in terms of life and pleasure. For life itself shows us this once again. No matter how much a person engages in such a calculation, he does not conclude from it that life has no value. From this, one must again realize—I have said before that Eduard von Hartmann’s calculation is insightful and correct—that when a person performs this calculation, he cannot at all draw a conclusion from it in his conscious life. Robert Hamerling had already expressed the idea in his Atomistik des Willens that something must be wrong with this calculation, for in every living being—and also in human beings—even when pain predominates, there is still a pleasure in existence, not a pleasure in the destruction of existence. Human beings therefore do not draw the conclusion that life does indeed have value from the subtraction example, but from something else. Now, in my Philosophy of Freedom, I have demonstrated that the subtraction example is not applicable, because the inner life of the human soul, in its depths, performs an entirely different mathematical calculation. Not a subtraction example: that is what the conscious mind would perform. The subconscious life of the soul performs a division problem: it divides the amount of pleasure by the amount of suffering and pain. Now you all know that if one subtracts—assuming the amount of pain were equal to eight, and the amount of pleasure were also equal to eight—the result, that is, the value of existence in this case, would be “zero.” But if one does not subtract but instead divides, the calculation would be: eight divided by eight equals one. One still gets one as the result, not zero. And so, no matter how large the denominator may be—as long as it is not “infinite”—the result is still a joy of existence. Human beings perform this division in the hidden depths of their souls, and what then rises to the surface and becomes conscious is what they perceive in their conscious, outwardly manifest spiritual life as the value of existence, as the value of joy. I demonstrated in that passage that the peculiar phenomenon of a human being—who, even when facing overwhelming pain, retains a joy of existence, a delight, and a longing for the world, provided they otherwise enjoy a healthy constitution—can only be understood by the fact that, in the depths of their soul, they carry out the very process that we can then scientifically clarify as an example of division.

[ 21 ] Thus we see how the soul, in its depths, is a calculating entity, and how life, in its manifest aspects, shows that human beings possess a governing reason in their subconscious. Just as in the beaver, for example, when it builds its dam, reason reigns—a reason that does not extend at all into the animal’s consciousness, of which it cannot consciously account—or as is the case with the wasp, so too does reason reign in the depths of the human soul and surge upward into consciousness—which is a much smaller sphere of existence than that which exists within the vast horizon of soul life—like the force in the sea that drives the waves upward. There we become aware of how, in the grand scheme of things, a human being must be seen as floating on the sea of soul and conscious life, and how only a part of his soul life is actually illuminated by consciousness—that part which, with its higher consciousness, floats within the subconscious.

[ 22 ] We can also see in everyday life how people are repeatedly reminded of what reigns deep within them, and how this makes life different for one person or another in the face of external events. In the depths of our souls, without our being aware of them, there may be forces at work that we experienced a long, long time ago—things we have forgotten in our outer consciousness, yet which continue to exert their influence. To the spiritual researcher, these reveal themselves as enduring within the central essence of the human being and as active, even if they do not manifest themselves in accordance with the patterns of conscious thought. Thus, the following situation can arise. There may be something deep within a person’s soul that they experienced as a child and that deeply affected them. We know that as a child, a person can be particularly receptive to perceiving injustice in their surroundings. Let us now suppose that, in their seventh or eighth year, the child experienced an unjust judgment from their parents or their environment after having done something. Later in life, the conscious life of the soul may then overlay this experience like a surface. It may be forgotten by the conscious mind, but it remains active in the unconscious depths of the soul. Let us suppose that such a child grows up and, for example, experiences another injustice at school at the age of sixteen or seventeen. Another child, who did not have that first experience, may grow up and be exposed to an injustice of the same kind. They come home, complain that they have experienced this injustice, they cry, perhaps even vent their anger at the teachers, but nothing else happens; the matter passes as if it had never happened and sinks into the subconscious depths of the soul. The other child, however, who grew up having experienced an injustice in the seventh or eighth year—an injustice that they have forgotten in their outer consciousness—may experience exactly the same thing. But now the incident does not pass unnoticed; instead, it leads to a student suicide in this child. What is the reason? The reason lies not in what may have played out in the conscious life of both children—which was perhaps exactly the same—but in what rises from the hidden depths of the subconscious into the manifest life of the soul.

[ 23 ] In countless cases, we can perceive how our subconscious inner life influences our conscious mind in this way. Let us consider the following scenario, which we encounter time and time again, but which, unfortunately, is not given proper attention. There are people who, throughout their later lives, exhibit something of a tendency that one might call longing. It surges up within them. And when you ask them what they long for, they say: that is precisely the monstrous part—that they do not know what they long for. And all the reasons for comfort and the like that one can muster—things that might otherwise comfort a person—cannot comfort them; the longing remains, no matter what one tries. If one then looks back into the early lives of such people using the same methods applied in the natural sciences—that is, observational methods—one notices that very specific early experiences have caused this longing. One will then find—and anyone who makes observations in such areas can verify this—that in their early youth, these people’s attention and interest were always directed toward something very specific that was not actually connected to the deepest essence of their soul; they were directed into a sphere of soul activity, and their attention was captivated by something the soul did not yearn for. Consequently, everything they would have liked to attain in their souls remained denied to them. Their attention was drawn toward something entirely different from what it was directed at; it literally shifts course. Hence, the following becomes apparent later on. Because attention and interest were not satisfied earlier, because the person always had that urge for which nothing was offered, what were once many successive experiences have now been transformed into a tendency, an impulse, something that acts like a passion or an instinct, which manifests itself in a yearning desire, in an indefinite longing for something. In the past, it would have been possible to satisfy this urge; now it is no longer possible. Why? Because in the flow of the soul’s life, only those events took place to which attention was directed—and toward which the soul did not feel drawn. As a result, certain concepts have become so firmly established that the person has no understanding of what was once appropriate for him. In the past, no understanding was shown toward what reigns and weaves in the depths of the soul; now the person has grown out of that, and it is no longer possible to intervene. What remains is that for which the person may not have been equipped at all.

[ 24 ] Thus we see how, alongside a person’s conscious life, a subconscious current flows through the soul, and we observe this in countless instances in everyday life. But other phenomena show how the conscious life of the soul, in turn, plunges down into the subconscious, and how human beings can nevertheless intervene in the subconscious depths of the soul’s life. This brings us to the chapter of spiritual science that shows us how the life of the soul extends down to the etheric body—which, however, works on the physical body—where the human being, as it were, descends into his own depths. But what does he find there? He finds that which leads his own life beyond the narrow circle of the human being, that which connects him to the entire universe; for we are connected to the entire universe through both the physical body and the etheric body. When the life of the soul pours into the etheric body, we can project our being out into the vastness of the worlds; then what we might call a first glimpse of humanity’s fusion with the entire world comes into being—that which is no longer the human being itself, but rather the world itself. Then we penetrate into the human life of imagination. And when the human being descends even further, he expands his inner being even more and transcends what otherwise confines him to the ordinary conditions of time and space, experiencing how his physical body and etheric body are encompassed by the entire universe and dependent upon it. Thus, what lies outside the human being illuminates his consciousness as he descends into the physical body. Just as we have seen how the hidden life of the soul can shine up into human consciousness, so too must we, on the other hand, descend with our consciousness into the hidden depths of the soul’s life. We reach these depths when we first descend through the imagination—provided it is true, real imagination, as Goethe, for example, understands it, and not mere fantasy. And if we descend even further, we arrive at what we call clairvoyant powers, which are not limited to what human beings otherwise have at their disposal in terms of time and space, but rather lead us to realms that are otherwise invisible.

[ 25 ] As we descend into the hidden depths of our inner life, we enter the realm of the imagination and, further on, the realm of clairvoyance and the region of the hidden aspects of existence. The points of passage, however, are the hidden “depths of our own inner life.” Only by penetrating these do we reach the hidden depths of existence—which are spiritual and supersensory, no longer perceptible to ordinary consciousness, and which underlie the things of the perceptible world. Through the imagination—when a person does not engage in fantasy but, out of a deepened life, out of a living in harmony with things, creates things, as it were, in such a way that the comprehensive image takes the place of external perception—the person feels very clearly— —and the true artist will always uphold this—how they grow together with things; how, although they may not describe what they express through the imagination as the essence of things, the imagination is the path through which one can penetrate into that which is deeper than what the intellect and external science can grasp. That is why a philosopher—and he has done something ingenious in doing so—Frohschammer, has described what underlies the world, what is creative, in a one-sided way as the “creative imagination” within things. So that when a person descends from their ordinary conscious soul life into subconscious regions—and who would not be willing to admit that life in the imagination belongs to the subconscious regions of the soul life— according to these philosophical discussions, would become more closely attuned to the essence of things—which, as imagination, is self-creative within them—than through mere reason. Although this view is highly one-sided, one can nevertheless say of this idea of imagination as a creative world force that it is more in harmony with what else mysteriously comes to light in the world than a mere intellectual view. When a person, through what they can create with the intellect, moves into the world of a thousand possibilities—the world of imagination—as opposed to the mere hundred possibilities of the intellect, he feels that, while he is indeed departing from what must govern everyday life, he is nevertheless entering the world of what presents itself in the depths of the soul as all-encompassing possibility—in contrast to which what is experienced on the surface appears to be only a small fragment. Or do not millions of possibilities lie at the very foundation of existence, as opposed to the mere thousand realities that spread across the surface of existence and that we perceive? One need only look at what is produced in marine life as fish larvae—what is brought forth as an infinitely diverse potential—and how this contrasts with the manifestations of life that subsequently emerge from it, and one will see just how many potential forms of life are possible. And how many of these embryos become reality? Here it becomes clear just how much richer life is in its depths compared to what can then be seen on the surface. It is no different when a person descends from what their intellect can grasp into the realm of the imagination. And just as when we descend from the realm of external reality into the realm of infinite possibilities, so it is when we descend from the world of the intellect into the magical realm of the imagination.

[ 26 ] But it is one-sided to draw a parallel between the creative power of the world and the imagination, because although human beings descend through the imagination, they do not go far enough to enter the reality of the supersensible world from these lower realms. They can do so only when they develop the clairvoyant powers that we discover when we descend—consciously—from the upper realms of soul life into the hidden depths of the soul, that is, into the forces that otherwise surge upward only unconsciously. This, too, has already been hinted at here: how a person can consciously delve down into subconscious regions. If a person wishes to descend in this way, they must, for this purpose, make their own soul into an instrument, a tool, so that it becomes just as much an artificial instrument for perceiving the world in the spirit as the instruments and the like that chemists and physicists use in their laboratories for external objects. The soul must become an instrument—something it is not in everyday life. But then Goethe’s saying rings true:

Mysterious in Broad Daylight
Nature cannot be stripped of its veil,
And what it chooses not to reveal to your mind,
You cannot force from it with levers and screws.

[ 27 ] One cannot penetrate the spirit with such instruments and through such experiments, which are based on levers and screws—that is, on external factors in general. But if one illuminates with consciousness that which otherwise reigns in the hidden depths of the soul, so that what is otherwise shrouded in darkness emerges into the light, then one can penetrate those depths of the spirit in which the human soul, as something eternal and infinite, lives together with the creative beings who are just as infinite as the soul itself. And it is only by undergoing intimate experiences within itself that the soul can make itself into such an instrument.

[ 28 ] It has already been pointed out here—and is described in detail in the book How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?—how a person can achieve, through meditation and concentration, what consciously leads the soul down into the hidden depths of the soul’s life. When a person thereby becomes able, through a strong act of will, to exclude what the senses perceive—when they can suppress what they would otherwise recall in life—such as troubles, worries, agitations, and so on, that is, whatever the agitated mind would otherwise present to them—then they can remain within themselves with an empty soul life. All memories of external perception are erased, just as they are during sleep. But in sleep, the forces at work in the hidden depths of the soul are not strong enough to penetrate consciousness—or, to put it better, the soul is not yet strong enough to consciously illuminate those hidden depths. A person can achieve this only when they direct their will toward the subconscious life—for example, by devoting themselves to a specific idea or a specific complex of ideas, let us say, to what the subconscious otherwise does. This must be completely immersed in the will. The will must be the determining factor in what we think, and nothing else is decisive except that into which a person places themselves through the will. In meditation, a person conjures up an image through their will. If, over a long period of time, they think of, contemplate, and recall nothing other than what they have imagined for themselves—if they are capable of becoming one with it through their will, and the will brings these thoughts into the horizon of consciousness, and if they are capable of firmly grasping these images in the mind’s eye and uniting all the soul’s powers—which are otherwise scattered—into a single focus of attention, if they place the will at the center and have the ability not to allow such an image to influence them suggestively, that is, if he always remains master of himself and is not under the compulsion of such an image, but can extinguish it again and again whenever he wishes—in short, if he brings his soul to this point and thereby achieves such a strong inner _ development of the will—then he has taken the first step. But it is not the ideas of the external world that have the strongest effect, but rather those ideas that we describe as symbolic or allegorical. Take, for example, the concept that a person has of “light” or “wisdom” reigning in the soul; while he will certainly be able to achieve a great deal by bringing it into his consciousness through his will, he will not get very far. It will be different, however, if a person tells themselves that wisdom is represented by the symbol of light, or love by the symbol of warmth—that is, if they choose symbolic concepts that live directly within the soul itself, in short, if they renounce concepts borrowed from the external world and instead take into account concepts they have created themselves—concepts that are not even unambiguous but rather open to multiple interpretations—and devote themselves to these. Then, of course, if one thinks materialistically, one might say that such a person is a fantasist in the making, for these ideas mean nothing. But they need not mean anything; rather, they are meant only to be educators for the soul, so that the soul can plunge into the hidden depths. When a person, through strict discipline, transforms his soul from what it is in everyday life—where external forces, whether from the outside or arising from the hidden life of the soul, bring forth images—into a state where everything is subject to the conscious will, and where he allows his entire life of imagination to unfold internally through powerful forces, then they live in true meditation, in true concentration; then, through such exercises, their soul becomes something else. Anyone who undergoes this process may notice that their soul descends into other realms. When we describe what such a practitioner, such a meditator, can experience, it will immediately become clear that they are reaching the true, inner, central essence—the supersensory, inner central essence of the human being. The following experience may arise.

[ 29 ] A person can reach a certain point where they realize: the ideas they are developing are having an effect on them, transforming something within them. They cease to merely be aware of thoughts or of a soul life they have had up to that point; instead, they perceive something that seeks to extend from the soul life into the vastness of the worlds and that acts upon them in a formative way from the expanses of space. How at one with space a person feels at that moment—yet always under the full control of consciousness. Now, in addition to this experience—which is extraordinarily significant and must never be overlooked if one is to experimentally experience the reality of the outer supersensible world—something else comes into play. The person becomes aware: Something is happening within you, but you cannot possibly imagine what is going on inside you in the same way you do in ordinary life; you cannot grasp what is going on inside you with the sharp contours of thought; you have an experience within you that is rich and multifaceted, but you cannot bring it into your consciousness. - It is as if a person were to encounter resistance when trying to bring this into ordinary consciousness. They must become aware that there is an expanded consciousness behind them, but they feel a resistance, as if they could not use the ordinary instrument of their body. There one becomes aware of how, inwardly, one is something other than what one consciously knows. One becomes aware that one is working these forces into the etheric body, but that the physical body lies there like a heavy block, refusing to yield. That is the first experience. And the subsequent experience, as we repeat the exercises over and over again, is this: the physical body begins to yield, so that we are able to translate what we experience into the concepts of ordinary life—something that at first could not be translated, but could only be experienced in the deeper, hidden life of the soul.

[ 30 ] Everything one experiences in the spiritual worlds and everything communicated in spiritual science is clothed in the ideas and logical concepts of ordinary life. But what we encounter there is not arrived at through logical conclusions, nor through any external assessment of things; rather, it is gained through supersensible experience, through the illumination of the hidden depths of the human being with one’s consciousness. And only then, after it has been experienced in the supersensible realm, is it brought down into ordinary consciousness, in that the one who has thus made his own soul an instrument for perceiving the supersensible has evoked within his soul that which now also transforms his organism right down into the physical and etheric bodily forces, so that it can be clothed in ordinary concepts and communicated to the outer world. Spiritual science is communicated “logically.”

[ 31 ] When we consider the subconscious forces of the soul, we can say: The researcher of the soul sees what is happening there. — As in the example mentioned earlier, when we said that a dream experience recurs, the researcher sees how the soul’s essential core first works within the human being. When the artistic abilities then emerge, the result of this work becomes apparent in the person’s consciousness. So we first see a process at work in the subconscious, then a transformation and the emergence into consciousness of what is at work in the depths. When consciously delving downward, a person first lives in meditation and concentration within their consciousness. There, the power of the will—which is directed toward meditation and concentration—brings about the transformation of the etheric and physical bodies. It is we ourselves who then bring into our everyday consciousness what we experience supersensually. It is therefore spiritually and experientially possible to bring what we observe in life into direct perception—but only when a person descends into the hidden depths of their soul.

[ 32 ] What I have described here as artificial training—and as the only correct form of training for people today who wish to develop clairvoyant powers through training—also occurs naturally for those who are predisposed to what might be called working from the core of their soul. A person can also, by virtue of a natural predisposition, direct certain powers down into the hidden depths of the soul. Then a kind of natural clairvoyance arises. Such clairvoyance, just like the self-conscious form described above, can lead to what has been indicated. When a person penetrates in this way into the depths of their soul and becomes aware of how what they have worked into their etheric body through meditation and concentration is affecting their physical constitution, they no longer remain confined to the conditions of space and time in which they otherwise find themselves when they remain solely within external perception, but rather they penetrate space and time and all that else exists in the sensory world, and also reach the things that, as spiritual realities, underlie sensory phenomena. When we see a person with a trained clairvoyant consciousness penetrating to the essence of things, this can also occur, to a certain extent, through natural predisposition. In the lecture on “The Meaning of Prophecy,” the example of Nostradamus was used to demonstrate how such a development of clairvoyant powers took place through natural predisposition. How this plays out in life, and how everything related to expanded consciousness—that is, the workings of the soul’s powers that lie beyond the ordinary limits of conscious soul life—functions in general, can be gleaned from a book to which I would like to refer here. It beautifully illustrates how the workings of the hidden soul and spiritual forces appear to external science, as well as the connection between these spiritual forces—attained without special training—and what is described in my book regarding the relationship of the human being to the higher worlds. You will find this described in the book The Mystery of Man in the Light of Psychic Research. An Introduction to Occultism by Ludwig Deinhard, which describes the two methods of supersensory research: both the method that adheres to external science and the method that relies on what can be achieved through genuine training—through meditation, concentration, and so on—to penetrate the supersensory worlds. But anyone who wishes to delve more deeply into what the soul experiences should turn to what is described in my book How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?

[ 33 ] Thus we see how the soul manifests everywhere that strange, earthquake-like surging of the forces that reign down there in the depths. On the other hand, however, it becomes clear how spiritual science is called upon to point out how human beings can also penetrate, experimentally—though only through the experiment they must carry out within their own soul life—into their own soul life and into the hidden depths of existence. But it is only by passing through the hidden depths of the soul and first coming to understand ourselves there that we also penetrate the hidden depths, the spiritual foundations, and the realm of the eternal and immortal in the outer world. Spiritual science passes through the hidden depths of the soul’s life to the hidden depths of the external world, of the cosmic, of the universe. This is the essence of the process and the methods of spiritual science.

[ 34 ] If we look at things this way, then Goethe’s words—spoken in response to Haller’s misunderstood view of nature—prove true for us in a very special sense. When Haller said: “No created spirit penetrates into the innermost depths of nature; blessed is he to whom she shows only her outer shell!”—Goethe, as a man whose natural disposition allowed him to penetrate to the very limits of clairvoyance, was aware that there is a connection between human conscious life and the descent into the hidden depths of the soul’s life, and from there into the hidden depths of the cosmos, knowing this through his own life, through his life with the external world, with nature itself—he said this in response to Haller’s words, which sought to acknowledge only knowledge of the external world and were directed toward the recognition of the surface:

“Into the heart of nature—
Oh, you philistine! —
“No creative spirit penetrates.”
As for me and my brothers and sisters
May you never
Even recall such words!
We think: place by place
We are within.
“Blessed is he to whom she
Shows only the outer shell!”
I’ve heard that repeated for sixty years;
I curse it, but secretly;
Tell me a thousand thousand times:
She gives everything abundantly and gladly;
Nature has neither core
Nor shell,
She is everything at once;
Examine yourself above all else,
Whether you are core or shell!

[ 35 ] Truly, we can say that much in the world is mysterious, and that what rises into a person’s consciousness is little more than the outer shell of their soul life. But we see that, if we only employ the right methods, human beings can indeed penetrate through the shell of life to the core of their soul; and that when they penetrate into the depths of their soul, they simultaneously have the prospect of penetrating into the life of the universe. That is why we can truly say with Goethe:

When observing nature
Always regard the one as the whole!
Nothing is inside, nothing is outside:
For what is inside is also outside.

[ 36 ] But first, a person must discover this hidden inner world for themselves! Thus, by pointing in its own way to the hidden depths of the soul’s life, spiritual science is able to stir up feelings in people that are quite different from those aroused by merely external science. It may well admit: When we look out into the world, we see mystery upon mystery. And these mysteries may often send a shiver down our spines when we find our own inner world so enigmatic, and when we perceive how the forces of this inner world work their way up into what we must experience directly, or when a person stands with anxious anticipation before what the unknown may yet become and bring. We see that, in relation to the outer world, human beings face mystery upon mystery. But when we properly compare outer life with inner life, we sense that hidden forces are at work down there in our own inner soul life—forces that do not penetrate the narrow circle of ordinary consciousness but, just as forces surge to the surface during an earthquake, push their way up into overt consciousness as subterranean soul forces. But when we see, on the one hand, how we can hopefully embrace the certainty that human beings can descend into the depths of their own souls and solve mystery after mystery there, we also gain hope for what spiritual science further promises: that not only can the hidden mysteries of soul life be revealed to us, but that as we pass through our soul life and open the gateway to the spiritual world, mystery upon mystery can be solved for the human soul, and new perspectives can open up through the unveiling of the great world beyond. - Thus, when a person has the courage to grasp themselves as a mystery, and when they strive to elevate the soul itself as an instrument of perception, they advance toward the hope and confidence that even in the spiritual realm of the world, the great mysteries will increasingly be solved to their satisfaction and for their sense of security in life.