The Rudolf Steiner Archive

4. The Paths of Supernatural Knowledge

[ 1 ] Even in the introductory lectures to this year’s winter lecture series, frequent reference was made to the sources of human supersensible knowledge—the very knowledge that this entire lecture series is intended to address, along with its relationship to the world in which we live. It was pointed out how these sources of supersensible knowledge lie within the human soul—within every human soul—as dormant powers and abilities that can be awakened through appropriate means in intimate inner experience, so that a person may become capable of looking into the spiritual worlds. This evening, we will outline the development of these latent capacities within the soul. Further elaboration on the topics presented today will follow in the upcoming lectures.

[ 2 ] When it comes to first making it understandable how the supersensible powers of cognition that lie dormant in the soul can be brought to the fore, one can always point to a phenomenon, a fact, that occurs in every human being over the course of twenty-four hours: the alternation between sleep and wakefulness. People usually overlook precisely those mysteries of life that occur daily as something familiar, while the rare—and, because of its rarity, oppressive—tends in most cases to easily evoke a longing to be solved as a riddle. Such oppressive mysteries of life will be discussed here in the next lecture. Today, however, we shall begin with a mystery that eludes human understanding—not because of its inherent mystery, but simply because we are so accustomed to the phenomenon in question: namely, the alternation between sleep and wakefulness.

[ 3 ] In order to sustain our lives, we must transition every day from the state of consciousness to that of unconsciousness. What, then, happens—to put it simply—when a person enters the unconscious state of sleep? The receptivity of the senses ceases, the mobility of the body’s limbs ceases, and thinking—which is, after all, bound to the activity of the brain insofar as it engages with the external world—ceases. As we fall asleep, we all feel the activities and the fullness of consciousness that fill us throughout the day sinking away. It would be a logical impossibility for anyone making an unbiased judgment to think that what surges up and down in our soul from morning to evening in the conscious state—our ideas, feelings, sensations, emotions, passions, indeed, as our ideals and ideas—would, in its very essence, pass into “nothingness” every time we fall asleep and re-emerge the next morning. Only a logical bias can deny that the core of a person’s spiritual and psychological being also exists while the person is in the unconsciousness of sleep.

[ 4 ] If we assume hypothetically for the moment—the following lectures are intended to justify this assumption—that while a person is in the unconscious state of sleep, their true spiritual-soul core has, so to speak, withdrawn from the physical body and the forces that animate it, and that they then live in a spiritual world, it is not far-fetched, as an initial assumption or conjecture, to suggest that the reason lies within the human being: when their spiritual-soul core is “withdrawn” from their body, they cannot perceive their surroundings in the same way as they do when, in the physical world, they make use of their eyes, their other sense organs, and the instrument of the brain. It is, I say, not far-fetched to think that a person’s spiritual and soul forces are initially dependent on making use of the “ordinary life of the senses and the brain” in order to have a world around them, and that when a person, as in sleep, deprives himself of the ability to perceive through these instruments, they are too limited, too weak to truly see, truly feel, and truly think what they could then perceive.

[ 5 ] Such an assumption could prove correct only if it were truly possible to bring the forces—which are presumed to be weak—out of their hidden state; for example, if one were able to condense and concentrate the spiritual forces that, in ordinary, normal life, are, so to speak, “thin,” to condense and concentrate them within oneself, so that what a person experiences in sleep—when they cease to use their senses or their brain—would not necessarily occur, but rather that there could also be a state similar to sleep, and yet, in a certain respect, completely opposite to it. This state would be similar to sleep in that a person would not be compelled—as when falling asleep—but would bring about the withdrawal from the senses or the brain at will, through their inner forces; so that he could bring about a state in which, although he is fully awake, he does not see his surroundings through his eyes, nor does he perceive anything through his other senses, but rather brings his eyes and other senses to a complete standstill. In other words, that he can completely suppress all sensory activity through his will, and that he can likewise suppress ordinary thinking—that thinking which, in everyday life, operates through representations of the external physical-sensory world. Furthermore, if a person could suppress at will what otherwise leads to perception, he would be able, in the core of his spiritual-soul being, not to fall into the unconsciousness of sleep, but to concentrate forces that are otherwise weak and faint, so that he can function properly even without his body, outside of his body.

[ 6 ] The question arises as to whether what has just been stated can in any way be realized. Of course, this can only be answered by the facts that a person brings about within themselves—namely, simply by the fact that they come to be in a position to apply certain methods to their soul through which what has just been described comes to pass. By applying such means to the soul, one arrives at supersensible knowledge. The path to supersensible knowledge is not one that leads through external means—one that, for example, requires all sorts of machinations existing merely in the external world—but rather it is an intimate path of the soul, and everything that must be undertaken for it takes place in the depths of the soul life itself.

[ 7 ] Now, if we wish to ascend into the worlds that are meant to explain to us the outer world in which we live—that is, if we wish to ascend into the supersensible worlds—there are three stages we must pass through. A more detailed description of these three stages can be found in the book *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?*. Here, however, they will be merely outlined in a few brief strokes. When it comes to the names of these three stages, I ask you not to take offense at the words. In part, these words are used in everyday language today to mean something entirely different from what is intended here; and in part, these words do not resonate well with contemporary ways of thinking, because they are applied to all sorts of things that are perceived imprecisely or unclearly, or even to those that are rightly rejected. This sometimes evokes a certain emotional reaction when one hears these words. Yet it is easy to see that, to a certain extent, this must be the case for the matters to be discussed here, for our language is, after all, intended for the external world. Therefore, the words used to designate these concepts must be borrowed from the external world and can thus never fit exactly what lies beyond the external sensory world for which language was created.

[ 8 ] The first stage of higher, supersensible knowledge is what is called “imagination,” or imaginative knowledge. To avoid the misunderstanding I just mentioned, I ask you to understand “imagination” for today only in the sense I am about to describe. The second stage of supersensible knowledge is inspiration, and the third stage is what one might call true intuition—provided the word is used as we will characterize it later, and not as it is often used imprecisely in everyday life. In relation to these three stages of supersensible cognition, the external sensory and intellectual cognition that we apply in everyday life and also in the science of the external world serves as a kind of preliminary stage, so that, taken as a whole and including the stages of supersensible cognition, one can speak of four stages of human cognition.

[ 9 ] Now there are many methods, and many methods must indeed be employed when it comes to rising from ordinary sensory and intellectual knowledge to the first stage of supersensory knowledge, imagination, and since there is not enough time for a more detailed explanation, I want to emphasize very concretely how the soul must, so to speak, use one of these methods—others are described in *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?*—to awaken the supersensory faculties of knowledge that lie dormant within it. One of these methods is what is known as meditation.

[ 10 ] When we ask ourselves the question: What is this meditation in the spiritual-scientific sense? — we must say: This meditation is the surrender to an idea, a thought-feeling, or a volitional content in such an intense manner and in such a way as does not occur in ordinary life, but which is suited to concentrating and condensing forces that are otherwise, so to speak, diluted in our soul life. In doing so, it is best—though the opposite is also possible—not to use for such an insight into the soul the ideas one otherwise gains in ordinary life or in ordinary science. These ideas can certainly be used, but they are not the most suitable. The most suitable ideas for meditation are allegorical, symbolic ideas. I would like to develop one such symbolic image here, which has already been mentioned in other contexts for some of the listeners. At first, it may seem grotesque or paradoxical that someone should be expected to allow what is now being discussed to take effect in their soul, but we will explain later why this should happen. Let’s suppose someone imagines that they have two glasses in front of them, one empty and one partially filled with water. Now let them pour the water from the filled glass into the empty one and imagine that, by pouring the water from the filled glass into the empty one, the filled glass would not—as happens in the external world—become emptier and emptier, but rather fuller and fuller. At first glance, this may seem like a paradoxical idea, but this image is meant to be a symbol, and the fact that it is a symbol should remain vivid in the consciousness of the spiritual seeker. It is meant, as it were, to symbolically characterize the nature and essence of human love for our soul. With human love—and with everything that falls under the concept of love in general—it is certainly true that this source of love is so infinitely deep and so infinitely rich that, when we are confronted with the reality of love in the world, we must always humbly admit: This mystery of love, in its true essence, is most certainly unfathomable to every soul. And the more we have this sense of unfathomability, the better it is for the substance and intensity of our lives. But there is one characteristic of true love that we can know with complete clarity and emphasize: it is the characteristic symbolically represented by the image we have just discussed.

[ 11 ] A person who shows love and performs acts of love toward others never becomes poorer or emptier as a result of what they do out of love; rather, they become fuller and fuller, richer and richer in their inner life. This characteristic of love, when highlighted, becomes clear to us, as it were, when we imagine the image of two glasses and the pouring of water from one into the other.

[ 12 ] We proceed here, in a sense, in a similar way to how one proceeds in another field of knowledge, thereby arriving at important results concerning the external sensory world. Let us suppose we have a circular plate made of some substance unknown to us. When we first look at this circular plate, we can say: What this substance is, and how the materials are bonded together, is initially a mystery to us. But there is one thing we can do if we want to know something definite about this disc: we can draw a circle in front of us. Then we have singled out a feature of this disc—namely, that it is circular—and this feature we have singled out is certainly true, no matter how little else we know about the disc. When we think mathematically, we do the same thing—and all of mathematics is, in this respect, symbolism—in that we symbolically isolate certain elements. This process of creating images that are perceptible to the senses and then retained by the soul is, for soul-spiritual acts and for soul-spiritual experiences, the preparation for imaginative knowledge.

[ 13 ] If someone were to say: “So the spiritual researcher sets out to allow images and symbols to live in his soul that do not correspond to any truth at all; he therefore sets out from the very beginning to think untruth and to allow untruth to live in his soul”—then the answer would have to be: But of course the true spiritual researcher is fully aware that what he allows to live in his soul as symbols corresponds to no external reality! If he were able to confuse the symbol with any kind of reality even for a single moment, he would not be a person on the path to supersensible knowledge, but on the path to illusion. These symbols are not meant to represent external realities, but rather to live within our soul, so that we may connect and fuse them with our soul life and concentrate our soul life upon them.

[ 14 ] If we are now able to focus so intensely on such a symbol that we use all our soul’s power to allow only this symbol to live within our soul and to set aside everything that might intrude upon us from external impressions—including all other thoughts—so that we bring solely and exclusively such an image into the center of our consciousness, then such an image is superior to a direct impression of external reality for this very reason: because a direct impression constantly draws us back to external reality with our soul’s powers, steering us, as it were, out of ourselves. But if, with the full awareness that we have something purely constructed, we have formed a figurative, arbitrary representation to which we now surrender ourselves, then this is something that retains reality only insofar as it is borrowed from it. Whatever images we may form: we have, after all, taken the components for them from external reality. These images are presented in colors, forms, and so on; they are borrowed from external reality, but they do not refer to external reality. For it does not happen in external reality that a glass becomes fuller when its contents are poured out.

[ 15 ] Such an exercise results in the soul having to concentrate its powers in a completely different way than when it draws upon what it has otherwise experienced. If, then, the person who wishes to walk the path into the supersensible worlds has the patience and perseverance to practice such concentrations of his soul life again and again, he will be able to have a very specific inner experience. Having this experience is the first step toward imaginative insight. He will find that, as a result, his inner life has been transformed, and that after some time he will become aware of how such symbols and images arise from within his soul itself—without his having to bring them about— appearing in such a way that they stand before him with all the appearance of reality, just as images otherwise stand before us only when we have made external perceptions and formed mental representations of them.

[ 16 ] While in ordinary external life, ideas arise from the soul, as it were, as mirror images of external reality, through the exercises mentioned above, ideas rise up from the depths of the soul’s life—ideas that are, of course, merely images at first. But the elevation of the soul’s life consists in the fact that the soul now feels inwardly strong and can, as it were, enter a state that is similar to, yet opposite of, the state of sleep. In sleep, we abstract from all external perceptions and also from the thinking bound to the brain, but we fall into unconsciousness. In imaginative cognition, we also set aside all external perceptions and all cerebral thinking, for we suppress all of that. Yet despite this, the soul does not become empty or unconscious; rather, images rise up from its depths—images that become ever richer and richer, ever more expansive and comprehensive, and that then stand before the soul like a new world. This is precisely the world that has already been alluded to in these lectures—a world that can be mistaken by the layperson, who is not well-versed in such matters, and can also be mistaken in its value for the world of pathological illusions, hallucinations, delusions, and the like. But only those who do not know the reality in this realm—and instead judge solely on the basis of a pathological inner life—can make such a mistake; for there is a vast difference between pathological—or even the slightest pathological—conceptions of this kind and those gained in the true sense through methodical spiritual education.

[ 17 ] Anyone who has even the slightest experience with what are called pathological mental phenomena—hallucinations, illusions, or delusions—knows one thing: that those afflicted by such phenomena ultimately believe in their reality so unshakably that the faith they themselves place in the experiences of the external sensory world pales in comparison. This is the defining characteristic of delusions and illusions: that those afflicted by them simultaneously develop an overwhelming belief in them. Indeed, there is nothing more difficult than dissuading a person who has illusions—they need not even reach the level of hallucinations, but need only be ordinary delusions or paradoxical ideas—from holding such beliefs. If, for example, a person begins to develop, in a pathological way, the idea that he is being persecuted by others, it is incredibly difficult to dispel this idea through mere persuasion, and it happens that such a person constructs the most marvelous logical arguments to prove how true all of his delusions are. A person can become obsessed with whatever comes over them in this way, and they believe with unshakable conviction in the objective reality of such ideas.

[ 18 ] If you now take into account, even just in part, what is said in the book *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?*, you will see that while a person brings about the effect of such images and visualizations in the soul, proper spiritual training simultaneously ensures that, to the same extent that this world of images blossoms in the soul, the soul is simultaneously freed from being ensnared by these images and from believing in them as objective reality, so that at no moment can the person undergoing spiritual training ever arrive at the idea that what presents itself to them as imaginations is an objective reality. Any spiritual training that does not simultaneously instill in the soul the clarity that whatever sometimes enters it—such as wondrous phenomena like new worlds—has no objective reality in the way it comes upon you is incorrect. At first, all of this is there merely to enliven the soul inwardly, to make it richer within itself and—if we may use this paradoxical expression—to make it more truly real inwardly, more filled with the real. And this is the best, indeed the only true achievement of the student: that he knows the imaginations that arise are nothing other than a reflection of his own being.

[ 19 ] If the spiritual student is able to overcome all belief in the reality and objectivity of these imaginings at the very moment they arise, then the spiritual training is correct. In general, it is difficult for some people to accept one thing alongside the other, for by engaging in these exercises within their soul, a person is, so to speak, gifted with a new world—a world of sometimes magnificent visions. But for many people, this is a source of extraordinary satisfaction, an extraordinary pleasure, something that fills them with deep affection. And anyone who were to try even in the slightest to convince them that all this is not an objective reality, but merely a reflection of their own being—that it is simply their own being expressing itself more richly than before—would be regarded by them as an enemy, as someone who squanders the soul’s most beautiful hopes. But it must be understood that such imaginations, as they first appear, are not at all suited to providing true insights into the higher worlds, but are merely a bridge for the soul. For now a completely different task begins for the soul—the task that gradually leads from imagination to inspiration. In a sense, a struggle now begins between the soul and what appears as its imaginations. If I am to describe the nature of this struggle, I must use a parable from everyday life.

[ 20 ] In everyday life, we experience time and again that we do not have the entirety of our soul’s content in our consciousness. Think about what it would be like if you suddenly had everything you’ve ever imagined in your consciousness! You could recall images you may have had decades ago. They lie dormant in the depths of your soul, and on some occasion they are brought to the surface. This means that in everyday life, we have the ability to forget—and to bring what has been forgotten back up from the soul. One therefore has the ability to remove from consciousness what consciousness experiences as ideas and to separate it from our conscious life, so that it exists independently of it somewhere within our soul. Thus, the content of consciousness can be lowered somewhere, so that it is then outside of consciousness.

[ 21 ] We must achieve the same thing—even if it is somewhat different in this area—with all our imaginations when we become researchers of the spirit. We must be able to arbitrarily eradicate any imagination that arises from our soul; we must be able to arbitrarily erase it and bring it into a state where it is cast out of our consciousness just as a forgotten image is cast out of our consciousness—one that we can later recall. This is necessary. We must be masters of every single imagination within the entire realm of our imaginations; we must be able to make each one independent of us.

[ 22 ] Anyone who is a conscientious spiritual researcher—who wishes to conduct such spiritual investigations and then conscientiously share them with the world—often finds that, time and again, over and over, they push down what first appears before their soul as an image, rendering it unconscious and erasing it. Then it returns—not merely by chance, but through something entirely different: through an inner force of which we become aware only at that very moment, when we have reached the appropriate stage. And not all imaginations rise up; rather, we have the clear awareness that there are imaginations that remain down there in the unknown, that cannot be brought back up, or, if they do rise up again, they reveal themselves as ones that we reject.

[ 23 ] Imaginations change when they return to us; they are then something entirely different. They reach us in the same way that, externally in the world, perceptions of things in the physical world reach us. For the same reasons that, when we possess common sense, we can distinguish externally between something dreamed up—something that does not exist—and something real and existing, for those same reasons we can recognize what reappears as an imagination in its reality, in its spiritual essence.

[ 24 ] When such matters were being discussed, someone once asked: How can a person be certain, when these imaginings return to him—which he had first cast out of his subjectivity and handed over to objectivity, only to have them reflected back to him—how can he be convinced that they represent realities or unrealities? After all, we know that there are suggestions and delusions so powerful that they overwhelm a person, causing them to perceive as reality what is not there at all. A vivid example was cited: if someone is so sensitive that, without drinking lemonade, the mere thought of it causes them to taste lemonade in their mouth, this is an example of something being present that does not actually exist. Thus, one could also fall prey to a similar delusion with regard to what these reborn imaginations are.

[ 25 ] One can always raise such an objection. It can even be sustained in the context of mere dialectics, in a mere play on words, but not in the face of reality. For whoever develops his soul in the manner described attains the same ability to distinguish between truth and error as one has in the external world, where one has nothing else but a sound soul to distinguish between truth and error. Everyone can form a concept of this by thinking, for example, of Schopenhauer’s philosophy with the statement: “The world around me is my representation.”

[ 26 ] I do not underestimate Schopenhauer’s philosophy; otherwise, I would not have published it myself and written an introduction to it. But great minds often make the simplest of errors. For in fact, the statement “The world is my idea” is refuted simply by drawing someone’s attention to this very trivial fact: if he forms the idea of a piece of steel heated to 900 degrees and imagines his fingers in contact with it, he will not burn himself. He will never burn himself through such an idea, no matter how vivid it may be. But if they have the actual piece of steel in front of them, they will burn themselves. Thus, not through concepts or philosophies, but through experience, they will be able to distinguish reality from imagination. There is no other distinction. And in the supersensible realm, too, there is no other distinction than that one has acquired, through training, the proper rapport with supersensible reality.

[ 27 ] Therefore, it is essential for our consciousness that we understand: the way these images first appear is a creation of our own soul, and thus they are merely a reflection of our own being. A person may have the most beautiful images—but they would do well to interpret them initially by asking themselves: What hidden state of mind lies within me, what hidden passion, what belief or superstition, that causes precisely these or those images to appear before my soul? — If, at first, he sees nothing in the images but the reflection of himself, then he has attained the proper state of consciousness to ascend the paths into the supersensible world. He must then be able to draw upon the powerful inner forces of his soul to become a warrior against himself. He must be able to uproot—by the roots—that which he is often most tempted to believe in, that which he loves most, that which for many people might already signify bliss, and let it sink into a sphere of forgotten ideas. Once he has so selflessly torn away from himself what his soul first created and surrendered it to the world outside himself, it returns to him as inspiration. Then he is on the verge of being able to live with those entities—real entities and facts of the supersensible world—to which such ideas belong.

[ 28 ] To begin with, such imaginations seem quite familiar to us because we can see that they take shape in no other way than we ourselves are in our souls—that they are merely a reflection of the soul. One can always demonstrate, with regard to the world of imaginations, that these imaginations are such and such, depending on who we ourselves are and on our state of mind. But when they return, however, it is indeed different. The same images do not return; others return—something new that we have never encountered before, and which presents itself as a reality just as external realities present themselves to us as such. Only, one has a completely different feeling about it.

[ 29 ] We relate to the things of the external world in such a way that we stand outside them. A table that we look at is outside of us. It is there, and we do not enter into these things. When it comes to the facts and things of the higher worlds that then present themselves to us—provided we have prepared ourselves for them in the manner described—we immediately have the inner experience of the awareness that we could only reach them by offering to them something we had first drawn forth from the depths of our own souls. It is truly as if an object were lying before me and I wanted to grasp it: just as I must reach out my hand and become aware of its reality, so too must I—through what I have first attained by the method described—separate from my own sense of self that which then confronts me as an imagination, and sink it into oblivion. In doing so, however, I extend my own being toward a world that I can then grasp.

[ 30 ] One encounters many counterarguments in the world, even to what has just been said. But no matter how much one looks around, no matter how much one is willing—however willing—to familiarize oneself with these refutations, one thing always becomes clear: the people who refute what has just been said have not yet understood it. This is evident from the way they speak about it. And those who have understood it would never even think of trying to refute it. In particular, one very often encounters this supposed refutation, where one hears people say: “But these supersensible perceptions that you have—which you regard as impressions of beings meant to inspire you—are really no different from quite ordinary illusions or delusions!” —They differ enormously in that the true spiritual researcher has a different awareness of them—an awareness that allows him to maintain his common sense toward these things just as he does toward the things of the external world. That is why superstitious or gullible people—those commonly referred to as “enthusiasts”—are the least suited to be true spiritual researchers.

[ 31 ] Anyone who readily accepts a truth will certainly not be able to conduct proper spiritual research. Imagination and faith are the greatest enemies of true spiritual research, even though what imagination is in art, for example, and what faith is in reality, can ultimately be the most wonderful gifts of spiritual research. For what can be explored in the spiritual realm can be transformed into imagination and become a work of art. Likewise, when it is said, “What spiritual researchers proclaim is something that appeals only to faith,” the following must hold true: Certainly, the spiritual researcher believes what he knows. But he would truly be a fool if he did not believe what he knows; yet he believes nothing other than what he knows.

[ 32 ] It has just been said that we must, as it were, tear from our very souls what we have initially acquired, that we must thereby extend, as it were, spiritual organs and, through them, regain spiritual reality. As we immerse ourselves more and more in such a life of the soul, we also grow ever closer to the beings and things of the spiritual world. Then what occurs in our consciousness is that we do not interact with these beings in the same way that one human being interacts with another through external organs, but rather through what speaks, as it were, directly from being to being—what is perceived directly by the beings—in that our soul is directly with the being it perceives, so that it is, so to speak, not outside of it but within it. Then intuition sets in, which is in fact the culmination of supersensible knowledge—that supersensible knowledge which leads us not into a vague, nebulous spiritual life, but into a concrete, essence-formed, reality-filled life. There is no other way to truly come into contact with the spirit and its existence than, so to speak, to merge with it as has now been described. But anything with which we do not merge can never serve as proof of the spirit, for there is no other proof than finding one’s own experience coinciding with the experience of the spirit. Anyone who wishes to experience a spiritual being must develop their soul to the point where they can allow their own experience to coincide with the experience of that spiritual being.

[ 33 ] The entire course of spiritual experience, as it has been described, can make it clear—for there would be no point in veiling these things; rather, they must be spoken of openly—that it is easiest for a person, through imaginative insight, if I may put it that way, recognize “pure” spirits whose existence is purely spiritual, who are clothed in no other form than a spiritual-soul form. Spiritual beings who do not incarnate, who do not express themselves through external natural phenomena, can already be recognized at the level of imagination, even when we do not yet possess the capacity to penetrate to the level of inspiration. This happens in such a way that the imaginations we have allowed to sink into oblivion return to us in a transformed form, and we then recognize them as images of spiritual beings that are as spiritual as our own spiritual-soul aspect, conceived without a body.

[ 34 ] On the other hand, one must rise to the level of inspiration if one wishes to perceive beings connected, for example, with the elements of nature, with the radiance in nature, with the thermal conditions in nature, and so on—in short, to perceive the creative powers and the forces of beings that lie behind the sensory world, which express themselves in external existence and can be perceived there only through their external expressions. This is possible only through inspiration. To achieve this, what we have within our soul must be drawn out more intensely so that it can descend—more so than is the case with beings who have a purely spiritual existence. And the strongest powers of vision must be employed if one wishes to perceive those creative forces which the outer intellectual consciousness refers to merely as materialistic forces of nature, but which are in truth creative beings.

[ 35 ] If we wish to recognize these creative beings that lie hidden behind all external existence, then we must be able to draw our inner soul life out of ourselves with the same intensity as when we have just risen to the level of intuition. This means that one of the most difficult tasks is to recognize, through supersensible knowledge, a person’s previous incarnation in a specific case; for when we encounter a person as they appear to us in the sensory world, we are also dealing with something that manifests itself in natural phenomena and physical effects.

[ 36 ] Behind these physical effects lie forces akin to those of the Creator. But to the spiritual seer, these are concealed behind the outward appearance of the physical world, just as the spiritual beings that exist in lightning and thunder—and behind all of nature—are concealed behind these phenomena; and one is hardly any easier to find than the other. That is why one will repeatedly find that people who develop intuition recount all manner of actual illusions from past incarnations. It is therefore best to attach as little importance to these as possible. The true spiritual researcher knows that this is among the most difficult things that even a developed soul can achieve, and only at this or that moment.

[ 37 ] What has been said so far refers to the exploration of the supersensible, of spiritual life and activity. Whoever prepares his soul in the manner described thereby transforms that soul itself into an instrument for penetrating the supersensible worlds. For the spiritual researcher who wishes to share spiritual knowledge of the world, however, the most significant task lies ahead. For this insight into the spiritual worlds is usually misunderstood and misjudged by people who do not know it in the proper way. And part of correctly assessing the paths of supersensible knowledge is that a person be able to form a judgment as to what constitutes genuine spiritual knowledge and what is merely nonsense, charlatanism, or self-deception.

[ 38 ] It must be said again and again: To explore the spiritual world and to seek out supersensory facts and beings, the soul must train itself for this purpose. But when the spiritual researcher—who has entered the supersensible worlds in the proper manner—describes his observations accurately using the concepts of common sense that correspond to a true sense of truth, then what the spiritual researcher describes can be understood correctly by anyone who allows themselves to remain unbiased. A prepared soul is necessary for investigating supersensible facts and beings, but never for understanding them. This is, in a sense, the secret of presenting spiritual matters: that once they have been investigated by the supersensible powers of knowledge, they can be presented in such a way that they can be understood by every soul.

[ 39 ] There is something peculiar here: the human soul needs the findings of spiritual research to understand those things we will discuss, for example, in the next lecture on “Questions of Life and the Mystery of Death.” The human soul thirsts for ideas and concepts about what lies beyond death—ideas and concepts that will enable it to truly grasp the nature of the soul. And anyone who were to refuse to comprehend this nature of the soul might well be able to suppress, for a time, what might be called the soul’s longing for the solution to the mysteries of the world. But it then becomes all the more evident that while we may deny the soul spiritual nourishment, we cannot suppress the hunger that arises and that can drive the soul not only into despair but also into ill health. In a sense, human beings need the findings of spiritual research for their well-being and security in life, and all that is necessary to make the soul happy in the right way through these findings is sound common sense. A natural sense of truth is sufficient to comprehend what the spiritual researcher communicates. As long as something has not been researched, it cannot be stated. But once it has been researched and properly formulated, it can be understood.

[ 40 ] Just how true this is can best be seen from the fact that the spiritual researcher himself derives absolutely nothing from his “vision” for his own spiritual well-being—for everything he generally needs for his soul. He has a new world. But this new world is of no use to him whatsoever until he has developed it to the point where it has become a criterion for judging the life of the soul that we lead in everyday life—a life that yearns daily for the solution to the mysteries of the world. What the spiritual researcher can gain from his research is exactly the same as what is available to others—those to whom it is merely recounted, and who grasp it with a natural sense of truth and sound common sense. But with regard to what the soul needs for life, the spiritual researcher gains nothing through his research itself, but solely through what ultimately emerges from that research and can be communicated to everyone. The spiritual researcher can also be of value to all of humanity only if he is able to cast the results of his research into concepts and ideas that the people of an age can grasp—provided they are open-minded and unbiased enough. This lack of prejudice is certainly still widespread today, because people believe that other concepts—such as those of the natural sciences—contradict these findings of spiritual science. But if one examines the findings of spiritual scientific research more closely, one will see everywhere that this is not the case.

[ 41 ] But there is yet another obstacle standing between the spiritual researcher and his audience. Precisely what makes the spiritual researcher who he is—his ability to look into the spiritual world—is, in fact, widely misunderstood. People fall prey to serious misconceptions about the spiritual researcher as such precisely when they seek to approach spiritual research or yearn for it. To keep this brief, I will merely note that the greatest misconception—especially among well-meaning people—is the belief that, because the spiritual researcher has prepared his soul to look into the spiritual world, he is a kind of “higher animal” who has an advantage over other human beings. But such a view is precisely what most obstructs the path to supersensible knowledge for those who wish to attain it. Very often, out of a certain goodwill, the view arises that the spiritual researcher, because he can look into the spiritual world, therefore stands above other people, is worth more than they are, and that the ability to look into the spiritual world is something particularly desirable for the human soul and its value. The fact that this aspiration is widespread in our time stems from a reality that can be briefly characterized as follows:

[ 42 ] In earlier times, we also find reports from spiritual research that were shared with people. But for the most part, only the results were communicated. The methods were not discussed in the same way as they can be today, or as they can be presented in a publicly available book such as *How to Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds* or my *Outline of Esoteric Science*. For certain reasons, the methods were discussed only with a select few whose specific qualities were known with absolute certainty. This was appropriate in earlier times because, although the general public possessed the feeling, understanding, and sense of truth necessary to allow the results to take effect on the soul and bring the soul happiness, these qualities were not sufficient to overcome the difficulties required for the soul to enter the spiritual world.

[ 43 ] Today, souls live differently. Today, there is the possibility of a completely different way of thinking. Let us simply compare how people today can think in a completely different way—not only through the advancement of the natural sciences, but also through ever-progressing education, which is teaching people to think in a way that is entirely different from how it used to be. As a result, our age has gained the ability to judge things more accurately. That is why these things can be communicated. But this is only just beginning. Therefore, it is inevitable that errors will arise.

[ 44 ] It is a mistake to regard the spiritual researcher as something special. But a person who deepens their understanding, as has been described, is never thereby something that rises above humanity—which cannot attain such understanding. Just as the chemist is no different from other people simply because he knows chemistry, so too is the spiritual researcher no different from other people. A person’s value is not determined by such things, but rather, within certain narrower limits, by intellectual capacity—by the power of sound thinking. A person who can think well is of greater value than one who cannot think well. And in a broader sense, a person’s value is determined by their morality—by the fact that they perform moral actions and possess a moral disposition. It is not through a special cultivation of the soul that they have an advantage, but solely through their intellectual and moral qualities.

[ 45 ] For this reason, the harmful habit that so greatly obstructs the paths to supersensory knowledge should be completely eradicated among those who wish to approach such knowledge: namely, the tendency to regard the spiritual researcher—who is able to look into the spiritual world—as a special authority or something extraordinary simply because he can do so. This gives rise to blind faith in authority and blind following, which are bad enough in other fields but are worst of all in the field of spiritual scientific research, for experience shows the following regarding the practice of spiritual research.

[ 46 ] Anyone who, within ordinary life—just like other people living ordinary lives—has acquired sound, upright, and logical thinking carries this logical, sound thinking into the supersensible world as well and is thereby able to judge what is real, what is right, and what is true; and only such a person can then convey correct judgments about their surroundings based on what they perceive. It is not by looking into the supersensible world that one forms correct judgments, but by entering it with a sound intellect and sound logic. A fool, no matter how much he may be able to see into the spiritual world—who sees a vast array of all manner of spiritual phenomena because he has in some way trained his soul to do so—will also spout nothing but nonsense about what the spiritual world is like. Whether one arrives at the truth depends on one’s ability to judge. That is why a person with sound judgment—even if they cannot see into the spiritual world at all—is always able to form a judgment as to whether what someone is saying—no matter how much they claim to have “seen” it in the spiritual world—is nonsense or whether it makes sense. If someone shows that they cannot think clearly, that they cannot connect the dots properly, then instead of listening to the spiritual researcher, they should rather rely on their common sense, for then they will always know whether something stems from a wise or a foolish mind.

[ 47 ] Even more significant in this regard is one’s moral state of mind. Anyone who approaches the spiritual world with base passions, with base feelings and emotions—but especially with vanity and a thirst for honor—will perceive what is then presented to them only in a distorted and untrue light. They will see the worst aspects of the spiritual realm, and these will present themselves in such a way that they do not reveal truth but rather present illusions. For the spiritual seer, their moral disposition determines what they can perceive in the spiritual world. Spiritual perception in and of itself is not sufficient to make a person an authority in any way. Rather, we must pay attention to the way spiritual research is conducted, and we must realize that we cause the greatest harm when we do not remain vigilant with our common sense and focus only on what can be judged objectively.

[ 48 ] This is the approach to evaluating supersensible insights on the part of those who long for such insights for the salvation and happiness of their souls. When people relate to the spiritual researcher in this way, then the world’s attitude toward the spiritual researcher is truly no different from the world’s attitude toward other sciences. Just as not everyone can go to an observatory or a laboratory to conduct research there, so too—even though a certain degree of immersion in the spiritual world is already possible today—relatively few are able to glimpse into it. But that is not necessary either, for the fruits of spiritual knowledge, when communicated, can be understood through an unbiased grasp of the subject. This can become the proper relationship between the spiritual researcher and his audience, and this is always the right approach in human coexistence.

[ 49 ] The more one manages to avoid treating the spiritual researcher as an authority and instead rely on one’s own common sense, to examine everything, and the more one judges everything the spiritual researcher says by how it makes sense when compared to life—in other words, by applying one’s common sense—the more one does this, the more firmly one stands on solid ground. We can certainly say that spiritual science, insofar as the world needs it, is accessible to everyone today precisely because it is comprehensible, even if one cannot look into the spiritual worlds. We have already reached the point where it is actually no longer denied to any soul to walk the path into the spiritual world. Our age demands that people become more and more convinced that the path into the supersensible worlds can indeed be taken. This is the right approach, in contrast to what leads people to a blind belief in authority. But only what is right has value for the happiness and salvation of the soul.

[ 50 ] These should serve as a few hints regarding the paths to supersensory knowledge—that knowledge which truly leads us into a spiritual world that lies beyond our sensory world, and which also enables us to comprehend this spiritual world. The spiritual researcher himself gains something of the spiritual world for his personality, for his being, only when he is not merely able to perceive, but is also able to comprehend what he perceives. For everything that is perceived is, without being comprehended, still of no value. But when it is comprehended—comprehended by that well-developed common sense and natural sense of truth—then it takes root in our soul, unites with it, and our soul immediately senses what is within it, just as the soul, when it stands before a picture, immediately senses what is in the picture, even if it cannot create that picture itself. Just as it is not necessary to be a painter in order to gain something from a painting, so too is it not necessary, in order to penetrate a realization that is of the utmost necessity for the soul— such as immortality or the cycle of repeated earthly lives, or to penetrate this insight sufficiently—that one must be able to form these insights oneself through spiritual vision—although it would be good if more and more people were to enter into spiritual vision. But this will come in time, and more and more people will do so, because the necessary—and by no means insurmountable—need to immerse themselves in the supersensible world will arise. Souls will be compelled more and more to become, so to speak, seers, truly growing together with the spiritual world.

[ 51 ] But this—whether it be conceptual self-contemplation or conceptual contemplation of the other—is the possession of supersensible truths, of supersensible knowledge, such that our soul knows, just as we come to know through external science, that all the external substances found in our body are present throughout the entire universe, so that we are, as it were, embedded in the very same substance that is spread throughout the entire universe—investigations that have only been made possible by spectral analysis—and how human beings are formed from the universe. Thus, through spiritual research, he also comes to recognize that in everything that surges and ebbs within his consciousness or subconsciousness, he is connected to a world of spiritual beings that are truly more real than the substances with which the body is connected.

[ 52 ] Thus, human beings gradually come to experience the fruits of spiritual research in the peace of their souls, and also feel the strength to work and be active in the spiritual universe—the universe imbued with God and spirit. But this is what enables a person to know who they are and to possess the necessary insight: that they live—at rest and in action, thinking, feeling, and willing—in the spirit-pervaded universe, and feel and know that they are connected to it. And this is what the soul cannot do without—what it seeks when it is deprived of it for a certain period of time. The soul needs this if it is not to become desolate within itself and, through this desolation, become incapable of contributing to humanity, so that it would not only fall into despair regarding the divine but also into decadence. But the awareness of belonging to the supersensible worlds underlies what lived within Goethe as an instinctive feeling when he said: “/p”

If the eye were not like the sun,
It could never behold the sun;
If God’s own power did not dwell within us,
How could the divine delight us?

[ 53 ] Indeed, the eye is like the sun! The same power that is in the sun is in the eye. Through this, as the ancient philosophers already said, like can recognize like. There is something divine in human beings; the whole world is imbued with the divine: through this, the inner divine can comprehend the outer divine. But Goethe also recognized that the opposite of this is a truth.

[ 54 ] Although Schopenhauer reduces the entire world to a manifestation of the will, he fails to recognize that what is within us is not merely necessary for our perception of the external world around us, but that, conversely, the external world is also necessary for the existence of the internal. In Schopenhauer’s view, this would mean that the sun exists only because we have eyes. This has given rise to the peculiar philosophy that regards the world as soundless, warmthless, and so on, and posits that all of this begins only when human organs enter the world. But Goethe knew the truth: that it is not merely because we have eyes that we see things, or because we have ears that we hear sounds, but that an eye can only come into being because the sun exists. From a being that was once without eyes, humanity has transformed itself into a seeing being through the fact that light filled space and brought the eye forth from the organism that did not yet have one. The power of the sun created the eye through the light it radiates. Thus, it is not a matter of us carrying the divine within us and, for example, in Fexerbach’s sense, merely projecting the divine—which we have first created within ourselves— but rather that we must realize we would not possess this “sense of God” within us at all if the divine-spiritual did not fill the world and create a spiritual organ within us, just as the external sun created the external eye.

[ 55 ] That is why we can say: The awareness of the unity between the soul and the world—which gives the soul strength and power and allows it to rest and be active in the spiritual universe—is composed of two things, two things, one of which we can characterize with Goethe’s beautiful saying:

If the eye were not like the sun,
It could never behold the sun;
If God’s own power did not dwell within us,
How could the divine delight us?

[ 56 ] But it is entirely in the spirit of Goethe when we supplement this one-sided truth with its counterpart—which is what makes it a complete truth—by adding the other saying, which might go something like this:

If the world were not blessed with the sun,
How could eyes blossom in living beings?
If existence were not God’s revelation,
How could people attain fulfillment in God?