The Rudolf Steiner Archive

8. The Moral Foundation of Human Life

[ 1 ] Although, by its very nature, this series of lectures has frequently had to address the moral life of human beings and the moral world order, allow me today to summarize once again, in particular, what can be said from the standpoint of spiritual science regarding the foundations of the moral world order in human life.

[ 2 ] Schiller expressed—in a magnificently simple way, one might say, drawing on a general sense of the world—the fundamental character of a moral human life. He expresses this in simple words:

[ 3 ] Are you looking for the highest, the greatest?

[ 4 ] The plant can teach you. What it does without will, do you with will—that’s all there is to it.

[ 5 ] Perhaps today’s debates will show that this saying truly captures the fundamental nature of moral life. But the fact that a riddle—a significant riddle—is hidden in the second half of this statement: “What the plant lacks in will, you must possess in will—that is it!”—this is precisely the crux of the matter: how, by what means, and from where a human being could possess the will that the plant lacks. And in the riddle contained in this second half of Schiller’s saying, one must, in essence, also seek the fundamental thread of all philosophical and moral scientific research as it runs through the history of humanity’s intellectual development.

[ 6 ] In our time, it is hardly possible for a large number of thinkers—of individuals who grapple with the moral questions of humanity—to truly penetrate to the source from which the undeniable fact of humanity’s ethical obligation must be derived. We shall see how ethical obligations and moral impulses seem to shine into the lives of a large number of thinkers and prominent figures, even though the premises of the worldviews characteristic of the present day offer little guidance as to the source from which this light of moral impulses actually flows into the human soul.

[ 7 ] It is precisely when we take up Schiller’s saying—and let us limit ourselves to that saying alone—that we can observe a peculiar fact that, at first glance, sheds light on moral life; a fact that becomes particularly clear when one descends into the lowest of the natural kingdoms, the mineral kingdom. Let us suppose we were to turn our gaze to some object from the mineral kingdom, for example, a rock crystal. The essential point—though not always sufficiently apparent—is that, given the overall state of the cosmos, one must assume the following: if this rock crystal, if this natural formation, brings to fruition what one must recognize as its—let us use the term—“innate laws,” then it represents what its very essence is. If one were able—and certainly the ongoing development of natural science will lead to such achievements; they have already been attempted by some as hypothetical models—to demonstrate, based on the specific substance of rock crystal, how its particular crystalline form, the familiar six-sided prism, bounded on both sides by six-sided pyramids, must arise, then one can also know, when it attains such a crystalline form, how this law—recognizable, so to speak, from its substance—is expressed in the external world. Then it represents its essence in terms of what it is in external space. — In a certain sense, we can say the same of the beings of the plant kingdom, though perhaps less so of those of the animal kingdom; but essentially, the same law applies—albeit somewhat modified, since in nature everything exists only in certain gradations—in the animal kingdom as well. Much would have to be said, of course, if one were to elaborate on the peculiarity of what this law implies. This is merely to be hinted at here. The deeper one delves into this fact, the more one recognizes that here lies a point in our world order through which human beings—precisely when one looks at the world order without prejudice, one notices this—are nevertheless radically distinguished from the rest of nature’s beings.

[ 8 ] Let us suppose for a moment that one could truly recognize all those laws of formation and other laws that are inherent in the human form, just as the crystalline structure is inherent in a rock crystal, and that human beings would express this innate sum of formative forces. Then he would not be representing his being outwardly in space in the same sense as the rest of nature’s beings; for deep within the human being lies what we call moral impulses, and their primary characteristic is that they kindle an inner tendency toward development, such that when a human being expresses his natural formative powers, he does not, like the rest of nature’s beings, present his being in a self-contained manner. It must be admitted that this initially expresses little more than—one might say—a rather trivial fact, but a fact that must nevertheless be taken as a starting point. It is not even acknowledged by worldviews with a more naturalistic or materialistic slant; but it must be acknowledged by an unbiased view of existence. It must be acknowledged that human beings initially, let us say, perceive something from somewhere that seeks to take root in their being, and that gives them the impulse not to regard their being as complete if it enters into existence in the same sense as other creatures of nature enter into existence. Indeed, one could say: No matter how perfectly, how completely a human being might bring his formative powers into existence in the same sense as the formative powers of other creatures of nature, he could never declare his being to be self-contained in the face of moral impulses. This led—not to speak at all of earlier times—to the point where Kant, the great philosopher, felt compelled to divide his worldview into two completely separate parts: one part, which represents everything that can be known about the external world—known in such a way that human beings, with all their organic formative powers, are also included in this worldview—and the other part, which initially extends into human existence only as a sustaining foundation through the “categorical imperative”: Act in such a way that the maxim of your action could become a rule of conduct for all human beings. This is roughly how the categorical imperative might be expressed. This other part of Kant’s worldview enters human life in such a way that it sets the fundamental tone for human beings. But how does Kant conceive of it? In such a way that, by its very nature, it speaks from a world entirely different from the one encompassed by the worldview of knowledge and cognition. And it speaks from a world so entirely different that Kant bases everything he attempts to incorporate into this part of his worldview—all his teachings on a divine being, on human freedom, and on the immortality of the soul—on this very part from which the categorical imperative speaks. And Kant explicitly maintains that one must listen to a world entirely different from that of ordinary human knowledge if one wishes to perceive what imposes obligations on human beings. The categorical imperative—this unconditionally binding imperative—is, as it were, the gateway to a world transcending the sensory realm.

[ 9 ] Thus we see that it is widely recognized that human nature is not limited to what constitutes its formative powers—corresponding to the formative powers of the other creatures with which it together constitutes the physical cosmos. A curious phenomenon is evident in our time. One might say: our era, with its more materialistic, mechanistic, and naturalistic way of thinking, cannot—if it consistently follows its innermost impulses—actually speak of the kind of world that even Kant spoke of in the sense just indicated. Certainly, very few people in our time are consistent in their worldview. Not all of them extend the fundamental sentiments that follow from the premises of their worldview to their entire worldview. In particular, those who today adhere to a worldview tinged with naturalism and materialism—and who today prefer to call themselves monists—should completely reject even the possibility of looking up into a world into which Kant gazes, as through a gateway, via his categorical imperative. And that is precisely what they do. And it is not only those who stand more or less on a scientific foundation—for whom this is understandable—but also many who call themselves “psychologists” who act in this way. Numerous psychological thinkers of the recent past are at a loss when they ask: Where, in fact, do the moral foundations of human life come from? Where does that which speaks into human life as moral impulses come from, and what nevertheless distinguishes human beings from all other natural beings? People then go so far as to say: Morality and ethics must be based on the individual not merely following those impulses that are directly directed toward his own being, toward his own existence, but rather on his following those impulses that are directed toward the whole. And “social ethics” has indeed become a term that is very popular in our time. Because one cannot look up to a higher world using the faculties that one once believed were at the disposal of the cognitive powers, one seeks, in certain borderline areas—though, as we shall soon see, still without any real foundation or basis—to find a foothold in what one can still regard as “real”: the totality of human beings or some group of humanity. And one calls “moral” that which is in the interest of this totality, in contrast to what the individual does solely for himself.

[ 10 ] One can find immensely thought-provoking ideas today that seek to uphold ethics and morality from the perspective of a purely social ethics. But anyone who looks more deeply into these matters—whether they are investigating the moral impulses governing the life of the individual, or what the individual, as a member of the whole, is called upon to do— must inevitably ask about the true substance of what is to be done, or, to put it better, about where such substance can come from—about the “place,” figuratively speaking, from which moral impulses can arise. In this sense, Schopenhauer truly spoke a brilliant phrase, one I have already quoted here on several occasions: “It is easy to preach morality, but difficult to justify it.” By this he means: it is difficult to identify the forces and impulses within the human soul that truly and actually make a person a moral being, whereas certain principles can easily be gleaned from the historical course of humanity or from religious or other systems, principles with which one can then preach morality. What matters to Schopenhauer is not whether one can articulate this or that moral principle, but rather what lies at the root of moral impulses as forces—just as the forces of external nature underlie natural phenomena.

[ 11 ] Now, however, Schopenhauer, in his one-sided way, seeks these impulses of human nature in pity and compassion. It has rightly been said: Why should someone who feels morally bound to a matter that concerns only himself and no one else seek to avoid perjury that is motivated solely by compassion? Or what moral force would prevent someone, say, from mutilating himself out of a certain sense of compassion? In short—and many such examples could be cited—the impulse that Schopenhauer identifies does indeed capture something immensely comprehensive, something that must underlie the vast majority of moral actions, but as such it can by no means be exhaustive.

[ 12 ] It is instructive in all circumstances that the theories, views, and opinions regarding the origin of morality become all the more futile the more any worldview focuses solely on what can be grasped by the external senses and by the intellect directed toward this external sensory world. It would, of course, take too much time to demonstrate this in detail, but it could be shown that such a worldview—even if it is able, for example, to provide a foundation for a particular conception of nature—is in fact incapable of identifying the source of morality. Fundamentally, the moral, the ethical life remains suspended in the air within any such worldview that seeks to be directed solely toward the external sensory world and toward the intellect, which combines the facts of the sensory world or forms them into laws.

[ 13 ] What has just been said—merely by way of introduction—is intended to lead us to examine what, in light of the preceding lectures, must ultimately seem quite natural: If one assumes—as is the underlying premise of all the lectures I have given here—that our sensory world and the world of the intellect are founded upon a world of spiritual entities and spiritual realities, then it is only natural—since one cannot find the impulses of ethics and morality within the realm of the sensory world—to seek these impulses in the spiritual

[ 14 ] to explore the world. For perhaps the premises, views, and opinions of those who believe that, precisely in the moral realm, something speaks to human nature that comes directly from a supersensible world are correct after all. Let us, then, approach the consideration of moral life based on the premises set forth in these lectures. For the benefit of those listeners who have heard only a few of these lectures, I will briefly summarize how the spiritual researcher ascends into the spiritual world, where we now wish to seek the origin of the moral foundation of human life.

[ 15 ] It has often been said here: If human beings wish to go beyond the realm of sensory experience and beyond the realm that conventional science can reach, the task at hand is not to remain confined to the cognitive faculties that human beings possess from the moment they are born into the world. All science and all inquiry are correct insofar as they speak, in the sense often discussed here, of the limits of knowledge and proceed from the premise that human beings cannot develop powers of cognition other than those that are inherent in them—powers that are present in them simply because, having been placed into the world without their own intervention, they find themselves in it with their inherent qualities. But in spiritual research, what matters is that everything that is already within the human being be further developed, that the premise be practically acknowledged: there are dormant powers within the human being that can be awakened. And here, the methods capable of developing these dormant powers have often been discussed. There has been talk of that “spiritual chemistry” which proceeds with exactly the same logic and mode of thinking as natural science, but which extends precisely into the spiritual realm and is therefore compelled to develop natural methods and the natural mode of conception in a completely different way than natural science itself. In this sense, we have often discussed how spiritual science, in the true sense, must be a continuation of natural science in our time. I would like to point out once more, merely by way of mention, what I have just touched upon, perhaps for the sake of clarification.

[ 16 ] “You cannot tell by looking at water,” I once said, “when you have it simply as water before you, that it contains the hydrogen which the chemist isolates through external chemical processes.” Water extinguishes fire; it is not flammable itself. Hydrogen, a gas, is flammable and can also be liquefied. Just as one cannot tell from looking at water what the nature of the hydrogen is—which is combined with oxygen to form water—so, too, one cannot tell from looking at the outer human being what is bound to the outer physical body as spirit and soul; and just as one need not fear being called a regressive dualist when one acknowledges that water, a monon, consists of hydrogen and oxygen, so too does one need not fear not being a true “monist” when one says that in what we encounter in human beings there is a spiritual-soul aspect, just as hydrogen is present in water, and that this spiritual-soul aspect is as distinct from what can be observed in the everyday human being as hydrogen is distinct from water. And spiritual chemistry certainly does not consist of tumultuous processes, of something that can be carried out externally, like external chemistry, but rather in the following, which, however, will be outlined only very briefly. More detailed information can be found in my Outline of Esoteric Science or in the book How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?

[ 17 ] Human beings are the only means by which one can enter the spiritual world. But through special exercises that he must perform with his soul, he must bring himself to the point where he can attach meaning to the words: “I experience myself in my spiritual-soul aspect outside of the physical-bodily realm”—just as hydrogen would have to say, if it could experience itself: “I experience myself outside of oxygen.” In order for this spiritual-soul aspect to separate itself practically from the physical-bodily aspect, and for the human being to come to attach meaning to the words: “I experience myself in the spiritual-soul aspect, but my physical-bodily aspect is outside of me, just as the table is outside of me,” this requires persistent exercises of the soul, which may take a shorter or longer time and essentially consist of an intensification of attention—something that is already important in ordinary life—but not attention directed toward a mental content evoked by external stimuli, rather toward a mental content deliberately placed at the center of the soul’s life. When a person then reaches the point where to mobilize all his soul forces and then concentrate them on a clearly defined mental content—one of which he knows exactly what he himself has placed there—then, through this stronger concentration of the soul forces, everything that gives a person the ability to lift his spiritual-soul aspect out of the physical-bodily realm is gradually brought together. However, in addition to the practice of so-called concentration, the practice of meditation must also be added. This is something a person already knows in ordinary life, but which must be heightened to infinite proportions in spiritual science: devotion—devotion to the universal process of the world. To be as surrendered to the universal existence of the world as the individual human being is during sleep through the rest of the limbs—but consciously and not unconsciously—that is the second requirement in spiritual science. The reason many people do not experience the proper success of these exercises is that they lose momentum in the systematic and persistent performance of these exercises. By giving the soul’s powers a different direction through such exercises than they have in everyday life, and by engaging them in a different way than they are engaged in everyday existence, one truly arrives at that remarkable moment—which is possible to attain—when one knows: “Now you are experiencing things spiritually and soulfully; but whereas before you made use of your brain and your senses, you now know that you have stepped out of your body and are outside of it, just as external objects were previously outside of you.”

[ 18 ] The recognition that such a thing is possible is still in its infancy in today’s cultural climate. It will prevail, just as truths—the truths of Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo—have always prevailed. These scientists were confronted by precisely the same, albeit slightly more nuanced, backward forces of perception that stand in the way of the recognition of the spiritual worlds today. Whereas the opponents back then were people who clung to old religious traditions, today it is so-called “free thinkers” who oppose the recognition of spiritual scientific insights. But the step toward this recognition will be taken—and must be taken—in the same way that the step toward external natural science was taken in the time of Copernicus, Galileo, and Giordano Bruno. — I have never been in the habit of speaking to you in terms of abstractions and speculations, but I have always tried to cite the concrete spiritual facts that a person encounters when they reach the stages of spiritual knowledge I have indicated. In fact, it can be experienced that a person, in their spiritual-soul aspect, rises above the physical-bodily realm and experiences themselves in such a way that they have a clear consciousness which, through the experience itself, distinguishes itself from every illusion and hallucination: You experience yourself outside your head, and when you submerge again, it is as if you were beginning once more to use your brain as an external instrument. This experience, when it first occurs in its initial phases, is shattering. But it is attainable, and it is described in the text: “How does one attain knowledge of the higher worlds?” And then one enters a world of concrete spiritual experiences, where one finds oneself just as much within spiritual realities as one stands, with the senses and the intellect, in a world of concrete sensory beings and sensory realities.

[ 19 ] One approaches this world, which one encounters in this way, in three stages. The first stage, through which one must work one’s way, is the one I have taken the liberty of calling the stage of the imaginative world. This imaginative world is not an imaginary world, but one in which one experiences the facts of the spiritual world through a series of images that—just as sensory perceptions express the facts of space—truly express the processes of the spiritual world as images. One must work one’s way through this imaginative world; above all, one must work through it in such a way that one gradually becomes acquainted with all the sources of error—which are very numerous—so that one gradually learns to distinguish between what deceives and misleads one and what corresponds to the actual spiritual existence of beings or processes. — One then ascends to a second stage of knowledge, which I take the liberty of calling inspiration. In spiritual perception, inspiration differs from imagination only in that, in the latter, one sees, as it were, only the outer surface of spiritual processes and entities reflected in images, whereas now one must develop what radically distinguishes spiritual perception from external perception: that one immerses oneself in spiritual perception. In fact, one does not face spiritual existence in the same way as one does sensory existence—where it is there, and I am here—but in spiritual cognition, something does indeed take place akin to an expansion beyond what is perceived, an immersion into what is perceived. It sounds strange, but it is literally true: one expands spatially with one’s own being into all the things one perceives in the spiritual world. Whereas one otherwise stands at a point in space, enclosed within one’s own skin, with everything else outside, in the spiritual world everything that one is otherwise accustomed to calling the external world becomes the inner world. One lives and weaves within it and merges with it to the extent that one is able to penetrate it. And then there is a higher level of cognition, which need not be discussed here today; this is intuition, understood in the proper sense, not what is often called by that name in the ordinary sense. Through imagination, inspiration, and intuition, one works one’s way into the spiritual world.

[ 20 ] Let us now consider the following question: So when one steps out of the body and out of the ordinary experiences of existence, what difference becomes apparent with regard to everything one calls knowledge—that which comes from outside, which one is accustomed to receiving from outside—and with regard to what one refers to as one’s moral impulses, moral ideas, and concepts? Are we then in a position to point to a source of moral life, if we can perhaps identify this source in the world that one reaches only by stepping out of the ordinary sensory world and entering a spiritual world through one’s own spiritual cognition?

[ 21 ] Let us first consider the world that creates a mental world of images around us. I will simply present the facts as they appear to mental observation. With regard to everything one acquires through sensory imagination—which is based on sensory perception—and indeed everything one acquires in relation to one’s experience of external life, one finds that the moment one leaves this world, a kind of darkness spreads over this world itself, and a new world of spiritual beings and spiritual realities emerges—the same world one is otherwise immersed in during sleep; but as a spiritual researcher, one plunges into this world of spiritual processes and beings in a conscious state. As one immerses oneself in it in this way, one notices: What you perceive as colors, what you hear as sounds in the sensory world, disappears; what you can bring with you into the spiritual world is only a memory of it—something that one can, at most, imagine. When that disappears, one plunges in such a way that, as it were, one’s thinking, one’s imagination, and even one’s feelings and sensations are taken over by other beings into whom one is plunging: for this is the essential point—that in the spiritual world one plunges into a world of beings. And then one arrives at what has often been explained: As soon as one enters the spiritual world, one encounters concrete facts and beings; and what one observes in the sensory world truly appears as though one were actually living within the supersensory, invisible, spiritual world—but, while we are confined within the body, this supersensory world reflects its image back to us through the activity of the body. In fact, it becomes a concrete reality that the entire external world one sees all around oneself is a reflection of the spiritual world—that spiritual world of which I have explained that it first brings about the brain processes which create the mirror mechanism through which external events are perceived, and which itself cannot be perceived. Just as a person does not perceive himself when he looks into a mirror, but rather perceives the reflection, so too, when he immerses himself in the physical world, he sees the reflection of the spiritual world, in that the spiritual world is reflected in the mirror mechanism through the processes of the body. And now one realizes that the relationship between the physical world of perception and the spiritual world is the same as that between the mirror image and the observer. It is indeed the case that just as the mirror image has meaning for the observer only when he looks into the mirror and takes the image into his soul, so too does the mirror image of the spiritual world—the entire physical world of perception that surrounds us—have meaning as an “image”—apart from the physical process underlying it. One becomes aware of this when one enters the spiritual world.

[ 22 ] The intention here is not to promote a teleological view of nature. I do not mean to suggest that the world has been arranged by an infinite intellect in such a way that human beings can find the possibility of developing their own selves; rather, I simply wish to point out the fact that is given as a fact: that human beings can carry forward into their own selves what they have perceived in the external world once they have received it into their souls. — As for what we call cognitive judgments, the fact is that this entire world of knowledge is constructed through a process of reflection, and what essentially disappears as a process of reflection when one plunges into the spiritual world—where one immediately immerses oneself in a world of spiritual processes and spiritual beings, of which one knows: it belongs to one, and from it is derived what is in the physical world merely a reflection.

[ 23 ] This is the essential point: that at the very moment when one, as it were, bids farewell to the sensory world and ascends into a spiritual world, one comes to realize: To what you yourself are—which would not exist without you, and to which you yourself belong—has been added only the reflection that has come about solely because you are a human organism; and this reflection has significance for your self, for your “I,” for what you carry as spirit and soul through the turn of the ages. Therefore, as soon as one finds oneself in the spiritual world, one is in a world that exists without one, of which one comes to realize: it must be reflected so that we can perceive it. But the essence itself does not engage in this reflection.

[ 24 ] Now let us consider the moment when we enter the world of the imagination. What happens to our moral concepts when we ascend into the spiritual world?

[ 25 ] What one perceives as moral impulses presents itself, the moment one steps into the world of imagination, in such a way that one cannot speak of it except by saying: “You have indeed created something here; you have placed something into the spiritual world!” What one recognizes, one has not placed into a world; one has merely placed it within oneself and carries it forward through the turning of the ages. What corresponds to a moral impulse, a moral action, or even merely a moral will is creative; so that when one views it in the spiritual world, one must say: Through what we experience within ourselves as the concept of the ethical, we create beings in the spiritual world. We are, first of all, the originators of processes, and furthermore, even of beings in the spiritual world.

[ 26 ] Those among the esteemed audience who have heard these lectures on several occasions know that spiritual science speaks of repeated earthly lives. This earthly life that we are now experiencing builds upon a series of previous earthly lives, and each earthly life is always followed by a life in a spiritual existence; and from our present earthly life, we look forward once more to the earthly lives to come. — Now, what we manifest within ourselves through our moral experiences literally objectifies itself, initially as spiritual processes. How I think and act morally is perceived in the spiritual world as processes. These are processes there that emanate from the very self of the human being. While we carry our experiences of knowledge forward only with our mere self and carry them over into subsequent earthly lives with the self, that which belongs to moral or immoral life is placed into the world as processes and continues to exert its influence as such, so that through karma we have to deal with them again in the next earthly life. And whoever ascends into the spiritual worlds perceives how moral impulses establish a certain relationship to what one creates as the Self.

[ 27 ] Let us take, for example, one of the most fundamental impulses—it would take us too far afield if I were to explain why I call it one of the most fundamental moral impulses—namely, the one that the eminent psychologist Franz Brentano called the sole impulse of the moral order: the impulse of love. Who would deny that countless aspects of moral life arise from the various stages of love—from the lowest stages of love up to the highest, all the way to Spinozist love, the amor Dei intellectualis? Everything that happens under the impulse of love, everything we count as belonging to the realm of morality—how do we find it in the imaginative world? We find that everything that arises under this impulse feels familiar to us, so that we can say: we can live in the spiritual world with what arises under the impulse of love. One feels at home in the spiritual world with that which springs from the capacity for love. This is the essential point that becomes apparent as soon as one enters the imaginative world.

[ 28 ] But let us consider what arises from hatred—whether it manifests as an action or merely as an intention inspired by hatred. Here we see the very striking fact that everything flowing from the realm of hatred manifests in the imaginative world in such a way that it instills fear and repels. Indeed, it is one of the tragic aspects of the spiritual researcher’s experience that he must witness how he projects himself into the spiritual world through the forces of sympathy and antipathy. Truly, whatever the circumstances may be: as soon as one enters the spiritual world, one may find oneself appearing sympathetic or unsympathetic. In the physical world, it does not happen that people find one another unsympathetic; sympathetic, perhaps. But in the spiritual world, just as one is subject to the laws of nature here, so one is subject to the spiritual laws there. Everything that arises from the capacity for love, from the capacity for sacrifice—everything that stems from these, everything one accomplishes out of a moral impulse or perceives as a moral disposition—all of this gives rise in the spiritual world to processes that one beholds through imaginative cognition, beholds in such a way that one may find oneself likable because of one’s loving thoughts, actions, or feelings. Everything that is undertaken, for example, out of hatred or similar impulses—out of malice or vanity—appears in the imaginative world in such a way that one knows: You are the creator of these processes, which are simply the objectification of your hate-filled or malicious impulses; you appear within them in such a way that the events compel you to feel antipathy toward yourself. In such cases, one cannot help but feel antipathy toward oneself.

[ 29 ] For a spiritual researcher, it is necessary in certain cases to learn, through thorough self-knowledge, to endure such situations and to learn to bear with patience how they play out in one’s future karma. This is not to say that a spiritual researcher should not experience such antipathy, but rather that he should by no means have the desire to present himself as a saint or a superior human being. Rather, what should be strived for is that he will attempt to refine his moral life—as it relates to living together with other people—to such an extent that the tragedy of feeling antipathy toward oneself occurs to a lesser degree. For it represents a state of the most terrible tension, one from which one feels the urge to escape; and this urge to escape only becomes apparent upon ascending into the spiritual world. There one sees where the impulses come from that lead us to do what is lovable—and to learn to avoid what we hate. For what one does in the ordinary world out of such impulses acts as a force in the spiritual world. Indeed, one can say: When a person falls asleep, the forces described above—characterized here as a sense of familiarity with the spiritual world or a sense of fear within it, as a sympathetic connection to what arises from one’s own actions, or as a sense of antipathy and a desire to flee—continue to operate. This has a strong effect on sleep and determines the quality of sleep, at least in part. What emerges as a result of daily life—and what, when it is actively at work in harmony, prevents a person from falling asleep—is precisely what the spiritual researcher must observe.

[ 30 ] Now we ask ourselves: Where do those moral impulses that speak within the human soul come from?

[ 31 ] In everyday life, we do not know where these voices come from. But they are there, and they speak in such a way that those who rely solely on reason—who combine the facts of the sensory world and formulate them into laws—cannot find them. So where does this come from, this voice that speaks within people as if from another world?

[ 32 ] Well, it only exists as knowledge once it is perceived in the world of the imagination. But it acts as dark forces whose origin remains obscure to the mind, yet which speak into the soul as impulses. The effects of what the spiritual researcher perceives are experienced in the sensory world as moral impulses; the causes lie in the spiritual world. Therefore, the human being perceives himself as a being who must always say to himself: “And no matter how perfectly developed your power of love may be, you belong to a spiritual world and find there the other part of your being, where you acquire what expresses itself here as moral life—what expresses itself, for example, in what we call conscience, which is a very great mystery if one wants to be consistent.”

[ 33 ] We have now identified the source of the forces that manifest themselves as conscience and the like. Let us suppose we are facing another person, and the particular configuration of our imaginative life might lead us to hate him. What might lead us to hate him—and what we would fear as processes in the spiritual world—this voice speaks into our soul as: “You shall not hate!” That which is at work in our capacity for love—and through which we may be in harmony with one another in the spiritual world—resounds into our earthly life as: “You shall love!” And so it is with the other manifestations of moral life, which ultimately crystallize spiritually as the conscience.

[ 34 ] And this conscience itself—how does it manifest as a reality in the spiritual world? |

[ 35 ] It cannot yet be found as a fact in the imaginative world. To find it as a fact, one must immerse oneself in the inspirational world—must immerse oneself to such an extent that one feels oneself poured out over the entire field of perception in the spiritual realm and experiences these inner perceptions as one’s own field of perception, as if within oneself. Now, from there, the source of conscience speaks down to us. It merely makes use of, and expresses itself, as it were, in what can be experienced in the imaginative world, but its center lies in the world of inspiration. And if one were to rise into it and tentatively ask oneself: What happens when you abstract from all that the voice of your conscience tells you? Suppose, just for the sake of argument, that you could do something out of love just as you do something out of hatred, and suppose your conscience were silent—then you would notice that something happens, which I will first clarify by means of a comparison. I would say that one experiences within oneself something like a drop of water that has been placed somewhere where it is so hot that it would evaporate immediately. Something like this happens when, as an experiment, one switches off one’s conscience in the imaginative world. Then one experiences it: consciousness wants, as it were, to extinguish itself, loses its center of gravity; one ceases to be oriented within the spiritual world. It is one of the most terrifying experiences one can have: to be in the spiritual world and feel one’s consciousness fading, after having first trained oneself to bring that consciousness up there. It is a terrible state when people who are, in fact, unscrupulous have experiences up there when they ascend into the spiritual world. For suppose a person who is otherwise not very conscientious were to enter the spiritual world. The exercises found in the book How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds? can be performed by anyone who carries them out with the necessary energy, so that they can then perceive the spiritual world. One should not ascend as long as it is not beneficial. That is why exercises are also recommended in which one does not lose consciousness; thus, the book mentioned describes exercises that make a person moral, so that consciousness is not shut off in the spiritual world. But let us suppose that an unscrupulous person were to ascend into the spiritual world. Then what would happen is that he would immediately fall prey to the dissolution, the evaporation of his consciousness. Such unscrupulous spiritual researchers certainly exist. Those who ascend to the spiritual world with a certain degree of unscrupulousness immediately feel the need—since we enter a sphere of beings there—to surrender themselves to other spiritual beings. People who ascend unscrupulously to the point where conscience, in its reality, provides a firm center of gravity—such people, who, as it were, feel their consciousness “evaporate” there—surrender themselves to another being, allowing themselves to be possessed by another being in order to find a foothold. This is an experience that can truly be had. This is why, in fact, when such a person returns to everyday consciousness, they no longer proclaim for themselves what they have experienced in the spiritual world, but rather what a being—by whom they have allowed themselves to be possessed—then speaks through them. The integrity of our being is maintained by truly carrying that voice—which exists here as conscience—up into the world of inspiration as a force within us. One then feels oneself within oneself, but in such a way that what one brings forth—what is already manifesting in the world of imagination—is present in such a way that one does not lose one’s center of gravity, and that it is something that holds and sustains one. And this—which can carry and sustain the human being in his true spiritual essence within the spiritual world—speaks down through two worlds, through the imaginative world and down into the sensory world, and that is the voice of conscience.

[ 36 ] Thus, conscience—whose origin many thinkers are actually unable to discern, and of which they speak as if it were formed solely through the social order of human coexistence— so conscience is something that is brought down from the spiritual world, something that is present in its effect within the human being who experiences the world through the senses, and whose origin is found when one ascends into the spiritual world. If, in essence, the mysteries of the entire world can only be discovered by truly developing those powers of knowledge that have often been discussed here, then one must say, in particular, of the moral world that it sends its impulses down from the spiritual realms, and that when a human being becomes aware of these moral impulses, they are experiencing the effect of that which has its origin in the spiritual world. And a true insight into the moral order of the world shows us, on the one hand, that spiritual worlds speak through the soul, but on the other hand also that through moral impulses we create realities that continue to have an effect, that we encounter again—realities that we send out into the spiritual world and that are causes in this world, which underlies the physical world. |

[ 37 ] By leaving out an entire range of intermediate stages, I could only hint at what the spiritual researcher must traverse when ascending from the sensory world to the spiritual worlds. But I would like to add briefly: What we see coming into being through our moral or immoral actions—what manifests in the effects of our moral impulses, what we perceive in the world of the imagination as uplifting forces with which we can live in harmony, or as destructive forces that make us repulsive to ourselves—this reveals itself to us as the very first causes of existence in the world. For we cast our gaze out into the vast world of the stars, where security, order, and harmony reign, and we look back to primeval times, in which beings acted morally in a manner similar to how we can today, when beings sent forth their moral impulses, which seem so insignificant that they appear like nothing beside the totality of worldly existence. But these moral impulses continue to grow over time! These moral impulses, which emanated from those beings in primeval times, grew on and on—and as they grew, they themselves became the forces of nature. One comes to recognize—though intermediate stages must now be skipped—when one considers what is found in the laws of the heavens, which filled Kepler, the founder of modern natural science, with such reverence: that ancient and matured primordial moral impulses are at work in the cosmos. — Those who in ancient times became spiritual guides in the sense of those epochs—we know from earlier lectures that one can no longer ascend to the spiritual worlds today by the same path as was once taken in the mysteries; today this must happen in a different way—they had to pass through certain stages and levels. Among these degrees, one of the highest was the one that gave the soul the ability to look into the higher realms of spiritual existence. One such stage was what was called the stage of the Solar Hero or the Solar Man. Why the Solar Man? It was called this because such a soul, which perceives the interrelationships in the world in the manner just described, must indeed have developed its inner life to such an extent that, when it rises into the highest realms of knowledge, is subject to the inner arbitrariness to which ordinary soul life is subject, but rather to impulses that act with an inner necessity that has been recognized and experienced, so that one might say: If you deviate from them, you will cause such disorder as the sun would cause in the universe if it were to deviate from its orbit even for a moment. Because one had to have attained such firmness of inner life at this stage of knowledge, such knowers were called “Sun-men” in the ancient mysteries. Therein lay the connection that exists between what we send out into the world and what grows out of it—just as what we experience as the “laws of the cosmos” has grown out of moral impulses of beings from times long, long past.

[ 38 ] When one takes this into account, one begins to perceive a statement by Kant in a different light. When the moral duty—and moral consciousness itself—first came to his mind’s eye, he uttered these significant words: “There are two things that always fill me with a timid awe: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me!” Such connections—those that have been experienced, those that one surveys, where one sees the moral law, as it were, at work in the course of time—filled him as he spoke of the “starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.” Whoever recognizes, through spiritual science, the primordial impulses of moral life also recognizes how this moral life is connected to the true root source of the human being. Therefore, spiritual science can, in the highest sense, lead to giving this moral life a firm foundation, so that one can truly say: Yes, all knowledge exists so that we may find ourselves within our own inner being and carry what we thus find through the world and through the ages; but everything we experience within ourselves as moral impulses makes us creators ourselves, co-shapers of the world. We can understand how we must despise ourselves as immoral human beings who bring ruin and sow destruction in the world when we realize: Through the moral order of the world, we are connected to the world in a far more real sense than through the other forms of knowledge we now take into our intellect. And then one senses what profound minds such as Johann Gottlieb Fichte—whose hundredth anniversary of his death we recently commemorated—felt so deeply, when he said: “The sensory world has no independent existence grounded in itself; it is merely the sensed material for duty, for the moral world order.” What spiritual science must bring to light today was foreshadowed, with regard to the moral worldview, by a mind as profound as Fichte’s, who, in essence, viewed the world in such a way that he said to himself: The moral world order is the most real of all, and the rest exists only to provide us with material in which we can express what the moral impulses are. — Of course, spiritual science, too, will not be able to stand on the ground of Fichte’s worldview; for this represents a one-sidedness. It stems from a time when spiritual science did not yet exist. But one will be able to look back with admiration on how a person like Fichte experienced the moral world order within himself. For this is precisely what spiritual science reveals: All other forms of knowledge present themselves to us as a tableau of the world; but in the moral sense, it is what we must be if we wish to develop our entire being. This is what not only anchors us within ourselves but also places us within the entire world order with true balance.

[ 39 ] When one sees how the spiritual sciences, in particular, are capable of providing the living foundation for the moral order of the world, it becomes truly clear what has already been stated many times in these lectures. However, modern spiritual science still stands today in much the same way that Giordano Bruno once stood before his contemporaries when he sought to expand the worldview beyond the blue vault of the heavens into the infinite expanses of space. He had to show the people of his time: What you perceive as the blue vault of the heavens is merely the limit of your narrow perception. Such a spiritual phantasmagoria is what human beings have placed within their existence through birth, conception, and death. But just as the blue vault of the sky is merely the narrow boundary of one’s own perception in space, so too are birth and death, for human perception, merely the boundaries in time. And just as what human beings themselves have established as a Maya—as the boundary of space—has been recognized as such, so too do the boundaries beyond birth and death open up for the human soul, and the infinite worlds that lie beyond birth and death are acknowledged. Today, with regard to the insights of spiritual science in our time, we stand in the same position as modern natural science did at the dawn of the modern era with regard to scientific views. But in a certain sense, we still stand alone. We stand in such a way that, even though we know of the invincible faith in the truth that finds its way through the narrowest crevices and rock fissures—even if opposing forces seek to fight against it—we still feel isolated in our pursuit of spiritual science: One feels how the present age must reach out toward spiritual science, how souls must yearn for it—and one feels in harmony with what the greatest minds of all times have intuited and meant, what they have often expressed in a simpler way than one must express it today, yet what they have nonetheless correctly articulated from a soul attuned to the truth. Thus, in pointing out—from the perspective of spiritual science—the true sources of moral life and a moral world order emerging from the divine-spiritual worlds, one feels in harmony with many other minds—and also with Goethe, from whom a saying will be quoted here to summarize what has been spoken to you in the course of this lecture. Goethe spoke a significant word regarding the source of moral life—a simple one, one might say, for those who can truly feel moral life: “Very softly a God speaks in our breast, very softly, yet clearly; He leads us to recognize what is to be embraced and what is to be avoided.” When Goethe says, “Very softly, yet clearly, a God speaks within our breast,” he is pointing—as do all great personalities, and especially those sensitive souls who could intuit the truth in this realm—as it were, intuitively toward what spiritual science can discover in the spiritual world as the impulses of moral life. We look up into the spiritual world, and we say to ourselves: It is precisely moral life that testifies to the fact that human beings have their origin in the spiritual worlds; for it is from there that the God speaks, who softly yet quite clearly proclaims what is to be embraced and what is to be avoided; though He veils what the spiritual researcher perceives as the reasons for embracing and avoiding, but what human beings express in moral impulses has its true roots in the spiritual world; what descends from there into our hearts, what speaks into the human soul as a true God, as the voice of God from the spiritual world, proclaiming the essence of the human being through which he reaches beyond what the creatures of his surrounding world in the cosmos are.