The Rudolf Steiner Archive

2. The Eternal Powers of the Human Soul

[ 1 ] Reflections on the eternal forces of the human soul from the perspective of spiritual science—as that term is used here—are, in our time, naturally, one might say quite inevitably, subject to misunderstandings. And it is only natural that they should be refuted from one perspective or another—a perspective that is undoubtedly justified from a certain point of view. In such refutations, the following occurs: The person who believes they are refuting these findings of spiritual science puts forward this or that argument and then assumes that they have hit the mark—that is, achieved what they set out to do—and that the spiritual scientist cannot possibly agree with their reasoning. Precisely the kind of analysis that is to be undertaken here today based on the findings of spiritual science is subject to the misunderstandings alluded to, for the situation is usually this—indeed, one might say, in the cases that have come to light, the situation is always this—that the person who refutes them puts forward points with which the spiritual scientist is in complete agreement, absolutely in agreement. It is simply that spiritual science has something to say that is not at all touched upon by such objections—objections that the spiritual scientist often accepts to a much greater extent than the person raising the objections.

[ 2 ] This applies in particular to the question to be addressed today and to the arguments often put forward on this subject by those with a natural-scientific worldview. The scholar of the humanities—I have often emphasized this from this platform, but I must point it out once again by way of introduction today—is by no means in any kind of opposition to the scientific worldview based on the great achievements of modern times, especially not when it comes to questions of human inner life. Certainly, those who wish to practice psychology—the study of the soul—in a sense that is still valid today put forward various arguments regarding the eternal nature of a human soul core. Then the natural scientist comes along—and I say explicitly, often quite rightly—and says: Here we see the manifestations of the human soul—human thought, human feeling, human will—as they express themselves from birth, or from the moment a person is able to develop conscious perceptions, right up until death. When we look at this inner life—so the proponent of the scientific worldview must say—it appears, in the strictest sense, bound to physical processes; and one can demonstrate how it is bound to physical processes, how physical functions gradually develop from the earliest childhood onward, and how, as these physical processes—as one might say—become perfected, the faculties of thinking, perception, and intellectual perception develop in parallel. One can also see how, as a person’s physical functions fade away, the mental functions gradually recede into the background, gradually diminish, and ebb away. Indeed, one can demonstrate even more: one can show how, in the case of illness or similar conditions, the elimination of any brain activity or any part of the nervous system causes parts of mental life to vanish; how incapacity takes the place of capacity when organic functions are eliminated. One could multiply the examples cited ad infinitum. Thus, one can rightly say: Is not everything that human beings develop through their thinking, feeling, and willing bound to the physical processes that are gradually being discovered by the natural sciences, just as the flame is bound to the candle’s fuel? And indeed, some so-called proofs put forward for the existence of a soul-core within ordinary thinking, feeling, and willing really resemble a notion one might form—as if one were to say that one finds something in the flame that cannot perish even if the material of the candle were somehow removed from the flame. One might say: Much of what is taught in conventional psychology is structured, in terms of its reasoning and modes of proof, in such a way that it corresponds exactly to the line of thought one would follow to prove that what lives in the flame cannot disappear if the combustible material is taken away from the flame.

[ 3 ] It must be emphatically stated that, with regard to everything that has just been indicated, spiritual science stands entirely on the foundation of natural science; indeed, as we shall see in today’s discussion, it must stand even more intensely and firmly on this foundation of natural science than natural science itself can at the present stage of its research. In terms of methodology—that is, with regard to the nature of scientific thinking and the scientific mindset—spiritual science is certainly aligned in such a way that it follows the same direction that has been charted for human research through the newer methods of the natural sciences. However, when these newer methods of natural science have been applied to the life of the soul, they clearly show that they do not lead precisely to those areas where the true enigmas of human soul life are to be found.

[ 4 ] Rather than merely making general remarks, I would like to consider a specific case. One of the more recent scholars who sought to ground psychology entirely in the scientific way of thinking was the psychologist Franz Brentano, who has already been mentioned several times in these lectures. His scientific endeavors coincided precisely with the second half of the nineteenth century, a time when the scientific way of thinking rightly made a profound, overwhelming impression on the leading figures of that era, so that no one engaged in any kind of scientific research wanted to miss out on the fruitful insights offered by the scientific worldview. And one of those who fully embraced this view—saying, for example, that if strictly scientific results are to be achieved, they must be attained through a method modeled on the natural sciences, otherwise they are not truly scientific results—one of the figures who approached the study of the soul in the same way as the study of nature was Franz Brentano. The theses he formulated at the beginning of his professorship in Würzburg in the 1850s went something like this: The future of psychology depends entirely on its following the same path as natural science. — Now, precisely with regard to the hopes that psychological research can hold for our age and the future, Franz Brentano is a distinctive figure. He began writing a *Psychology*, a book that has attained a certain degree of fame within the narrower circle of psychological researchers. When the first volume of his psychology was published, he promised that, before the end of the year in which the volume appeared—it was 1874—the second volume would be published, followed in quick succession by the third. So far, nothing has been published except the first volume! And this is characteristic precisely because Franz Brentano is one of the most conscientious and energetic thinkers.

[ 5 ] Franz Brentano sets out to study the mind in the spirit of modern natural science. He begins by examining mental life as it manifests itself in ordinary human existence; to investigate how, as human beings live within the ordinary physical world, thoughts follow one after another; what the laws are governing how one thought gives rise to another; and what the laws are governing how this or that sensation of pleasure, or this or that sensation of pain, takes hold in the human soul. In short, he endeavored to investigate this inner life, which unfolds within the ordinary physical existence of human beings, in a scientific sense. The goal of the study of the soul is already clear to this researcher of the soul, yet he sees no way to do anything to even come closer to this goal in any way. A characteristic statement by Franz Brentano reads as follows: “For the hopes of Plato and Aristotle to gain certainty about the survival of our better part after the dissolution of the body, the laws of the association of ideas, the development of convictions and opinions, and the germination and growth of desire and love would be anything but a true compensation.... And if indeed...” —he is referring to the newer scientific way of thinking—“implied the exclusion of the question of immortality, then [this loss] would have to be called an exceedingly significant one for psychology.”

[ 6 ] Franz Brentano is quite characteristic of those representatives of modern psychology who, while seeking to stand on the ground of modern natural science—that is, to observe mental life just as one would otherwise observe external natural phenomena—find that the very important, meaningful questions intimately connected with human life slip away from them as they conduct their investigations. We can, as Brentano puts it, arrive at an understanding—in the spirit of modern natural science—of how ideas are linked, how opinions take root in the human soul, and how pleasure and suffering are mutually dependent; but one cannot take a position on the important question of what the eternal forces of the human soul are based on what one initially seeks to achieve through this method. — And so, it must be said, the question of the eternal forces of human existence has increasingly disappeared from the writings and literature on psychology in modern times. One need only leaf through the literature on psychology to see how true is what I have just indicated.

[ 7 ] The spiritual sciences now seek to find a path to the mysteries of the human soul, drawing entirely on the mindset of the natural sciences. But it comes to the realization that the mode of thinking—which, on the one hand, is so fruitful for the observation and exploration of the mysteries of external nature—must be internalized and thereby completely transformed if one wishes to pursue spiritual science from the same mindset from which one pursues natural science. Spiritual science shows that those activities of the soul that take place in ordinary thinking, feeling, and willing between birth and death truly contain nothing that is not bound to the physical body just as the flame is bound to the material of the candle. Spiritual science shows that precisely those activities of the soul that are fully suited to ordinary life—and are also fully suited to ordinary scientific research—do not allow us to approach what exists as the eternal in the soul. Spiritual science shows that the human soul, as it exists in everyday life and in ordinary scientific research, is bound to the physical functions of the body, and that one must first seek out what is eternal in the soul by finding a path, starting from the ordinary activities of the soul, to a place where these ordinary activities do not extend—a place they cannot reach if they merely accomplish what is accomplished in everyday life and ordinary science. An inner development of the soul’s faculties toward a point that is entirely superfluous for ordinary life—this is necessary if one wishes to find the eternal powers of the human soul.

[ 8 ] In previous lectures, I have already spoken—from certain perspectives—about this development of human soul faculties toward a view of the world different from the everyday one. Today I would like to approach the question from yet another perspective and shed new light on it.

[ 9 ] What is generally regarded as the most important aspect of ordinary science—and of ordinary life, for example, in thinking and imagining—is considered in a completely different way in spiritual research than it is in everyday life. In ordinary life, we come to know something by reflecting on whatever initially approaches us from the outside. We perceive what approaches us from the outside; we also perceive what is unfolding in the course of history; we reflect on it and thereby investigate the laws governing external facts and historical development. Thought arises within us, and it is precisely because we are able to think—because our thoughts have a certain content—that we know something about the external world. And so it is appropriate for our place in everyday life. It is also appropriate for the work of conventional science.

[ 10 ] However, if one wishes to understand thinking in the way it must be understood in order to arrive at true results in the spiritual sciences, one must approach it in the following manner. I want to use a comparison—one I have already employed here before—to show how the researcher of the spirit must approach thinking and imagination in a completely different way than people do in ordinary life or in ordinary science. I have already hinted at this: When we use our hands for some kind of external work, what matters first and foremost is that we perform this external work, that the results of this external work are there. Attention is focused on what is brought about in the external world through our work. But that is not the only result of the work. The external world must look to this result, and it has a right to do so. But as a person repeatedly performs this or that task, he simultaneously strengthens the power of his hands and arms—and not only makes them stronger, but also more skillful at performing these tasks. One might say—if we may use the term, which is of course only true in a relative sense—that a person perfects the dexterity of his hands and arms through his work. In terms of external work, this may be something quite insignificant if one considers only how the result of the work fits into the context of human life. In that regard, it is a side effect that the human hand and arms become more skilled. But for human beings, it matters greatly. Or even if one were to reject that view, this very fact remains as a side effect! We can, however, compare this to what a person achieves in imagination and thought. In everyday life and in conventional science, what matters is that one forms a certain content of thought. Certainly, that is quite right. But in forming this content of thought—that is, in thinking—something similar actually happens to the act of thinking as happens to the strength of the hand and arm when one works. Thinking undergoes an inner process, and it is precisely this—which is actually quite incidental to everyday life and to ordinary science, even with regard to their achievements—that spiritual scientific research must now direct its inner gaze toward: what happens in thinking. The soul must be directed not toward the content of thoughts, but toward the activity itself. And not merely toward the activity, but toward what occurs in the activity of thinking—if I may use this expression, which has only relative validity, once more—in the direction of perfection, of the development of thinking.

[ 11 ] This is what the soul’s gaze must be directed toward. And in order to enter realms where the eternal forces of soul life unfold, it must be possible to look beyond the content of thought and direct one’s soul’s gaze toward the act of thinking, toward the activity of thinking—toward what one does by thinking. This is achieved systematically and methodically through an intimate inner process—which one might also call an intimate inner soul experiment—and which I have often referred to here as “meditation.” One must understand the word “meditation” only in the sense intended here—as a technical term for the endeavor to cultivate a capacity through which the soul’s gaze can be directed precisely toward this development of thought. And one can truly achieve this orientation of the inner soul forces in this direction through what is called meditation, provided this meditation is practiced in the proper sense. Of course, I can only outline the basic principles here regarding what meditation is. More detailed information can be found in my books, particularly in the book *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?*, where the soul’s activities—the inner soul experiments, so to speak—are explained in detail; these set the entire life of the soul on the path that is now to be outlined here in principle. Thinking and imagination must be brought into a state of possibility more often, so that they stand, as it were, just as external things do—so that one can observe them, hold them more firmly, as it were, within the inner faculties of the soul than one is accustomed to holding them when one simply allows thought to proceed in a way that serves one’s understanding of the external world. And to steer the soul in this direction, one must, again and again—out of the deepest freedom and of one’s own volition—give thought a direction that one sets for it solely to truly feel what has just been indicated from within, to experience it inwardly, and to strengthen this thinking to the point where one can experience what has been indicated from within. To do this, one must introduce into one’s thinking and imagination contents, thoughts, and images toward which one now focuses one’s entire inner soul life, so that one truly forgets the world and everything around us, disregards the entire course of the rest of one’s soul life, in order to concentrate and direct all one’s soul forces. It is a seemingly undemanding exercise of inner spiritual life, but with regard to what is meant here, one could say, as in Goethe’s *Faust*: “True, it is easy, yet the easy is hard!” It is generally easy to direct one’s thinking in the manner suggested here. But in order to truly muster the inner strength necessary to observe one’s thinking in action, the process must be repeated over and over again. Depending on a person’s disposition, it takes weeks, months, or even years before any result is achieved. Consequently, most people who embark on such an inner path have long since lost patience by the time any result might be attained.

[ 12 ] Then there is this to consider: When we take any thought from our inner life—as memory, for example, presents it to us—that thought, which we have often had and which is linked to this or that external circumstance, may not be of much help to us in carrying out the task in question. For when a person draws a thought from the realm of their inner life, a vast number of feelings and remnants of feelings—which otherwise lie more or less unconscious within it—are linked to that thought; and one experiences many things in connection with this thought that one experiences only because the thought has become associated with much else that is not conscious to us in ordinary life. One cannot know whether what one then experiences in connection with these thoughts is not somehow a reminiscence, some hidden memory from ordinary life. And finally, when one takes a thought that relates to something external, one cannot be entirely certain either. For when we form a thought about the external world, that thought does indeed enter our consciousness, but we are never fully aware of the impressions we receive more or less unconsciously alongside it. One can, for example, bring any thought of an external object one has seen into consciousness. And by concentrating all one’s spiritual power on it, something that one did not bring into consciousness through direct perception may well emerge; and one may believe that one has somehow brought forth what one is experiencing from unknown worlds, whereas one has merely brought it forth from one’s own soul—from the part that otherwise remains unconscious. Therefore, it is best to form ideas that one can easily grasp and with which one is not exposed to the danger that they might draw something up from the life of the soul and then lead us to believe we are experiencing something that is nothing more than reminiscences of one’s own subconscious soul life. To prevent this from happening, it is good to form a thought—or to take a thought from the literature of spiritual science—that one can fully grasp, to which one has not yet, so to speak, attached any habits, whose individual parts one knows how they fit together, and which one knows will not subconsciously evoke anything from one’s inner life that then presents itself to one’s mind, rather than experiencing something new. I have therefore often said: Since it does not matter at all that, through these activities of the soul—which we call meditation—one perceives anything external or brings any external truth to mind, it is good to take symbolic images about which one is clear from the outset: they do not express anything external; they are merely placed at the center of one’s thinking in order to engage the mind in them, to strengthen the mind through them. For it all comes down to grasping the activities of thinking vividly as one performs them. Through free inner activity, one must place a specific content at the center of one’s inner life and then confine oneself entirely to that content. Only a few minutes need to be devoted to each specific content for each individual exercise, for as a rule it does not depend on the length of time at all, but rather on the extent to which one truly succeeds in concentrating the soul’s power so that it is directed toward a single point and thereby gains inner strength, becomes inwardly fortified, so that this inner thought activity does not go unnoticed, but rather manifests itself with such intensity that one can feel it inwardly, that one can experience it inwardly. If one now carries out such a soul experiment again and again with sufficient patience, perseverance, and energy, one eventually comes to truly set thinking—that which otherwise eludes us as an inner thought process—before one’s soul, and to relate to one’s inner self in a completely different way than one has otherwise related to it. One comes to discover something entirely new within oneself. But it is new only to one’s consciousness; it is always present within the human being. The spiritual exercises one has undertaken merely lead to becoming aware of it. What one discovers there is always present in every human being. But as a new human being within the human being—as something we perceive to be filling us, something we did not know before—we can now embrace this new human being within the human being with the strength we have become aware of through comprehension, through the inner strengthening and fortification of thought. And this now leads us—if we pursue it long enough, intensely enough, and with sufficient patience—truly beyond the sphere of what we have in ordinary thinking and imagination; it leads us to a completely different way of viewing our soul than the one to which we are accustomed. But at the same time we notice something that can, however, only be perceived at a point where the human being truly arrives at a result. One must wait patiently until what is now described as a conclusion—the one one has just reached—actually occurs. One arrives at a profound conclusion. |

[ 13 ] This startling finding brings to mind, time and again, an expression that has often been used throughout the course of human development. It has been used within those circles that have been aware of the existence of such an expansion of the soul life as the one being discussed here. Now, however, in order to explain what is meant here, it must be said: spiritual science of the kind referred to here is only possible in our age. Humanity is evolving. What appears in some form in a later age was not possible in an earlier age. After all, modern natural science—as it has developed, for example, since the times of Galileo, Kepler, and Copernicus—was not possible in earlier epochs of human development. But these earlier epochs had to come first. In those earlier epochs, people sought to attune themselves to the inner nature of the world in a very different way than is the case in the present epoch. Just as modern science in its current form was not yet possible, for example, in Greco-Roman times—not possible based on purely external facts, not merely in principle—so too is spiritual science, as it is understood here and described in terms of its method, something that can only now begin to dawn within the course of human development. But just as people in the past delved into nature even before the advent of modern natural science, in accordance with the human faculties that were then at the surface of human development, people also sought in earlier times to reach the eternal forces of the human soul and, in the different manner of antiquity, to further develop the human soul’s powers so that they could perceive, in the ancient way, what lies at the foundation of human soul development as the eternal. Even back then, a frequently used phrase was employed to indicate what one attains through a development of the inner soul life, as has been suggested; it was said that in order to reach the eternal foundations of one’s soul life, a person must approach the gateway of death. One comes to recognize the full meaning of this phrase—“to approach the threshold of death”—by actually bringing the inner experience just described as meditation to a certain point. One reaches a point, in fact, where one discovers within oneself a genuine second human being—a human being who can be encompassed only through strengthened thinking, just as one grasps the ordinary physical human being through ordinary, all-encompassing will, through what one can otherwise bring to bear within oneself. One arrives at this second human being within oneself, who is, so to speak, sensed inwardly by the thinking that has gained strength, but at the same time one comes to realize—through direct perception—how this second human being is connected, not with the constructive but with the destructive forces of our human organism. One comes to realize that, fundamentally speaking, one carries within oneself the conditions of death from birth—or, let us say, from conception; that certain processes in the human being are real, processes that unfold and which, once they have reached a certain point, must inevitably lead to death. Alongside that which animates the human being—alongside the ascending life process, which, after all, cannot be perceived even with the ordinary soul forces—there stands that which consists of destructive soul forces; what, I might say, are destructive soul forces. And with the highest flowering of these destructive soul forces—with that which reigns and weaves within the human being as, one might say, the cause of death, as a continuous cause of death—one sees most intimately connected that which is now this “second human being,” whom one, as it were, feels inwardly through thinking. Truly, only through inner experience can one arrive at the assertion I am now making, Just as someone who does not know that water is split into hydrogen and oxygen through electrolysis is unable to discern anything about hydrogen or oxygen, so too is one unable, from ordinary soul life, to discern anything about the experience that has now been hinted at and that has always been expressed in words: one approaches the gate of death.

[ 14 ] One experiences that, just as there is something in water—namely, hydrogen and oxygen—that one cannot see directly when observing the water, so too there is something in the human being that is connected both to their thinking and, at the same time, to the forces that bring about their death. One looks within oneself at the human being who makes it possible to have, between birth and death, precisely the purest, most abstract thinking—the kind that takes one furthest in ordinary life—yet one could not have it if the forces within the human being that bring about death did not reach their highest flowering. And as one discovers within oneself—precisely through the strengthening of thought—that which brings about death, an experience immediately follows, an inner experiential knowledge—one cannot call it anything other than an inner experiential knowledge—not something that could ever be reached through a rational inference; just as one cannot, by observing water from the outside, reach the conclusion through rational deduction that it contains hydrogen and oxygen. One gains the experience of saying to oneself: One now looks beyond the scope of what ordinary consciousness surveys and comes to know within oneself the human being who, between birth and death, is connected to the life-giving forces. But one comes to know this person in such a way that, by looking through him, one comes to know in this second human being what was present in the human being before he entered physical existence through birth—or, let us say, conception. From this moment on, one comes to know that it is not only the hereditary forces from the ancestors—from the father and mother—that have brought the human being into existence, but that spiritual forces, which have come forth from a purely spiritual world, have joined themselves to what lies within the stream of heredity.

[ 15 ] In everyday life, we are accustomed to calling “knowledge” only that which is arrived at by pointing out certain facts that already exist before the knowledge is acquired. With regard to spiritual facts, this way of thinking would be exactly the same as saying: I want to communicate something to another person, but I will not speak it aloud, because by speaking it, it is no longer an objective fact that exists; it must come about on its own. — Just as speaking brings something into being that is not, however, exhausted merely by its content in what is spoken, so spiritual-scientific knowledge is bound up with an activity in which that which is the content of knowledge first comes to fruition, just as it is only in speaking that what is the content of speech is brought into being. And one now truly comes to realize that in spiritual realms, in a higher form, there exists what natural science has struggled to grasp since about the middle of the nineteenth century: what is called the “transformation of forces.” The transformation of forces is, for example—in its simplest form—as follows: You press down on a table, and the force of your pressure, the work of your pressure, is transformed into heat; your force of pressure has not been lost, but has been transformed. This law of the transformation of forces has, of course, taken hold of the scientific mindset and thereby gained great significance. Anyone who, as a scholar of the spiritual sciences, advances to the point I have indicated learns to recognize that what underlies all our thinking—and what I have just called “the life-destroying forces”—are in fact eternal life forces; yet as eternal life forces, they can only be active when they do not take hold of an organism, a physical organism. When they exist in the purely spiritual world before birth or, let us say, before conception, they are eternal life forces. And they must lose the form of eternal life forces; they must transform themselves into forces that now, between birth and death, build up the organ of physical thinking. Their task is to build up the organ of physical thinking. They can therefore only resume their spiritual activity once the organ of the physical body—the organ of thought—has been broken down. For this reason, it is truly impossible to find within physical life what has just been described. For one could not think in the ordinary sense at all if one were able to find what has been described. In physical life—as spiritual science in particular shows—one thinks with the organ of thought. It is not thinking itself that is created by the eternal activity and the eternal forces of the human soul, but rather the organ of thought; this must always be present first, so that thinking can take place. This ordinary physical thinking would therefore have to cease if one were to contemplate precisely what is essential. It is not thinking that arises from the eternal forces, but the organ of thought, which remains hidden behind thinking. And it is precisely this organ of thought that must remain hidden so that thinking can come to the fore.

[ 16 ] Therefore, as one progresses in this inner development of the soul that has just been described, one has an experience that, I would say, is no less profound than the one just described by the traditional expression “approaching the gates of death.” One experiences: Yes, your thinking—that is what you are strengthening; your thinking becomes stronger in itself, so that it can inwardly sense a second human being who is within you. — But one thing applies above all else to this thinking. Everything I have said is meant only in a general sense, for the reason that, as one develops within the soul, a remnant of ordinary thinking always remains; otherwise, one would have to leap out of ordinary thinking and into the other. So what I am saying is always meant only in a relative sense—that is, it does not apply in the full sense, but only in the main.

[ 17 ] What emerges as particularly characteristic, as particularly significant, as thinking gains strength, is something that represents a certain importance for ordinary mental life and now, for this mental life that has gained strength, actually comes to an end. It is possible, through ordinary memory—through the ordinary faculty of recollection—to retain what one has thus attained through thinking. The convenience of ordinary life, too, in which one simply commits one’s thoughts to memory and then has them at hand, needing only to recall them—even that, in fact, comes to an end. So, once one has developed one’s thinking, despite having done so, one has reached a point where, by continually immersing oneself in this developed thinking, one is constantly confronted with the feeling that this thinking is lost again the very moment it arises. And this is precisely the difficulty that causes so many people to lose patience and never get around to developing the inner spiritual powers referred to here. Someone who does exercises like those described may do them for a long time; but they fail to realize that what one produces in this way is just as difficult to retain as a dream sometimes is. When one wakes up, one knows quite precisely: “I dreamed this or that”—but one cannot hold on to it; it vanishes. And so it is with what one has attained here. It can be incorporated into ordinary memory only with extraordinary difficulty.

[ 18 ] That is why, when presenting truths from the humanities, one must always first create them in the moment; as strange and paradoxical as it may sound, it is simply true that one cannot draw them from ordinary memory. And why is that so? For the reason that human beings, as they exist in ordinary life, have a constant tendency to let what they actually attain through the shaping and formation of the organ of thought—that which emerges from the eternal—slip down into the physical realm. No sooner has one attained what the eternal presents to one than it already slips back into the ordinary organ of thought. That is to say, it passes into ordinary soul life and thereby loses its eternal form. One actually sees constantly that, as something arises, one grasps it only for it to slip away again immediately. And it takes a long time of practice to be able to observe to some extent what arises and passes away again at once; to hold within the soul that which arises and passes away again at once. Thus, one realizes that one actually needs a completely different kind of consciousness than the one that arises from the ordinary thinking faculty. And one gradually comes to the realization—which is, in turn, a profound spiritual experience—that: Yes, you do gain something through your soul’s development; but with the consciousness you possess—which serves you so fruitfully in ordinary life—you cannot hold onto it. For this ordinary consciousness is organized in such a way that the eternal slips away from it, precisely so that it may function effectively. Ultimately, this leads to the conviction: You need a different kind of consciousness; you need a consciousness that transcends the one that serves you fruitfully in everyday life, for with this consciousness you cannot hold on to the eternal.

[ 19 ] It is therefore necessary that such pure mental exercises—which have been described as a component of the meditative life—be supplemented by other exercises, which may now be called exercises of the will or exercises of the will and emotion, It is not enough to strengthen thinking and imagination internally in the manner described, for it is precisely through this internal strengthening that one would find what is emerging constantly slipping away. Therefore, spiritual science must also advise treating the will in a different way than it is treated in ordinary life. In ordinary life, the will functions in the soul in such a way that, when we will, our attention is actually directed toward what is to happen—toward what flows from the will into action—even if we are merely willing inwardly, even if it remains at the level of intention—the inner visualization of the will. Attention is always directed toward that into which the will is expressed, into which the will flows. If, therefore, one applies the same effort to cultivating the will inwardly as one might apply to cultivating imagination and thought in the manner described, one can develop the will to a point where one attains a capacity for its further development—a capacity that is necessary to approach the eternal forces of the human soul. To achieve this, however, it is necessary to perform inner exercises of the will in such a way as to truly establish a deep inner peace, calms the ebb and flow of desires and the ebb and flow of other impulses of desire that play a major role in life, so that one creates, as it were, complete stillness—like that of the sea—in one’s inner soul life, and then reflects on what one may have wanted at some point in time. All the vitality that will is imbued with when it is an immediate, present will is, so to speak, removed by setting one’s remembered will before oneself—by, for example, looking back in the evening on what one willed during the day, and now allowing this will to take effect on oneself in such a way that one does not become an inner critic, but rather observes this will; that one observes it now, when it no longer directly tempts one to direct one’s attention solely toward external actions, but rather, because the will has become detached from external activity within the inner life of the soul, one can now direct one’s attention to what the life of the soul is and what it accomplishes in the will. One also makes further progress in this area by making an effort—I would say, once again as a purely inner experiment—to place within the innermost depths of one’s soul life that which, for one reason or another, one deemed good to will, and then to bring to mind in a subtle, intimate way: What do you experience when you place your soul in the position of willing that? — while completely setting aside what is connected to the object of the will itself, and instead focusing solely on what the soul feels inwardly as it goes through the act of willing.

[ 20 ] Once again, extensive practice in this direction is necessary if one wishes to reach a conclusion; but one does reach a conclusion: namely, one discovers that, throughout one’s life, one is constantly carrying an invisible, imperceptible spectator with oneself. Once again, one discovers a person, a new person—albeit a person who is always there but who goes unnoticed. Just as the inner person described earlier goes unnoticed in imagination and thought, so too is this inner spectator overlooked in the act of willing, because one’s attention is directed toward something entirely different. This inner person, however, is in fact a consciousness that—if I may use the paradoxical expression—is always unconsciously within us, that is not brought up into ordinary consciousness, but is nonetheless present.

[ 21 ] It is difficult to talk about these things because one is speaking of realities that are, in fact, unfamiliar to human beings; they are unfamiliar because they are not brought to consciousness in everyday life. The spiritual scientist speaks of nothing new. He speaks of nothing that does not exist; he merely points out what is present in every human being. But in order to point this out, it is necessary to approach it in such a way that one actively engages with it—not merely presenting facts intended to attest to its existence, but rather bringing forth for observation what actually is, which can only be revealed through active engagement.

[ 22 ] And now, once one has reached a certain point in this area, something happens in the soul that can cause the deepest upheaval. One now comes to know, to a great extent, something that one indeed experiences continually in external life—specifically within the intentions, desires, and will that one holds in the soul—but, I would say, only in its outward form, only in fragments. One experiences in a comprehensive way what one might call the direct beholding, the direct feeling of what suffering and pain are. For, fundamentally speaking, every aspect of this attainment of consciousness—which otherwise remains unconscious—is connected with deprivation and pain. But these two experiences now merge. The one experience that has led one to the perception—I would say—of the blossoming of the power of dying within the human being, and the experience that has led one to the perception of an unconscious consciousness that is always present within the human being, that always watches the human being as an observer—these two experiences merge. Regarding the first experience, one realizes: This cannot, strictly speaking, be described as “being” in the same way that any other existing thing is described. It cannot sustain itself in being unless it is supported by a consciousness—in other words, unless it is remembered by a certain consciousness. And one makes a discovery—one of the most magnificent, most powerful inner experiences one can initially have on the path of knowledge—one makes the discovery: Whatever you create through the exertion of your thinking is like a fleeting dream. It cannot compare to the capacity for memory of ordinary consciousness. But if you truly bring forth within yourself that which lives in the will—as your observation, as your subconscious consciousness—then this is now the consciousness that can grasp the other, which otherwise cannot be recalled, and which can hold onto it.

[ 23 ] And now we come to an experience that, in terms of scientific attitude, can be compared entirely to the way we approach the external natural world—the way we observe the external natural world. One looks at the plant. One sees how it brings forth a seed in the flower and how this seed, when planted in the earth, is the beginning of a new plant. One brings the end together with the beginning to form a cycle, a circle. In the same way, though on a higher level, the end and the beginning of physical human life are grasped. One knows that what existed before birth—or, let us say, conception—has united from the spiritual world with what lies in the physical line of inheritance, which surges through and interweaves with this physically organized aspect of the human being. We know that this plays out in such a way that it produces an organ, that this organ enables thinking, and that its ultimate development leads to memory; but that in so doing—by emerging from the spiritual world—it has attained, through this transformation, a form that is, so to speak, a supreme flowering, which must now be grasped by a consciousness that is of an entirely different kind than that through which it initially emerges from the spiritual world. This consciousness lies like a seed of consciousness, like something that underlies volition, but in ordinary volition—because attention is not directed toward it—does not rise to consciousness. That which lies within the human being as a source of death unites, when the human being passes through the gate of death, with this seed of consciousness that lies within the will. And ordinary physical life is merely a keeping of the one and the other apart. We live physically as long as the one and the other are kept apart, as long as we stand between them with our being. In the experience of death, what occurs is that the first is grasped by the second—that consciousness grasps the former and carries it out through the gate of death, back into the spiritual world.

[ 24 ] Just as one can see from the plant seed in the flower that it begins the cycle anew when it passes through the necessary intermediate stages, so too does one experience that which existed before birth—that which lies within the human being as a source of death—descending into a renewed earthly life once it has passed through spiritual conditions. One connects the end and the beginning entirely in the spirit of the natural sciences and thereby arrives at a confirmation of what has emerged in one of the most beautiful phases of modern spiritual life and—one might say—as if it had sprung from the thinking of a profound thinker: what emerged through Lessing when he concluded his most mature work, *The Education of the Human Race*, with a reference to the intellectual necessity of repeated earthly lives. At that time, it sprang, as it were, from a line of thought that had struggled its way to an independent worldview. Modern spiritual science strives to substantiate—truly scientifically, but, as we shall see, from within—that which thus took shape in Lessing’s thinking: this doctrine of repeated earthly lives! Today it is regarded just as much as something fanciful, something dreamlike, as the doctrine was regarded at a certain time not long ago: that the living can arise only from the living. — But whoever holds such a view, having recognized it as truth, also knows that truth has a difficult path to travel among humanity, yet that it will find that path!

[ 25 ] It seemed fantastical and dreamlike to most people when the newer, scientifically minded individuals appeared and said: People believe that a firmament above limits space, whereas this firmament is nothing other than the expression of the limits of perception itself. What you perceive as the firmament is brought about solely by yourselves; that is as far as your gaze extends, that is as far as your perception reaches! It does not exist externally in nature; rather, what exists externally in nature is the infinity of space, within which countless worlds are embedded! Spiritual science stands today at the same point of view as people did back then, when the old conception of the spatial firmament had to be overcome—I would say, with regard to the spiritual firmament of the human soul between birth or conception and death. At first, a person looks toward conception, toward birth, or up to a point as far as their memory reaches, and up to their death. But there is nothing that limits life, any more than the firmament limits space. Rather, beyond it lies what human beings do not see, because they do not attempt to extend their capacity for knowledge and their power of thought beyond this firmament of time. Out there, beyond this firmament, lie the repeated earthly lives and the lives in between, in which the soul lives in a purely spiritual world.

[ 26 ] It is certainly perhaps even more difficult to become accustomed to the mental processes required to achieve this removal of the spiritual firmament than it was to achieve the removal of the physical firmament. But our time is certainly ripe for us, from a scientific perspective—I would say, to go beyond what external natural science can achieve. And so I do not hesitate—even if this must lead to even worse misunderstandings than what has been said so far—to apply concretely, in a specific instance, that particular kind of spiritual research I have just characterized, an instance that can interest us at all times, but especially in our fateful age.

[ 27 ] People speak—and will speak more and more—of the immortal powers of the human soul as they return to a true understanding of the soul. But they will also learn once again to speak of what reigns invisibly within the visible, of what reigns imperceptibly in the course of human life from the perspective of ordinary historical observation. In connection with the eternal forces of the human soul, we have spoken of death, which indeed poses a riddle—not only for those who say they desire a life beyond the gates of death, but above all for those who must comprehend life itself; for much of what is needed to understand life lies in unraveling the mystery of death. But in our present time, death approaches us in an entirely different way—amidst pain and suffering, yet also amidst hope for the future and certainty about the future. Death occurs in such a way that it seizes flourishing human lives, not in the sense that the forces leading to death run their course from within—as is allotted to each individual; this cannot be elaborated further today, but could also be characterized in the sense of spiritual science—so death does not merely occur in such a way that these life-ending forces, arising from within, from the organic, take the physical body away from that which then, as the higher consciousness in the life of the will, unites with the Eternal—which is life-ending, yet is one with the Eternal—; death does not merely approach us in this way, but rather through violent interventions from the outside—say, through a bullet or some other means—and forcibly severs the physical human body from the soul in the prime of life. Although I will provide some more precise details on this very subject in eight days’ time in the lecture on “The Human Soul and the Human Spirit,” I would like to venture to simply recount here a research finding that lies along the path just described.

[ 28 ] To fully explore how the very same approach that has just been outlined for the ordinary, simple results also leads to an investigation of what we are now about to discuss would, of course, take a great deal of time. But it is precisely this same approach that, as we proceed, will also lead us to an understanding of the great interconnections of life.

[ 29 ] We must keep this in mind: no energy is lost; it remains, it is transformed. If, then, the physical body is taken away in the prime of a person’s life by an external influence—say, a bullet—there are still forces present within the general human constitution that could have sustained the person for a long time to come in terms of their life in the physical world. These forces are not lost. The spiritual researcher must ask: Where do these forces come from, and where do they go? A profound question presents itself to our souls here. In a lecture last winter, I spoke from the perspective of how this force lives on in the present. Now I would like to speak about these forces insofar as they are linked to the historical course of humanity. The spiritual researcher must ask: Where do these forces—which cease to act within a human being when his body is violently taken from him—reappear elsewhere? Just as one seeks in the natural sciences, when any force is lost, how that force reappears transformed into other forms, so the spiritual researcher seeks within spiritual phenomena to rediscover, on the one hand, what is lost and, on the other, what is regained. And precisely by seeking what is being discussed here, one comes to realize: There are forces at work in human evolution—forces we observe, for example, when we educate a person. There we observe how a person can become capable of thinking, doing, or feeling this or that. We guide the innate capacities within them in such a way that we know: we are doing nothing special when we develop general human abilities. We know that if they are later able to do this or that, it is because this or that has been developed within them.

[ 30 ] But alongside all of this, other forces emerge in human life—forces that are called “genius-like forces,” forces that appear while one is educating a person. One can be much less intelligent than the person one is educating: these genius-like forces emerge nonetheless. They come to light; one speaks of a divine gift, of forces emerging without one being able to do anything about it. Of course, I do not mean by this merely the powers displayed by the highest geniuses, but rather the genius-like powers that are present in every human being. Even the simplest person needs this or that capacity for invention in the most ordinary of daily tasks in order to truly make progress. There is only a difference of degree between what one needs in ordinary life and the highest genius-like powers. These genius-like powers emerge, one might say, from the twilight of becoming; they arise in a person as something bestowed upon them by the world spirit—the divine spirit that pervades the world—as one might initially say, without being able to claim that one has cultivated them or nurtured them through education. And here the remarkable, surprising result emerges: that these powers, which thus manifest as inventive, as genius-like powers, are transformed powers. Those powers are transformed into genius-like powers that vanish when the physical body—which the human being could have retained in the ordinary course of life had he not been struck by the bullet—is taken from him from without. A surprising connection emerges here: The powers that a person carries into death by passing through the gate of death in a violent manner—that is, when the physical body is taken from them from the outside, not through internal organic processes—these powers are not lost; these forces manifest themselves, and not merely in the individual’s later earthly life—which manifests in an entirely different way—but they manifest in the course of history; they manifest in entirely different people. They are, as it were—if I may use this trivial, philistine expression—embedded in the historical process. And what were the forces of a violent death in the past are transformed, sooner or later in the future, into creative forces that emerge within the course of human development.

[ 31 ] If one pursues spiritual science to such depths, then for those who are trained in thinking—that is, who have inner practice in the paths that thought must take to approach realities—connections truly emerge that come to light in the spiritual world—though these are no more wondrous than when mysterious natural connections arise— connections that simply exist in a higher sphere, and because they exist in a higher sphere, are all the more important for the elevation of our lives—more important than how the soul feels in existence, how the soul can also become imbued with the connection of the worlds through religion, and more important than mere external knowledge of nature. Spiritual science does not seek to replace any religion; religious feeling has an entirely different origin. But spiritual science is, if one may say so, suited to deepening these religious feelings, to stimulating them even in those who, through the influences of modern natural science, have lost all religious feeling. Spiritual science reveals connections within spiritual life, entirely from the perspective of the scientific mindset. Not that this would solve all the world’s mysteries, but what would otherwise merely stand as one fact alongside another is internally illuminated—in a manner similar to how natural facts are illuminated when one can trace them through the chain of causes and effects.

[ 32 ] Now, in conclusion, I would like to say something that is not logically connected to what I have just discussed as a final observation — I will have more to say about this next Friday — but rather something connected to it only through a “logic of feeling,” a logic of feeling that must be comprehensible to anyone who is connected to what permeates and moves us all in our time.

[ 33 ] That is precisely the point: we see the people of Central Europe encircled, beset, and struggling for their very existence. Yesterday I tried to show what spiritual aspirations exist within this sphere of existence. Now, I really do not feel compelled—I would say, in order to serve the times in an outward way—to force out what I have to say. Yesterday I tried to show how, in German spiritual life—precisely as this German spiritual life sought its paths to knowledge through its great philosophers in an idealistic manner—there lies a path into the spiritual worlds. One must not take this dogmatically—as I emphasized repeatedly yesterday—but rather one must take it in the spirit of seeking, in the spirit of striving. One must examine the direction in which the inner soul forces of the German idealist philosophers were moving. And if one then traces, in the manner I attempted to elucidate yesterday, how in Kant, Goethe, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel—on the one hand through abstract, sober thinking, and on the other hand through energetic insights of the will, as in Fichte, or through powerful poetic creative forces, as in Goethe— paved the way for Germany’s idealistic worldviews—then one finds in this something that presents itself as if the national soul itself, this German national soul as a whole, had immersed itself in meditation—the meditation of an entire national soul during the idealistic development from the end of the eighteenth century into the first third of the nineteenth century! Anyone who, through meditation—through the special cultivation of thinking, feeling, and willing—sees the path into the spiritual worlds may, without having to force such a claim in any way, say what can truly be the deepest conviction for the modern researcher of the spirit: Progress in spiritual science can be understood as the development of a seed embedded in German idealist philosophy—a seed that was present throughout the entire idealist German spiritual striving at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and has continued to take effect right up to the present day, as I attempted to characterize yesterday. Truly, in everything I have been able to speak about here in these lectures over the years, there has always been the awareness: What is now presented as spiritual science—even if this may sound quite paradoxical—is nothing other than Goetheanism, German idealism. I mean this concrete idealism, as it emerged in the German spirit at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, transposed into our own time; not simply viewed historically as it was back then, but grasped vividly in our own time! And I was aware that, in essence, I was never presenting anything other than Goetheanism when I spoke of spiritual science as it can be understood in our time. As strange as this may sound to some people today—precisely when one must view the matter in this way—one finds the striving for the spiritual world firmly anchored in that to which German spiritual striving once rose as a highest summit, as a highest inner summit.

[ 34 ] And if one allows this connection to take effect within one’s soul, one can position oneself within these fateful days in such a way that what, on the one hand, the German people have sought in the most extreme form of spiritual endeavor is now merely another aspect of what must be at work in our time so that the historical task placed upon the German people in our day may be fulfilled in the external realms of action. Precisely for this reason, one finds everything the German people accomplish intimately connected with the deepest life of the soul—with that which was great and significant in a time when, in relation to the outside world, the ground had, as it were, been pulled out from under the German people’s feet. Hence, one may say: If, alongside the external struggle—which will be decided by arms and which it is not really fitting for the observer of the spiritual realm to discuss, because matters are being decided not by words but by arms—if, alongside this struggle, something has developed that strikes us as so peculiar precisely because this German spiritual life is disparaged by its opponents, so that one might believe, these opponents find the only way to make their own spiritual life shine in a special light by belittling German spiritual life—then a consideration of the inner significance, the inner world significance, of German spiritual life leads precisely to the realization of how little the German needs to view his own spiritual life in such a way that, by comparison, the spiritual life of others would have to be belittled. Germans need only look to the task set before them from the very heart of the world spirit to know what they have to accomplish in the world and what they have to carry forward into the future.

[ 35 ] Therefore, one may say from the depths of one’s consciousness: This German national spirit, which reigns in the totality of German life, which reigns in German thought, in what I have referred to as German meditation, which reigns in German action—this German national spirit may point out, when it is now confronted here and there in such an incomprehensible manner with the accusation that it has produced a worldview aimed solely at violence and power, —it may point out how, through its connection with the spiritual, it can refute this peculiar talk. And if it is even claimed that the German national spirit has played out its role in historical development, then precisely because the seed of the highest spiritual life lives in the aforementioned meditation of the German national spirit—one need only imagine how those seeds will become blossoms and fruits, though they must first become blossoms and fruits in the future— — then, through the genuine consciousness that flows from such thinking, from such perception, from such feeling, it can be said: To those who today seek to belittle this German national spirit—or even deny it its spiritually fruitful powers for the future—this German national spirit, out of an awareness of its spiritual and historical deeds and tasks, holds before them the book of destiny, which it believes it can correctly decipher through a contemplation of the German mission and the German spiritual essence. And it says to all those who believe they must oppose German intellectual life—not only with weapons but also with verbal weapons—and who prophesy its downfall: it believes it can counter them—out of a firm conviction grounded in an understanding of the course of German intellectual life—with a page from the book of destiny concerning the development of humanity. And on this one page stands—no matter what may be said or claimed—the future of the German spirit, the future of the German national soul!