The Rudolf Steiner Archive

4. The Human Soul and the Human Spirit

[ 1 ] Anyone who views spiritual science—as it is understood here and as I have had the privilege of presenting it here for years—will always find themselves at odds with it if they perceive in this spiritual science, particularly in its approaches and methods, something that is utterly alien to ordinary human nature and ordinary human life—something strange, foreign, and, in a sense, otherworldly; who sees in spiritual research something that can only be attained through special, extraordinary gifts that are inaccessible to ordinary human nature. In contrast, it has been emphasized here time and again: Spiritual science aims to be nothing other than the genuine continuation, in the spiritual realm, of the scientific worldview—insofar as this has, in recent times, found methods that have led to previously unimagined results and successes in the investigation of material, outwardly sensory phenomena. The difficulty in grasping the entire spirit and purpose of spiritual science lies in the fact that, from the perspective of the current worldview, it is hard for people to understand that this spiritual science, at its core, seeks nothing other than to develop the inner human thought and other soul experiences in a similar way—through purely inner processes—as certain external manipulations and certain external operations are refined and developed in the scientific experiment. Just as the scientific experiment, through which nature’s secrets are to be uncovered, is, in essence, nothing other than a refinement—in a certain sense, an elevation, if I may use that word—of activities that are otherwise also carried out with external, material things, activities that are merely performed in a certain, let us say, methodical sense, so that through their combination, nature reveals its secrets to the human soul. Just as the scientific experiment is nothing other than a continuation, so to speak, of human external activity, so too is spiritual scientific research nothing other than a continuation—let us say, a refinement—of what the human soul accomplishes in the ordinary course of life and in ordinary science through thought and other mental activities. That is one difficulty: the path from one to the other is not always sought, for example, in the way indicated here eight days ago.

[ 2 ] The other difficulty lies in the fact that, when confronted with the findings of the natural sciences, people are much more likely than they realize to accept what is presented to them if it strikes them as plausible based on their common sense—even if they do not apply the methods themselves or are unable to conduct the experiments in a laboratory or clinical setting. There is no desire here to investigate everything directly on one’s own, but rather to approach, with common sense, what the researcher—who has become familiar with the application of these methods—presents. With regard to the humanities, the situation for the researcher is no different from that in the natural sciences. He presents, of his own accord and from the same line of thought, what he has now investigated—through intimate inner soul processes—as objectively as the mysteries of nature are investigated through experiments. And he likewise counts on approval coming from common sense, which speaks in favor of what the “inner experiment”—as I put it eight days ago—has to offer. Now, however, in the face of the findings of spiritual science—the mysteries of the course of evolution and the destinies of the human soul—there exists a desire among all people not merely to accept research findings, but to explore for themselves, to a greater or lesser extent, what they should regard as true in this realm. The paths that the soul of every human being can take—and which are, for example, outlined in my book *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?*—do indeed offer every human soul the opportunity to convince itself and to verify within itself what the spiritual researcher has to say, precisely by experiencing these intimate, inner processes within the soul. But these paths must actually be taken. And so, even though many people repeatedly set out on this path, an inner, subjective difficulty arises: these paths—I cannot say they are difficult, but they are found to be difficult by human souls—cause people to lose patience after the first few steps, or at least lack the inclination to pursue them with the same conscientiousness with which a natural scientist prepares an experiment. And in all of this, a certain belief speaks within the human soul—a belief that constitutes a prejudice against genuine spiritual research; yet in human life, it is precisely prejudices that are decisive in most cases. The belief arises that the human soul, just as it is, if it only reflects a little, if it only develops those habits of thought, experiences those mental processes, and lives them out—which are so immediately present in life—must surely arrive at an understanding of the mysteries of inner human nature. One has the feeling: It cannot be difficult to recognize the most mysterious thing in the world—in the outer world—namely, the human being itself, in its very essence. One has this feeling: It cannot be difficult. To understand the inner workings of a clock mechanism, one sets out to study it. Faced with the most complex and enigmatic thing in the sensory world around us—human nature—one would actually prefer to give in to the belief that anyone could recognize the full truth about the essence of the human being without first preparing oneself to adopt a certain perspective, without first embarking on inner spiritual journeys to understand one’s own nature. One might indeed think it would be quite good, convenient, and perhaps even pleasant if that were the case—if no preparation were needed at all to explore the human being. But in response to this, one can only say: It is simply not the case; rather, in order to explore the human being in its innermost nature, the paths of spiritual research are required. That is a truth. And whether or how a person comes to terms with this is irrelevant in the face of this truth. A person must first, through a preparatory path, acquire the means by which they can unveil their own mystery.

[ 3 ] And yet: The starting points are by no means a secret. The lecture eight days ago already demonstrated this, and I would like to return briefly today to the fundamental principles, at least. Every person thinks throughout life and continues to develop their thinking when they devote it to scientific purposes. Thinking and imagining are everyday inner activities of the soul. What matters now is nothing other than approaching this thinking in a way that differs from how one approaches it in ordinary life and in ordinary science, in order to explore the paths of the spiritual. In ordinary life and in ordinary science, a person forms concepts, notions, and ideas in order to represent something external through them. And they are satisfied when they are able to represent something external in their mental images. They rightly call this the truth—in ordinary life and in ordinary science—that they can form mental images which represent an external reality to them, bring it to life within them, and allow them to relive it inwardly. Now it has been pointed out that where this ordinary mode of imagination in everyday life—and also the thinking of conventional science—ends, only then does that which is necessary for the exploration of the human spiritual life begin. That is to say: thinking—the very same thinking that one employs in everyday life—must be experienced inwardly in a different way, and brought to life inwardly in a different way, than it is experienced and brought to life in ordinary life and within ordinary science. It is brought to life, as I have indicated, through that inner process which, in a certain sense—and the word should not be misunderstood—constitutes the inner, intimate, purely soul-based experiment, or at least initiates it through the process that is called true meditation—if it did not sound pedantic, one could say “in the technical sense of the word.” One thinks in order to internalize the act of thinking, to experience the process of thinking. One does not usually experience it. One believes one is experiencing it in ordinary life or in ordinary science. But one does not truly experience it there. One has it, one uses it, one applies this thinking; but the soul is directed toward the external world, toward something real outside of thinking. What matters is that one can pay attention to thinking itself. To do this, however, it must be intensified. That is to say: it must be carried out in the same way as it is in meditation—setting thought in motion, not to visualize something external, not to bring something external to life internally or to represent it, but solely to experience this process of thinking inwardly and to observe it within that experience. That is what matters. And for this, it is precisely necessary not to surrender to the mental processes of ordinary life, but through inner volition—out of completely free will—I am stating the principle here; you will find the details in my book: *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?* — easily comprehensible images introduced into one’s thinking, images with which one can be certain that all sorts of inner reminiscences will not arise and obscure the clear experience of the process; preferably symbolic images that are not meant to represent anything external, that are not meant to actually bring something external to mind, but are meant solely to set thinking in motion and thereby strengthen it internally, so that one does not merely practice this thinking, but experiences it inwardly—so that one now truly experiences oneself as an inner thinking being, just as one otherwise experiences oneself inwardly through one’s sense of muscle sensation.

[ 4 ] If one pursues the development of the soul in this way, focusing on one aspect, one eventually reaches—as I have described—a certain point that constitutes a significant, indeed, a profound inner experience. And I would like to characterize once more how this experience leads one to adopt a completely different attitude toward human nature than one usually does in life. The spiritual-scientific view is in complete agreement with the scientific way of thinking—even when that thinking is carried to its utmost consequences. Within ordinary thinking—the kind we engage in as human beings embodied in the sensory world—we need an organ for this thinking. And not only that, but every time we think, an inner process must first take place that cannot enter into thinking, nor even into consciousness; it must precede thinking. Thinking can only take place once it has been internally and organically prepared. Thus, every time one thinks, two things occur simultaneously: a process of which one is unaware, which first prepares the organism—the physical body—so that the processes take place there which then emerge into consciousness as thoughts or mental images. Through meditation—by concentrating, as it were, all the powers of the soul on a specific mental image, compressing them, maintaining stillness in thought—not allowing the flow of thought to pass by as it does in ordinary life, but maintaining stillness in thought, that is, holding the thought still—and now thinking, not to represent something external, but to sense inner thinking, to sense the process of thinking—by accomplishing this, one realizes inwardly: What one has actually been doing up to now as thinking—how one has been engaged in thinking—comes to an end. One does not emerge from a clear perception of consciousness, nor does one enter into a state of nebulosity; but this thinking, which is carried along by the flow of the external world’s processes, ceases as such. One enters an inner experience that initially brings one much closer to oneself, that leads one into the process that precedes thought, the process that first prepares our body so that we can unfold our thinking. One descends beneath thinking. This cannot be proven in any other way than through direct experience. The kind of thinking one engages in during ordinary life appears to be like a flowing river. Now one knows: one is now in a deeper layer of being; one is now within the process that cannot be experienced in ordinary life because it must precede thinking.

[ 5 ] This is the process which, however, if continued with patience, perseverance, and energy—as was explained eight days ago—leads far; for some people it takes less time, for others it takes years, although the individual exercise should not be overdone. This inner experience leads to no longer merely conceiving what lies in thought, but to actually experiencing it. That is to say: not experiencing thought as it reflects an external reality, but as it takes shape within the human being—how it first takes hold of the organism and shapes the human being. At first, one does not know what this inner experience actually means. One feels, so to speak, as if one were descending at this or that point beneath the ordinary life of the soul into a world that one had not known until now. But then, as the first significant result, one comes to know that which lies as a living force within thinking—and which preceded the formation of our physical body, and above all preceded that point in human experience up to which one can recall in later life: back to birth, to conception, and even further back. That is to say, one comes to recognize oneself as a spiritual being who does not live within us merely to use the organism as an instrument for perceiving the outer world, but as a spiritual being who, before our birth—or, let us say, before conception—has shaped that which must be formed in the human body by the human spirit and the human soul. One learns to recognize through experience what takes shape out of that triad that arises from the father and mother, but also from what lies beyond the hereditary line and descends from the spiritual world to unite with what is given through the hereditary line. To do this, it is simply necessary to deepen the process of thinking, to strengthen the process of thinking from within. One can be led—not, of course, through ordinary thinking—to the insight—for it must be an insight—into what preceded our birth or our conception, what descends from the spiritual world to unite in the physical world with the physical body provided by the hereditary stream. Anyone who demands proof of this would first have to familiarize themselves with the nature of all ordinary proof. Facts cannot be proven at all. Just consider for a moment that no one had ever seen a whale. No one would ever be able to prove, based on any zoological knowledge, that a whale exists. There is no way to lead from any concepts or ideas to reality if the course of these concepts and ideas is understood as it unfolds in ordinary life. And so this leads us, on the one hand, out of the world in which we live between birth and death, and into that world from which we stepped into our physical embodiment—the world into which we step when we pass through the gate of “death.” Thus, the path that, on the one hand, leads us out of this sensory world into the spiritual world involves a special inner development, a special inner mastery of thought. And here it must be said: Although spiritual science, in its entire outlook and in its entire relationship to the world, truly works from the spirit of the scientific attitude, there nevertheless arises a difference from ordinary natural science, which is due to the fact that natural science is directed toward the external world, whereas spiritual science seeks to do for the world of the spirit what natural science seeks to do for the external world. Consequently, despite this complete harmony, a difference—not a contradiction, but a difference—emerges, one that could be characterized from many angles, but which, for our purposes today, can be characterized as follows: In ordinary life and ordinary science, what we accomplish through thinking is the final result, that which we aim to reach. By engaging in thinking within external reality, we arrive precisely at what we wish to obtain from external reality. All these activities—insofar as they are activities of the soul—that we employ to gain knowledge of the external world and of life within that external world are merely preparatory when it comes to the path of spiritual science. In external science, in the external world, one thinks in order to arrive at a result of thought. But this thinking, as it is practiced there, merely prepares the soul so that, through this thinking, the soul may reach a point of inner experience at which the spiritual world meets it. Thus, everything that external life can offer us in terms of thinking, thinking power, and the results of thinking in external science is used differently in spiritual science than in ordinary life and ordinary science. It is used in such a way that it merely develops the thinking, the thinking aspect of the human spirit and the human soul, up to a certain point. What constitutes a result in ordinary life and in ordinary science is a living preparation for spiritual science. And what then emerges as a fact—as I have just described in the most elementary terms—does not occur during the effort itself. Inner effort serves only to lead the soul up to a certain point. Essentially, one remains within the realm of ordinary life as long as one exerts inner effort, as long as one is engaged in meditation. Only then, once one has completed the effort, once one has allowed it to take effect on the soul and has then set it aside and waits calmly, do the results of spiritual science emerge. These can only manifest as spiritual facts, for the perception of which one has prepared oneself by developing the inner spiritual eye. Just as nature brings the eye forth from within the human organism so that it may look out toward the outer world and receive light and colors, so one works through everything that constitutes thinking and inner soul effort toward meeting that which is to come—and must come—toward one from the other side. Inner revelation—the soul’s inner approach—must be that which confronts one as a fact of the spiritual world. That is one side,

[ 6 ] From another perspective, one could say: it is just as much an inner, intimate experience of the will as what I have described was an inner experience of thinking. In everyday life, people carry out actions that arise from impulses of the will, from wishes and desires. But one does not pay attention to the fact that there is something special in this will. One comes to realize that there is something special in human volition when one withdraws from life—even if only for a few minutes—in meditation and observes how one has willed; when one directs one’s inner soul not toward a volition that translates into outward action, but toward an inner contemplation of volition itself. Incidentally, anyone who practices thought meditation in the proper way arrives quite naturally at this inner contemplation of volition. For meditation, insofar as it is even merely placing a thought at the center of consciousness, is at the same time an intimate bringing forth of an inner volitional process. One experiences volition in such a way that one is inwardly united with it. Through the intensification and strengthening of what has already been called “meditation” in the previous discussion of the soul’s experience, it follows quite naturally that one learns to direct one’s attention to the inner process of volition in a way that one never does when volition is actually translating into external action—because in that case one directs one’s attention to what one wills in the external sensory world. But one must direct one’s attention to a process of willing, insofar as the essence of this process takes place within the soul. It must, in turn, be a deeply intimate, inner process. And it is precisely this act of willing that one recognizes best in the very process of meditation itself, provided one truly experiences the process of meditation inwardly. And it then becomes apparent that, by continuing to do this with ever-increasing inner perseverance and energy, one finally reaches a point where one discovers an inner observer within oneself. It is difficult to say such a thing, because it lies so far removed from ordinary ways of thinking that it seems as if one were speaking of something terribly fantastical, whereas one is speaking of a reality that one actually encounters. So one discovers an inner self within oneself that constantly observes what is taking place in our volitional decisions, in our entire will—an observer of whom one knows nothing in ordinary life, precisely because one does not direct one’s attention toward him. It is not an imagined being, but a real one that is truly and constantly watching within us and is present in our will. Just as we relate with our thoughts to the objects of external perception, so does something within us relate to the unfolding of our will. What colors and sounds are to the senses and to the consciousness that perceives the external world, that is what our will is to an inner observer. There is an inner observer within us to whom we provide the material for observation through our volitional decisions and the execution of our will, just as colors and sounds provide the material for our observation of the external world.

[ 7 ] It is difficult to speak about these things because one believes one is talking about something imagined, whereas one is actually speaking about something that, once the soul has prepared itself, comes to meet it again. This higher consciousness is such that one truly undergoes a deeply moving experience in the soul: one emerges, as if through an inner leap, from everything to which one is bound by ordinary soul life, and is able to place oneself in the position of this observer—even if only, I would say, for a moment. There are already enough of these moments. One feels oneself in relation to one’s whole being—as it stands in ordinary life—now in the same way that one otherwise feels, as an ordinary human being, in relation to things, the colorful and resonant things of external nature. If one takes this experience further, then at a certain point in the inner experience one realizes what it means to unfold an inner activity of the soul that does not make use of the organ of physicality, but rather stands opposite this outer physicality as one would stand opposite an external object—just as the ordinary person stands opposite a table or a chair or any other external object. To experience one’s soul life outside the body—that is precisely what, once again, one can only experience. And then one knows what life looks like as it passes through the gate of death, living free of the body even when the physical body is destroyed. It is an inner, weaving life of the soul that then passes into the spiritual world, in order to live its way through the spiritual world and henceforth draw its strength from the spiritual world. One comes to know these forces in their own unique way; they gradually prepare the soul being so that, after passing through the life between death and rebirth, it may descend into a new earthly incarnation.

[ 8 ] Starting from what is present in human volition, starting from what is present in thought and imagination—in other words, starting from the ordinary human being—one arrives at the findings of spiritual science. And these findings of spiritual science are not something that the spiritual scientist possesses for himself alone. It is the greatest error to believe that the spiritual researcher creates anything new in the soul beyond what is already there. Truly, just as the natural scientist who approaches nature does not create anything but merely eavesdrops on nature’s secrets, so too does the spiritual researcher create nothing with regard to the inner life of the soul. He merely approaches what is pre-birth, what lives on after death—the eternal forces of the human soul, which constitute the human spirit and the human soul.

[ 9 ] Here, too, I would say, a partly—or sometimes even entirely—selfish prejudice creeps into what the spiritual researcher actually intends to say. People simply say to themselves in life: The spiritual researcher can do something that other people cannot—and people then project this onto his human worth; they project it onto his significance as a human being. But he has nothing more within him than what every ordinary person has within them. For what he discovers as prenatal is always present in human nature, and it does not become any different for him simply because he acquires knowledge of it. That which passes through the gateway of death is present in the spiritual researcher just as it is present in every human being. And the knowledge that the spiritual researcher acquires relates to the reality of the human soul-spiritual existence no differently than the knowledge of natural science relates to external nature. It would even be good if, in literature dealing with such matters, certain words were not immediately taken to mean that one, so to speak, inwardly—pardon the expression—scatters incense, wishing to experience something quite special within one’s feelings. One often refers to someone who can thus look into the spiritual world as an “initiate.” But then, when the word “initiate” is uttered, people associate it with the idea that they are now in the presence of a very special person. This is precisely what one should avoid; instead, one should take things as they are to be understood in accordance with the descriptions just given. And the spiritual researcher himself is convinced that it is only the prejudices mentioned at the outset that prevent people from accepting his findings with common sense, just as one accepts the findings of a chemist, a physicist, and so on. For in principle, there is no difference.

[ 10 ] By training one’s thinking in the manner described, one comes to enter the spiritual world from one perspective. One encounters the pre-birth life—the life of the human soul in the spiritual world—and, proceeding from there, a vision of the spiritual world itself with its spiritual beings. This comes to one in such a way that it is vividly present. But one must be clear that this perception differs from the perceptions, sensations, and feelings one has in relation to the external sensory world. Anyone who believes that this perception can unfold for them in such a way that it is, as it were, merely a mist-like repetition of the perception of the sensory world is completely mistaken. Rather, one must realize that everything that makes the sensory world the sensory world stems from the fact that we perceive it with our organs. Colors such as they exist in the outer sensory world can be perceived only by the eye; sounds such as they exist in the outer world can be heard only by the physical ear. Nevertheless, one can speak of perception, of spiritual perception. One can speak of a soul’s eye or a spiritual eye when approaching the spiritual world from this perspective—to use Goethe’s term “spiritual eye.” This form of perception differs only in that, in such true clairvoyance, one is always conscious—just as one is conscious when writing that one is presenting as a vision that which is to be expressed as reality—that one evokes the vision oneself. But in this self-evocation, one follows an inner reality, a spiritual reality, just as in writing one does not scribble down anything arbitrary, but rather expresses an inner reality—albeit an inner reality that belongs to the outer world. This much more active, ever-active inner collaboration with the mental image is precisely what distinguishes this—I will now say: true—inner clairvoyance from external sensory perception, which is passively given to us, which approaches us as we turn our eyes toward it. But we, too, can only attain this ability to depict the spiritual world in a spiritual way if we have made the necessary preparations, so that the spiritual world comes to meet us as a result. From this experience, the soul then depicts the vision, and it feels the need to do so because it corresponds to an inner impulse to now truly have before itself, in a vivid way, that which otherwise weaves and lives as an experience but is not yet reality.

[ 11 ] And when one turns to the other side—when one steps out of the sensory world through the will, as has been described, and comes to the inner observer who truly accompanies one, but who is not observed because attention is withdrawn from him in ordinary life—then one feels: There is always one within you who watches over you, who in turn expresses what you want, what your intentions are directed toward, and what belongs to the sphere of your desires and your will. But this watching now presents itself in such a way that one feels this observer—this higher human being within the human being, this spiritual human being within the physical human being—to be inwardly active. One feels how he is actively involved, how his activity is present in everything, in all of it. I called this inner activity an “observer” because it leads one to an understanding of it; but it is not an observer in the sense of mere watching, but in the sense of active participation. We already feel the human being who passes through the gate of death within our own body when we bring about in this way that he is active within us. But we must then call this inner activity “clairaudience,” having previously called the other “clairvoyance.” “Spiritual ears,” to use a phrase from Goethe once more, open within the soul. One lives, so to speak, in a vibrating tone perceptible only spiritually, which one knows corresponds to an inner reality. One knows that one is oneself a spiritual being and can now enter into the “company”—to use this trivial word—of the other spiritual beings who are in the spiritual world.

[ 12 ] However, whenever the terms “clairaudience” and “clairvoyance” are used, one must always point out that it is precisely on this point that serious—and, I must even say, justified—objections and misunderstandings arise against spiritual science. For rightly—and please note that I say “rightly”—the terms “clairvoyance,” “clairaudience,” and so on—are rightly disregarded in the broadest circles and viewed as something that, fundamentally speaking, cannot lead to a better understanding of reality than ordinary thinking and imagination, but which, on the contrary, must lead away from true reality into all sorts of fantastical notions, all sorts of daydreams—indeed, in a pathological manner. But here, too, spiritual science not only stands on the same ground as natural science, but on the contrary: true spiritual science draws precisely the most extreme conclusions. And what has been characterized here in this context—and for which the terms “clairvoyance,” “clairaudience”—terms that have come to be used—has absolutely nothing to do with what is often called by those names in everyday life; to what extent this has nothing to do with it, I would now like to illustrate through an argument that may seem far-fetched.

[ 13 ] By directing, practicing, and using our thinking in everyday life, we employ our body for our thinking. We need not consider here exactly how much of our body is involved. As I have said, we shall not take into account at this point the extent to which thinking has the nervous system as its organ. Now, in the lecture I gave eight days ago, I pointed out that this ordinary thinking is connected to the fact that, from the moment we are capable of thinking in life, a process of deterioration actually takes place within us—a process of deterioration with regard to subtle life processes. This is what spiritual science reveals. I can only mention this briefly today. I spoke about it in more detail last time, in the lecture eight days ago, but it will be elaborated upon in greater detail in the following lectures.

[ 14 ] Up to the point at which one recalls past lives, a process takes place within the human being—initially in the prenatal stage, before conception, in the purely spiritual world. A process takes place that is directed toward activities which, in a sense, build up the organism and are in line with the organism’s life direction. At the very moment up to which we can recall in our lives, this inner activity of forces—which is the thinking essence, the power of thought, that does not yet think—ceases to build up the human being. From that moment on, it breaks down the human being, actually carrying out continuous processes of destruction that then accumulate and ultimately bring about the human being’s external physical death—separating the human body from the soul and the spirit. Thus, precisely when we investigate thinking from the perspective of spiritual science, we perceive it as physically bound to a process of breakdown—a process that, as thinking proceeds as it does in ordinary life, causes deterioration. This breakdown must then be continually replenished whenever thinking comes to a standstill during sleep. But the process of breakdown is stronger, more intense, and ultimately brings about death slowly, insofar as it is connected to those processes of the organism that are anchored precisely in the organism of thought. Of course, death is also connected to other processes. Thus, as we develop this ordinary, everyday thinking, we become so dependent on our physical organization that this thinking is actually linked to the destruction of the organism. What brings us death in the physical organism is therefore connected to that which, to the highest degree, represents the flowering of human inner experience in this world between birth and death.

[ 15 ] This is an activity that must now be elevated within the process of the inner soul activities that have been described. Thinking through meditation, as well as the development of the will through meditation, lead the human being to become independent of his physical body, to rise above his physical body, and to engage in a special activity of the soul in which he consciously maintains himself outside of and independent of his physical body. The “outside” is not meant so much in a spatial sense, but rather in the sense that the human being knows himself to be independent of physical bodily activity. Now, with regard to what in ordinary life is called clairvoyance, clairaudience, and so on—which can intensify to the point of hallucination and illusion—there exists a fatal superstition that one can thereby gain insights into the world that lies beyond birth and death. However, what is commonly called clairvoyance and clairaudience in everyday life cannot lead one to any processes or events in the spiritual world that lie beyond birth and death. For ordinary, everyday thinking, we must, so to speak, destroy something that constitutes a wholeness within our body, and we must destroy it to the extent that this lies within—to use the term—normal daily activity. We place our entire being within the environment and allow it to be broken down as we practice and carry out thinking. In what is usually called clairvoyance or clairaudience, however, it is not the whole human being that is set in relation to the world, but rather, in a pathological way, only a part of the world is set in relation to it, so that the human being does not go beyond thinking but descends; does not rise into the supersensible but sinks into the subsensible. Because in this ordinary clairvoyance the individual engages his organ to a lesser extent than in ordinary thinking—that is, by engaging only a part of his organism—he arrives at hallucinations and illusions that certainly point to a reality, but one that is less real than our ordinary sensory reality, which we experience between birth and death. This ordinary clairvoyant, with his sub-sensory clairvoyance—which must be understood either as something that must descend below ordinary reality or else be misunderstood, leading to daydreaming and fantasy, to a pathological worldview—this sub-sensory clairvoyance is based on the fact that one sees less of the world than one perceives through the ordinary perception of the sensory world; One steps out of the world, so to speak, but in a pathological way; one limits oneself to something that lies beneath the reality of ordinary experience. And this hallucinatory, illusory clairvoyance is more attached to physicality—and now to pathological physicality—than ordinary thinking, feeling, and willing.

[ 16 ] Therefore, spiritual science takes the view that it is precisely through true clairvoyance and true clairaudience that all these pathological forces—which can lead a person to sub-sensory perception—are overcome. What the true spiritual researcher develops is not the same as what a person suffering from a disorder develops when, as it is commonly said in everyday life, becomes clairvoyant and experiences hallucinations; rather, it is precisely what overcomes the hallucinatory forces within a person, what eradicates all such forces, and what destroys within a person everything that leads to illusions. One reaches spiritual reality precisely by turning away from that pathological plunge into the sub-sensory realm, which in ordinary life is called clairvoyance or clairaudience. Therefore, what has been described here—which consists precisely in not delving deeper into one’s organism, as in ordinary clairvoyance, but in rising above it, becoming independent of it, and thereby seeing and hearing in the spiritual world—is a form of clairvoyance that, in contrast to ordinary clairvoyance, is an absolutely healing process. It can only be healing; it can only lead to an elevation of all human experience free from illusion, as opposed to the experience found in the ordinary sensory world. While the hallucinator, the deluder—the one who is often called a clairvoyant in ordinary life—is precisely a fantasist because he descends into the sub-sensory realm, in the person who develops true clairvoyance and true clairaudience, a healthy outlook on life is simply elevated, so that for them, the possibility of illusion regarding the world is even much less than for those who approach the world solely with their healthy five senses and common sense.

[ 17 ] This is a source of endless misunderstandings, because time and again what has been described as true clairvoyance is confused with what is so often called clairvoyance, clairaudience, and so on in everyday life—phenomena that, however, stem from some defect in the physical organism. One may have such a defect or bring it about oneself through all manner of unnatural practices, insofar as this makes it easier and more convenient to achieve what is mistaken for what can be attained through the further development of a healthy human perspective. It must be expressly emphasized that overcoming the sub-sensory behavior of the soul is precisely what is achieved in the very best way—much more healthily than through common sense—precisely through true clairvoyance and true clairaudience.

[ 18 ] So one might say: Spiritual science is a seeking—it is not even accurate to speak of a further development of the soul—it is a seeking of that which lies within the human soul and the human spirit as the deeper forces, toward which one simply does not direct one’s gaze because, so to speak, one has not developed the spiritual ear and the spiritual eye, the organs for this purpose, and does not direct one’s gaze toward them in ordinary life. It is a search for the eternal forces of the human soul. And if one holds fast to this, one comes to say the following, which, when expressed in this way, may be surprising, but which is self-evident to those who see through the actual facts. Viewed from the outside, spiritual science—that is, the true knowledge of the human soul and the human spirit—is still today regarded by the vast majority of humanity as fantasy, as daydreaming, as something nonsensical to which only a few people can devote themselves—people who have, in fact, lost their common sense through some means or other. Viewed from within, viewed in the light of truth, the spiritual researcher actually has no adversary in the world. And the curious thing about this is that the spiritual researcher asserts nothing other than something with which, fundamentally speaking, every human being agrees—with the very few exceptions that, in turn, stem from particularly peculiar states of mind. With few exceptions, every human being must in truth agree with him—only they do not realize it; they merely believe that they cannot agree with him. That is it! For anyone who is merely aware that they go through the world thinking can, in reality, no longer be an opponent of the spiritual researcher. For anyone who walks through the world thinking thereby demonstrates that thinking has meaning in the world; they thereby admit that thinking is a process that takes place beyond the sensory world. When we think, we experience inwardly something that takes place beyond the sensory world, something that does not belong to the sensory world—one might even say something that takes place beneath the sensory world. One acknowledges this the moment one thinks precisely. One simply does not acknowledge it, and thereby one is an opponent of spiritual science. One acknowledges it the moment one realizes that even in ordinary life, thinking could not form an image of the external world if it were situated within that external world—the sensory world. For if thinking belonged to the sensory world, it could form no image of the sensory world any more than a flame can form an image of the candle. The flame is a product of the candle, but the product can never form an image. Thus, anyone who, in this sense, wishes to be an opponent of the spirituality of thought would have to be an opponent of spirituality in general. For thought is, in and of itself, something above the sensory world, because it is brought about by inner exertion, by an inner activity of the soul—and thus not merely by processes that unfold in the same way as the other bodily processes. This simply follows from the fact that one allows this thinking to pass judgment on the sensory world. And by acknowledging that thinking does not spring from the sensory world, but rather passes judgment on it, one already adopts the standpoint that thinking as such does not belong to the sensory world—that it is something spiritual. If one were to take the position that it is not something spiritual, that it springs from the sensory world, then one would have to structure one’s opposition quite differently. And only the one who says, “I do not believe that this thinking has any significance beyond the sensory world; therefore, I will stop thinking,” may truly and consistently be an opponent of the spiritual nature of thinking. I do not force myself inwardly to form any thought, but rather I surrender myself to the sensory world; then thinking must come of its own accord. — Anyone who does not abandon thinking can never be an opponent of the spiritual nature of thinking, provided they think correctly; provided they carry their thinking through to its logical conclusions. In fact, in practice, all those who think hold this view. For any other view is not opposition to spiritual science, but opposition to oneself. One claims something other than what one practices. Anyone who engages in thinking at all thereby acknowledges that thinking is spiritual.

[ 19 ] Spiritual science does nothing other than lift this thinking out of abstraction, out of imagery, out of the fact that it merely signifies something, and enable the spiritual researcher to immerse himself in the process of thinking to such an extent that thinking becomes an experience for him. And one immerses oneself in that very same experience that one otherwise has in thinking—but to which one simply does not pay attention, so that one fails to realize that it is an experience. At the moment when one no longer regards thinking as one does in ordinary life—where it signifies something, represents something—but rather regards it as one otherwise lives physically in the body, experiencing the process of life—at that very moment, the spiritual world, spiritual beings, and the truly spiritual world creep into this lived experience of thinking, and the rest follows naturally.

[ 20 ] The spiritual researcher therefore need not refer to anything other than what every person who actively practices thinking actually acknowledges. For in what they acknowledge—in the process of developing their thinking—the spiritual world is to be found. Through thinking, the human being is already clairvoyantly immersed in the spiritual world; it is just that, instead of living thought, they receive a form of thinking that is merely a mirror image. Therefore, I can once again use the comparison I have described many times before. When one stands before a mirror image, one experiences oneself inwardly, but one experiences oneself in such a way that the mirror provides the image. Everything is in the mirror, except that it presents a lifeless image that is not experienced. Just as if one could mentally remove the mirror image and then experience the whole thing pictorially within oneself, so it is when, in thinking, one moves away from its pictorial nature—which truly relates to experienced thinking as a reflection does—and passes over to the experience of thinking itself. It is precisely here, as I said, that the spiritual worlds creep into thought. One’s own “I,” the deeper “I,” the observer living within us, thus creeps into the world of volition that is internally formed in the manner described.

[ 21 ] Again, fundamentally speaking, every human being—if he understands himself—is a follower of spiritual science, even with regard to this volition. For whoever does not admit that there is something in the will that is just as inwardly conscious as we are in our ordinary physical thinking, whoever does not admit that there is another, inner human being within the human being, will, through consistent thinking, be forced to say to himself: If I deny that something is taking place within me that relates to me in the same way that my perception relates to external nature, if I believe that my will is carried out by the mere physical organism, then I must draw the following conclusion: then I no longer need to summon the will within myself; then I need not believe that I can take a step in life through an inner, spiritually conceived impulse, but rather I must lie down and wait until my organism wanders about in the world and does what I then merely need to observe. So whoever does not deny the will to the extent of lying down on the couch and saying: “I deny the will; it is anchored in the physical organism”—believes in this inner observer. And the other approach is then merely a further development of this conviction—gained directly through true, healthy, inner contemplation—that this observer exists. Hence, the spiritual researcher comes to the realization: In reality, I have no opponents at all. People are always their own own opponents. In theory, through their misunderstood concepts, they do not admit what they acknowledge in practice, through the way they live. The spiritual researcher simply articulates what lies inherent in every human being’s natural worldview. And so people will come to realize more and more that the spiritual researcher expresses nothing other than what people actually unconsciously embody as their tangible worldview in ordinary, natural life—between the lines of life—even if they do not articulate it due to misunderstanding. This will become increasingly clear, particularly in relation to spiritual science. Then spiritual science will no longer appear as something peculiar, but as the self-evident explanation and the self-evident spiritualization that one needs for life.

[ 22 ] And so, as spiritual researchers, we emerge in this way on two sides from that human nature which exists in ordinary life and is active in ordinary science. We emerge onto the side of clairvoyance, understood in the true sense of the word, as it has been described; and on the other hand, toward the realm of clairaudience, where one immerses oneself in one’s own inner observer, who then lives with other spiritual beings in the spiritual world that a person enters once they have passed through the gate of death. There, however, one enters into a state of immediate inner activity; there, everything is just as active as everything here is passive.

[ 23 ] If one now considers ordinary life and the ordinary inner experiences of the soul, one must say: These inner experiences of the human being are such that, continuously and without the person’s awareness, the objects of clairvoyance and clairaudience are present within them; that these objects are continuously and actively at work in their ordinary soul life. What enters us from the spiritual world, passing through conception and birth, remains active within us. This is what a person, when they become aware of it, tends to call the spiritual aspect of their soul life. But that which passes through the gate of death, which lies in the will—existing as an inner observer—is what a person, when they experience it not in connection with the entire macrocosm but within their ordinary soul life, refers to as the “soul.” And the spiritual and the soul-life, in all their diversity and variety as they appear, ultimately trace back to these two aspects of human nature. The spirit always lies in what we develop on the side of thinking. One thereby becomes spirited —if the word may be used here only in a technical sense—by cultivating this thinking toward ever greater inner flexibility and ever greater inventiveness, without following the paths of the spiritual researcher, which may still remain in the unconscious; so that thoughts flow more abundantly, and so that they are more closely related to what inherently belongs together in the sequence of ideas one may have. Through this growing spiritual insight—in which, then, lives what, by its very nature, can be found through the aforementioned path of thought and meditation—through this spiritual aspect of the human soul, one learns, above all in life—but here in a practical, not a theoretical sense—what can be called knowledge of human nature. One learns what guides one to place human beings in the world in the right way. One learns what reveals the interconnections of the world to one’s own soul. In a certain way, as the spirit develops, one thereby distances oneself from what is expressed as the physical human being. Through the development of one’s spiritual nature, one approaches that which was primarily active in enabling us to enter the sensory world. In this way, by becoming spiritually developed, one distances oneself to a certain extent from what is directly experienced in the sensory world. This is why becoming spiritually developed leads one into a certain cool atmosphere. But by surveying the wisdom-filled interrelationships of the world that reveal themselves to the inner soul, one can go a long way in this direction. One can gather much from the world, perceive what others do not perceive, be able to articulate much about the interconnections of the world, and even invent things that are then transformed from these interconnections into reality. One can go far in this way. The whole process unfolds such that the world, I would say, becomes more luminous, that it becomes transparent to us. It is the process of becoming spiritually enlightened, the awakening of the spirit within the human being—like a preliminary stage, a stage not yet imbued with true clairvoyance, of entering the world from which we emerged through conception or birth.

[ 24 ] One does not become rich in soul, but rather becomes filled with soul. As the soul develops, it lies in the deepening of inner experience. Those who deepen the spiritual within themselves do not yet attain the clairaudient experience of their inner observer, but this observer works within them in a particularly strong and intense way, so that their inner spiritual experience becomes more real than it otherwise would be. They become filled with soul. As a result, they learn less in life about what constitutes knowledge of human nature—that is, a comprehensive, luminous view of world conditions and the connection between human beings and those conditions—but their inner experience becomes more real. The soul becomes more intense; it is strengthened from within. What lives in the will—one might say, what resonates and surges within the will throughout life—pleasure and suffering, joy and pain, which ebb and flow and are fundamentally connected inwardly to the nature of the human will—this could be rigorously proven psychologically, but there is no time for that—is experienced in a more intense way when a person is strengthened in this manner within themselves. Not only is what exists within them as pleasure and suffering—the inner feelings that well up from within—experienced more intensely, but precisely through this strengthening of the soul, they can extend their own pleasure and suffering to encompass the pleasure and suffering, the joy and pain, the happiness and misery present in other beings around them. This is connected to the soul. This, in turn, is connected to what, as the essence of the individual self, passes through the gate of death—what is carried through the gate of death by uniting, in the manner described eight days ago, with what is now the spirit and what is attained through meditation in thought.

[ 25 ] Thus one becomes strong in love as the soul grows stronger. Thus one becomes enlightened in spirit as the spirit grows stronger. But by strengthening the spirit, one alienates oneself, on the other hand, in the way I have described, from the connection with the inner reality of the body—the reality that places one within the sensory world. Therefore, one must not become hostile to reality in a false way, for otherwise one could very easily become detached from reality through this turning toward the spiritual and this abandonment of physicality. One could lose the connection that living thought has with reality, even if it is not conscious but is experienced only unconsciously, as is the case in ordinary life. Then, through a derailment of the mind, one would arrive at a point where thoughts spin off one from another, yet one no longer lives so intensely within these thoughts as to maintain a connection with reality. It is precisely then that one enters a mental process within which one can think, but one loses the connection with reality. One becomes a doubter, a skeptic. And if this intensifies to a certain degree, one may come to endure all the torments of skepticism; one may come to regard what takes place in thought merely as sophistry. One becomes a skeptic who does not draw spiritual nourishment from the source of reality.

[ 26 ] And by straying, as it were, toward the other side—toward that process which strengthens the will from within, which expands the circle of inner experiences of pleasure and suffering, joy and pain, beyond what lies within oneself—it may be that this inner nature of the self is still so strong that it does not let go of what is growing stronger. Then it may be that, while a person does indeed live in harmony with their surroundings, their empathy and shared experience with those surroundings actually reinforce their egoism. And it may even be that this empathy and shared experience hide behind the mask of selfishness, that witnessing pain and suffering actually becomes a shared experience only through what it does to oneself, whereas true empathy consists in extending one’s own self beyond what the other person is experiencing. Thus, to put it in extreme terms, the unpleasantness and discomfort that pain causes us may be experienced in a wholly selfish manner if the inner self does not relinquish its intensified inner life.

[ 27 ] But that is precisely why love is rooted in a strengthened spiritual life. And the human soul is that which carries within itself the source of love, just as that which is spirit carries within itself the source of knowledge of the world. Spirit opens up to us, reveals to us the light that illuminates the world; the soul kindles within us that which connects us to every being, to the innermost essence of every being—that which allows us, as human beings among human beings, to live directly among other human beings. Love is the primordial element of the soul. Light in the spiritual world is the primordial element of the spiritual. Whoever, then, truly wishes to walk the path of spiritual research—even if only a short distance—for even walking just a short distance is enough to convince oneself—will come to see that there is truth in what the spiritual researcher asserts.

[ 28 ] Anyone who follows the path of spiritual research must therefore, above all else, ensure that what they develop as spirit does not lack the foundation of soul life. The spirit can only distance itself from the reality of one’s own personality—and thus from a grasp of worldly reality—if love does not reign in the soul. When love reigns in the soul, when the soul is permeated and empowered by the element of love, then it is strong enough to hold the spirit, no matter how high into the light it may rise. And again, if a person does not spurn to seek wisdom in the world—wise connections—not wisdom that is synonymous with cleverness, but the humble wisdom that reigns in the world—if they wish to bring this wisdom to life within themselves and not merely grasp it with the intellect, not merely through abstraction, but allow it to immerse itself in the loving soul; if everything that is wisdom and light is warmed by what rises up in the soul—what places a person in life as one who loves humanity—just as, on the other hand, wisdom and the spirit make him a connoisseur of human nature, then this, in turn, is capable of steering the human being away from selfishness and truly carrying love up into that which he—by adding knowledge to love—can experience as a survey of the world: the spirit rooted in the loving soul, warm soul love that allows itself to be illuminated by the spirit—that is an ideal of humanity.

[ 29 ] And, as has been explained, everyone essentially acknowledges this very ideal of humanity. Spiritual science has opponents only because of misunderstandings. So that one can even say in specific cases: the spiritual scientist is actually in complete agreement with what people say—indeed, often precisely with what they say against spiritual science. For example, when Leonard Nelson wrote a very insightful essay in the September issue of *Neuer Merkur* on the current challenges facing philosophy, it seems as though everything Nelson—who is among the most insightful people of our time—expresses there could be interpreted as opposition to spiritual science. The counterargument would be that the spiritual researcher need not say “no” to anything this man says. On the one hand, Leonard Nelson describes how human beings degenerate when they develop only their intellect; how this leads them into an abstraction that cannot guide them toward a truly life-affirming philosophy. In a much more consistent and elevated sense, the spiritual researcher must acknowledge this, demonstrating the torment of skepticism—the doubt that becomes suffering—when the spirit seeks to develop in a one-sided manner, without the deep foundation of love for the soul. But Nelson focuses solely on thinking and is unaware that, when this very thinking is experienced, a completely different world creeps in—a world far richer in content than the sensory world, a world that remains closed to him. One is in complete agreement with what he asserts positively. Yet he refuses to accept this truth for himself; he misunderstands himself. One also agrees when he says, on the other hand: When a person delves into his own nature, brooding within himself, a false mysticism comes to the fore, and the person enters into a nebulous inner dream. Yet he does not wish to be anchored solely through thinking; he believes that it is precisely through feeling that he is closer to the foundation of the world. In truth, what is achieved there is merely a subjective experience. The spiritual researcher fully agrees with what is stated in a positive sense. However, the author of the essay does not realize that something entirely new is discovered if one simply follows the right path. He does not understand himself and, in essence, merely contradicts himself by holding a different view than the one he—if I may use this paradoxical expression—actually puts into practice. What he does is entirely in accordance with spiritual science. The spiritual researcher is, in essence, no opponent of what people truly mean; and they are opponents only because they misunderstand one another and thereby misunderstand him, talking past him.

[ 30 ] This becomes evident when a person who believes they must stand on a different philosophical ground than that of spiritual science—specifically based on the certain findings of natural science—allows themselves to let go and replaces what they merely imagine with what lives within them in a natural way. Yesterday I spoke about a thinker, and from what I have said, you will have seen that I hold this thinker in the highest regard. He is the Austrian philosopher Bartholomäus von Carneri. I admire Carneri because he attempted, with such a powerful spirit, to develop an ethics—a moral philosophy—based on Darwinism. But he stands on ground that gives rise to thoughts which, naturally, are opposed to what spiritual science teaches, because he does not understand himself, because he puts forward ideas that contradict what he is actually doing. Let us suppose, for a moment, that such a man lets himself go and lives inwardly what he conceives only in a way that is misleading even to himself. Let us suppose that such a person were to reach a moment when he surrendered himself to life rather than to his thinking, which has gone off on a crooked path. Let us suppose he were to surrender himself fundamentally to life and speak from inner strength—the very same strength that had led him to his distorted thinking. We can observe this in Carneri. Carneri had actually been born crippled, with a curved spine; he had grown up in the greatest agony and had become a very old man. Life was truly a torment for him. He could write only with his left hand; his right hand had been completely paralyzed his entire life, and in a certain sense the entire right side of his body was otherwise unusable, compounded by the constant breathing difficulties associated with such a physical condition. Yet this man stood firmly on Darwinian ground and at the same time sought to establish a worldview—including in ethics—that eschews what is mistakenly called dualism, though it is indeed a misunderstanding. After all, one could also claim: Water is merely a single entity. But water is not a single entity, for it consists of hydrogen and oxygen. One certainly does not break with monism when speaking of body, soul, and spirit, but Carneri simply believed that. We can understand him perfectly well on this point.

[ 31 ] I am presenting here something drawn from life that, of course, may be regarded as laughable by many who are accustomed to thinking philosophically in the current way. But it really illustrates vividly how Carneri, that is, the man who conjures up ethics out of materialism, who in theory actually denies the independent powers of the human inner self, becomes his own opponent in a moment that compelled him to speak from his deepest inner self, and for a moment speaks as if he were the most ardent adherent of a doctrine that recognizes the independence of the human spirit and soul, as I have described it today. A friend of Carneri’s, Marie Eugenie delle Grazie, recounts how she was once with him—when he had already reached an advanced age—after he had suffered yet another episode that truly demonstrated how discomforts can make life a torment. She said to him, “How were you able to endure this all these years and still retain that smile, that kindness, and that zest for life?” Marie Eugenie delle Grazie, the Austrian poet, did not merely say this; she “cried out in anguish” as this man struggled so painfully to breathe and suffered a choking fit. She then goes on to describe:

[ 32 ] “Slowly he raised his head, which had sunk low onto his chest, wiped the sweat from his forehead and cheeks with his trembling left hand, took a deep breath, and looked at me with a gaze that was once again full of sunshine and resilience. ‘Well—’ he smiled then. ‘But don’t you understand that in the daily struggle with such a beast, I wanted all the more to remain human—I had to remain human? I—’ he smiled again, ‘—had my ambition, after all. Should this’—he pointed to his still-twitching body—‘be stronger than I am? ‘Should it be capable of robbing me, day after day, To spoil all the joy and beauty of life? Would I even be human if I didn’t remain the stronger one? That’s how it began, and that’s how—it will end!› …”

[ 33 ] Marie Eugenie delle Grazie goes on to write: “Outside, it was spring. A blossoming apple tree swayed in front of the open bay window. His eyes shining with patience, fixed on its beauty, Carneri spoke softly: “How many trees do you think are blooming right now, even though the worm is inside them and on them? Should I be weaker or stupider? Even nature, insofar as it does not think, acts just like me. And that’s exactly it. Only one thing matters: how long one can keep it up. But that is strength. And we have so many words for what strength is. Should I think about which one is the right one?” »

[ 34 ] And he did this often. But his thinking did not keep pace with that inner disposition which emphasizes the strength of the soul in those moments when he felt himself to be the victor over the mere external aspects of physical life.

[ 35 ] The materialist view holds that when one considers a human being as a physical being, certain processes take place within that body, and these processes result in what we call thinking, feeling, and willing. The researcher of the spirit does not set out to refute this view. That is precisely what is distinctive about this field: its relationship to the other sciences cannot be one of refutation. Rather, the researcher acknowledges all of this: Yes, it is entirely correct that every thought that is expressed corresponds to a process in the brain. Something is happening in the brain!

[ 36 ] The highest ideal of the natural sciences will be to demonstrate what the organic process of thought is. But how does this organic process relate to thought? I can only express this in comparative terms for now, though it could be explained in detail. Yet it is precisely through a comparison that it can be understood quite well. When a person walks along a road and the ground is somewhat soft, so that every step leaves an impression, the footprints can be seen afterward. Someone might come along and say: Yes, there are certain impressions in the earth—I will now investigate the forces within the earth that shape these impressions from the earth’s interior, which caused the path to be formed in this way. Someone who merely looks at the earth and forgets that a person has walked over it might believe that. This is precisely how someone proceeds who seeks the causes of thought in the brain and in the actual processes taking place within it that accompany thinking. Just as the shapes of the footprints do not come from within the Earth, so too does what is found in the brain not come from within the human being, but is imprinted there through a living, soul-related process, just as the footprints are imprinted in the ground. And just as the person who seeks to derive the footprints from the forces of the Earth itself—rather than from the human being who made them—is mistaken, so too is the person who believes they can deduce from the inner processes of the nervous system what takes place in the brain during the course of thinking amidst these neural processes. These are the traces imprinted by this living soul. This living soul cannot be seen within, but it is at work and present there. And it cannot be found through external research; rather, its paths, its destinies, and its life can only be discovered through those processes that are purely inner soul processes—the very processes discussed today as the paths along which one finds the human soul and the human spirit!

[ 37 ] In conclusion, I would like to summarize in a few words, in a paradigmatic way, what I have attempted to express as the characteristic of the human spirit, which is effective above all in bringing in from the whole world the forces—but not merely forces like the external forces of nature, but rather those that are truly forces of the inner human being and spiritually transform from within what is given through the stream of heredity. But it is in this—in that it can be found as an inner observer, or perhaps better said, as a spiritual listener within the will—that the soul lives and expresses itself. Thus, soul and spirit permeate the human being. Thus, soul and spirit are also involved in the way the human being positions themselves not only within the temporal worlds but also within the eternal worlds. And from what has been said, it follows that the spirit leads upward to those luminous heights where we can see through the world and perceive it in its connection with the human being itself, where the soul strengthens the human being inwardly, where the soul is the source of what human love is, of what human knowledge is. The spirit is something that can be perceived under the symbol of light—but specifically, inner light. The soul is something that can be perceived under the symbol of inner warmth, which spreads throughout one’s entire life and expands the circle within which the soul can experience life—with pleasure and sorrow, pain and joy. Thus, we can express the relationship between the human soul and the human spirit, and, in turn, what the human soul and human spirit together constitute within the human being—within the whole human being, who consists of the physical body, which is the bearer of the inner human being that spiritualizes itself and animates the physical body, and which is the truly eternal within the temporal, — so that this relationship can be expressed through the words with which I wish to conclude this reflection:

When a person, warmed by love,
Gives themselves to the world as a soul,
When a person, with a mind filled with light,
Gains the spirit from the world,
In the spirit-illuminated soul,
In the soul-sustained spirit
The spiritual human within the physical human
Will truly reveal himself.