The Rudolf Steiner Archive

7. A Healthy Soul Life and Spiritual Research

[ 1 ] Among the various prejudices directed against spiritual science, as understood here, are those that link the methods of spiritual research—what might be called the paths of spiritual research—in some way to an abnormal, pathological mental state. Although anyone who examines more closely what can be said about the course of that spiritual development intended to lead into spiritual research may, whether out of dilettantism, ignorance, or malice, ultimately arrive at such a prejudice, this prejudice must nevertheless be addressed at some point. For there is no shortage in the world of both ignorance in the sense described and ill will. I do not wish to address individual attacks that have been launched against spiritual science specifically from this quarter, but I would simply like to discuss in general terms the possible attacks, objections, and prejudices, and show how unjustified they actually are in light of the nature of true spiritual research. To do this, however, I must briefly present, from a certain perspective, some of what was already the subject of the lectures I gave here at the beginning of winter. I must characterize the path of spiritual research in a very sketchy manner.

[ 2 ] The path of spiritual research—as has been emphasized here time and again—is a purely inner path of the soul, a path that is traversed only within the life of the soul itself, and it consists of certain activities of the soul, certain exercises of the soul, which lead this soul life from the point at which it stands in ordinary life to another point, from which it is then able to approach what may be called the spiritual world. Now, summarizing much of this, I have, in one of the lectures I gave this winter, divided the exercises that the spiritual researcher must undergo into two main groups. The first group consists of exercises that involve shaping one’s thinking in a certain way that differs from how it is in ordinary life: exercises of thought. These belong to the first group of spiritual research exercises. Exercises of the will, performed in a certain way, belong to the second group of spiritual research exercises.

[ 3 ] Today, I will, of course, have to summarize many things briefly; to fully understand them, it is necessary either to have heard what was said in earlier lectures or to read, for example, my book *How Does One Gain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?* or the second volume of my *Esoteric Science*. For I will primarily attempt to explain to what extent thinking is transformed—through certain exercises technically referred to as meditation or concentration of thought—in comparison to ordinary thinking. I do not wish to go into detail about how these exercises are performed, but rather to mention right away that what matters in the actual thinking exercises is bringing into consciousness something that is always present in human thinking—and especially in the healthiest human thinking— but which remains more or less unconscious within this healthy, everyday human thinking for the reason that we carry out this everyday thinking in the sense of what might be called adaptation to the laws and processes of the external world. After all, we do not merely perceive the external world through our senses; we think about the external world, we form ideas that become thoughts, and we connect these ideas in our thought life. When it comes to healthy thinking grounded in reality, we connect them in a very specific, lawful manner. Yet even what is called logic can only describe how judgments take place, how we judge, and how thinking moves, so to speak, internally in order to arrive at what is called truth. The actual process of thinking—the inner activity of thinking—remains essentially unconscious in ordinary thinking. To treat what takes place in ordinary thinking but remains unconscious in such a way that it is raised to full consciousness—so that we do not merely allow our thoughts to weave and live, as it were, under the compulsion of the currents of the world, but rather so that our full, conscious will comes to the fore within thinking—this is the goal sought by one group of exercises.

[ 4 ] One must realize that when one truly observes the flow of thought and imagination, we carry them out in accordance with what is imposed upon us like a compulsion from the current of reality. The exercises—which are, in particular, exercises in thinking—aim to bring such ideas into consciousness and to incorporate them in such a way during the processes that we call meditation, concentration of thought, that throughout the entire process of meditating—this concentrating—the conscious will is always in control, so that there is not a single moment in which the conscious will is not in control. And it turns out that if one has the necessary patience, perseverance, and energy to undertake such exercises, one arrives at a point where one can, so to speak, detach the activity of thinking—the act of thinking—from what constitutes “thought” in ordinary life; one learns to concentrate not merely on the thought itself, but on the process of thinking, on that inner weaving and life of the soul that takes place as one thinks. And I have also explained the accompanying phenomena associated with this inner discovery, which consists in becoming aware of the activity of thinking within the act of thinking itself. The accompanying phenomenon is this: one can, as it were, regard the thoughts themselves—which one is otherwise accustomed to always having present in the act of thinking—as something secondary; indeed, one ultimately removes them entirely from the act of thinking. One begins with certain thoughts, but then moves on to a purely conscious, volitional—and fully volitional—act of thinking. One reaches a state in which one can switch thoughts on and off and consciously exercise control over the act of thinking. As a concomitant of this, one does indeed become more grounded and empowered in this volitional handling of the act of thinking. But at the same time, one enters a certain emptiness of consciousness, a form of empty weaving and living of consciousness. Therefore, as I said, these exercises, which relate to the mere act of thinking, must never be undertaken on their own. Indeed, the exercises of meditation and concentration are carried out in such a way that, as one undergoes them in consciousness, the ordinary element of the will is simultaneously trained; so that one comes to bring up into consciousness what is hidden in the will in ordinary life. And there one comes to find something quite real in ordinary willing, in ordinary volitional activity—something that is always there, but which otherwise remains buried in the depths of the human unconscious. One cannot simply want anything; nor can one allow just any kind of will to flow into an action without what I am speaking of being present in the activity. But it remains unconscious. Through those exercises—which, in turn, are based on a kind of concentration, meditation, and an inner, now more—I would say—emotionally oriented act of the soul—one comes to discover what is otherwise unconsciously poured into the act of willing or into the action itself when one wills or allows a will to flow into the action, but which one does not observe. Now one discovers it. Strangely enough, one now discovers in the will something that resembles consciousness. One discovers a consciousness other than ordinary consciousness. One discovers—and one must not regard what is now being observed as a mere image, but as a reality, as something actual—that we are constantly accompanied by a consciousness other than our ordinary everyday consciousness, that we—if one may use this paradoxical expression—are simply not aware of this other consciousness. One discovers another human being within the human being. One discovers what one might call: a consciousness that is constantly observing us. And one learns to handle this consciousness—which one thus discovers in the activities of one’s will—in the same way as ordinary consciousness. One also learns to connect this consciousness with the results achieved through the exercises of thought in such a way that the two, so to speak, merge with one another, and one is now able to perform acts of the soul that one now realizes are completely free from any involvement of the physical body. The latter must simply be an inner experience, and it does become an inner experience.

[ 5 ] Thus, one develops one’s inner life into a form of consciousness different from the ordinary one, and thereby gives this inner life substance by discovering the will within thought—by discovering thought as this “activity in itself.” Not in such an abstract way as is done by ordinary philosophies or other sciences, but in a living way, one discovers the activity of thought as an activity of the will. One can also say that one discovers the will in thinking, and one can say that one discovers in the will a consciousness that can be described as a thinking consciousness, just as the ordinary, everyday consciousness we have in life is a thinking consciousness. One discovers the will in thinking, and in the will one discovers an objective form of thinking—which we do not otherwise control, if I may use that expression—that controls itself; a thinker within us, who is present within us and exists objectively. This essentially characterizes what is to be achieved.

[ 6 ] Other accompanying phenomena of this process must be characterized so that one has a complete picture of it once one has reached the point of discovering thought as an activity—of truly finding within one’s own thinking that which might otherwise remain unconscious; I have described this in more detail in earlier lectures. Then one finds oneself confronted with something, just as one otherwise finds oneself confronted with the objects and events of the external world. But a peculiarity arises that is important, that is essential. What one now experiences with the help of thinking developed in this way and that consciousness of which I have just spoken—that consciousness which is different from the ordinary one—what one discovers in this way differs quite fundamentally from the soul experiences one otherwise has in ordinary life. One may now interpret the process in a more materialistic or a more spiritual way; that is not the point, just as today’s reflections will not depend on interpretation at all, but on experience. For what has flowed into us through our perceptions in our ordinary experience—what has become thoughts and ideas—is transformed in such a way that it can remain fixed in memory, as we say, even though, of course, there are entirely different processes underlying this retention. Just as the experiences of ordinary perception and ordinary thought gain the capacity, through a certain psychological process, be immediately retained in memory—as they, so to speak, become part of our store of memories without any effort on our part—so it is not the case with those experiences we have in the manner I have just described, through developed consciousness and developed, will-filled thought activity. These experiences are had, but they pass as they are had, so that one can actually hold onto them for only a moment. They do not become imprinted on our organic life. One can compare their fleeting nature to the fleeting nature of dream experiences. But this is no more than a comparison. For the dream, after all, still has the peculiarity that it can at least, in a certain way, be retained in memory directly through itself. What is experienced in the spiritual world in the manner described takes place, but does not, through itself, pass into the ordinary store of memory. And this is the peculiar thing: when one wishes to confront reality in the spirit, one can never proceed in such a way that one can simply retrieve from memory what one has once experienced and then possess it again. One would not then possess it again; rather, one must have the experience anew. Of course, what I have described develops slowly; it unfolds through all manner of stages. But what one ultimately arrives at—if one takes into account all the things described, for example, in my book *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?*—is precisely what I have just described.

[ 7 ] Now you might say: So spiritual experiences can only be had and must then be forgotten. That would indeed be the case if nothing else were added to the picture. And what is now added to this is, at the same time, the specific fact of spiritual loss, which must be taken into account if one wishes to understand the relationship between the healthiest spiritual life and spiritual research, and how unfounded are the prejudices that suggest spiritual research might somehow have anything to do with pathological spiritual development. The peculiar aspect in question is that the state of consciousness develops which is attained through the true, proper path of spiritual science. It comes into being; it is then present in our soul life. But the ordinary state of consciousness in which we otherwise find ourselves in everyday life remains just as it was before we entered this other state of consciousness. That is to say: we remain capable of judgment—or, if you will, deficient in judgment—in exactly the same way as we were before; we remain, for the time being, just as emotionally engaged—or less so—as we were before. Initially, there is the possibility of using this newly attained consciousness to observe the other person—the person we were before and who we have remained—with the same objectivity with which we can now observe the events we experienced emotionally yesterday. Just as the inner life one experienced yesterday is not altered in any way by observing it today, so too is ordinary consciousness not altered in the slightest by having attained this other consciousness. And if it is altered—if one projects something into it—then that observation is not the kind that can lead to any objectivity; then something must have taken place that is not in accordance with the proper order. One thus faces one’s ordinary inner life in the same way that one, I might say, faces a past inner experience. The ordinary inner life remains completely intact. And if one wishes to retain experiences from spiritual science, one must first bring what one has experienced in the spirit into ordinary consciousness—which has been preserved—and can then, of course, retain it in memory just as one retains experiences of ordinary consciousness. But it is always necessary that ordinary consciousness stand alongside the newly attained consciousness, and that what is undertaken for ordinary life be done not with the newly attained consciousness, but with ordinary consciousness. If, therefore, one wishes to incorporate spiritual scientific experiences into ordinary thought life—which can be retained in memory—one must first transfer them from the other state of consciousness. If one wishes to recognize that these spiritual experiences are true, one cannot experience this within the other state of consciousness—this must be expressly emphasized—but must judge them with ordinary consciousness. They must be subjected to the judgment of ordinary consciousness. Insight into the spiritual reality is attained through developed consciousness; insight into the truth of this spiritual reality is attained initially through one’s entirely ordinary, sound power of judgment, which remains completely intact when all exercises are performed correctly.

[ 8 ] This, however, is what distinguishes the consciousness I have just been speaking of from all pathological mental states. It differs from pathological states of consciousness in that the pathological states of consciousness develop out of the healthy ones—for the sake of argument—and that those which can still be regarded as healthy transition into the pathological states of consciousness. The altered consciousness replaces the first. But even if you can conceive of them in succession—healthy consciousness, pathological consciousness, and then healthy consciousness again—you cannot, in the truly conscious sense, conceive of being normal, sane, and crazy all at the same time. For then one would not be crazy. The moment one can judge one’s own madness with a normal mind, one is truly not mad. This is the crucial point that must be kept in mind: that all altered consciousness, all pathological consciousness, arises from healthy consciousness like a metamorphosis, and that one should never actually speak of a “dual self”—a point already criticized by the distinguished criminal anthropologist Benedikt—but rather, in the case of ordinary pathological phenomena, speak of an altered consciousness.

[ 9 ] This simultaneously characterizes what the spiritual science exercises aim at, and where what is called spiritual research actually leads people. Now it is quite understandable—and I say explicitly: quite understandable—that someone who is not initially familiar with the full nature of the matter described here might easily fall into the prejudice: Well, someone has been messing around with their inner life and has ended up with an abnormal mental state. Perhaps one could also quite neatly—as is usually done—place this alongside the ordinary abnormal, pathological mental phenomena, all of which must, in essence, be characterized by the fact that in reality one consciousness cannot exist alongside another, but rather that one must develop from the other, one must replace the other, — one could simply record new ones alongside these pathological mental phenomena—that’s how it’s done—in which one consciousness could indeed coexist alongside another. For anyone unfamiliar with these matters can, in the first instance, come to no other conclusion than that the person in question, who has arrived at such a different state of consciousness, is essentially subject to abnormal thinking, or even abnormal volition or feeling in some way.

[ 10 ] These things are quite understandable at first, even though they ultimately belong to no other realm than that of someone who has attained a certain level of peasant education—and this is by no means meant as a disparagement! ——for example, someone who spends the entire “day engaged in quite clever mathematical operations” might, from his own standpoint, regard such a person as a madman, for it is in human nature to view everything one does not think of oneself and does not believe in as something abnormal. Essentially, the prejudices often directed against the humanities from this very quarter stem from nothing other than the impulse inherent in human nature—as just described—to accept only that which one can experience inwardly oneself.

[ 11 ] The point, however, is that there are indeed many objective opportunities to confuse true spiritual research with all sorts of nonsense. Spiritual research—which, in a certain sense, is dictated by the necessities of life—will initially address a smaller, closed circle of people, just as is ultimately the case in other fields as well. Certainly, those who have the task of speaking to people about spiritual research are often accused today of speaking in all sorts of small circles and the like, of speaking to people who, in a sense, have first declared themselves willing to listen to these things. Yes, but I cannot see any objective difference between this process and the one in which, at the beginning of a semester, a number of students enroll with a particular professor, who then also speaks to this closed circle. And unless other nonsense is going on, I also fail to see why the closed circle of a lecture hall should be any less deserving of the label “sect”—if one wishes to use that term—than a group of people listening to something related to spiritual science. But in the field of spiritual science, one is indeed initially dealing with things that cannot be readily verified through the processes and events of the outer physical plane. If someone tells you that a certain compound body consists of these or those elements, you can verify this directly by external means. All findings of spiritual science can also be verified, but it is necessary first to follow the path of the spiritual researcher that has been described. So although these things are verifiable, they cannot be verified in the ordinary state of mind in which other things taking place purely in the outer physical world can be verified. Hence—and I need not now make a detailed line of reasoning to illustrate the experience I wish to characterize—in this realm, where verification can only be achieved through the use of the appropriate means, what one might call a blind faith in authority regarding what is said—or, more generally, mere rhetoric and empty talk—flourishes to an immense degree. Indeed, driven by motives that need not be elaborated upon here, societies dedicated to the life of the humanities readily form, making tolerance, mutual love, and mutual trust—with a certain degree of justification—their primary principles. That is a fine principle. But experience has repeatedly shown that nowhere is there more strife and nowhere does discord reign more than in such societies. And although such societies have often made it their banner to revere the truth as the highest good, one can also observe that in no field is the truth often less respected than within societies that claim to have such goals. And so it indeed happens that within circles where spiritual science is supposedly practiced, a great deal of nonsense prevails. And then it is difficult for those who do not engage with the matter itself, but judge things by outward symptoms and external events, to distinguish the truth from the nonsense. And I would now like, in the course of today’s reflections, to offer some insights that may make it possible to distinguish truth from nonsense in this field. Above all, I would like to emphasize that one should not be too critical of the prejudices directed against spiritual research, particularly from the perspective I have just described; rather, one can even find these prejudices understandable to the greatest extent. I will now mention something quite specific right away.

[ 12 ] Once one has, in a certain sense, entered the spiritual world—once one has had spiritual experiences, that is, come to know spiritual reality—one arrives at what I have already described here on several occasions, but which you can find described in detail in the books I mentioned, —one arrives at what is called imaginative knowledge, not because it involves merely exercises of the imagination—mere imagination in the ordinary sense—but because one finds oneself in a position where one must express what one experiences in pictorial terms. Of course, the capacity for imagination that a person initially possesses—including in all the ways they can put ideas into words and characterize them—relates to the physical world. If one is then transported into an entirely different world and does not characterize it differently—that is, if one already characterizes this other world pictorially in one’s own mind—one forms false ideas about it. One must therefore always take in what is stated in detail and concretely about the spiritual world with the awareness that everything the spiritual researcher describes flows from fully conscious volitional activity—that is, he does not describe it from some indeterminate, twilight state of consciousness, nor from a visionary state of consciousness, but rather—in direct contrast to any twilight or visionary state of consciousness—he consciously and with full will shapes what he presents as imagination, as images of spiritual experiences. Just as he presents what he depicts in this sense—that is, with everything imbued by his will—so must it also be received in this sense.

[ 13 ] To depict the spiritual experiences that are, after all, truly present in the life of the soul—even if they must be represented figuratively—it is, of course, necessary to draw on imagery from everyday life; that is, to characterize what is spiritually experienced by designating one thing with this color, another with that color, and so on. However, there is a certain—though now purely psychological and spiritual, not physiological or organic—necessity to use one thing—let us say, this color, this tone, and this tactile sensation—to describe one aspect, and something else to describe the other. And just as, when speaking in a particular language, one does not first have to explain that this word has this meaning and that word has that meaning, so it goes without saying that when one describes spiritual experiences in concrete terms, the world of images through which one must express oneself must be present like an inner language, like something through which one brings to mind and represents the spiritual experience that actually lies behind it. Now, if—I have discussed what I am now explaining here in great detail in the sixth edition of my *Theosophy*—such a description of a spiritual experience arises, and this or that spiritual being is described as red, blue, and so on—which is entirely correct, and through which it is truly represented, not merely characterized—then, of course, the person receiving this description, who is completely unfamiliar with the way it is actually intended, may say: “We know that! We know that from the field of psychology!” We are well acquainted with those inner lives in which soul experiences arise—as secondary sensory perceptions, hallucinations, or even illusions—that originate purely from within. —So it is entirely justified, for example, to point out that there are people—according to certain findings, as many as one-eighth of all people have this characteristic—who, for instance, when they perceive a certain tone without seeing any color, add a color to it, but in such a way that it becomes quite concrete to them. Such color phenomena, which are not caused by an external impression but arise from within and accompany a sound—I will not go into the various hypotheses that have been proposed about this—are called secondary sensory perceptions. And what people can experience in this way can go so far that, for example, when they pick up a printed text, the individual letters appear in different colors depending on their content—whether it is an “o” or an “a.” In short, the psychiatrist can of course say: We are familiar with these phenomena. And he can say this all the more so when psychological experiences occur with the full character of sensory perceptions, yet are formed from within as hallucinations. And when one frequently encounters hallucinations that appear before the soul in a particularly vivid and three-dimensional way, one might ask: “Is not the pathological mental life capable of truly producing inner effects?” And when one then hears the claim put forward from this or that quarter—that such experiences have developed in relation to the mental life—one finds exactly the same thing. The significant point is simply that, precisely because of the aforementioned nonsense that has been cited, secondary sensory perceptions or hallucinatory states very often occur in people who have a particular predisposition for them, and it is then claimed that these are “higher experiences,” that they have thereby truly received something from the spiritual world. I already pointed this out yesterday in connection with *Faust*: nothing at all has been received from the spiritual world in this way; rather, these are mere transformations of the inner life of the drives—they have simply risen from within the human being. This is no more than normal soul life; in fact, it is less, because there is something at work beneath normal soul life that, only when raised into consciousness, transforms itself into phenomena that appear to be ordinary soul life. But there is a considerable difference between what true spiritual research—and, if one wishes to use the term, true clairvoyance—achieves, and what is often also called “clairvoyance” in everyday life.

[ 14 ] And one will notice this enormous difference when one considers what has been said: In all the activities of the spiritual researcher, in all the activities of the true clairvoyant, there is a full measure of volitional activity; there is no element that comes about without one’s participation, whereas the vision has precisely the peculiarity that it comes about without the will being active in it. And one can even—even though this will seem extremely paradoxical to many—answer the question: “How, then, does the spiritual researcher differ from the ordinary visionary, from the hallucinationist?” — by saying: They differ in that the spiritual researcher never has visions or hallucinations in the ordinary sense; precisely through his training in spiritual science, he transcends entirely the possibility of ever having hallucinations or visions in the ordinary sense of the word. And this is connected to the fact that what constitutes a spiritual scientific experience—as I have said—cannot be fixed directly within the human organism, but must always be experienced anew,

[ 15 ] If the experience of the humanities, as it is in its immediacy, were to become fixed in the organism, it could indeed lead to an illusory life, because it would then rise up from the organism of its own accord, because it would cling to the organism, and the human being would lose control over it. He can only be present in the act of creation when he approaches it each time—I would say—with a sense of freshness, just as he approaches, for example, an external impression. And only through this fresh, unencumbered approach to the spiritual experience each time can he know that he has received an impression from the spiritual world, just as he knows through ordinary life that when he sees an external object—say, a watch—he is not hallucinating this watch, but that an external impression truly exists. Through what is now taking place between him and the watch, he can distinguish what he is currently experiencing in direct interaction with the external physical world from what arises within him—which might, for example, compel him toward some kind of hallucination or illusion. And again, only by maintaining the purity just described in relation to spiritual experiences—by truly not forcing them into the physical realm but rather creating them anew time and again—does he know that he is not facing what arises from his own constitution, but that he is always facing objective experiences that emerge from a spiritual world, And indeed, when one is truly immersed in the living perception of the spiritual world in the manner described, one learns to recognize, strangely enough, that inner energy, that inner power needed to arrive—let us say—at imaginative insight by one’s own will, as the very same power that dispels and sees through illusions and hallucinations. That is what matters. One does not invoke the force through which hallucinations arise, but rather the very force through which one dispels illusions, hallucinations, delusions—and whatever else these things may be called.

[ 16 ] And so one could also cite something else that, in turn, could quite easily be raised as an objection. If someone who is still a layperson in these matters hears that a person who describes their spiritual experiences using the terms “world of colors” or “world of sounds”—as you, for example, illustrate the world of the soul and the world of the spirit in this way in my *Theosophy*—is portrayed as depicting imaginative worlds, they might say: Yes, if one must come to perceive the spiritual world in this way—as a world of color, as a world of sound—then on the one hand, all of this is regarded as hallucinatory, as visionary activity, as pathological conditions; on the other hand, however—he might object—we also know that someone born blind cannot, through any process of spiritual training, be led to such visions that play out in colorful images, nor can someone born deaf be led to such auditory hallucinations. And from this, one can very easily formulate the rebuttal by saying: So we are, after all, dealing purely with the development of that which depends on the presence of certain organs.

[ 17 ] An objection raised from this perspective is, to those who see through things, just as meaningful as the question: Can someone who has very good thoughts express those thoughts in a language they have not yet learned? Of course, he cannot express those thoughts in a language he has not learned—that goes without saying. Just as someone born blind cannot express in colors what he experiences mentally. Nevertheless, he can still experience mentally exactly the same thing as the other person who is able to express it in colors—that is, who also illustrates it for himself in colors and deliberately chooses to express it in this way. However, it is often necessary to gain a truly precise understanding of things if one wishes to see through the validity or invalidity of objections.

[ 18 ] But if one considers things not according to their inner character, according to their inner nature, but rather according to how they appear externally, one will very easily find that there are indeed—if I may use the trivial expression—quite crazy offshoots that belong to a certain movement that calls itself “parapsychological,” and which comes up with all sorts of things that can more or less truly be classified under the category that psychiatrists know very well. If, for example, someone approaches a psychiatrist and tells him that he is the reincarnation of John the Baptist, then it will certainly be entirely justified for the psychiatrist to say: We are dealing with an ordinary megalomaniac. From the standpoint of spiritual science, too, we are dealing with an ordinary megalomaniac, for the truly reincarnated John would not express this in such a manner. But quite apart from that, one must be clear about this: when dealing with such phenomena, which truly must be described as pathological, one cannot characterize the essence of the matter on that basis alone; for one must take into account the entire manner in which spiritual research has established itself in our present time. One must realize that a particular worldview prevails today that leaves a great, great many people unsatisfied for various reasons. I need not elaborate—for this is too well known and too widely understood—on why various religious worldviews leave many, many people unsatisfied today. I need only point out, however, that even those worldviews which are very often built on the so-called solid ground of the scientific way of thinking leave many people unsatisfied, and for two reasons. First, in part because anyone who adopts the scientific way of thinking truly recognizes that scientific findings, as they currently stand, generally do not provide the answers to the big questions, but at most point to the questions themselves. For those who can see the matter clearly, scientific books generally do not actually provide answers, but rather raise even more questions. That is one aspect. On the other hand, however, there are other reasons why building a worldview on a scientific foundation—or indeed on any modern foundation today—leaves some people unsatisfied. It must be said: Building a worldview today on a scientific or historical foundation requires a great deal. Above all, it requires making an effort to become familiar with many, many facts and chains of facts. It certainly cannot always be said that those who do not wish to build a worldview on the basis of scientific thinking do so because they realize that nothing satisfactory—nothing readily satisfactory—can be built upon it; rather, very often it is simply a matter of convenience, or even an inability, to familiarize oneself with the necessary facts and chains of facts. People shy away from coming to terms with the difficulties that modern science, admittedly, presents. And so it turns out that a great many people find it more convenient not to take the long path of preparation that claims a certain scientific rigor, but rather to accept—as mere phrases or beautiful sayings—whatever comes out of the spiritual sciences in one way or another. It also appeals to people because it initially ties in with the personal—what interests people directly and personally. It appeals to them more, satisfies them more, than if one were to start with nature and then attempt to arrive at some understanding of the human being, insofar as this can be gleaned from the natural sciences. For then one has a long and ever-demanding path to follow. Many wish to avoid that. This is precisely why people who actually have no way of finding satisfaction in what the current cultural climate has to offer turn to the science of the spirit—and why, in the science of the spirit, they do not develop what arises from the science of the spirit itself, but rather bring into the spiritual current of the world what they already possess within their entire being, within their entire soul.

[ 19 ] If someone, in all their affections, in their entire emotional life, has something that—when describing things externally in terms of symptoms—can be called a tendency toward megalomania—I am well aware that I am merely describing a symptom here—then it can, of course, very easily happen that this tendency toward megalomania is carried over into the spiritual science movement. And then it is only natural that the person in question will bring what he hears about human beings into direct connection—not in an objective way with what is human, but with what he himself develops through his own emotional inclinations. And so it happens that when he learns of the law of repeated earthly lives, he naturally finds it very satisfying if he can somehow imagine that he is, let’s say, the reincarnated so-and-so, There are, of course, those who think things through rationally and realize quite clearly that what the person in question has himself brought into spiritual science has led him to such an idea, and that spiritual science itself could not have led him to this idea. And the person who takes into account what appears only as very brief hints regarding the path of spiritual research in the last chapter of my *Theosophy*—he doesn’t even need to learn more about it— and who then takes seriously what can be gained from today’s official psychiatry—from recognized psychiatry—cannot possibly arrive at the idea that the spiritual-scientific path itself could contribute in any way to the illness of the soul’s life. Conversely, however, the activities of spiritual science can be distorted or caricatured by what is brought into spiritual science by people who possess the necessary predispositions. Someone might, instead of entering the spiritual-scientific worldview, enter, say, the world of the stock market, and he might have predispositions that develop into delusions of grandeur; then he would, of course, act out his megalomaniacal ideas in all sorts of notions related to the stock market. He might imagine himself to be a special “stock market king” or something of the sort. If, instead of entering the world of the stock market, he enters the spiritual scientific worldview, he acts out the same predispositions by, say, considering himself to be the reincarnated John the Baptist.

[ 20 ] And so one can say: In a certain sense, spiritual research itself suffers from the fact that many people—who have failed in their search for a worldview through what is otherwise offered today for such a search—end up joining some spiritual research movement and then clothe in all sorts of spiritual-scientific ideas precisely what they would otherwise have lived out in a completely different way. One can easily observe that, precisely in circles composed of people who, because of a failed quest for a worldview, have turned to a spiritual scientific movement, many approach spiritual science at the very moment when they become disillusioned with what the external world has to offer. Now consider what is actually happening here. Previously, the person lived with their predispositions, which, of course, were bound to lead to some abnormality in their inner life. This abnormality in their inner life would certainly have arisen. But at the very moment when it is still concealed—when they no longer feel quite at home in the external world—they turn to some form of spiritual research. The consequence of this is not that he can be saved by spiritual science—as I will indicate shortly—but rather that he carries what is churning within him into the realm of spiritual science. And because of all these facts, it can very well happen that—since such a spiritualist movement is generally viewed with suspicion—people will, as it were, blame it for having driven such individuals to mental illness. Of course, on the one hand, every sound psychiatrist and every sound spiritualist will be perfectly clear about the true nature of the process. Now, to understand more in this area, it will be helpful to consider once again how the two types of consciousness we have spoken of do not necessarily relate to one another in such a way that one develops out of the other or one replaces the other, but rather that they coexist—that full consciousness exists for two spiritual lives, which, however, do not diverge. These two souls should denote nothing more than what has already been concretely characterized. This, then, is what one must bear in mind.

[ 21 ] Now one might ask: Does this spiritual research, as such, have any positive significance for ordinary life—for external life in the physical world? One might think that it has no significance, for it has just been said: What is experienced in the spiritual world cannot flow directly into ordinary consciousness. But the following, for example, can still occur. It can happen that a person perceives this or that in the spiritual world—a moral impulse, a moral motive—that can only be recognized from the spiritual world. Our moral perspective can, however, be enriched from within the spiritual world. Likewise, our view of nature can be enriched from within the spiritual world. Now, let us consider the case in which one receives a moral impulse from the spiritual world through a spiritual experience—that is, an impulse to do this or that in ordinary physical life. Then, according to what has been explained, this moral impulse—which is initially experienced in the spiritual world—must be brought over into ordinary physical consciousness and justified there; indeed, it must be introduced into the world in the same way that moral impulses are otherwise introduced into the world. This will eliminate any possibility of someone appearing in the world and saying: “I must now do this or that, for this is my mission”—a phrase one hears very, very frequently, especially in the areas I could only characterize by saying: “Nonsense is being made of it.” Motivation arising from the spiritual world will never manifest in such a way for the true spiritual researcher. What he receives from the spiritual world enters his ordinary consciousness, and he then, by developing ideas adapted to the outer physical world, steps into this physical world with his impulse of will—just as when one receives an impulse to recognize some scientific relationship. One will not present this scientific connection from the outset as some kind of epiphany, but will bring it into ordinary consciousness, test it against common sense and all the knowledge one has acquired so far in the field of natural science, and will then, having brought it over, begin to place it within the system of scientific knowledge that one has developed. If one keeps this in mind, then one will never find oneself in a conflict or disharmony with external physical life. However, one can fall into such a conflict, such a disharmony, if one assigns this mission to oneself on the basis of compulsive impulses—compulsive drives—that dwell within one; this mission, of course, because it arises solely from within, is not at all adapted to the external world and will fit into it as poorly as possible. Such a person will be more of a destructive individual than one who could enrich communal life through what can be experienced in the spiritual world. Yet the path one follows on the journey toward spiritual research makes one thoroughly familiar with all these things. And it must be said: Everything else that is associated with the described series of exercises for thinking and willing is essentially there so that, on the one hand, the human being truly carries nothing unhealthy into his spiritual life from ordinary physical life, so that he may truly become free in his spiritual and soul experiences from bodily life, and, on the other hand, so that they do not distort what can be experienced in the spiritual realm by incorporating it—instead of into healthy reason or a normal emotional life—into a morbid emotional life or into the pathological. But if what actually underlies experience in the spiritual world is developed in such a healthy way, then one has not only something healthy in the path of spiritual research, but one has something healing; one truly has something that advances a person even in terms of their physical health. But it must proceed as I have described—or at least outlined—today. Confusions, which then lead to the most unfortunate prejudices, will always arise.

[ 22 ] In this way, spiritual research arrives at a deeper understanding of the human inner life, at a perception of more within the human inner life than can be perceived there with the ordinary state of mind. And one can then—if one does not misuse the term—call such a perception of that which lives within beyond ordinary soul life a mystical perception of one’s own inner being. One can call such a life a life of mysticism. Again, it is quite understandable when someone who is a layperson in these matters says: Yes, we know mysticism quite well; we have come to know it quite well, only we call it “mystical madness.” - For there is indeed a pathological condition that can be strictly defined, which is called “mystical madness”; it leads, in a certain way and from purely pathological sources, to a vision of the soul that is, however, purely organic and physiological—if you will, to a form of inner brooding in which one then comes to find all sorts of religious visions of a visionary nature within oneself. In short, there is what is called “mystical insanity” in psychiatry.

[ 23 ] Anyone who stands on the solid ground of spiritual research will not, for example, set out to criticize psychologists to the hilt, although there are, of course, plenty of such people who believe they understand something about spiritual science as well. They will not say: “When you speak of mystical delusion, we are dealing with a person sanctified by God, to whom more is revealed than to others.” No, the sound researcher in spiritual science describes the mystically deluded person precisely as such—just as the psychiatrist himself does—in exactly the same sense and with the same caution, which I need not go into today. With regard to everything that has any sound, natural justification whatsoever, sound spiritual science stands entirely on the ground of sound natural science; it does not deny anything that is accepted as justified by natural science, not even in matters such as those just discussed. And so, without falling into dilettantism, the researcher of the spiritual realm—if he is capable of judging these matters—can quite appropriately and positively agree with the psychiatrist on all pathological phenomena that are outwardly characterized as symptoms of insanity—for my part, as mystical insanity, religious madness, or the like. He will never deny that these things exist and occur here and there in specific cases.

[ 24 ] But if true spiritual research is indeed pursued with inner energy, then one does indeed come to the conclusion that certain types of abnormal mental life can be healed and brought into balance through what the individual experiences psychologically, in the manner described today. If the person performing such exercises—as alluded to today and described in greater detail in the books mentioned—attains true mysticism, that which can objectively present itself in the human soul as a spiritual-psychic experience, then even if they previously had a tendency or disposition toward mystical delusion, this will disappear; it will be corrected! All false mysticism is dispelled by true mysticism in the sense indicated. And it can even go much further. Predispositions toward megalomania, as well as toward other things, can be overcome by finding one’s way into spiritual scientific life in this manner. Not to mention that, of course, the more deeply one immerses oneself in the spiritual-soul realm, the more the energies developed there can extend their influence even further, into physical life itself. But I do not wish to delve into this topic today, as it can only be discussed in detail and in specific terms. Thus, immersing oneself in spiritual research—even in this limited area discussed today—and this could actually be extended in a certain way to all manifestations of pathological soul life—is not only something healthy but also has a healing effect. And it must be understood in this sense. One must always be clear that what appears as spiritual research, precisely because it deviates from the experiences of ordinary mental life, can very easily be confused with abnormal mental life, and that abnormal mental life itself can also be confused—by the person experiencing it, of course—with what constitutes a healthy mental life. And indeed, one encounters the strangest things among those with abnormal mental states when they venture into the realm of spiritual research. There is now—to highlight just one point—so much available in the literature regarding the possibility of making progress to a certain degree on the path of spiritual research that, under certain circumstances, anyone can follow it safely, provided they observe the guidelines. Let us now assume that someone wants to make progress. At first, they are driven by an inner impulse, a desire, to move forward. It is often curiosity, or a thirst for sensation, that prompts them to look into the spiritual world. In the course of their striving, it very often happens that they do not achieve what they initially envisioned. The reasons why this or that is not achieved, and the reasons why this or that is achieved in the wrong way, are sufficiently explained in the books mentioned. However, because the person in question does not truly wish to enter into the spiritual-scientific worldview, he is reluctant to admit that he is not making progress or that he is arriving at a caricature of the spiritual-scientific perspective, and he does not acknowledge that he has failed to heed this or that; rather, he is often inclined to say: “The instructions are to blame; I have arrived at this or that, which seems abnormal to me; the instructions are to blame, or the person who gave the instructions.” And particularly out of some pathological disposition, a belief very easily takes shape that can be characterized by a kind of persecutory delusion directed precisely against the very person who, in some way, provided the guidance for making the soul’s journey into the spiritual world through exercises. This is a very, very common phenomenon, one that occurs time and again and that can be exploited, because, of course, it is very easy to cite the testimony of such people. I do not wish to point to individual cases, but only to show how, when a pathological inner life is carried into the spiritual-scientific worldview, the spiritual-scientific worldview as such can in fact be misunderstood. If one wishes to become acquainted with this spiritual-scientific worldview, one would therefore do well to learn about it where it can be recognized in its true nature.

[ 25 ] And then it will certainly become clear that what I said in my book *How Does One Gain Insight into Higher Worlds?* —everything I have described today and in other writings: that a person may undergo certain unsettling experiences that can, in a certain way, throw them off balance—but in the same way that an objective fact does, not like something that arises from within. For all these reasons, it may happen that in various writings dealing with such matters—as I have stated in the aforementioned book—there is indeed much discussion of the dangers associated with the ascent into the higher worlds. The descriptions of such dangers that are sometimes given are well suited to making anxious minds view this higher life with nothing but dread. Yet it must be said that this danger exists only if the necessary precautions are disregarded. If, on the other hand, everything that true spiritual training provides is truly observed, then the ascent takes place in such a way that the grandeur of the phenomena surpasses anything the boldest imagination can conceive. And when it is said that a person comes to recognize, as it were, impending dangers at every turn, he must face these dangers boldly and courageously. It becomes possible for them to make use of forces and paths that are beyond sensory perception. And they are threatened by temptations to seize upon these very forces in the service of a selfish, unhealthy interest, or—due to a lack of clear thinking about the conditions of the sensory world—to use these forces in an erroneous manner. But there can be no question of slipping into an unhealthy spiritual life if all the rules are truly observed in the proper manner. And if they are not observed in the proper manner, then one need not be surprised if what is to be achieved is not attained. After all, spiritual science has this in common with other aspects of life as well. If someone is supposed to learn something in school but instead of going to school always goes behind the school, then they will not achieve what is supposed to be achieved in school. Although this is a very trivial comparison, it is nonetheless an apt one.

[ 26 ] One could speak at length about the various errors and prejudices that are levelled against spiritual science. Anyone who is deeply immersed in spiritual science itself knows that much about it is different from what people are accustomed to today in their ordinary educational and worldview contexts. Much is different. For example, a critic recently said about my book *Theosophy*: “Well, various things are claimed there, but they would first have to be objectively examined.” — So if it is claimed that one can see this or that in the spiritual world, then, according to this critic, the objective examination would consist of seating five or six spiritual researchers side by side—on one side and the other—and having them recount their spiritual experiences regarding the very same matter. If they agree, then—from this critic’s point of view—it is, of course, true. The man has criticized the book *Theosophy*. But if he has actually read it—and one is almost tempted to believe that he is incapable of understanding a book written in such a way at all—then he should have realized that this approach is out of the question; that the only valid test, however, is possible by his attempting to embark on the path of spiritual research himself. Anyone can investigate for themselves and will find that everything is confirmed by their own research. I recently explained why all of this is possible in a note to the sixth edition of my *Theosophy*. But one must simply engage with the subject itself. One must already today, I would say, be able to rise to the point of view that spiritual science is something which, in a true and genuine sense, is a continuation of the scientific way of thinking that the dawn of the modern era has brought; but that precisely because it, just like natural science, seeks to penetrate the spiritual world and explore its mysteries—as well as the sensory phenomena—it must also proceed differently from the natural-scientific way of thinking, which is directed solely toward the external. And once one sees the matter itself in this light, one will find that, fundamentally, the way spiritual science is received does not really differ all that much—in terms of understanding and even in terms of hostility—from the way other spiritual movements were received that were unfamiliar to conventional views—for this spiritual science is nothing other than unfamiliar. Certainly, anyone who wishes to attain higher spiritual experiences has a long, long path to travel before they can reach that point. But we are living today in an era of human development where everyone can, to a certain degree, cultivate within themselves what will at least lead them to the conviction—a conviction they have arrived at on their own—regarding the nature of the spiritual-scientific path. To understand that the findings of spiritual science are true, one need only have common sense; this has often been emphasized here. For those who can explore them can only recognize and confirm their truth through the common sense they must also possess. And in contrast to the natural sciences, one can say that spiritual science first leads one to the questions that nature poses, that it enriches one’s understanding of the whole of nature, rather than dismissing one in a philistine, pedantic manner with a so-called “meaning of life” that is easily found. It does indeed find the meaning of life, but in a different way than is often thought.

[ 27 ] What is necessary for understanding spiritual research, then, does not require that one personally travel a long path; nor does what one needs in the present, so to speak, for the security of one’s soul—that security which one can attain when one knows that this soul passes through births and deaths, that it belongs not to temporality but to eternity”—for what one needs in this way, one need not even approach spiritual science itself; rather, when the spiritual scientist describes what he has investigated and presents this description accurately, then one already has in it what one needs. I have mentioned this here many times before, but it cannot be repeated often enough: Just as one does not need to feel the need, when looking at a picture, to have the actual event before one’s eyes, but finds satisfaction in the picture itself, so it is the case that, for certain spiritual needs, one truly has enough in the description provided by one who is a spiritual researcher. Indeed, such a person can obtain what he desires for his spiritual needs not only through his spiritual research, but also by drawing it from the spiritual worlds and bringing it down into the world in which he himself lives, by describing it for himself. However, the fact that it is also necessary today to describe those exercises through which one can take certain steps in spiritual research is not related to the idea that only those who enter the spiritual world themselves can reap the fruits of spiritual research; rather, it is connected to something entirely different. It has to do with the fact that present-day humanity has reached a point in its development where it no longer wishes to accept things merely on authority, but truly desires to reach a level of development—at least to the extent that it can say: “I, too, can then judge to a certain degree what the spiritual researcher says.” — Therefore, the development of spiritual research will naturally take the path whereby a larger number of people will come together who take the first steps—which already lead very far—in the field of spiritual research, in order to — without relying on authority, and not merely on that simple sense of truth which is sufficient for the soul’s needs — to be able to accept what is brought forth from the spiritual worlds through spiritual research. For the soul’s needs, self-inquiry would not be necessary. For the needs of the times, however, self-inquiry will emerge more and more. For the needs of the soul, it is just as sufficient to hear what the spiritual researcher says as it is sufficient for the ordinary person not to conduct chemical experiments in a laboratory at all, but simply to accept the results of chemistry for everyday life. Let each person now search their conscience and ask themselves how many of their scientific views they have adopted other than on the basis of authority. Undoubtedly, when one considers the matter in truth, faith in authority has never been as great as it is today—even though this may seem to some today like a completely paradoxical statement.

[ 28 ] When one takes all these things into consideration, one must say: Spiritual science must indeed be something that seeks to become an integral part of humanity’s spiritual development, from the present into the future, not because it ascribes this mission to itself solely from spiritual realms, but because one can recognize—based on what exists today in humanity as a need, as a potential for development—that spiritual science is just as much a necessary product of further development as Copernicanism, Galileanism, and Keplerianism were in the dawn of modern history. Anyone who sees through these things will not be able to despair, nor will they be able to lose heart in the face of all the misunderstandings directed against spiritual research. They will not lose heart; rather, when they consider the great examples of history, they will realize how, time and again, everything that must be integrated as something new into the spiritual development of humanity is met with prejudice. Just as Copernicanism had to face prejudice—and was not even permitted to be believed in ecclesiastical circles until the course of the nineteenth century—so, fundamentally speaking, spiritual science must also face prejudice.

[ 29 ] But anyone who has given even a little thought to the course of truth through human historical development knows that truth is something intimately connected to the human soul. One may fail to recognize the truth, but even if it were so thoroughly misunderstood in a particular time or era that it were forced to disappear for the time being, it would soon rise again! For it possesses powers that enable it to force its way through even the narrowest crevices of the rocks of prejudice in the course of human development. One may hate the truth. But whoever hates the truth will, in the end, only be able to harm themselves. One can repress the truth in any age, but the truth cannot be completely suppressed, for the reason that it is—to put it figuratively—in a sense the sister of the human soul. The human soul and the truth are sisters. And just as discord can sometimes break out between siblings, but harmony will always be restored when they remember their common origin in the true sense, so too, when discord, hatred, and misunderstanding break out between the human soul and the truth, there will always be times when both sides come to recognize and affirm that truth and the human soul belong together and have a common origin in the eternal Spirit of the world. Therefore, anyone who sees through what I have just attempted to express figuratively will be able to rightly say what is contained in a proverb with which I wish to conclude today’s reflections—one of those proverbs of which it is said in certain regions of Germany: “A proverb—a word of truth.” Yes, it is both a proverb and a word of truth: You can squeeze the truth, but you cannot crush it!