The Rudolf Steiner Archive

7. Beyond the Senses and Beyond the Soul

[ 1 ] The great advances in the natural sciences over the past few centuries—and especially in recent decades—are rightly admired, as I have repeatedly mentioned in the lectures on the humanities I have given here. And modern people are right to immerse themselves in the way of thinking and the perspective from which these results—these advances in the natural sciences—were achieved, in order to understand the current stage of human development. But by immersing themselves in this perspective, their thinking and their entire way of perceiving the world take on certain forms. And one must say—without in any way diminishing one’s admiration for the advances in the natural sciences—that it is precisely this immersion in the scientific way of thinking that, in recent times, has led to a kind of inability in very many people, one might even say an inability to be attentive to what provides insight into the essence of the human soul, of the human spirit itself—insight into the most important, most profound mysteries of human existence.

[ 2 ] When one traces the course of intellectual history from the perspectives just mentioned, one gains not only a general understanding of the inability described above. When one examines in detail what has been attempted, particularly with regard to the study of the soul in recent times, one immediately gains the impression that minds trained in the scientific way of thinking often pass right by the very points where insight into the soul—and into the most important questions of existence—should open up. As an example today, I would like to cite the writings of a modern thinker whom I have often mentioned here, who can indeed be regarded as one of those who have endeavored to go beyond mere external, sensory existence and to point to something that lives in the spiritual realm behind the sensory. I would like to begin with certain thoughts that Eduard von Hartmann, the philosopher of the unconscious, wrote down at the beginning of his Psychology, his theory of the soul. There he expresses how it is actually impossible to observe the phenomena of the soul, and how the difficulty of the study of the soul lies precisely in the fact that it is virtually impossible to observe these phenomena. Let us allow Hartmann’s thoughts along these lines to arise before our soul. He says:

[ 3 ] “Psychology seeks to ascertain what exists; to do so, it must, above all, observe it. However, observing one’s own psychological phenomena is a matter in itself, since it inevitably disturbs and alters what it is directed toward to a greater or lesser degree. Anyone who wishes to observe their own delicate feelings will, precisely by directing their attention to them, alter those feelings to a not insignificant degree.”

[ 4 ] Hartmann thus argues that one cannot observe the soul, because in order to observe the soul, one must observe emotions; but when one tries to focus one’s attention on a subtle emotion, it vanishes into the soul; the soul, as it were, eludes human observation.

[ 5 ] “Yes, even,” he says, “they can slip away from him unnoticed. A mild physical pain is intensified by the act of observing it.”

[ 6 ] So he means: Pain is a mental experience; but how, then, can we observe it? How can we get to the bottom of what is there, if pain exists in the mind in such a way that, when we begin to observe it, it grows stronger? In other words, it changes. Through our observation, we alter what we intend to observe. Or:

[ 7 ] “Reciting even the most familiar memorized material can falter or become confused in its flow when the observer tries to track the progress of that flow.”

[ 8 ] He says: It is, after all, a mental phenomenon when we recite something we have stored in our memory. But if we now want to begin to observe what is actually happening while we are reciting, that is not possible. So we cannot observe this mental phenomenon of recitation. Or, as he goes on to say:

[ 9 ] “Strong feelings or even emotions, such as fear and anger, render one incapable of observing one’s own mental phenomena. Often, observation distorts the result by first projecting onto the given what it expects to find. It seems almost impossible to objectify the psychological experiences of the present moment in such a way as to make them the object of simultaneous observation; either the experience does not allow for simultaneous observation, or observation distorts and suppresses the experience.”

[ 10 ] Here we see a figure who, in a sense, recoils from observing the soul under the influence of thought. If I wish to grasp the soul, I alter the soul precisely through this very act of grasping. And that is why observation is actually impossible—so Hartmann argues.

[ 11 ] Now, this is indeed an extraordinarily interesting example of the wrong turns that this very line of research can take due to a certain inability. For what would one actually gain if, say, one could truly observe a subtle feeling? A subtle feeling, if observed, would remain in the soul exactly what it is. By observing this subtle feeling, we would learn nothing other than what this subtle feeling is. Nothing about the soul; absolutely nothing about the soul. And the same is true of the other examples Hartmann cites. For the point is that what we should actually call the soul never reveals itself in what the moment presents. Rather, the soul can only truly appear before us when we experience the very changes of individual soul experiences. If we were to try to observe what is present in the soul at a given moment, we would be like someone who, at a certain time of year, goes out into the field and sees the brown farmland, spread out far and wide, and says to himself: this brown farmland is what is actually spread out there. After a certain time, he goes out again. Now green shoots have emerged everywhere. Will not the observer, if he is reasonable, then say: “Yes, then the brown farmland I saw recently did not show me everything that is actually present there.” It is only by observing the changes that have taken place at different points in time that I come to understand what is actually going on: that it is not merely farmland spread out there, but that this farmland contained within it a certain number of seeds that are sprouting and growing.

[ 12 ] Thus, the soul only reveals itself when we become attentive: a delicate feeling is extinguished when I direct a strong, observing thought toward it. This interplay between the delicate feeling and the strong, observing thought—that is the very workings, essence, and undulations of the soul. Thus, Eduard von Hartmann regrets that he cannot observe what is changing, precisely when he should be observing the change. If he were to adopt a perspective that allows him to look more deeply—than he is currently able—into the life of the soul and into the connection between the life of the soul and physical life, then he would say the following, for example, about memorization. He would recognize that memorization is based on the fact that a mental process, through my having performed it repeatedly, has become ingrained in physical processes, so that when reciting what has been memorized—in a sense without the mental aspect needing to be present—the body automatically carries out what must happen so that what is to be memorized emerges once more. Anyone who knows how to observe mental experiences knows that through memorization, the mental aspect, so to speak, sinks deeper into the physical organization, resulting in greater physical activity than when we form present thoughts through direct reflection on things we have not memorized. When we form thoughts directly, we are active—I would say—at a level one tier higher in the soul than when we recite what we have memorized, in which case we bring forth, more or less automatically, what the soul has imprinted into the physical body. But then, when we automatically let what we have engraved from the soul into the body run its course, we disrupt this automatism when we intervene with a thought that is immediately present—one that arises on a higher level, namely in the soul— It is as if, when we intervene with our thoughts from the soul into the automatic process of the body that takes place while reciting memorized material, we were, for example, to insert a stick into a running machine and disrupt its operation.

[ 13 ] When one grasps the things that Hartmann regrets, one will immediately see how the various modes of activity of the soul and also of the body interact within the human being.

[ 14 ] And Eduard von Hartmann says: “Observation often distorts the psychological.” Well, essentially, mainstream science has, over the course of the last few decades, more or less strayed from actual observation of the psychological realm—at least from methodical observation of it. But certain flashes of insight have emerged. And such flashes of insight have been experienced precisely by those who are not really recognized by mainstream academic philosophers. Nietzsche, for example, had many such flashes of insight. In a certain brilliant grasp of the life of the soul—one that escalated more and more into the pathological—Nietzsche recognized how what unfolds on the surface of that life differs greatly from what takes place in the depths of human existence. One need only read something like Nietzsche’s discussions of the ascetic ideal to which some people devote themselves, and one will see what is actually meant here. How is the ascetic ideal often described? Well, it is described with a focus on what the person who devotes himself to asceticism in the ordinary sense imagines: how a person trains himself more and more to no longer will anything of his own accord, to suppress his will, and thereby to become increasingly will-less and selfless. Pursuing this line of thought then gives rise to what is called the ascetic ideal. Nietzsche asks: What is actually behind this ascetic ideal deep within the soul? And he finds: The one who truly lives according to an ascetic ideal desires power—the increase of power. If he were merely to develop his ordinary inner life, just as he is, he would have less power—as he feels—than he desires. Therefore, he trains his will, ostensibly to diminish it. But in the depths of the soul, it is precisely by subduing the will that he seeks to attain great power and great effects. The will to power lies behind the ideal of willlessness and selflessness. So Nietzsche argues. And in this lies, in fact, a true flash of insight that should certainly be taken into account in our judgment, particularly in a person’s self-knowledge.

[ 15 ] Let’s take a more obvious example than the one Nietzsche discussed in Asceticism. A certain individual once wrote to me—and often said to me as well—that he was devoted to a particular field of scholarship; in truth, he had not the slightest sympathy for this field, but he regarded it as a mission, as a duty, to work in this field because that is what humanity needs at the present time. In fact, he would much rather do anything else than precisely what he was doing there. — I did not hesitate to tell this man time and again that, as I saw it, this was a superficial view his soul had of itself. Deep in his subconscious, in those layers of his inner life of which he knows nothing, there lives within him a craving to do precisely what he said he actually finds unsympathetic—that he accepts it only as a mission. And in truth, I said, the whole matter strikes me as though he regards it as a mission precisely because he wants to carry out these very things out of the most selfish motives. One can see, without delving any deeper into the inner life, that the superficial inner life virtually falsifies the subconscious. But it is precisely in this falsification that a remarkable activity of the soul lies.

[ 16 ] It was Eduard von Hartmann, in particular, who, based on lines of thought such as those I have cited—and by pursuing such lines of thought no further than I have done—arrived at his hypothesis of the unconscious. He says: From what takes place in the soul—thinking, feeling, and willing—that is, from what we have in the soul as consciousness, we cannot actually gain any insight into the true nature of the soul. But since that is all we have, we must forgo any insight into the true life of the soul altogether and can only formulate a hypothesis. — That is why Hartmann posits the hypothesis: Behind thinking, feeling, and willing lies the unconscious, which can never be reached. And from this unconscious, thoughts, feelings, and impulses of will well up. But as for what lies down there in the unconscious, one can only form ideas about it that have a greater or lesser degree of probability, but which are merely hypotheses. - It must be said: Anyone who thinks this way simply blocks their own access to the life of the soul—to that which lies beyond ordinary soul life. For Hartmann correctly recognized that everything that enters ordinary consciousness is nothing more than a mere image. And this is precisely one of Hartmann’s great contributions: that he repeatedly emphasized, in the most eminent sense, that what enters ordinary consciousness arises because the soul, as it were, receives a reflection of its own content from outside the body, so that in what we experience in thinking, feeling, and willing, we have only mirror images. And to speak as if these mirror images of consciousness contained a reality is quite akin to claiming that the images we perceive in a mirror are reality. Hartmann emphasized this time and again. We will return to this very point again today. But Hartmann—and with him countless thinkers, countless people in general from recent decades and the present day—have cut themselves off from the possibility of penetrating into the soul because, I would say, they harbored an indescribable fear of the path that leads into the soul. Yet this fear remains in the subconscious; it rises into ordinary consciousness to such an extent that one conjures up numerous reasons that tell one: one cannot go beyond certain limits of knowledge.

[ 17 ] For anyone who truly wishes to penetrate the life of the soul must not remain at the level of ordinary consciousness, but must move on to what I have called, in the lectures I have given here, “contemplative consciousness”—a consciousness that is, in a sense, higher than ordinary consciousness. I have chosen the following comparison: When asleep, a person lives in images. The images of the dream, as one emerges from sleep, become conscious to a certain degree. I have said in previous lectures: The essential point is that, within these images experienced in the dream, a person is not in a position to relate their will to the things in their surroundings. At the moment of waking, when a person passes from dream consciousness into waking consciousness, what constitutes images and mental representations essentially remains just as it is in the dream; only now does the person relate to the surroundings through their will, and they integrate what in the dream otherwise unfolds merely as images into their sensory environment. Just as a person now awakens from dream consciousness into ordinary waking consciousness, so too can they, through certain activities of the soul, bring themselves to awaken from ordinary waking consciousness to a “contemplative consciousness,” through which they no longer integrate themselves into the ordinary sensory world, but rather, with their soul forces, into the spiritual world. This contemplative consciousness—and it alone—is what enables a person to penetrate into the realm beyond the phenomena of the soul.

[ 18 ] It is precisely those—I might say—the most enlightened minds of our time who believe that one is committing a veritable sin against knowledge when one speaks of humanity’s ascent to such a contemplative consciousness. And for some—especially among the philosophical minds of our time—this contemplative consciousness is simply condemned by the fact that such a person says: “Yes, that’s just like clairvoyance!” — Now the fact is that—to take up a point—it can perhaps best be characterized by describing the immense progress that has taken place in humanity’s relationship to reality from Kant to Goethe. In doing so, one certainly commits a sin against the spirit of many a philosopher. But this sin must be committed at least once. Kantianism, after all, is what began to erect barriers to human knowledge within the development of continental thought. The “thing-in-itself” is to be presented as something absolutely otherworldly, beyond the reach of human knowledge. This is what Kantianism demands, and this is what many people of the 19th century—right up to the present day, even in the 20th century—have demanded along with Kantianism. In just a few short sentences, Goethe put forward something immensely significant against this principle of Kantianism. And if one wishes to properly assess German intellectual life, one could actually regard Goethe’s short essay “On Intuitive Judgment,” which is usually printed in Goethe’s scientific writings, as one of the greatest achievements of modern philosophy—for the simple reason that what lives within this short essay provides the starting point for a tremendous development of human intellectual life. In this essay, “On Intuitive Judgment,” Goethe says, in essence: Yes, Kant excludes human beings from the thing-in-itself and acknowledges only that the categorical imperative, which commands them what to do, penetrates the soul. But if, in matters of morality, Goethe argues, one is to rise to thoughts of freedom and immortality, why should it be closed off to human beings to elevate themselves directly, through knowledge as well, into that world in which immortality and freedom themselves are rooted? — Goethe calls this faculty of judgment, which transports itself into such a world, the “intuitive faculty of judgment.” Now, in his contemplation of natural phenomena, Goethe continually exercised this intuitive power of judgment. And in the way he observed plants and animal forms, he provided a magnificent example of the use of the intuitive power of judgment. To Kant, this intuitive power of judgment appeared as something demonic that one should simply leave alone, that one should simply pass by. He called the use of this intuitive faculty of judgment “the adventure of reason.” Goethe countered: Why, having striven as I have to recognize how the spirit lives and weaves within natural phenomena, should one not courageously undertake this adventure of reason?

[ 19 ] This, however, is only a beginning—but the beginning of a development that unfolds as I have described it in these lectures. I would like to point out once again today that in my writings—in How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds? and in An Outline of Esoteric Science— and in my latest book, The Riddle of Man, you will find information and hints regarding what the soul must undertake within itself in order to find, as it were, the inner strength to awaken from ordinary waking consciousness to contemplative consciousness—just as one awakens from dream consciousness into ordinary daytime consciousness. Just as the soul must summon the strength, through the natural forces given to it, to awaken from the dream life—in which the human being is passively surrendered to the flow of images—into waking consciousness, so too can it, by taking matters into its own hands and applying to itself everything I have described in the book How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?, gain the strength to awaken within a world that is now just as different from ordinary waking consciousness as the ordinary sensory world of waking consciousness is different from what one experiences in the mere world of images in dreams. Out of ordinary waking consciousness, into a world of contemplative consciousness: this is the path that the most outstanding thinkers of modern times have so very much avoided. And we are faced with the peculiar phenomenon that, once again, the most enlightened minds have remained stuck at Kant and have not found the path from Kant to Goethe, so as to press forward, building on Goethe, into contemplative consciousness—which is merely the development, on a different level, of what Goethe meant by “contemplative judgment.”

[ 20 ] But then, when a person rises to such an awakening in contemplative consciousness, they first arrive at what I have already characterized in my lectures as imaginative cognition—which is not called “imaginative” because it merely represents something imagined, but because it lives in images; but in images drawn not from the external sensory world, but from a more powerful, more intense reality than the external sensory reality. When a person gathers the strength within themselves to rise to this imaginative knowledge, it means that they truly live in what I have called the etheric in earlier lectures in the context of spiritual science. Through ordinary waking consciousness, the external sensory world comes to our awareness. In imaginative consciousness, we enter a completely different world, in which, so to speak, something different lives and weaves than in the ordinary sensory world.

[ 21 ] Now, for those who have no idea what this “contemplative consciousness” is, it is certainly difficult to form a conception of it. And this is probably also the reason why some of my esteemed listeners have told me recently that these lectures in particular are difficult to understand. They are not difficult in terms of the content being conveyed, but rather because they speak of something that is, after all, not present in ordinary consciousness.

[ 22 ] You speak of insights based on an exploration of the beholding consciousness. But even within ordinary consciousness, one can form an approximate idea of what actually constitutes the very first aspect of the beholding consciousness. Try—and basically anyone can do this—to imagine a very vivid morning dream from which you wake up, and try to recall a dream in which you made an effort—I would say—to truly live within the dream, having more or less subconsciously strived to truly live within it. You will have experienced that what you feel bound to you like your own body—those thoughts of which you must say to yourself, “I feel my thoughts as thoughts conceived by me”—you must, so to speak, think of this as spread out over the seemingly surging flow of the dream’s images. You cannot distinguish yourself from what is surging into the images of the dream, as you can distinguish yourself in sensory consciousness, so that you can say: “I am standing here and I am thinking about the things that are out there.” You do not perceive something externally and reflect on it, but rather you have the immediate experience: within what is surging up and down, the forces that otherwise live in my thinking are alive. It is as if you yourself were immersing in a surging life, so that the surging—the very form of the surging—and everything that is there is formed like weaving, living thought forces: objective life and the weaving of thought forces. This—which in dream life, I would say, can only be intuited—is particularly perceptible in contemplative consciousness as a first impression. That is where the possibility of thinking—that “out there are the objects, and in here, inside my head, I think about the objects”—truly ceases. No, there one feels embedded in something one might call a surging, substantial sea, in which one is oneself a wave. And what is the power of thought is not only within one; it is out there, driving this undulating and surging movement, flowing outward and inward. This means: one feels connected to it at times, and at other times it is as if the power of thought is flowing outward without one.

[ 23 ] What one achieves in this way—in which, in a sense, something substantial is connected to what otherwise lives within us only as thought—is that which, in reality, should be called ether. For the ether is nothing other than a finer form of substance, one that is, however, so thoroughly imbued everywhere that flowing thought acts within it—so that, in reality, thoughts outside fill the ether itself. Only in this way, through the development of consciousness, does one arrive at what should in reality be called ether. But then one also attains a more intimate relationship between one’s own soul and one’s surroundings. Through sensory perception, one can never enter into such an intimate relationship with one’s surroundings as in this experience of contemplative consciousness, which truly has no boundaries between inner and outer, but rather allows that which is thought-filled and thought-permeated ether to flow in and out—into one’s own soul life and out of one’s own soul life.

[ 24 ] But only once one has entered into this contemplative consciousness can a higher self-knowledge be attained. And here I now touch upon something that, in turn, belongs to the significant findings of spiritual research; but it will also extend into scientific research, insofar as the latter will find confirmation of this just as it will find confirmation of those findings of spiritual research that I have presented in previous lectures. For the human being is, in fact, a complex being, even when we consider him merely from an external, physical perspective. Had Goethe’s way of viewing things borne fruit earlier, had it not been overshadowed by the spirit- and soul-hostile outlook of nineteenth-century materialism, Goethe’s theory of metamorphosis would also have been applied to the human being himself. Goethe beautifully distinguished how, in a plant, the green leaf and the colored petal are one and the same, merely at different stages of existence—one being merely a product of transformation, a metamorphosis of the other. If one proceeds not from a merely theoretical understanding but from the perspective that lived within Goethe—as he first applied the idea of metamorphosis to the simplest form, the plant, and now applies this view of metamorphosis to human beings in all the complexity of their being— one comes to recognize that human beings, by having a head and the rest of their organism, are thereby very remarkable beings.

[ 25 ] For when one observes how human beings develop continuously from an early age, from the very earliest childhood onward, one encounters many aspects of great significance that are still far from being sufficiently recognized by science today. Let us highlight just one point: in the very earliest childhood, the most physically developed part of the human being is the head. Throughout life, the head grows to four times its original size, while the rest of the organism grows to twenty times its size compared to what it is in childhood. So consider how different the pace is between the growth of the head and the growth of the rest of the organism. This stems from the fact that the head and the rest of the organism are two different metamorphoses of the same entity, but in a very peculiar way. In humans, the head appears immediately with a certain degree of perfection as the physical life begins; the rest of the organism, on the other hand, appears with the greatest conceivable imperfection and must first develop slowly to the degree of perfection it is to attain in physical life. Thus, the head and the rest of the organism undergo entirely different developmental processes. I have mentioned before how spiritual science explains the origin of this. The human head points back to a long preceding spiritual development. When we enter our physical existence through conception and birth, we come forth as soul-spiritual beings from a spiritual world. What we experience during spiritual development in the spiritual world contains a sum of forces that initially manifest themselves primarily in the head; therefore, what appears in the head as so perfect and in need of only minor further refinement points to a development that the human being has already undergone.

[ 26 ] The rest of the organism is, as it were, the same thing at an initial stage. It is just beginning to develop the forces which, if they could reach full development, would strive to make the entire rest of the organism into what the head physically is. As paradoxical as it sounds, it is nevertheless true. The head shows that it is a transformed remainder of the organism; the remainder of the organism shows that it is a head that has not yet come into being. In a sense, just as the green leaf is a petal not yet come into being, and the colored petal is a transformed leaf. And whatever the human being develops through the rest of his organism, the soul incorporates into itself. And when a human being passes through the gate of death, this enters a spiritual world, undergoes a process of development between death and a new birth, and in a later life becomes the forces that then develop in the head, just as the present head has developed out of the organism of a previous earthly life.

[ 27 ] Now you might ask: How can such a thing be known? It can be known as soon as a person enters into a state of intuitive consciousness. For it is there that what truly compels us to view the human being as this duality—the “head-human” and the “human of the rest of the organism”—actually comes to light. And the head is, in a sense, an instrument of the etheric world, as I have just described it, and the rest of the organism is also an instrument of this etheric world.

[ 28 ] Human beings do not merely possess their physical organism as, so to speak, a fragment of the entire physical world; rather, held together by the physical organism, they possess within themselves an etheric organism that can only be perceived when one rises to imaginative cognition, as I have described. But then, when what is ethereal truly becomes vivid to one, one encounters the great difference between what underlies the head as the human etheric body and what underlies the rest of the organism as the etheric body. And just as the head and the rest of the organism have entirely different rates of growth, so too do the forces that act and live within the etheric body of the head, and those that live within the etheric body of the rest of the organism, have entirely different inner developments of force, which give rise to different inner imaginings. And when one enters the world of imagination at all, one encounters the imagination of the head’s etheric body interacting with the imagination of the etheric body of the rest of the organism. And this living interplay within the human etheric organism is the very content of a higher self-knowledge. Because the human being comes to truly know himself in this way, he also comes to be able to evaluate certain soul experiences in the proper manner. If what I have described were not as I have portrayed it, the human being would never be able to have what is called a memory. The human being would be able to form mental images based on sensory impressions, but these would always be fleeting. The fact that a person can remember what they have once experienced is based on the fact that, as the etheric body of the head interacts with the etheric body of the rest of the organism, what is active in the etheric body of the head brings about changes in the etheric body of the rest of the organism that are lasting and that have an effect all the way down to the physical organism. Every time something takes hold in a person’s soul-physical life that pertains to memory, a change first occurs in the etheric organism—which can be visualized through imaginative insight—but this change then carries over into the physical organism. And it is through this alone that we have the ability to recall certain thoughts—that what is transmitted from the etheric organism of the head into the rest of the etheric organism becomes manifested in the physical body. It is only because something has made an impression deep within our physical body that we are able to retain it in memory. But what takes place in the physical organism from the etheric organism in the manner described can, in turn, be observed only through the contemplative consciousness. This can only be observed if the contemplative consciousness continues the exercises described in the cited books, if the contemplative consciousness rises from mere imaginative knowledge to what I have called “inspired knowledge.” Through imaginative knowledge, we immerse ourselves in a world of undulating ether, animated by the thoughts that permeate it. If we continue the exercises and draw even more strength from our inner life than is necessary for this imaginative knowledge, then we come to perceive not only a surging life of thought in the ether, but also, within this surging life of thought, beings—true spiritual beings—who do not reveal themselves in any physical body, but reveal themselves solely in the spiritual realm. But by coming to a true perception of a spiritual world, we also gain the possibility of achieving what might be called: viewing one’s own human being as one would view external objects, truly facing oneself—not merely sensing what I have just called one’s own life of thought in the undulating ether, within one’s own etheric organism—but perceiving oneself among other spiritual beings as a spiritual being in the spiritual world. When one reaches this point, something occurs that is difficult even to characterize, but which can be understood with a little good will.

[ 29 ] When one imagines something, and that image remains in the soul, and later this image is brought back up from the soul, one says that one remembers. But as I have just explained, this is based on something that takes place in the physical organism. It simply cannot be traced with ordinary consciousness. But if one ascends into the beholding consciousness, then one comes, so to speak, to see what lies behind the memory—what takes place within the human being during the time that elapses from the moment one has formed a thought that has now seemingly vanished and lives only down in the physical organism until it is brought back up again. Everything that lives beyond the thought that is being recalled—one does not perceive this unless one can lift oneself out of oneself through contemplative consciousness and, so to speak, observe oneself from the other side. So that one not only sees a thought descending and feels it rising again, but also perceives everything that happens in between, while the thought has descended and is rising again. This reveals itself only to the inspired consciousness; it reveals itself to the contemplation that has enabled itself not only to look outward while living in the physical body, but also to look inward toward the physical interior of the human being while living in the spirit. In this way, the human being reaches, on the one hand, a realm beyond the soul that assures him that he lives in the spirit. But the human being also reaches that realm beyond the soul which is at work in what lives unconsciously from the disappearance of a thought until its reappearance—that which lives down there as what Eduard von Hartmann calls the “unconscious,” and which he believes can never be reached by consciousness. It cannot be reached through ordinary consciousness because the thought is first reflected in the organism; but when one goes beyond this reflection, when one steps outside oneself and lives in contemplative consciousness, then one experiences what truly takes place within a person between the grasping of a thought and memory. And this is what we now wish to record: what a person can perceive, as it were, beyond that stream through contemplative consciousness, which is usually limited to him by memory. For we can clearly see: there, through contemplative consciousness, we enter into a realm beyond the soul.

[ 30 ] Let us keep this idea in mind and, from the same perspective, examine some of the other endeavors that have emerged in the age of science.

[ 31 ] The scientific worldview not only, I would say, leads to such erroneous paths regarding the life of the soul as I have described, but also, in a certain sense, to erroneous paths when it seeks to investigate what lies beyond the senses. In this regard, scientific research—when it forms a worldview—is indeed in a peculiar situation at present. It has actually come to the conclusion that everything that exists in consciousness is merely images of a reality. It proceeds from a flawed premise; yet despite this flaw, this premise provides a certain insight that is correct—namely, that everything that exists in consciousness is an image. Scientific research proceeds from the idea that out there exists a reality entirely devoid of spirit and soul, consisting of vibrating, thoughtless etheric atoms. We have found the ether to be a surging life of thought; the scientific worldview assumes a thoughtless, soulless ether. These vibrations make an impression on our senses, giving rise to effects within us that conjure up the colorful, resonant world, while outside everything is dark and silent. Yet the thinking that underlies this worldview seeks to go beyond these images. What does it do? What it does there can be compared to someone—well, let’s say a child—looking into a mirror. There, mirror images meet the child’s gaze: its own and those of the surroundings. And now the child wants to know what actually lies behind these mirror images. What does it do? Well, it says that what lies behind them must be behind the mirror; so it will either want to look behind the mirror. But there it sees something entirely different from what it was actually looking for. Or it might even smash the mirror to see what is behind the glass. The scientific worldview essentially does the same thing. It has the entire tapestry of sensory phenomena before it, and it wants to know what actually lies behind these sensory phenomena. It goes so far as to reach the substance, the matter. Now it wants to know what is out there—apart from the senses. But this is merely like trying to break the tapestry, which is like a mirror. It would not find what it is looking for behind it. And if someone were to say, “Here I have the color red through my eye, and behind it are certain vibrations in the ether,” they would be speaking just like someone who believes that the origin of what appears in the mirror lies behind the mirror. For just as when one stands before a mirror, one sees the image of oneself in the mirror, and one is united with what is in the surroundings and with what is also reflected from oneself, so too is one, in the soul, united with what lies behind the sensory phenomena. If I want to know why something else is reflected there along with me, I cannot look behind the mirror; rather, I must look at those who are to my left and right, who are of the same nature as I am, and who are also reflected. If I want to explore what lies out there beyond the sensory phenomena, I must do so by exploring that in which I myself am contained—not by shattering the mirror, but by exploring that in which I myself am contained.

[ 32 ] Indeed, astute and marvelous lines of thought have been developed regarding the ether from a scientific perspective. Yet all these lines of thought have led to nothing other than the realization that, through physical research, one arrives at nothing more than what one already perceives through the senses—except that, because some phenomena are simply too subtle or occur too rapidly, they cannot be perceived by the senses. One does not arrive at any ether. This is now evident from the excellent research with evacuated tubes—vacuum tubes—where one believed one had the ether within one’s grasp; for we know today that these experiments yield nothing other than radiant matter, not what can be called ether. Ether research in particular is today, I would say, undergoing the greatest revolution of all. For one will never arrive, through the path of physical research, at anything other than that which reflects. If one wishes to go further, one must take into account—but this can only be done with the contemplative consciousness—that which is reflected in a communal way. And that is what lives in the truly thought-imbued ether. Therefore, when one inquires about the realm beyond the senses, one finds an answer only through the contemplative consciousness. For if one recognizes the undulating, thought-imbued ether within oneself through imaginative insight, one also comes to seek it behind the red, behind the sound, behind all external sensory perception—no longer the dead ether of today’s physical worldview, which is now fading away, but the living, thought-imbued ether. Behind what the senses perceive lives the same thing that is found within us when we delve down into that which lives within ourselves between the grasping of a thought and the recollection of a thought. One does not reach what lies beyond the senses by following the path taken by physics today, but rather by finding what lies beyond the senses within one’s own being, by learning to recognize that the same process is at work within one’s own being—between grasping a thought and recalling a thought—as the one that lives out there and imposes itself upon my eye when I perceive red. Behind this red lies the same thing that is within me between the grasping of a thought and the recall of a thought. The realm beyond the senses and the realm beyond the soul lead into the spiritual.

[ 33 ] I had to guide you through a somewhat abstract train of thought today because, in the context of these lectures on perspective, I wanted to say something about the perspective that must emerge from spiritual science. I wanted to show how true self-knowledge leads into the realm beyond the soul, but also how, when one enters the realm beyond the soul, one stands in the realm beyond the senses, and how one thereby finds the path—through intuitive consciousness—into the spiritual world. And within this spiritual world, what also plays a role in our soul life—and what I have described in the preceding lectures as that which ebbs and flows as our destiny in our experiences—further reveals itself to intuitive consciousness. There, the experience of destiny is interwoven with the moral—with what takes place within destiny. Once we realize that behind sensory experience lies not a spiritless reality but a reality imbued with spirit, then our moral life will have just as much a place in this spiritual world—which lies beyond the soul and beyond the senses—as the material world we perceive all around us has a place in this outer world.

[ 34 ] Even today, when the humanities explore these matters, they are still regarded as paradoxical; the things I have described are, in a sense, regarded as folly; and yet they can just as well be viewed as facts to be simply observed, as if one were describing an external event. But this approach of spiritual science is merely digging a tunnel of knowledge from one side; from the other side, natural science is digging into the mountain. If both are striving in the right direction, they will meet in the middle. And I would like to say: In a sort of negative way, those engaged in natural science are already coming toward those engaged in spiritual science; for remarkable things have emerged among natural scientists in recent times. Admittedly, those who believe they stand firm on the ground of scientific research—because they know what had been discovered up to twenty years ago—do not yet know much about what scientific thinkers are actually doing. But if one looks more closely, one does make quite remarkable discoveries in the course of scientific thought. That is precisely why I cited Eduard von Hartmann today as a thinker who at least points to a realm beyond the senses and a realm beyond the soul. Yet he does not admit that it is possible for the perceiving consciousness to penetrate even further beyond the senses and beyond the soul. That is why he says—dipping it into a general “sauce of knowledge” (or “dip of knowledge,” as one might say nowadays!)—that what lies beyond the senses and beyond the soul is the unconscious. He then puts forward some rather questionable hypotheses about it. But these are merely truths of thought. Thought does not reach into these worlds. Only and exclusively the contemplative consciousness reaches into them, as I have described. But still: Hartmann at least advances to the inkling that there is something spiritual beyond the senses and beyond the soul, even if he did not bring it to consciousness. When he published his Philosophy of the Unconscious in 1868, he offered a critique of Darwinism—which was already surging at that time and interpreted in materialistic terms. “Darwinism interpreted in materialistic terms”—not what Darwin discovered in specific facts, which is not to be discussed here—believes it can explain, by setting aside everything spiritual, how more perfect living beings arise from imperfect, simplest ones, as they say: through mere natural selection, through the mere struggle for existence. Because the more perfect forms develop by chance and overcome those that have remained imperfect by chance, the more perfect forms gradually prevail; this gives rise to something like a developmental sequence from the imperfect to the perfect. As early as 1868, Hartmann explained that such a play of purely external natural necessities—which one might also call chance—is not sufficient to explain the evolution of organisms, but that certain forces, even if they remain unconscious, must be at work when a living being develops from the imperfect to the more perfect. In short, he sought a spiritual element in evolution; he hypothetically posited that spiritual element which can truly be found beyond the senses and beyond the soul. He posited it only hypothetically, for at that time one had not yet advanced to the stage of intuitive consciousness.

[ 35 ] When The Philosophy of the Unconscious was published—a work that offered a perceptive critique of the Darwinian theory of chance—a large number of those with a scientific mindset spoke out against this “amateur thinker,” Eduard von Hartmann. Such an amateur philosopher, who understands nothing of what Darwinism has brought about, and who goes and speaks out on the matter from his own intellectual standpoint! And among those who criticized Hartmann at the time was Oscar Schmid, a professor at Jena. It was Haeckel himself as well. Haeckel himself and many of his students were now greatly astonished that, among the many writings that, in their view, brilliantly refuted this Eduard von Hartmann—who spouted such amateurish nonsense—a text had also appeared by an anonymous author—a man who did not reveal his name. And Haeckel said: “Let him reveal his name to us!” And others said likewise: “Let him reveal his name to us, and we’ll consider him one of our own!” It is so magnificent that a scientific treatise has now appeared in this way against the drivel of the “Philosophy of the Unconscious”! — And a second edition of this treatise, The Unconscious in the Light of Darwinism, was published. And then the author revealed his name—it was Eduard von Hartmann! You see, there were now reasons why people no longer proclaimed: “Let him reveal his name to us, and we will regard him as one of our own.” They now ignored him completely. - That was a thorough lesson that had to be taught once and for all to those who believe that anyone who speaks of the spirit does so simply because he understands nothing of their science. Things had now grown quite quiet. But something else became apparent: in 1916, a very interesting work was published, one of which it can be said that, in the field it addresses, it stands at the very pinnacle of that science. This work is titled: “The Development of Organisms: A Refutation of Darwin’s Theory of Chance.” And this work—well, by whom was it written? It was written by the often-mentioned, most brilliant of Haeckel’s students, Oscar Hertwig, the Berlin professor of biology. We are witnessing the curious spectacle that Haeckel’s next generation of students—the very generation of which he himself was most proud—is already writing books refuting Darwin’s theory of chance, which, at the time when people were turning against Hartmann, was precisely the prevailing view in Haeckel’s circle. And what is Hertwig doing—whom I myself knew, along with his brother Richard, as one of Haeckel’s most loyal students? He is examining what might be called the “materialist interpretation of Darwin’s theory,” refuting it point by point, and in some places quoting Eduard von Hartmann. Hartmann now reappears in Oscar Hertwig’s work The Development of Organisms. A Refutation of Darwin’s Theory of Chance, and is once again held in high regard. Back then, when he was unknown, people said: Let him call himself one of us, and we will regard him as one of our own. And now people are beginning to return to what Hartmann had relegated to the unconscious. Now people are beginning to recognize the spiritual in what is perceptible to the senses.

[ 36 ] This book, The Development of Organisms: A Refutation of Darwin’s Theory of Chance by Oscar Hertwig, is indeed curious. For while all earlier materialist interpretations of Darwinism boiled down to the assertion that “we have perfect organisms, we have imperfect organisms; the perfect ones have developed from the imperfect ones through external natural forces," Hertwig returns to the fact that, in the perfect organism—if one goes back microscopically to the first germ—one can demonstrate that Nagels’ view is correct: that in the very first stage of development, the germ of the perfect organism already differs from that of the imperfect organism. For there is already something entirely different within the perfect organism than in the imperfect one, from which it is believed the perfect organism developed. Microscopic research has gone as far as it can, but it has achieved nothing more than encountering a mirror, and gets no further than the boundary of the sensory world. The result will be that many people who hold a natural-scientific worldview will not merely state, as Hertwig does: “The materialistic interpretation of Darwinism is impossible.” Rather, they will acknowledge: If we are to arrive at anything at all that explains this sensory world and lies beyond it, then we cannot remain at the level of ordinary consciousness; there we cannot escape the sensory world, not even with as many telescopes as there are. We can escape the sensory world only if we arm ourselves with intuitive consciousness.

[ 37 ] But in general, even philosophers have not yet progressed very far in compelling the soul within themselves to recognize that contemplative consciousness can spring forth from this ordinary consciousness, just as waking consciousness springs forth from sleep. Philosophers today are even less equipped to penetrate these matters. I have often said that I take an adversarial stance only toward those whom I, at heart, hold in high regard. Therefore, I may well say: It is solely due to this inability to think in a way that is truly in keeping with the spirit and reality—that is, to strive for this contemplative consciousness—that people are today regarded as great philosophers who, in essence, with all their thinking and feeling, merely float about in what what ebbs and flows in this ordinary consciousness, without ever feeling the need to go beyond mere talk of ebbing and flowing ideas. And so it has also come to pass that someone who merely revels with relish on the surface of these ebbing and flowing ideas—such as Eucken, for example—can be regarded today as a great philosopher. It is simply part of what one must characterize by saying: That clinging to ordinary consciousness has also robbed people of the sharpness of thought that would allow them to realize that there are not such limits to knowledge as Kant posits, but rather limits that one must reckon with in order to transcend them through intuitive consciousness. That is why those who speak grandly of all manner of spiritual worlds, yet within ordinary consciousness arrive at nothing other than what Eduard von Hartmann long ago recognized as mere ordinary, image-based consciousness, are regarded today as great philosophers.

[ 38 ] And so there are many things that could be shown in the present that would draw attention to how—I would say—precisely this admirable scientific way of looking at things has, in fact, led us away from the paths that lead to the soul. For some, however, things have indeed taken a peculiar turn. There are people today who sense what I have said. For example, there is a person today who senses that what lives in the soul between birth and death—as thinking, feeling, and willing—is merely something conditioned by the body, whereas the eternal emerges from the spiritual world, enters into existence through birth, transforms itself within the body so that it works within the body, and then departs again through death, and that what acts within the body is not the true soul. The individual I am referring to acknowledges this. Yet they speak of the fact that in what lives in ordinary consciousness, we have only images. This individual calls them “events.” Behind these lie those primordial factors that are experienced in contemplative consciousness as lying beyond the soul and beyond the senses. But the personality I am referring to does not wish to engage with this contemplative consciousness. And so it stands before the occurrences—again, I might say, constantly smashing a thick mirror—and says: “The primordial factors must lie behind this.” — But it is rushing headlong. And by rushing against the mirror’s surface and refusing to turn toward the contemplative consciousness, it believes that all philosophy has merely been rushing headlong. In Fichte one can see—I have discussed this in my book The Riddle of Man—that he did not rush headlong, but rather pointed toward the contemplative consciousness on a crucial point. The person I am referring to now, who does indeed recognize the pictorial nature of ordinary consciousness, says: “Anyone who cannot laugh at that (in Fichte) cannot philosophize either.” And as this person lets all philosophers—from Plato and Heraclitus down to the present—pass before him in their contexts, he calls these philosophies “The Tragicomedy of Wisdom” . And there is an interesting sentence on page 132, which reads: “We have no more philosophy than an animal, and only the frantic attempt to arrive at a philosophy, and the ultimate resignation to ignorance, distinguish us from the animal.”

[ 39 ] That is one individual’s verdict on all philosophy, on all attempts to penetrate the beyond of the soul and the beyond of the senses! He is truly a madman who, as he races by, believes that others are the ones who are mad. And because he speaks so eloquently about philosophy, he is currently a university professor of philosophy! Philosophy is, as it were, treated in the present day exactly as this phenomenon illustrates.

[ 40 ] I am well aware that to some, what I am saying may seem bitter. I can certainly empathize with that. I can empathize with all the bitterness and also with the entire paradox. However, attention must simply be drawn to the fact that, in the present, there is a necessity to break free from what confines itself to the mere sensory world and to immerse oneself in that which leads beyond the soul, beyond the senses. For it is not the world that sets the limits of our knowledge. It is human beings themselves alone who set the limits of knowledge.

[ 41 ] Sometimes one can make quite interesting discoveries about what a human being really is when he is so unwilling to even look at what, as a observing consciousness, leads to the very essence of the soul. I have just given an example of the philosophical view of a university professor, Richard Wahle, who wrote The Tragicomedy of Wisdom. I could name another: the famous Jodl. That man would certainly—he is no longer alive—regard everything that has been said here today, and everything that is ever said here, as the most utter madness. However, he expresses his views on the soul in the following way: “The soul does not have states or faculties, such as thinking, imagining, joy, hatred, and so on; rather, these states in their entirety are the soul.” Very witty! And Jodl’s entire philosophy is permeated by this wit. However, this definition of the soul is no more meaningful than if someone were to say: It is not the table that has corners, edges, and a surface, but rather the corners, edges, and surface are the table.

[ 42 ] And such is the nature of most of the thoughts that exist today amid that thicket of mere figments of the imagination—which are, after all, merely a product of the body, because they do not seek to penetrate to the level of the perceiving consciousness, where one first discovers the soul. One will, however, still find today that such a view often backfires. I have called the worldview represented in these lectures “anthroposophy.” This is in reference to the “anthroposophy” of Robert Zimmermann, who was also a university professor but who was equally opposed to anthroposophy. For what would Robert Zimmermann have said about the anthroposophy presented here? Well, he would say what he had already said against Schelling: The philosopher must remain within the realm of what is accessible through thought. He must not appeal to anything that requires a special training of the soul! — One can speak that way, but then one is simply practicing a form of anthroposophy as Robert Zimmermann did. There you will find a thicket of thoughts; it will not interest you, for not a single word is said in it about any questions concerning the soul and the spirit. Of what I have discussed in these lectures—what pertains to the soul’s afterlife and the realm beyond the senses, what pertains to the question of the immortality of the human soul and the question of destiny—none of that is to be found in that form of anthroposophy. For while the thinking of the past century has, on the one hand, indeed brought about the great—and never sufficiently admired—advances in the natural sciences, on the other hand it has also produced that very attitude toward knowledge which the young Renan, upon leaving college, expressed as his conviction—an attitude born of his religious conceptions having been thrown into confusion by the findings of modern scientific thought. At that time, he declared: “The person of the present is aware that he will never know anything about his highest causes or his destiny.” This, after all, is the confession of many today, except that, because this confession has been around for so long, very many have become somewhat numb to it and do not feel how such a confession gnaws at the soul when it is new. This admission has blocked off the paths—as we recognize them today—to the soul’s beyond and to the beyond of the senses. Ernest Renan was, after all, someone who sensed how one might live with such a blockage. And so, as an old man, he made a curious remark:

[ 43 ] “I wish I knew for certain that there was a hell, for better the hypothesis of hell than that of nothingness.”

[ 44 ] Failing to recognize the perceiving consciousness certainly does not lead to an understanding of the origin and nature of human beings, just as breaking a mirror does not lead to an understanding of the beings reflected in it. Renan sensed this. He felt that where earlier times had sought the spiritual origin of humankind, his worldview posited nothingness. His mind protested against this, and in his old age he declared that he would rather know that hell exists than believe that nothingness is real. As long as the mind protests in this way, humanity will not be able to transcend the barriers of the worldview that, to this day, has blocked the paths to the realm beyond the senses and the realm beyond the soul. Only when humanity declares itself willing to develop such powerful thinking and imagination that the soul can summon the strength to attain what, in contemplative consciousness, is the living further development of what Goethe inspired in his concept of the “contemplative power of judgment”—and regards Kant as an adventure of reason— only when humanity resolves to advance toward this strengthening of thought—and of the entire world of the soul—in order to penetrate spiritual reality through contemplative consciousness, will a protest arise—no longer merely an emotional one, but a protest of knowledge—against the coercive forces of that so-called monism, which seeks to sever human beings from an understanding of their true essence. And I believe that one can already sense the inner pulse that animates the debates in spiritual science today to such an extent that we are living at the starting point of those upheavals in human soul life which, moving beyond the scientific worldview—which we have indeed already admired—lead into the realm beyond the senses and beyond the soul, into the very source of humanity, into the spirit.

[ 45 ] And thus human beings will once again be able to connect that which lives in their destiny and in their moral existence to the origin of the world, just as they can connect that which lives in the external necessity of nature. And through this, human beings will rise to a truly unified and truly satisfying view of nature and the soul—one in which spirit speaks to spirit.