The Rudolf Steiner Archive

5. Nature and Its Mysteries in the Light of Spiritual Research

[ 1 ] The American science writer Charles Snyder, who has written a book on the current scientific worldview—which has also been translated into German—speaks in an almost mocking tone about a lecture once given by Darwin’s fellow discoverer, Russell Wallace. As a naturalist—or perhaps more accurately, even though he was a naturalist—Wallace made the statement that, in his view, human life, the immortal soul of man, has not only the significance that can be observed here in life between birth and death, but that it extends, through its hidden, supernatural influence, throughout the entire universe. A person like Charles Snyder, with his more materialistic way of thinking, can of course only react to such a statement with something bordering on derision in our present day. Now, if one wishes to consider the cultural-historical significance of this fact, one must point out that Wallace—even somewhat before Darwin—had arrived at the evolutionary ideas regarding the animal and human worlds that defined the nineteenth century and which were subsequently popularized by Darwin. Nevertheless, Wallace belongs to those who, although they stand in the fullest sense of the word on the scientific ground of the theory of evolution, ultimately worked their way up to a view that is revealed precisely in a statement such as this: that the human soul, indeed the whole of human life, has significance for the entire, all-encompassing world.

[ 2 ] However, Wallace attempted to find confirmation for what had taken root in his mind as a conviction through the experimental method commonly known as spiritualism. One might say that Wallace’s endeavor to find confirmation in such external experimentation for a truth pertaining to the spiritual world—a truth that must be derived from the spiritual world itself—is a mistake, for in this case the question arises: Has the external experimental method—the spiritualist quest—truly been able to offer Wallace anything to support his conviction regarding the eternal, universal significance of the human soul? — Today I would like to say only this much about this question: For those who, in accordance with their worldview and spiritual understanding, have insight into what actually occurs in a natural process and what results an experiment can yield, it is clear that such an external experiment—even if it reveals all sorts of phenomena reminiscent of spiritual manifestations—cannot provide any more insight into the eternal significance of a being than any other magnetic, electrical, or other experiment. What comes to light in the sensory world can provide insight only about the sensory world. In this endeavor to find confirmation of his conviction through such experimental methods, Wallace was certainly mistaken. But his conviction could not have been generated or reinforced by such external observation in the first place. Anyone who knows the human soul understands that such a conviction must well up from the depths of the human soul itself, that the process leading to such a conviction must be an entirely spiritual one and can have nothing to do with external experiments. And so it must be assumed that Wallace, although he stood firmly on scientific ground, expressed an insight that had emerged from the unconscious, from the depths of the soul, and that referred to this eternal significance of the human soul.

[ 3 ] This is connected to what I have said about spiritual research in the lectures I have already given here, and which I would now like to briefly repeat from a somewhat different perspective. It is connected to the fact that in the depths of the human soul there is indeed something that could be called—not only in an ideal sense, but in a spiritually real sense—a second human being, who is a spiritual entity. This spiritual being does not enter into the ordinary consciousness we have between birth and death, but sends manifestations and revelations up into this consciousness, the origin of which may even be unknown to this ordinary consciousness. One can call these revelations “inspirations,” which then manifest in a conviction for which a scientific thinker seeks external confirmation similar to that provided by scientific research. Thus, Wallace is actually a representative of those scientific minds of the present who, precisely because they have a deeper insight into the nature of natural processes and the unfolding of nature, are impelled in their souls toward convictions about spiritual life; yet they cannot arrive at a spiritual-scientific method on their own and therefore seek an imitation— one might even say a mimicry of the scientific method to confirm their spiritual convictions.

[ 4 ] Now, of course, the primary concern will be to ensure that such a claim—that there lies in the depths of the human soul something that may well remain entirely unconscious to ordinary consciousness, a sort of second human being—does not remain merely a hollow assertion. The spiritual scientific method strives to find confirmation for this assertion. In earlier lectures of this series, I pointed out in principle how certain powers of cognition slumbering in the human soul—which do not come to light in ordinary consciousness—can be brought to the surface through a strengthening, and vitalization of this soul life, through certain exercises, so that it truly dawns on the human being how another being rests within his or her essence—a being that can perceive a spiritual world around itself just as the human being inhabiting the physical body perceives the sensory-physical world through his or her senses. I have often explained here how one can awaken these powers slumbering in the soul and transform them into genuine, conscious powers of knowledge. You will find a more detailed description of this in my books Occult Science, The Riddle of Man, and, in particular, in my treatise How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?

[ 5 ] Let us simply note the following here: Anyone who strives—though this effort requires long, energetic, and patient inner work of the soul—to introduce the will into their life of imagination, so that this life of imagination truly proceeds under the influence of their own will, initially through practice, will come to discover the spiritual in their life of imagination. It must be said that the correct method of meditation leads one to find the spirit as such within ordinary imaginative life—which is otherwise merely a mental activity—just as the natural scientist finds expressed in the sensation of hunger those chemical or physical processes in the body that underlie this hunger. To meditate means—as I said, I can only state general principles here, otherwise the discussion would take me too far afield—to allow a mental image that is as clear as possible, so that nothing subconscious, nothing from memories, can intrude upon it, to rest within the soul, so that one develops the power of imagination and the power of thought as the content of the mental image. If one persists in such an activity time and again, and—in a sense—perceives the soul just as one otherwise perceives one’s physical body in this act of meditation, then—once one’s own will has been introduced into this voluntary, meditative imagining for long enough that the power of this will has grown stronger—an objective something that does not depend on one’s own will gradually reveals itself. One’s own will can, so to speak, withdraw from the act of imagination, and one has raised the activity of imagination into consciousness to a degree that it is not otherwise raised. Through this, one has set out on the path toward the spirit. One arrives at this by increasingly detaching the act of imagination from the physical realm, thereby truly discovering the spirit’s influence within the act of imagination.

[ 6 ] This is, at first, only one of the paths the spiritual researcher must take; others are similar. What matters is that the activity of the human soul be strengthened to such an extent that it truly breaks free from the physical. This must be experienced, and it can be experienced precisely because it breaks away from the physical and becomes permeated by the spiritual. When one undergoes the exercises that consist in such a strengthening of the soul life, one gradually—and this, of course, can only be achieved on the basis of the spiritual-scientific method—comes to be able to say what, in fact, the spiritual is that acts within the human soul. One makes the profound inner discovery—one that gives a new direction to one’s entire life—the shattering discovery—as simple as it may sound when recounted, it is, when experienced, shattering—that by developing one’s thinking more and more as pure thinking—not through the exertion of any physical functions—one reaches a point where one realizes: you can no longer get by with your habitual method of thinking. Thinking is just like having a weight lying there and at first mistakenly believing you can lift it, only to realize afterward that your hands and arms are too weak to lift it. Externally, it becomes apparent that the physical organ is too weak for the task at hand. Something quite similar, transposed into the spiritual-psychic realm, can occur to the spiritual researcher when he has developed his thinking through meditation to the point where it is imbued with the spirit. He then feels he cannot go any further; he feels that the instrument of the brain is not yet ready to truly grasp a thought—one that is imbued with the spirit—which he now wishes to grasp. One must have experienced the resistance that the brain—or physicality in general—can offer in order, on the one hand, to properly appreciate the dependence of ordinary consciousness on this physicality, and on the other hand, to realize that physicality can also be too weak to sustain a thought that has been grasped in the spirit. When one has such an experience—that physicality can be too weak and the thought too strong—one knows that there is a spiritual realm that can be directly experienced and perceived, one that is independent of the body, and into which one can enter through appropriate methods. In fact, one gradually comes to a direct perception of a spiritual world by—and this must be said again and again, even though it is a paradox for today’s world—placing one’s soul activity outside the physical body. There one learns to recognize what it means to be filled with the spirit in the same way that one is otherwise filled with the ordinary conception of physical activity. One learns to distinguish between the soul life supported by the body and the soul life supported by the spirit.

[ 7 ] One then comes to realize how human beings can actually fall into materialism through scientific views. For this must be said: On the path toward the spiritual, the spiritual researcher—if he lacks the intellectual courage to reach the spiritual precisely through these efforts—has every possibility of remaining stuck in materialism, because in the process he experiences how his ordinary consciousness is dependent on the body. If he is then unable to attain a true perception of a supersensible being of consciousness, and if he rejects this, then the very path toward the spiritual will put him in danger of falling into materialism. Anyone who has never truly sensed how great—how immensely great—the temptation and allure to fall into materialism is, does not stand fully engaged in the spiritual world. For one must realize, on the one hand, that this consciousness, which accompanies us between birth and death, is indeed, in its primal power, a soul activity; yet in every minute aspect of its activity, it requires the outer, physical-bodily organ, and that one can detach oneself from this bond to the physical-bodily realm only for the purpose of spiritual research. There one then discovers—and one must not misunderstand the expression; it is not meant to express a judgment, but merely to state a fact—how, within this human being who lives between birth and death, there truly lives a higher, spiritual-soul human being who passes through births and deaths. One comes to know this spiritual-soul being, and how, when it develops its own consciousness, it lives within an objective fabric of thought.

[ 8 ] The experience that arises here can be expressed through a comparison: One comes to recognize that this ordinary world, which we see with our physical eyes and hear with our physical ears, is much like the world we perceive when we stand, say, on the shore of the sea. And just as when we plunge into the sea to swim underwater, we emerge from the sensory-physical world into a world of objective thought life. This must be an experience and can become an experience. One learns to recognize what objective thought life is. However, this does not lead to the same sense of uncertainty regarding the manifold world that arises when one plunges into the sea and swims submerged within it; rather, one learns to recognize a second, spiritual world, within which the human being, as a spiritual-soul being, lives just as he lives in the physical-sensory manifold as a physical-soul being. Certain concepts, which natural science can otherwise approach only hypothetically, take on a thoroughly real significance. Certain mysteries of nature approach the human soul in a new form.

[ 9 ] I will begin here by pointing out just one mystery in nature that has caused natural scientists so much of a headache, because they approach it only from the outside, because they want to consider it solely on the basis of what the external facts of nature reveal. I am referring to what is called “ether” in the natural sciences—that which natural scientists seek as the foundation underlying the external, coarse material world, as a finer element of natural existence. It is remarkable how, precisely in such fields, serious natural scientists approach spiritual science from the other side. After all, a very eminent physicist has recently been heard to say: “If one wishes to ascribe properties to the ether, they must certainly not be material ones.” A physicist is already saying this today; that is, he is already placing the ether in that world where non-material existence is to be found. But for the physicist, as for the natural scientist in general, this ether must remain a hypothesis. He can deduce it from other natural processes and manifestations of being. When a person, as a spiritual researcher, treats his soul as I have indicated, he will indeed come to perceive, first of all, the nature of the ether within himself and to become aware of how this physical body—I must, since I do not wish to speak in vague or purely theoretical terms, address this paradox, which is still a paradox for the modern world—is underpinned by an etheric body, a supersensible body. That which arises through true self-observation—through self-awareness in the weaving of thought—has a direct relationship to this supersensible body. Soul experience is essentially an interaction between that human being—which withdraws from the physical body and can live in the weaving sea of thought—and the etheric. And it is only indirectly through the etheric—as the etheric in turn acts upon the physical body—that the soul also acts upon the physical body. Thus, on the one hand, we discover that this etheric body—which I have also called the “body of formative forces” in the journal Das Reich—underlies the human physical body and is an essential element of what I previously called the “higher human being.” On the other hand: By strengthening one’s soul faculties to the point where one can perceive this etheric body vividly, one thereby comes to know the refined form of the human being in the etheric realm and also experiences that the human being is spiritually richer than what is contained in what they experience in their ordinary, everyday self-consciousness. This everyday consciousness is bound to the body and therefore reveals only a fragment of the general spiritual realm. One plunges into this general spiritual realm as if into a sea of thought, and in this way one experiences what, spiritually speaking, underlies the human body. But by stepping out of this human body, one also learns to recognize what lies spiritually at the foundation of everything else one encounters in the physical-sensory environment.

[ 10 ] Now that one has arrived at this insight, it becomes apparent—as a matter of experience—that one cannot find any real meaning in the search for the hidden essences of nature, as it initially appears in natural science itself; rather, one must seek a different purpose for this research. When one considers the ordinary naturalist’s investigation into the mysteries of nature, one actually always finds that he conducts his research as if he had spread out before him the results of natural observation, and then, by penetrating this web presented to him by natural observation, he wishes to find behind it something that essentially underlies what is observed externally—whether this is conceived in a more philosophical sense as the “thing-in-itself” or referred to as the active atomic world. Whenever one goes beyond mere sensory facts, it is always assumed that one can, as it were, penetrate this web of sensory facts, and that behind this web there must lie something that is some kind of “thing-in-itself,” into which one cannot penetrate precisely because the world of sensory observation is spread out before one. To the researcher of the spirit, who has come to know what spirit is through direct perception, such an endeavor—to find a “thing-in-itself,” an atomic world, or the like—be like someone looking into a mirror, seeing their own image and the images of surrounding objects in that mirror, and then, in order to find the source of these images, piercing right through the mirror. They will discover that behind the mirror there is absolutely nothing that could in any way account for what they perceive in the mirror. If one truly comes to know the spirit, one makes the discovery: In this way, by penetrating behind the sensory world, one arrives at nothing—neither an atomic world nor a “thing-in-itself.” If one wishes to seek the cause of what appears in the mirror, one must seek it in front of the mirror; one must seek it in one’s coexistence with the world. One must penetrate vividly into the world with which one lives in harmony before the mirror. So it is with the mysteries of nature; so it is with what one might call the “unrevealed” in natural existence. If one comes to know, in the manner described, how one stands within the spiritual world, then one knows: What one recognizes as the Spirit that bears and further develops one’s own spiritual soul—what one learns to recognize at all as the Spirit in which one lives and weaves—that is also the cause of natural phenomena, and it is solely the outer human constitution that is responsible for the fact that we see these natural phenomena spread out around us like a mirror image, that these natural phenomena are held fast within this sensually and physically spread-out tapestry of observation. Thus, when spiritual science wishes to speak of an essential reality behind natural phenomena—if it wishes to speak of such a reality at all—it comes to speak of the Spirit, which it comes to know as that into which the soul enters when it frees itself from the body and comes to know its own eternal being in the spiritual world.

[ 11 ] It is of great importance not to allow oneself to be deterred by scientific prejudices, but to look upon the relationship that presents itself to the spiritually observing mind in the manner described. For it is precisely what emerges in this way—drawn up from the soul itself as the soul sinks into the spiritual world. What can be drawn up from the soul itself can also be obscured or rejected if that soul harbors prejudices. What is meant to become the soul’s own can be taken away from the soul when prejudices cloud the free view of the spiritual environment. Whether someone comes to admit this at all depends on whether they allow opposing scientific prejudices to take root in their soul. Anyone who thinks that our physical-sensory world—from which we, as physical-sensory beings, originate and in which we develop—is the source of ordinary consciousness—which is true and is also corroborated by spiritual research— and who then traces this physical-sensory world back—in the Kant-Laplacean manner—to a mere primordial nebula, which, through its inorganic, purely physical activity and ongoing development, also gave rise to life, and ultimately to human beings in the course of life’s evolution, and whoever then goes on to formulate all manner of hypotheses about a final state that will occur in the Earth’s evolution once the Earth has cooled to, say, minus 200 degrees Celsius—who, through scientific speculation, places the inanimate at the beginning and at the end, and is then justifiably convinced that ordinary consciousness arises from these scientific givens—for such a person, this speculative scientific worldview can become such a suggestion, such a prejudice, that it completely robs him of the possibility, if he wishes to remain an honest human being, of advancing toward the spiritual. Perhaps precisely because the scientific worldview has had such a suggestive effect on humanity over the course of the last few centuries—especially the very last century—and because it has become so deeply ingrained in human education, there is so little inclination among people to strive toward any spiritual perspective. From what I have described, you can indeed see that one can only penetrate to the essence of nature by penetrating to the spirit; for then one finds the spirit as the essential element within nature itself. But—and this is the significant point—since spiritual science is not abstract like mere philosophy, but rather a very concrete investigation that takes place in the intuitive spirit— one finds not only in general that the spirit underlies natural phenomena, but one finds this in the particular as well. Consequently, spiritual research cannot be presented within an easily comprehensible worldview, but must be presented step by step, slowly and gradually, just like any other science.

[ 12 ] If one truly learns to observe this etheric aspect of the human being, which is integrated into the physical-sensory body, then this etheric human being is of an entirely different nature. It is indeed supersensible; it is similar to the soul; it stands between the material and the soul, but it is not as differentiated, not as finely developed in its details as the physical body. The physical body has, as part of its own structure, eyes through which we can only see, ears through which we can only hear, a sense of warmth through which we can only experience warmth, and so on. The human etheric body is not structured in this way; rather, as it encounters the etheric world, it takes shape and forms itself—stimulated by that which it encounters—in such a way that the spiritual eyes and spiritual ears are only generated at the very moment when something is to be perceived in any way in the spiritual world. Thus one discovers a completely different inner mobility, an inner capacity for forming images in this body of formative forces. Above all, one discovers this: While the physical-sensory world is dependent on the physical earthly environment—and while, in the sense of physical science, it can be explained through this dependence on the physical earthly environment—the body of formative forces is not dependent on this immediate physical environment. One gradually comes to realize: This human etheric body is actually dependent on the entire universe—so dependent, in fact, that the vertical or horizontal direction matters to it; that it matters to it whether it is within the light mass emanating from the sun or under the influence of the Earth’s gravitational mass when it is in darkness, and so on. One realizes that this etheric body exists on a level where it is even more dependent on the entire cosmos, whereas the physical human body has already left this stage of development behind and has now become directly dependent on the Earth. It is a much—I would say—more ideal dependence on a more comprehensive whole that characterizes this body of formative forces than that which characterizes the physical-sensory body. Thus one discovers the remarkable truth that, in what he is inwardly, the human being is indeed a supersensible, spiritual being who creates his own image—here in the physical human body—but that this supersensible aspect, even though it is supersensible, is in a certain sense higher than the physical-sensory aspect, yet remains at an earlier stage of development.

[ 13 ] This is something that becomes immediately apparent when a person, as a researcher of the spirit, says to themselves: There is something living within you that, while it stands higher than all of external nature—precisely because it is spiritual-soul—is, as a spiritual-soul entity, more imperfect than the external physical realm; as a spiritual-soul entity, it will only become as differentiated and fully developed at a later stage of evolution as the human being’s sensory-physical nature already is today.

[ 14 ] If, therefore, one wishes to find a reflection of the spiritual-soul aspects in physical life, one must seek it in the world of lower organisms. The lower forms of organisms present themselves in such a way that one might say they materially embody what human beings develop spiritually and soulfully at a higher level. You see, things are not as simple as they are portrayed by the Darwinian-tinged scientific worldview. This inner flexibility and purposefulness of the formative forces of the etheric body—through which it sometimes follows the vertical direction, directing its organs accordingly, and sometimes follows the horizontal direction, directing its organs accordingly, sometimes following the light, sometimes following gravity, and directing its organs accordingly, and so on—this inner characteristic of the etheric body, which one truly does not discover through speculation but through spiritual insight—which one must possess before one can find any kind of corresponding image in external nature—has nothing to do with speculation about external natural existence. Now, having convinced oneself that this supersensible body of the human being possesses the characteristics I have just described, one would have to assert that something similarly undifferentiated must be found precisely in lower living beings; it would have to turn out that, although they are spiritually and psychologically inferior to the human spiritual and psychological nature, they are not similar in their physical configuration to the human physical body, but rather to the human etheric body. It is remarkable, then, that the further natural science advances with its entirely different methods, the more it is able to provide the very best evidence for what spiritual science must present as a challenge. The process, then, is this: spiritual science first states that one must find in nature the material counterpart to what is discovered in the supersensible world.

[ 15 ] Now, precisely in a research context such as that corresponding to Snyder’s more materialistically oriented approach, you may come across references to very interesting scientific investigations, such as those conducted by Jacques Loeb, who, after all, also played a major role in various monist societies in Europe in the past. There you will find a very peculiar experiment described—I am not speaking now of whether it is humane or inhumane, whether it is permitted or prohibited, or whether it is moral or immoral to carry out such experiments; such considerations are of little concern to “science”—: This researcher, Loeb, took the tissue of simple, lower organisms—hydroids—and ruthlessly cut cubes out of the tissue with a knife. What happened? Tentacles grew upward from the top, forming a head, and feet grew downward, just as they normally do in hydroids. So no matter what shape was cut out: a head and feelers grew upward, and feet grew downward. But then Loeb turned the tissue over so that the feet were on top. Sure enough, a new head emerged, growing upward between the feet. There you have the completely undifferentiated; there, in the lower animal realm—in this case, in the hydroids—you have what the researcher of the spirit discovers at a higher level of existence in the formative-force body of the human soul, expressed on a material basis. The situation is similar with another species. If you cut into the substance of the lower animal with a razor blade at a certain point, a mouth even forms there, surrounded by feelers—so-called tentacles. Here you have the undifferentiated substance as a reflection of what lives spiritually and soulfully in human beings at a higher level. Here you find the concrete connection between what has been discovered in the spirit—of which human beings are participants at a higher, supersensible level—and that which expresses itself in the material realm at a lower level.

[ 16 ] You can see that the lower organic world is based on the fact that it retains within the material realm that which human beings can develop spiritually and psychically at a higher level, because their more highly developed organism can serve as a foundation for this. It is precisely here that you can see how spiritual science—when taken seriously as research rather than as the frivolous nonsense that is often presented today as mysticism or theosophy—counteracts what comes from the natural sciences from the other side, and how the spiritual and the natural, spiritual mysteries and natural mysteries, truly converge in the middle.

[ 17 ] By delving into such matters, one comes to understand thoroughly how the true fact—that the ordinary consciousness we experience in everyday life is bound to the physical-sensory realm—does not preclude the recognition of what is called the spiritual-soul realm, the eternal, and the immortal human soul; for one comes to understand the possibility that human beings live not only in this form of consciousness but also in other forms of consciousness. If one has no other option but to know only the form of consciousness that is characteristic of the human being here between birth and death—which spiritual science shows to be bound to the physical body—then one also has no way of gaining a conception of what the human being will be like once they have passed through the gate of “death.” But if, through spiritual research, one comes to recognize that this consciousness is only one of various forms of consciousness, one also comes to recognize that even sleep is merely another form of human consciousness. Then, precisely by taking into account the legitimate demands of material research, one clears the path to penetrate into the spiritual-soul realm. Then one realizes that the further and further natural science advances, the more enigmatic facts it reveals, the more it compels us to acknowledge the spirit and its science; and it will increasingly recognize that ordinary consciousness requires, as its foundation, a material element situated at a lower level, and that the spiritual-psychic in human beings permeates this lower realm in a supersensible way. Anyone who fails to grasp this relationship between the spirit and nature will be horrified by the crude materialism when a natural scientist today—and with some justification—says something like the following—although one can, of course, hold other views on this, but what is at stake here is more the direction, the entire method of research—: What, in fact, is the human brain’s nervous tissue? It is organic substance, and the excitation that occurs in ordinary consciousness with the aid of this organic nervous substance is actually nothing other than a striving of this organic substance to coagulate; and this coagulation of a phosphorus-containing, fat-like substance that occurs in our brain’s nervous system when we think, imagine, or perceive—as Snyder, for example, notes in his scientific worldview—can certainly be compared to what happens when, for instance, a jelly or cream prepared by a housewife coagulates as it cools. - Thus, the natural scientist gradually comes to think in truly vivid, material terms, to say to himself quite vividly—and the scientific worldview is quite rightly moving in this direction—: While a wide variety of processes are taking place in the soul, the natural basis for this is that the nervous mass—the jelly-like, cream-like mass—strives to set, and that it actually does set.

[ 18 ] Here we have the perspective that leads to the other side—the side of nature. The spiritual researcher need not oppose this. If he were to oppose it, that would be dilettantism, for the simple reason that the legitimate scientific method leads—and must lead—to the development of such insights, even if they are still very imperfect today. But by recognizing the simple material processes that take place while the spiritual-soul aspect is at work, one explains precisely the independence, the self-groundedness, of this spiritual-soul aspect. It is precisely through this that one comes to know the spiritual-psychic realm, and thus the proper relationship between spiritual scientific research and natural scientific research will prove to be that spiritual science must, in a sense, provide guidance as to how the facts of natural science are to be viewed—and what is to be made of them—if one wishes to use them to uncover the mysteries of nature. One gradually comes to realize that one should not think of nature’s manifestations—as, unfortunately, the vast majority still do today—as if these manifestations were simply revealing the essence of nature on the basis of some material foundations; rather, one comes to recognize that the essence of nature is to be found in the spiritual. By discerning this relationship between the spiritual and the natural, one comes to recognize that the spiritual is active everywhere in the natural world, and that one must, so to speak, regard the facts of nature as the letters of a text. To describe them as letters is quite correct, but it is not the whole story. One must be able to read what is expressed through the letters as they are arranged into words; in the same way, one must learn to read nature, and one must come to—I would say—gradually grasp the facts of nature in such a way that one says to oneself: What natural scientists recognize, what they find in nature, leads more to questions than to answers. Answers can only be given once one has penetrated the spiritual foundations. This, however, is something that the present and the future will first have to work their way through. Today, when a natural philosopher writes about natural phenomena and processes, people expect him to provide answers. One will adopt the correct standpoint once one has reached the point of saying to oneself: What one observes in nature leads the human soul to ask questions; the answers must come from that which can only be grasped spiritually. Thus, even in the most everyday occurrences—when we focus specifically on their natural mysteries—we could point out how the spiritual must endow human beings with the instinct to treat natural facts in the proper way as questions.

[ 19 ] A very common fact in human life is the alternation between sleep and wakefulness. There are very interesting theories about the nature of sleep from the perspective of the natural sciences—theories put forward by J. Cräger, L. Strümpell, Preyer, and many others—which I do not intend to discuss here. This sleep research is all very interesting, but it suffers above all from a failure to grasp the fundamental facts—which can only be discovered through spiritual research—namely, that the alternating states of sleep and wakefulness are as much a part of human life as the swinging of a pendulum to the left and right. When one recognizes that the human being, while living here on Earth, is both a natural being and a spiritual being, one also recognizes how the human being, with his true self, oscillates back and forth between being embedded in natural existence and in spiritual existence. In their waking life, for the activities carried out with ordinary full consciousness, they make use of the physical body, which—because it has undergone a longer process of development—is more perfect than their spiritual-soul being, which, though on a higher level, is less perfect. Then, with his spiritual-soul nature, he drifts off into sleep and into another state of consciousness—one that he cannot yet perceive between birth and death, but which he will perceive only after he has passed through the gate of death, because there, precisely through the severing of his connection with his physical body, he enters into a different connection with the spiritual world, and is able to assume a spiritual body. This back-and-forth oscillation is a fact that must be regarded as such—as an inner necessity of life. In this regard, too, interesting scientific approaches have already been made. If, for example, one is able to delve into some of the interesting points made by the Hungarian researcher Palagyi regarding emotional and memory life in his Lectures on the Philosophy of Nature, published in 1908, one sees that even there, scientific research is already approaching, from the other side, what is understood in the spiritual sciences. However, it must be said that precisely the facts presented in relation to sleep research—which exist purely in external nature—are not being treated as questions in the proper way. How are they being treated?

[ 20 ] A highly respected contemporary naturalist from Haeckel’s school has also written about sleep in a popular work. He asserts, as have other naturalists, that sleep sets in because a person is tired; sleep follows fatigue. That is quite correct; we will discuss the matter further in a moment. But to indicate that a person is now overtired—that they can no longer engage their senses—this distinguished naturalist points out, for example, how a person falls asleep: what actually must happen for a person to fall asleep. I could cite Strümpell’s very interesting experiment here, but I do not wish to do so; rather, I simply want to point out what this distinguished naturalist argues: that the fatigue of the senses and the exhaustion of sensory life actually lead to a state where a person—because they can no longer function within sensory life—effectively ceases to function until sensory life has regenerated itself through self-regulation. Here, the human being is regarded as a purely natural being. Therefore, to reinforce the idea that sensory life ceases when we want to fall asleep properly, this naturalist cites the following: What do we do when we fall asleep? We try to block out sensory stimuli as much as possible. We darken our bedrooms so that it is as dark as possible; we block out auditory stimuli so that it is as quiet as possible around us. — He even points out that even an improper temperature—whether it is too warm or too cold—prevents a person from falling asleep, meaning that a certain temperature must be maintained, and so on; in short, he wants to show that the causes of a person falling asleep are to be found not in the oscillation of life between body and mind, but in the external environment, in external conditions.

[ 21 ] Can this question really be posed in this way? Can the external scientific facts really be viewed in this way? Then there could be no other possibility, for example: I have observed numerous instances in my life where people do not go so far as to create a completely silent environment—nor even the deepest possible darkness by drawing the curtains and so on—but where, in brightly lit rooms, no matter how loudly the speaker shouts, they have fallen asleep five minutes after he has finished shouting. None of the conditions required by the natural scientist are present there, and yet, with absolute certainty, sleep sets in—though, of course, only in certain individuals! It is not simply a matter of having the right conditions—conditions that correspond to the facts—but rather of being able to place these facts within the broader context to which they belong, along with all the circumstances related to them and under which they occur. If one knows that the state of transition, the oscillation between sleep and wakefulness, is based on the fact that, by oscillating back and forth from the body into the spiritual environment, a person becomes embedded in the spirit, and that—as long as they are not connected to the physical body—they enjoy this body from the outside—then one can also understand that it is possible to revel in this enjoyment, to overindulge in it. Then, just as one can understand that a person gets drunk, one can understand that they sleep too much, or that they sleep at the wrong time. One comes to recognize sleep as an independent, self-contained demand on life, as a state of consciousness different from that which one experiences in the physical body. Now, this state of consciousness has a specific significance for the physical body. What one experiences as a pleasure—from falling asleep to waking up—is carried into the physical body upon waking, and it is also carried into the physical body during sleep. This is how fatigue is dispelled. That is quite correct, but it is something different from saying that fatigue is the cause of sleep. If someone has filled a blackboard with chalk all the way to the bottom, then takes a sponge and erases what is written on the blackboard, they have indeed erased the writing; in the same way, a person eliminates fatigue through what they experience during sleep. But just as one cannot say that the chalk produces the sponge, one cannot say that fatigue produces sleep. It is one thing to say that sleep dispels fatigue, and quite another to say that fatigue produces sleep. However, when sleep is considered from a spiritual and psychological perspective, it may seem understandable that a person longs for sleep when they are fatigued. Herein lies the necessity to move into the spiritual realm. Yet it is not fatigue that produces sleep; rather, the soul’s longing to dispel fatigue produces sleep—that is, the soul’s longing for sleep must be understood as a spiritual-psychological phenomenon, not as something arising from mere fatigue.

[ 22 ] As you can see, what guides the paths that must be taken to solve the mysteries of nature is that which can be found in the spiritual realm. To illustrate this, I would like to briefly cite an example that I was already able to elaborate on in the appendix to my most recently published book, On the Mysteries of the Soul. The point is that nowadays, when people speak of the connection between a person’s spiritual life and their physical life, it is almost universally assumed—even by those who acknowledge this spiritual life as a distinct reality—that this spiritual life is related solely to the nervous system. Those among my listeners who have heard me speak often know how little inclination I have to make personal remarks. Here, however, the personal is inextricably linked to the factual. Therefore, I may well say that this very problem—defining the relationship between spiritual science and the natural sciences in objective terms—has occupied me for thirty to thirty-five years, and only now am I able to find the right words to formulate it at least to some extent; for spiritual research is truly no easier than scientific research. What has emerged for me over the course of thirty to thirty-five years through spiritual science—in the continuous observation and comparison of the relevant scientific facts as they stand today—has confirmed to me in every respect that the relationships between the spiritual-soul aspects and the physical must be characterized in a completely different way than is very often the case today. Certainly, there are also hints of this everywhere, so I do not wish to say that what I have to say here is an entirely original truth of my own. But in this context, it is not yet fully understood today in the field of external natural science. The point is that one cannot conceive of the human spiritual-soul aspect as relating only to one part of the physical body—the nervous system—but rather that one must conceive of the entire spiritual-soul aspect, which enters human physicality from the spiritual world through birth or conception, as connected to the entire body, and specifically in the following way:

[ 23 ] We can divide the spiritual-soul aspect—my listeners will know that I do not place great value on such a systematic approach, but it does make it easier to grasp the overall picture—first, into perception and imagination, second, into emotional experience; and third, into the experience of volitional impulses, which are then realized in action, so that the human spiritual-soul life, as it appears in ordinary consciousness, consists of this threefold structure. If one takes the facts of spiritual science, they lead one to relate the life of imagination and perception to nothing else in the body than what takes place in the nervous system—but only this aspect of imagination and perception. It is interesting that, for example, Theodor Ziehen—because he relates the soul only to the nervous system—has, as a result, only the term “emotional tone” for the life of feeling, as if the life of feeling were not something independent in the soul, as if it were merely a tone of the life of imagination. And consequently, he denies the existence of an independent life of the will all the more. All these researchers are correct when they relate only this part of the spiritual-soul life—the life of imagination and perception—directly to the nervous system and the brain. However, physical science has no concept of these nervous processes at all, because it does not view them correctly. I will speak about this in more detail shortly in my lecture on the revelations of the unconscious. But then, as the second link in the life of the spirit and soul, the emotional life comes into play. This emotional life is not in a direct relationship, but only in an indirect relationship to the nervous system. It stands in just as direct a relationship to what manifests as the rhythm of life in the blood and in breathing as the life of perception and imagination stands in a direct relationship to the processes in the nervous system. When we observe the nervous processes within ourselves, we see the physical counterpart of perceptions and concepts. If we wish to have an equally valid physical counterpart for the emotional life, we must not initially focus directly on the nervous system, but rather on the rhythmic life as it unfolds in the interplay of respiration and blood circulation. It is only because this rhythm of breathing and blood circulation impacts the nervous system—entering into a relationship with it—that it becomes possible for us to conceptualize our feelings at all. As we conceptualize our feelings, they do indeed enter into the life of imagination, thereby establishing a direct relationship between the life of feeling and the life of imagination. But a direct relationship also arises between what underlies the emotional life in the body as a rhythm and the nervous system.

[ 24 ] I am well aware that now that experimental psychology exists—and indeed, for the benefit of science—this relationship between the rhythm of human life and emotional life has already been hinted at. But it is not indicated in the right way, because the direct relationship between the emotional life and the rhythm of life is not sought, just as one otherwise seeks the direct relationship between the life of the imagination and the nervous system. I also know how many objections can be raised against what I have said. It would take me many hours to refute these objections. They can all be refuted. I want to point out just one thing. Someone might come along and say: “Yes, look at musical-aesthetic perception, at life in musical art—that arises precisely through perception, through the life of the imagination; so that alone already refutes what has been said.” — One could put forward hundreds and hundreds of such refutations. These matters are, after all, very subtle, and if viewed crudely—as is often the case today—they can, of course, very easily be seemingly refuted. The true process involved in musical-aesthetic perception is that what takes place in rhythmic life resonates with what—as the psychologist knows—takes place in the brain when the tones are heard, and that only when the rhythmic life absorbs what passes from the sound into the human organism—only when the sound becomes integrated into the rhythm of the entire body—is musical perception and aesthetic enjoyment in the realm of music produced.

[ 25 ] A third aspect—as I said, I can only briefly illustrate these things—is life in impulses of the will that are realized in actions. Just as the life of imagination is directly connected to nervous activity, and the life of feeling to the rhythms of breathing and blood circulation, so too is the life of the will—indeed, the entire life of the will—actually connected to the metabolic life of the human organism, however strange that may seem. Every volitional process is underpinned by a metabolic process. Things only become confused because, in a certain sense, everything in the human being interacts with one another—for example, the will influences the life of the imagination, and through this, metabolism influences the nervous system. But one must not relate what takes place as metabolism to the life of the imagination—which is based on entirely different nervous processes—but must always relate what takes place as metabolism to the life of the will.

[ 26 ] Thus, the entire spiritual-soul aspect—thinking, feeling, and willing—has been related to the three kinds of life processes in the human organism. For when one examines the human organism, its entire life is comprised of nervous processes, rhythmic processes, and metabolic processes. The entire physical aspect of the human being stands in direct connection with the entire spiritual and psychological realm. This connection can be substantiated by thousands of facts that are already recognized by natural science today, but which are simply not posed as questions in the right way and are therefore not approached in such a way that one can find through them the path to spiritual insight—which alone can bring order to the riddles of natural science. Thus, one can make the following discovery today: One need only pick up a state-of-the-art physiology textbook; one need only familiarize oneself with what has actually been discovered in the field of natural science, need only set aside the prejudices that have been theoretically introduced into it, need only see through it correctly and ask the right questions—then what is already available in natural science today provides, to an immensely high degree, universal confirmation of what spiritual science has to say. But natural science does not come to truly apply its methods comprehensively. It specializes. As a result, what is correctly applied in one field is not transferred to another. Will it, for example, occur to science to conceive of the magnetic needle’s orientation from north to south in physical terms such that the forces determining the direction act only within the magnetic needle itself? Rather, science rightly states: The Earth itself is a great magnet; the Earth’s magnetic north pole attracts one end of the magnetic needle, and the magnetic south pole attracts the other end. In short, the magnetic needle, with its directional force, is situated within the entire cosmos. Just imagine if this were applied to organic science! In organic science, one proceeds in the same way as someone who would seek the directional forces of the magnetic needle solely within the magnetic needle itself. There, one practices embryology and studies how the chicken’s egg develops, seeking its origin solely in the chicken itself, or at most in its ancestors along the line of inheritance. If one were to apply the physical method to embryology, one would readily perceive throughout the entire cosmos the formative forces responsible for egg formation and germ formation. This is what spiritual science must point out. It will increasingly demonstrate that the scientific facts already available today confirm to a high degree what spiritual science has to say. How can one—as Loeb does, for example—cut through the hydrozoan substance, observe how a head and tentacles form on one side and feet on the other, reverse the process, and then see another head form between the feet—and yet completely overlook the fact that there exists a similar inner relationship between the formative forces and the cosmos as that between the magnetic needle and the Earth’s magnetism? And how, then, can one fail to see what a wonderful confirmation this is, in the external realm, of the fact now discovered purely spiritually in the field of spiritual research—namely, that what lives in the human being in a supersensible way as the body of formative forces is integrated into the entire cosmos in a similar manner, so that cosmic forces are thereby introduced into human nature, so that the human being, while living on Earth in ordinary consciousness, lives at the same time within the imperishable, eternal cosmos through the fact that the supersensible is integrated into him. But this will be the subject of the next lectures, in which I will speak more about the actual, eternal nature of the human being and about the destiny of the soul after death.

[ 27 ] Today, my task was to show how spiritual science, by leading us toward the spirit, also leads us toward the essence of nature, and how it is capable of truly grasping and fathoming the mysteries of nature. This leads one to no longer look back at a Kant-Laplacean primordial nebula, but rather, through genuine inner spiritual insight, to say to oneself: You now know what is connected within the human being to the entire cosmos, what the higher being is in its purely external, natural existence, and what lies supersensually at the foundation of what is expressed sensually in the body. You must now trace this body back to the stage it occupied in primeval times—the stage on which the spiritual-soul aspect stands today—in order to then proceed to other stages of development. I can only hint at this as well. But it is clear from the overall meaning of what has been discussed today: One comes to conceive of the Earth’s initial state not in the lifeless Kant-Laplacean primordial nebula, but in a spiritual-soul aspect, so that one sees in the Earth the transition from the spiritual to the material, just as in the individual human being, who descends from the spiritual world to incarnate here through union with the material. Thus, one does not arrive at the lifeless Kant-Laplacean primordial nebula, but rather at what stands as spiritual-soul-like at the beginning of earthly existence—at the spiritual-soul-like origin and the spiritual-soul-like final state of earthly existence. There, one connects with external existence in reality, not merely through hypotheses. In this way, one learns to grasp thoughts only as they correspond to reality.

[ 28 ] I would like to draw attention here to a very interesting lecture that Professor Dewar gave at the beginning of this century. He takes a strictly scientific approach in his explanations; logically, there is not the slightest objection to them. He calculates what the state of the Earth will be after millions of years, and does so quite correctly from a scientific standpoint as follows: The temperature must be at least minus 200 degrees Celsius; at this level of cold, however, entirely different conditions must prevail. What surrounds the Earth as the atmospheric cycle will then have liquefied into water, forming an ocean. The lighter gases of today will then form an atmosphere, and certain substances—as I said, this is a perfectly sound scientific conclusion—will be solid, whereas today they are liquid. For example, milk, which is liquid today, will be solid at minus 200 degrees. But not only will it be solid; if it is exposed to light for a while, it will itself become luminous. Therefore—as the professor describes very vividly—one will only need to coat the walls with this milk protein, and then one will be able to read newspapers by this “milk light”! He goes on to describe very vividly how it will then no longer be possible—which has already become a problem today—to take photographs, because at this temperature the chemical forces of the light rays will have been lost. In short, one could continue the image quite well using entirely scientific methods. Those who, through spiritual research, have learned to think in accordance with reality are so close to reality that they know where to stop their thinking. Such research—as paradoxical as what I am about to say may sound, it is entirely self-evident to the spiritual researcher—is exactly like taking any human organ, for example, the heart: You observe its changes over six to seven years and then, in a thoroughly scientific manner, deduce how the heart must continue to change, calculating how it will have changed after three hundred years. There you have the very same method applied by Professor Dewar! By extrapolating the slow changes in our Earth over a finite period of time to millions of years, he arrives at the Earth’s final state, just as one would arrive at a human’s state after three hundred years if one based the calculation on the changes in an organ or the entire organism over a few years, without taking into account that the human, as a physical being, would of course have been dead long ago by then. Likewise, the Earth will no longer exist by the time Professor Dewar has calculated this ideal state—a state that, viewed from the outside, makes one wonder who will still be reading newspapers at minus 200 degrees Celsius, with these luminescent walls coated with milk protein, which cows will be producing liquid milk by then, and so on! Even a purely superficial observation could show one—if one has connected one’s thinking to reality—that as soon as one ceases to think with the thoughts that physical reality provides, one must move into the spiritual realm. But the Kant-Laplacean theory is conceived according to the same method—just as if you were to start from how the human heart has changed over a specific, finite period of time and then calculate what the heart will be like in three hundred years. Thinking that has become saturated with reality by incorporating the spirit does not allow one to develop concepts to the point of this emptiness, which then makes it impossible for there to be a completely unbiased contemplation of a spiritual world.

[ 29 ] This is why spiritual science will truly provide the foundation upon which a view of reality in harmony with reality will emerge—one that will also truly accommodate sound human thinking. It is indeed remarkable—and to illustrate this, I would like to cite an example that I have already mentioned here in earlier lectures, but which is always interesting to bring to mind—how sound thinking is constituted: though it is not grounded in spiritual science, it nevertheless confronts reality in a sound manner, and how it relates to a way of thinking that is entirely scientific, yet fails to recognize that this scientific approach ceases to be grounded in reality at a certain point. To illustrate how a sound sensibility cannot engage with such scientific thinking, I would like to refer to the remarks Herman Grimm made in his beautiful book on Goethe—which contains so much spiritual insight—regarding the Kant-Laplace theory, the primordial nebula from which everything is said to have formed, and the relationship of this primordial nebula theory to Goethe’s sound perspective. He says the following on this subject:

[ 30 ] “Long before, during his (Goethe’s) youth, the grand Laplace-Kantian imagination regarding the origin and eventual demise of the Earth had already taken hold. From the self-rotating cosmic nebula—children already learn this in school—the central protoplanet forms, which later becomes the Earth, and, as a solidifying sphere over unimaginable spans of time, undergoes all phases—including the episode of human habitation—only to finally plummet back into the sun as burnt-out slag: a long process, yet one entirely comprehensible to today’s audience, the continuation of which now requires no further external intervention other than the effort of some external force to maintain the Sun at a constant temperature. — No more fruitless prospect for the future can be imagined than the one that is being imposed on us today as scientifically necessary in this expectation. A carrion bone that a hungry dog went out of its way to find would be a refreshing, appetizing morsel compared to this final excrement of creation, as which our Earth would ultimately fall back to the sun, and the thirst for knowledge with which our generation accepts such ideas and presumes to believe them is a sign of a sick imagination, which scholars of future epochs will one day expend much ingenuity to explain as a historical phenomenon of our time.”

[ 31 ] If someone says something like that to us today, it goes without saying that if it is an ordinary person, they are a fool; if it is someone like Herman Grimm, they are a man of wit who, however, has been misled precisely by his imagination and, because of his imaginative idealism, was simply unable to grasp the rigorous, exact method of natural science. Well, yes! But ultimately, even someone who applies entirely correct scientific methods still needs, in addition to this method, the ability to recognize where his thinking—drawn from purely physical processes—steps outside of reality, and where, in order to remain within reality, he must enter into the spiritual realm. Then they become convinced that the greatest mysteries of nature—the beginning and the final state of earthly existence—lead toward the spiritual; that the two polar extremes of Earth’s development are to be found not in the Kant-Laplacean primordial nebula, nor in the Dewar-ian state of solidification, but in the spiritual-soul-physical origin and destiny of the Earth. In this, however, one simultaneously perceives the spiritual-soul-physical environment of the Earth, which corresponds to the spiritual-soul-physical life of human beings themselves.

[ 32 ] Cautious, serious natural scientists already sense what the spiritual sciences seek to achieve. Yet even today, there is still little inclination to tackle these matters with true seriousness and thoroughness. On the occasion of Darwin’s hundredth birthday, Julius Wiesner, a prominent contemporary natural scientist, wrote about the positive and negative aspects of Darwin’s “theories”—and so much of what preoccupies the world today regarding the mysteries of nature is connected to this. Among other things, there is a passage in it referring to the aberrations and dark sides of Darwin’s theory, which has given rise to so many materialistic nuances of opinion in questions of worldview. Wiesner says something along these lines: The true naturalist is well aware of the limits of his scientific approach and knows that while natural science can provide the building blocks for a worldview, it can never provide more than the building blocks. The image is roughly accurate because, unlike most images, it can be elaborated upon further. Natural science really does provide only building blocks. If one takes building blocks, one cannot construct a house using only what they are in and of themselves. One must draw the laws of house-building from outside—from the relationship of weight, the relationship of pressure, and everything else that does not lie within the stones; the stones must conform to other laws. However, one will then find that, by constructing the house according to laws that do not lie within the stones themselves, one has expressed something in the house’s ratios of pressure and weight, its harmonious proportions, and so on—something that can lead one back to similar ratios in nature itself, from which the building blocks were quarried. But one can only arrive at the house by subjecting the stones to laws other than those inherent in them. Wiesner is quite right: natural science can provide building blocks, but they must be subjected to laws other than those found in the sphere of natural existence itself. Where are the laws found with which spiritual science builds, using the findings of natural science as building blocks in the exploration of spiritual life? Just as the architect, having designed the plan of the house and constructed the house itself according to laws entirely different from those inherent in the building blocks, so too does the spiritual scientist use what relates to the spiritual in nature to erect the edifice of a worldview for the natural sciences themselves, according to the laws he has observed in the spirit itself. Just as one can find something in the structure of a house that leads back to the natural structure from which the stones were quarried, so too are we led back to nature by spiritual science. Spiritual science can, in turn, shed light on natural life, but spiritual science must not believe—nor must natural science, if it understands itself—that a worldview can be constructed for natural science itself using only the building blocks and their laws, that is, the immediate findings of natural science.

[ 33 ] Today’s reflections should justify my summarizing them at the end in this brief statement: It becomes evident, precisely when one engages in a proper observation and contemplation of the mysteries of nature, that the natural sciences themselves lead to the spirit, and that in the contemplation of the spirit the elements are also provided to solve the mysteries of nature itself. Thus, one can find the following as a motto for the pursuit of a worldview, even in the realm of the natural sciences and regarding the mysteries of nature:

[ 34 ] Nature itself cannot shed light on itself; rather, only the light gained in the spiritual world can illuminate the processes and essences of nature. If one wishes to understand nature, one must take the path through the spirit. The spirit is the light that illuminates its own essence and, of its own accord, can also shed light on the mysteries of nature.