The Rudolf Steiner Archive

9. The Super-Sensory Human II

The Supersensible Human Being According to the Findings of Research in the Spiritual Sciences

[ 1 ] Since the supersensible human being—insofar as it is acknowledged as such—must be recognized as the deepest inner essence of the human being, it is entirely natural that the knowledge of the supersensible human being is, in the highest sense of the word, human self-knowledge. But this human self-knowledge presents us with a very curious paradox. On the one hand, we are faced with the necessity of grasping the human being itself as something supersensible; on the other hand, all the faculties of cognition that human beings develop in ordinary consciousness are entirely bound to external sensibility. Even what the human being grasps with the intellect is, insofar as it belongs to human consciousness, bound to external sensibility. One could therefore say that human self-knowledge requires the perception of the human being through cognitive faculties that are, at first, entirely remote from his consciousness. To the extent that the human being becomes conscious of his essence as a supersensible being, he must, in a certain sense, acknowledge that everything he accomplishes in life springs from his supersensible being. On the other hand, one could say that everything that appears in human consciousness manifests itself, in a somewhat inapt sense, in the “veil” of the sensory. This is precisely why, in the spiritual-scientific sense intended here, all research and all discourse on the supersensible are so easily and so frequently misunderstood. For today’s reflections will certainly show that with the ordinary faculties of everyday human consciousness—including the consciousness that underlies external science—one cannot, after all, approach the deepest and thus the true essence of the human being. Indeed, one must go even further: that kind of knowledge which has developed so magnificently in recent times on the foundations of a natural-scientific view of the world is, in certain areas, more likely to mislead us regarding what human self-knowledge is than to guide this self-knowledge in the right direction. For it is precisely when the well-trained scientific mindset of the present day sets out to address human self-knowledge in the broadest sense that one becomes truly aware of how easily it can fall short. Let us begin with an example.

[ 2 ] In the nonetheless very interesting little book The Subconscious Self by Louis Waldstein, which appeared in the Wiesbaden collection of writings on the frontier questions of mental and nervous life, there is mention of various things that also strike the natural scientist when he comes to understand human life in the broader sense—in its unfolding and in its manifestation in various circumstances. In an earlier lecture, we spoke of the manifestations of the unconscious and the subconscious. The example I wish to cite here is that of a natural scientist, and the way he speaks of it is very much in the spirit of the natural sciences. The author of this little treatise wishes, at a certain point, to draw attention to how these revelations of the unconscious or subconscious self approach human consciousness, and how this subconscious being plays, so to speak, a peculiar, vague role in the conscious being of the human person. To this end, Waldstein chooses the following example. He says: I am standing in front of the window of a bookstore where many books are on display. Since I am a naturalist, my gaze falls directly on a book about mollusks. At that very moment, as my gaze falls on this book, I cannot help but begin to smile quietly, and I am myself astonished at how I came to do so, since a book about mollusks has nothing humorous about it. — He continues: “I now close my eyes to explore what might be happening around me.” And as I take my eyes off the book on mollusks that interests me, I do indeed hear, very far off—albeit only very faintly—the sounds of a barrel organ. It is playing the melody of a song that was played for me in my boyhood to set the tempo when I danced my first quadrille. Back then, I didn’t pay much attention to whether I felt any particular affinity or aversion toward this particular melody; for I was very busy making sure my dance steps were correct, keeping my partner moving, leading her around, and so on. So back then, I wasn’t particularly attentive to what had half-entered my consciousness musically. And yet, the fact that now, standing before the book on mollusks, I find myself smiling softly after all these decades, testifies that the impression that melody made back then still lingers, now that it’s sounding again from a barrel organ; and if I hadn’t closed my eyes, but had merely contented myself with the surprise that I found myself smiling right in front of a book on mollusks, I wouldn’t have known at all in the present moment how I came to be smiling in front of the book on mollusks.

[ 3 ] From this, one can see how mysteriously such things continue to exert their influence in the depths of the human soul, and how much there is in and about human beings that emerges into consciousness only in a dreamlike, one might say, hazy way; from this, one can see how difficult it is to attain true self-knowledge of the human being. For what danger does one actually expose oneself to when one wishes to practice self-observation? The danger, indeed, of having to deal with all manner of subconscious elements—things one may have absorbed only very vaguely decades ago—that continue to exert an influence, that operate like a mood in the very deepest recesses of the soul, and that then rise up to color and nuance whatever one is now observing in oneself. Waldstein and others provide numerous examples of this. You will also find such examples cited in my book How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?. Such examples are very apt to make one quite cautious regarding what is called human self-observation. For quite a few people take up the practice of self-observation and believe that through it they will attain a true understanding of the human being itself. Many also believe that by bringing up such recollections from their subconscious, they can make all sorts of clairvoyant discoveries.

[ 4 ] Now, of course, one can also be cautious in another way. One can, for example, realize that some who claim to see through this or that through their supersensible insight into their inner being express these supersensible insights in images drawn, for example, from the telegraph, the railroad, or the like. From this, one would see that the supersensible realm, with its images, must have waited until the railroads were invented to reveal itself, But anyone who does not approach supersensory research lightly or uncritically will easily be able to see how reckless, how frivolous, and how uncritical the approach in this field sometimes is—and how beneficial it actually is that thorough scientific thinking points out how such content—which some people sometimes regard as revelations from higher worlds— are nothing other than what the person in question once absorbed in some vague way at an earlier age—something that did not come to consciousness at the time, that has changed in many ways, that he no longer recognizes, but which he now regards as a revelation that came about in a supernatural manner. In the book I mentioned, I pointed out how, in fact, everything affects a person and how sometimes what a person regards as an inspiration is nothing more than the transformation of a store sign that they did not look at properly while passing by on the street, but which merely penetrated their subconscious.

[ 5 ] This points to an area of human life that must be considered quite carefully and quite critically, especially by those who seriously wish to extend their research into the supersensible world. But on the other hand: this whole phenomenon of reminiscence, this whole life of subconscious images that well up and mimic human behavior, points to something entirely different; it is, so to speak, a side effect of something entirely different. Here I must return today in somewhat greater detail to something I have already mentioned in the course of these lectures: the relationship between what we call the human soul’s power of memory and what we call ordinary imaginative life. A very common way of thinking—one that has also played a major role in science, particularly in psychology—is that when a person encounters the external world, they have experiences. These experiences evoke mental images within them. They now possess these mental images. After some time, they “remember.” Now, this process is very often imagined as if these mental images—which one once had and which were wandering somewhere in the depths of the soul—then, when recalled, wander back up into consciousness. People very often think—more or less consciously or subconsciously—that what reappears in memory is nothing other than the very same mental image one once had, which was wandering around down there or sleeping or something else, and then rises back up into consciousness. But anyone who knows how to engage in genuine observation in this area will have to regard this way of thinking as rather childish and amateurish. For when we are confronted with an external phenomenon, when we have an experience—whether minor or major—that evokes perceptions within us and, through those perceptions, ideas, this “activity” —I’ll call it that for now—that flows in the interaction between us and the external world is accompanied by another activity that usually does not enter human consciousness at all. This activity is something entirely different; it accompanies the conscious, image-forming “activity” and sets something in motion within our human being that then leads to the formation of memory. Of course, to understand what I mean here, one must be able to observe correctly. The most trivial observation in this area is when you consider the difference between forming mental images—which can come quite easily—and memorization. Just think of all the things young people who have to “cram” for an exam or something similar have to do to ensure that they not only have something in their imagination but can also remember it. Sometimes quite strange actions are performed on the side. Think of the interplay that takes place between the hands and the head when someone has to cram. Of course, this is only an outward sign of what I mean. But in truth, while the activity that leads to forming a mental image is taking place, there is another activity at work that does not enter consciousness at all and that exerts an effect on our organism consisting of something entirely different from the formation of mental images. Later, when we recall what we once imagined, that mental image arises anew; it arises, so to speak, from the “sign,” from the “engram”—if I may use that term—from the “imprint” that this activity accompanying the formation of mental images can exert on our organism. Just as we face the object of the external world and, turning inward, form our mental image, so too, when we remember, do we face our own physical constitution. What takes place there—which is as different from our mental imagery as the external object is from our mental image—is subsequently transformed back into a mental image.

[ 6 ] Anyone who knows how to observe the organization of the human mind and its functioning knows that what takes shape as a mental image comes and goes as it is imagined. And when something is recalled, it is not that the mental image has been lying dormant down there and then resurfaces, but rather that the mental image is newly formed from something entirely different that is taking place down there in the organism. What I wish to point out here is that in that activity—which I have just described as an accompanying one—we must see something that actually runs parallel to our entire conscious life, lies beneath our conscious life, and is connected to something that constantly surfaces along with the images of memory from our subconscious. Just as, I might say, everything that appears in the vastness of the world also has its accompanying phenomena—which at times even appear as caricatures of the real—so, too, is what was cited earlier as an example from Louis Waldstein’s writing such an accompanying phenomenon of the entirely normal, regular kind, illustrating how the human being functions in the act of memory. One might say: What goes on subconsciously—since human beings are creatures endowed with memory—comes to light, when it overflows or remains somewhat indistinct or blurred, in such phenomena as the fact that, caught up in a certain mood, one barely hears the sounds of a barrel organ, and yet they produce an effect that can make one smile at a book on mollusks. What is presented here tends to obscure what really matters rather than explain things. For what really matters is a very normal activity that is essential to human existence—namely, what underlies human memory. This is something that continually accompanies our entire conscious life, but in everyday life we do not pay attention to this accompanying process. This accompanying element lies in the structure of our organism.

[ 7 ] It is now a kind of touchstone for genuine parapsychological research to examine something like this memory-shaping, accompanying activity of our imaginative life. For whatever weaves and lives as continuously as a normal process in the subconscious can, at first, be transformed into a conscious experience at an initial stage. And this transformation of the unconscious into the conscious is one of the steps whose development leads to genuine spiritual research, to the genuine exploration of the supersensible. For the true exploration of the supersensible, what otherwise remains subconscious must be brought up into consciousness. Through this process, it already becomes something different. Now, much of what is described in the book How to Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds consists of exercises one must undergo to bring the soul into a state in which it is capable of facing the supersensible. But one can also make an elemental being vividly clear by showing how closely this first elemental phenomenon is related to a completely normal, yet otherwise subconscious, human activity. One need only consciously perform the activity that is otherwise carried out unconsciously—yet quite normally—to form memory. To do this, it is necessary to be able to set aside what is otherwise conscious—that is, to be able to set aside, not for the sake of life but for the sake of spiritual inquiry, the activity that gives rise to ordinary, sensually bound perception. One must, so to speak, be able to withdraw from this kind of imagination. But one cannot do this unless one can replace it in the soul with a different kind of imagination—unless one can inwardly strengthen and invigorate the soul to such an extent that something other than what is sustained by external perception arises within the soul. One achieves this by placing, as far as possible, self-willed, self-formed ideas—which are comprehensible—at the center of one’s inner life; that is, by withdrawing from external observation, being with oneself, and introducing self-formed, comprehensible ideas into one’s inner life.

[ 8 ] I say “manageable” ideas; this is extremely important. They must be deliberate, self-formed, manageable ideas for the simple reason that everything subconscious—everything about which one cannot know from what vague perception it originates, whether it might not somehow be the sounds of a barrel organ—must be shut out. But one can never be certain—as this example shows—that this vague, subconscious weaving of the soul’s life will be eliminated unless one introduces into that soul life a concept that one can truly comprehend at the very moment one has formed it, willed it oneself, and put it together oneself, so that one knows: Every part of this concept has arisen from the immediate will that one has unfolded at that very moment. “Willed by oneself” does not, of course, mean “made by oneself”; one can have such concepts provided by an experienced researcher of the soul, and he will even be best able to know how they can be adapted to the individuality of the person in question. What matters, however, is that one brings them into the soul, that one allows one’s thoughts to flow through the image and experiences it in the soul, that one has nothing else in the soul but this image. And it is further essential that these ideas engage our consciousness in as dynamic a way as possible, that it is present in every atom, so to speak, of this imagination, that it is there throughout the entire process of surveying this imagination. This is fulfilled most fully when one takes into one’s consciousness such ideas that inspire one to make the thoughts one devotes to them dynamic.

[ 9 ] A growing plant, for example, that gets bigger and bigger—that is a good image; not staring at something at rest, but at something that is in motion or that has some kind of relationship to other things. This protects us from our consciousness becoming inactive by staring fixedly at the image. For in the exploration of the supersensible world, it is essential that everything done in preparation for this exploration be fully illuminated and permeated by consciousness from beginning to end, and that consciousness not be dampened in any way. Therefore, one of the first requirements for the spiritual researcher in preparation is that he exclude from that activity of his soul which is intended to lead to spiritual research—not, of course, from the rest of his life—everything that could in any way lead to a dimming of consciousness. It is especially important that in this life, within manageable mental images—in this “meditation,” as one might call it, to have a term for it; but it is more important to observe the matter than to find a term for it—nothing reigns in consciousness that can dampen it. Thus, the first requirement is that everything dreamlike that dawns from the indeterminate, unconscious life of the soul—all thoughts that arise in this way from within, to which one gladly surrenders in a certain spiritual indulgence—be thoroughly eliminated from the preparations for spiritual scientific research. Furthermore, everything that could in any way dampen consciousness during perception must be removed. Thus, not even on an inner, soul-level must what is being sought have anything to do, for example, with staring at a luminous point—through which one might enter a certain hypnotic state—or with what some people regard as a rather pleasant preparation for spiritual vision—precisely because they do not need to be present during the process—such as such as “crystal gazing” and the like. The opposite of everything that has to do with lowering the level of consciousness, with suggestive or hypnotic states, must be cultivated when it comes to preparation for spiritual research. Neither the dreamlike nor the act of staring intently must in any way enter into the preparations for spiritual research. You can see this from the following: When you often hear from people who are also “followers” of spiritual science and describe it in such a way that one must, if possible, lose oneself in a dreamlike “surrender” by setting aside one’s own being—reveling in one’s consciousness to the point of being completely detached from people and the world—then that is the very “spiritual science” that may indeed provide a great deal of comfort and many pleasant daydreams, but which most certainly does not lead to the exploration of the supersensible world.

[ 10 ] It is sometimes necessary to draw attention to such things; for even people who wish to be serious critics of spiritual research, as understood here, confuse it precisely with its opposite. Even one critic who has caused quite a stir thoroughly confuses this spiritual research with its opposite, and he describes the “beyond of the soul” precisely in those phenomena which, according to the methods of spiritual research, are anything but what exists in the realm of the spiritual world. It is curious, however, that this very critic has mentioned—he cites it as an example of his own inner life, which is indeed sometimes interesting—that when he gives a lecture, he continues speaking for a while and only then realizes that he has kept talking without his thoughts keeping pace. One can be quite certain that a speaker to whom this can happen—who speaks to his audience in such a way that the words flow on without his thoughts accompanying them—has not grasped the slightest bit of what is meant here by spiritual research.

[ 11 ] Of course, what I have just outlined needs to be further developed, but my aim here is to emphasize the essential points. The essential and important aspect of what one experiences inwardly in this way is as follows: As one evokes such images more and more within the soul and pays attention to how the soul then acts—how it acts differently than during external perception— a great and significant fact reveals itself to you from a certain point onward: that you are now right in the midst of what such meditation has brought about within you, that you are right in the midst of an inner activity of the soul that otherwise remains unconscious and, as an unconscious process, leads to the formation of memory in ordinary life. One has, so to speak, shifted down one level what one otherwise experiences in the life of imagination. One has not taken into account what one otherwise experiences in the life of imagination, and one has taken into account what otherwise accompanies this formation of images. One has shifted one’s entire sense of self down a level, to where the processes that lead to memory are otherwise carried out, and in this way one learns to recognize what is otherwise constantly at work deep within the soul—what is not taken into account in ordinary consciousness, yet what weaves and lives and enables one to have memories. And I have often shown here as well what depends on a person’s ability to form memories. Everyone knows what it means for a person when their memory is pathologically impaired for a time. One learns to recognize a level of soul experience that remains subconscious in ordinary life, yet cannot be denied because its effects are present; but when one immerses oneself in what one has thus awakened through meditation, it becomes a special experience. And for those who are at all sensitive to such things, this experience is a profound one. One experiences that, having now reached this level of soul life that lies beneath consciousness—and thereby having reached the level where memory lives and weaves—one has come into contact with something within one’s own human being that otherwise proceeds quite unconsciously, something that ordinarily never actually enters consciousness even approximately in accordance with its true nature. For with regard to this memory-forming force—the nature of which one has now come to understand to some extent—one learns to recognize a certain kinship with what within us is the force of growth and of decline, with all that which, growing out of our organic life, leads us from childhood to adulthood, and with what makes our life “outgrow” itself as we decline from a certain stage onward. One learns to recognize all that lives and weaves within us as organ-forming forces that enlarge us and continue to be active within us later on—what constitutes organic force, what constitutes formative force within us, but also what constitutes formative force in the plant. For while that which weaves and lives within us and expresses itself in our growth is quite distant from our ordinary conception, it is found to be closely related to what now appears as the force that forms memory. Something that is otherwise within us always grows together: two currents—the power of growth, the formative power within oneself, and the power of memory—grow together into a composite entity that we carry within us and that we come to know in this way. We carry this within us constantly.

[ 12 ] Ordinary consciousness has no inkling that the very same force which accompanies human beings from early childhood onward—as a force of growth and as a formative force—is, in an intensified and refined form, the very same force that is called upon when human beings form memories. Yet it is, after all, a composite entity. When one comes to understand the matter, it reveals itself as a composite entity. For one learns to distinguish again between what is, so to speak, bound together as the force of growth and the power of memory; it is, in a sense, a duality that functions as a unity. As one delves into the matter, one discovers: What one brings up as memory is actually subconscious knowledge, a deeper level of consciousness, a living and weaving of consciousness in which our ordinary “I” does not dwell. But this consciousness permeates the other aspect within us, which is the power of growth. One learns to recognize these two—the power of growth and formation and the power of memory—as something that stands in opposition to one another, only standing closer together than our conscious knowledge and the external physical world. Yet our conscious knowledge stands farther from the external physical world; we cannot bridge the gap between the two; we cannot cross over to it with ordinary consciousness. What we seek to take up there, what we make conscious through meditation, carries, so to speak, its own object within it, yet is still something related to our knowledge. We learn to see through a duality. Yet the further one advances in one’s spiritual life, the more clearly and distinctly this duality appears before the observing consciousness. In this way, one perceives that which weaves and lives as a force of growth. One perceives it—to use a good old Troxlerian expression—as true human physicality as opposed to physical corporeality. In our ordinary consciousness, we perceive physical corporeality. This subconsciousness, which we have now reached, perceives this physicality within us.

[ 13 ] To avoid being misunderstood, I have recently referred in the journal Das Reich to that which lives and weaves within us as a creative force—which is not perceived by ordinary consciousness, but is perceived by that which acts and weaves in memory—as the “body of formative forces.” I used to call it the “etheric body,” but since certain people take offense at certain expressions, I have tried to use words that more closely capture what is at stake, and have called that which lies closest to our physical body and accompanies our entire life as the formative force the “formative body.” And that which does not dwell in our ordinary consciousness—which remains ever close to this Formative Body beneath the surface of that consciousness, and which one reaches through meditation—can be called, for well-founded reasons, the “astral body”—if one is not afraid that the mockers will then come and make a mockery of what they do not understand; but it can also be called the “soul,” which is at work one level deeper than ordinary consciousness. And just as the chemist breaks down a compound substance into its various elements, or as the physicist divides what meets his eye in white sunlight into different shades of color, so have we now divided the human being into the physical body—which is seen with the external senses and is open to external perception—the body of formative forces, which is the first supersensible aspect of the human being, and into the astral body—or the soul entity—which is aware of the life and activity of the body of formative forces not in the manner of ordinary consciousness, but beneath ordinary consciousness, yet which shines up into ordinary consciousness only in the form of memory images, in the waves that take shape as memory perceptions. And, in a sense, set apart from all of this is that which seems to float above this threefold human being: the actual I-essence, that essence which knows nothing of what the soul—in the sense intended here—knows of the physical body, but which sets itself apart from the soul and then forms ordinary consciousness, and which is spiritual. That this “I”-essence, which at first does not perceive the spiritual but makes use of the instruments of the senses to perceive the environment and to perceive the human being itself by means that are also applicable to the environment, — that this “I,” this true self of the human being, must again be separated as a distinct member from the other members of the human being—this, however, only becomes apparent when one advances somewhat further in the kind of soul training that I have outlined in principle. I have described how one introduces self-formed, comprehensible ideas into the soul. It is good, I said, to take ideas that give the life of the imagination itself room to move, and then to try to feel, to experience, what can indeed be experienced in this resting within such ideas.

[ 14 ] There are two aspects to this. The first is becoming aware that there is a kind of weaving and living within the human being that is similar to the formation of memory. The second is what one experiences when one looks at this experience with particular inner attention. It is just as if, for example, one were to proceed by forming images on the one hand and forming thoughts on the other, which then become memories. This is a special experience. Anyone who goes through this process—that is, anyone who trains themselves to become a spiritual researcher in the true sense—knows that this is a special experience. For from a certain moment onward, one element ceases to prevail in this soul life—an element that otherwise always has significance for our soul life: the spatial element ceases to prevail. If you reflect on how everything you imagine in ordinary consciousness is permeated and interwoven with some kind of spatial concept—for in ordinary consciousness one can hardly imagine anything that is not simultaneously imagined in relation to space—then you will realize how deeply ordinary consciousness is bound to space. This experience, which is linked to such concepts as I have developed, gradually leads one to feel lifted out of space and to know oneself to be within purely temporal occurrences, within temporal processes. This is like a significant advance in human soul life: to know oneself to be within the stream of time, for this leads to truly seeing through the stream of time. As I said: The whole point is to recognize the relationship between the faculty of memory and the forces of growth that accompany the formation of our physical being. It is precisely into this temporal realm that one is transported.

[ 15 ] And there is something else that is particularly important. I said it is twofold: These imaginings have—and now pay particular attention, with intense focus, to what one is experiencing there, to how one truly experiences the coming to life of the imaginative life, the mere weaving in time; for then one is present with one’s “I” within this imaginative life. However, one is not merely within a life of imagination, but within a life in general that is permeated by the real forces that live and weave within time. Then one has arrived at an experience of the “I” that is entirely different from the ordinary experience of the “I.” Anyone who knows the ordinary experience of the “I” through proper self-observation knows how closely it is bound to human physicality, and I described last time to which elements of physicality the “I” is primarily bound: namely, to conditions of equilibrium—that is, to something that is decisively situated within space. But one cannot remain at this level of experience; rather, one truly enters into the flow of time.

[ 16 ] What has just been hinted at is still taken into account by very few people today—even by those who deal with these matters professionally—and one hears ideas characterized in a way that is still accepted today as if they represented the very essence of certainty. For example, some philosophical thinkers assume that our “I”—that is, the “I” that possesses ordinary consciousness—is the very “I” that is preserved as enduring throughout all experience from birth to death. Indeed, a philosopher—who, admittedly, approached his philosophy in a peculiar way—coined the strange concept that this “I,” into which one must intuitively immerse oneself in order to become a true philosopher, is particularly characterized by the quality of “duration.” Indeed, he even coined the peculiar phrase that no one can penetrate to the true human being who cannot grasp this concept: “duration lasts.” While everything external passes away, this inner “I”-life, as he claims to know it, is duration, pure duration. When he says, “duration lasts,” one gets the impression that someone is trying to describe “wood wooding” or “iron ironing.” But when a philosopher coins such a phrase, today’s humanity—which places its faith in authority—does not reflect on the actual logic behind such a statement. But setting that aside, there is a very obvious refutation of this strange concept of the enduring ordinary “I.” Every night provides an example of this, where—from falling asleep to waking up, with the exception of the time during which dreams unfold—the experience of the “I” ceases. Every dreamless sleep refutes this famous tenet of Bergson’s philosophy. Therefore, if one wishes to understand human beings, one cannot build anything upon the ordinary sense of self. Instead, one carries the sense of self into the flow of time. And then, when one carries the “I” into the flow of time, when this new experience of the “I” emerges alongside the other experiences of the subconscious mind and the form-creating body, it is no longer true that every sleep interrupts this experience of the “I”; rather, something else applies. For then it turns out that the following is also connected to our conception of the “I.”

[ 17 ] Last time, I pointed out the vague sense from which this sense of self actually arises. It must, so to speak, be ignited. During dreamless sleep—from the moment we fall asleep until we wake up—it is not present. What sparks it? It is sparked at the very moment when our soul reconnects with our physical body. From the outside, our physical body is the stimulus for what we experience as our “I” in ordinary consciousness. In ordinary consciousness, we come into contact with our body; this stimulates our sense of self. This sense of self must not be regarded as something permanent. But the situation is quite different with what I have just described as a new experience of the self. It lives within the flow of time; it is lifted out of the spatial realm. This is precisely kindled when a person ignites the experience at a single moment in time—not through a spatial collision with physicality, but through a collision with the experience of another moment in time. This “I” experience I have just spoken of is identical to the fact that, when I wake up, I mysteriously collide with the moment in time when I fell asleep. And this forms the basis for the new experience of the “I”—that we experience ourselves in different, successive moments in time, that we look across time, that we bridge time, even when it is discontinuous, when sleep disrupts it. That is the essence of this experience of the “I.” By immersing the “I” in the soul—insofar as it is related to the conditions of growth—we thereby immerse the “I” itself in those conditions of growth. We penetrate to that aspect of the “I” which accompanies us from birth to death; we penetrate the continuous stream of the “I” experience. What is otherwise only deduced by philosophy, what one merely judges, is now experienced. And one even objects—as I have already mentioned here—to the fact that Eduard von Hartmann, in his psychological writings, states that if one attempts to observe a feeling, it is thereby disturbed and altered.

[ 18 ] When Eduard von Hartmann makes this observation, he is specifically seeking to rule out the possibility that the “I” can exist within this flow of time. He is attempting to prove precisely that, for the experience of the “I,” the flow of time is lost to it. However, it is not lost; rather, it is gained precisely through this. Indeed, anyone who can practice self-observation from this spiritual-scientific perspective knows how this experience of the “I,” which is present in this moment of our existence, enters into a relationship with earlier moments in time.

[ 19 ] Please do not take it as a trifle or as boasting when I recount here a personal experience from my very earliest days. I wish to recount a personal experience that seems very simple when lived through, but which has recently once again been something deeply moving to me. In 1894, I completed a book in which I drew attention, from a purely philosophical perspective, to the fact that human thought is already a spiritual reality: my Philosophy of Freedom. When I wrote the book, I was a young man of thirty-three. In this most recent period, the need has now arisen to revise this book anew for a new edition—to go through once more everything that moved through my soul at that time, and in doing so to observe how my present “I”-experiences relate to the very “same” “I”-experiences of that time. If one manages to see how, in reliving the past experience and in this encounter with the revived experience, something similar occurs in time to what normally happens upon waking—an observation that passes most people by, since they simply recall earlier experiences and cannot look closely at everything that is emerging anew— then one can see precisely from such an example how the “I” is kindled in exactly the same way as through bodily sensation upon waking, by encountering again—and coming into contact with—something that was present within the stream of time. Anyone who cannot observe this fails entirely to grasp what one experiences when one does not have the “I” situated within the stream of spatial reality, but is instead compelled to conceive of it in accordance with the ideas developed in The Philosophy of Freedom—ideas that many people call “abstractions”; I call them the most concrete, most vivid concepts, because the Philosophy of Freedom develops nothing but living concepts. What is present is what I would like to call the experience of the “I” in relation to the interplay of one moment with another. This is where what might be figuratively called the transition to the inner musical experience of the world begins. It is, if I may make this comparison, as if you were to place a note of a melody in interaction with the other notes of the melody—that is, not merely so that the note, as it were, vibrates the air and experiences itself in space, but rather so that one note enters into interaction with another. In fact, it is impossible to grasp the inner weaving and life of this—initially the highest link in the human being—in the inner spiritual eye other than by moving from one musical experience of a given moment to another.

[ 20 ] Thus, the entire human being is divided into 1. the physical body, 2. the body of formative forces, which I have characterized as that which acts in memory and, like a subconscious knowledge, spiritualizes the body of formative forces, 3. the actual soul, the astral body, and 4. the “I.” We have then attempted, by tracing the human being in this way from the lowest sensory boundary of the physical up to what appears as the most spiritual in the human being—to the truly supersensible—to gaze upon the whole, complete human being. In doing so, we have also pointed to the manner in which one must experience in order to directly perceive the truly enduring aspect of the human being from within. No mere interpretation or philosophical dissection of the ordinary “I” will suffice here; this “I” must be carried into a different sphere and experienced anew under entirely different conditions. This “I,” experienced in this way, is simultaneously experienced as an “I” independent of spatial physicality, and as it continues its exercises, it gradually rises to the point of being able to perceive—within the flow of time—that which lives within the human being only temporally, not spatially.

[ 21 ] If I may add this for those who know something about such matters: In contemporary philosophy, it has been pointed out that one cannot approach the psychological if one seeks to grasp it as a substance, but only if one regards it as a passage through a process. Wundt in particular drew attention to this. However, Wundt merely pointed out in abstract terms that one cannot approach the psychological by regarding it as a substance, but rather must view it as a living process. But the point is not merely to conceptualize it within the psychological process through abstract concepts, but to immerse oneself with one’s own “I” in the psychological process and to experience this process firsthand. Then, little by little, what makes it possible to trace this psychological process even beyond those periods in which it is bound up with the spatial-physical realm begins to emerge. Once one has learned to allow the experience of one moment in time to intersect with that of another, one can also gradually develop within oneself the ability to let the inner experience of the “I” itself touch the stream of time where the spatial-physical first arose within the stream of heredity. Then the stream of time expands beyond the spatial-physical realm; one then looks, in a certain way, into prenatal life and life after death within the stream of time in which the “I” weaves. Then, for a new insight, what I have often tried to compare to a certain image comes to the fore. For the one who undergoes what I have now described in principle, something happens inwardly that can be compared to the experience that Giordano Bruno may well have had when he stood at the dawn of the modern scientific way of thinking and asserted it. Essentially, up until Giordano Bruno, people had looked out into space, seen the blue firmament, and regarded it as a truly tangible boundary of space. It was significant that the idea first arose in Giordano Bruno’s soul: There is actually nothing there at all; it is only our perception, only the conditions of our sensory perception, that cause us to see a blue dome there; in truth, it extends out into infinity, and where the blue firmament appears to us is merely a boundary of our perception. This also applies to the temporal realm. Birth or conception and death become, for the temporal firmament into which we gaze, the boundary set for us by our sensory organization. What we perceive as our world—in which we live and weave our lives with our “I,” with our supersensory human being—extends beyond this temporal firmament, beyond death on one side and beyond birth or conception on the other. And today we stand before this leap forward in human knowledge, where—in a manner similar to how, centuries ago, the illusion of the blue celestial vault was dispelled for the human imagination—the illusion is being dispelled for human perception that birth and death are boundaries beyond which one cannot go.

[ 22 ] This leap must be made. Then it opens up for the individual the prospect of experiencing the true life of his supersensible being. In doing so, however, one must keep this clearly in mind: Anyone who wishes to become a spiritual researcher in the manner described here must, with the utmost critical self-observation, always be able to recognize what might prevent him from objectively entering this spiritual world. He can very easily be deterred from doing so. I have already described the state of drifting and floating in a sense of being carried along by the world; this, of course, must not be allowed to enter into the preparation for spiritual research. But it is, of course, advisable to use, as far as possible, images for meditation and for the preparatory exercises of the soul life that do not engage the emotional and feeling life. Anyone who uses images that strongly stir them for contemplation or meditation will very easily fall into “delusion.” Therefore, it is especially important to avoid allowing religious impulses to be carried into the exercises during preparation. Religious impulses that strongly stir a person and have a powerful effect on their emotional and intellectual life must be excluded. And strangely enough—though this may not sit well with some—the very best images are those that leave us the most at peace in terms of our emotional and feeling life. When one immerses oneself in similar ideas in mathematics—especially those that introduce dynamic life into geometry, where figures can take on various forms, or in ideas such as those I have presented—with ideal content—in The Philosophy of Freedom—then this is indeed something that can advance us in this field. This is by no means to say that research in the humanities has nothing to do with religious life. But the point is that the best way to attain that religious internalization and deepening—for which the humanities can indeed serve as a preparation—is not to start from that premise right away, but to set out on the path of research with concepts that are as unemotional and detached as possible, and then, once one is immersed in the spiritual world, a perception emerges from within it that can already serve as a powerful aid precisely for religious deepening. Thus, for this path of the spiritual researcher, one must pay particular attention to ideas that are not connected to the troubles and worries of life, that do not agitate the soul so much—especially ideas that are easily comprehensible. But these are never the ideas that easily stir us, for then all manner of things from the subconscious enter the soul. Above all, this subconscious must be excluded.

[ 23 ] In this way, one truly enters into a spiritual experience where one can first find that essence within the human being of which it can be said: it lives in the freedom of the will; it lives in the immortal soul. Every human being carries it within. But it can be discovered intellectually only through the paths described above.

[ 24 ] In the next lecture, I intend to continue from this very point, discussing the important questions of human spiritual life: human free will and the immortality of the soul, in order to show how, starting from what we have described today as the supersensible human being, one can ascend to a true understanding of the life of this supersensible human being—life in true duration and life in free will. There has been so much controversy over free will and the immortality of the soul because people were unwilling to first lay the groundwork necessary to enter the realm of human experience—a realm that must be entered if one is to gain an insight into that from which free will springs and in which rests that which passes through a human being in the cycle of births and deaths. One must first learn to recognize how the temporal aspect of human life unfolds during this earthly existence. Then one will also find the paths to transcend this earthly life. Such research can bear fruit in the most diverse fields, even though much still stands in its way today. It can bear fruit in the most important and practical areas of life, for example, in the field of education. The field of education, after all—even though people today seek to apply the most modern ideas to it, and even though we live in the “Century of the Child”—is not actually viewed from the perspective that is so closely related to educational life: the perspective of the human soul’s experience of time. Anyone who, as I have described, can view one moment of human experience from the perspective of another will find in the life of the human soul a life undergoing metamorphosis, a life in constant transformation. One finds, for example: When one has become an older person, looks back on earlier times, and then looks back to times even further in the past—and when one does not merely observe this outwardly but experiences it inwardly—then one notices how the inner structure of the soul transforms, what becomes of a structure of soul life at a particular point in time. And one realizes: What in childhood acts primarily as will—what is expressed as a desire—has a different effect in later life, when one is older; it is still there, but it is transformed within the life of thought—within the life experience that weaves itself into thought. What we have as life experience later on, at the age of fifty, is the will life of early childhood transformed in this way. Just as the flower petal of a plant, in the sense of Goethe’s metamorphosis, is an outwardly transformed green leaf, yet just as the leaf does not remain green but turns red in the case of the rose, so too does what is a desire in the child transform into the life experiences of later years. And conversely: What the child thinks—what is stimulated within it as a thought—is transformed in later life into volitional energy. So if one understands this connection from an inner perspective on life, just imagine how one can then influence the child!

[ 25 ] If you grant the child every senseless wish and cause it to scatter its will in all directions, you will make it relatively foolish at an early age, because that scattered will cannot be transformed into life experience, which later finds expression in a calm inner life. — This metamorphosis of inner life reveals itself to spiritual observation just as spatial relationships otherwise reveal themselves. And in the same way, one learns to recognize how one must try to guide and direct the child’s thoughts so that it does not later become a weak, listless person, but rather absorbs ideas that lead to a certain energy of will. Anyone who believes, for example, that stimulating the will strengthens the will, and that stimulating the life of thought strengthens the thoughts, is on a completely wrong track; such a person does not understand the weaving and life of the supersensible human being. Here is one point—and we could cite countless others—where a genuine penetration into the reality of existence leads directly into practical living. Anyone who, as is so common today, wishes to remain at the level of purely external reality is like a person who has a horseshoe-shaped piece of iron in front of him and says of it: “This is a horseshoe-shaped piece of iron.” But another person tells him: “That is a magnet.” The former, however, replies: “I see none of that; I see only a horseshoe, and I want to use it to shoe my horse.” — He does not see the magnet! But what a difference it makes for the one who can include the invisible in his conception of reality! Thus, the world is permeated by something that, as the invisible, is added to the visible. But everywhere, reality is filled with a stream of existence that can only be recognized when one gains an understanding of the relationship between the supersensible in human beings and the supersensible in the surrounding world. The fact that so much in our time makes such a particularly unreal impression stems from the fact that people believe they are standing directly before the stream of reality. This is supposed to be the “scientific view of the world.” But they do not see what lives in the depths of reality. Therefore, they are particularly unable to recognize as real that which weaves its way through human life. Anyone who has a discerning sense of what is happening in the present, anyone who can compare finer, more intimate processes with the catastrophic events that have now become a calamity for humanity, will be very, very strongly reminded of how necessary it is, especially in our time, for an understanding of humanity’s supersensible relationship to the world to take root once again within humanity. If one asks: How did it actually come to be that this understanding is lacking? then one can characterize it roughly in the following way.

[ 26 ] It isn’t really there. Today, people who are considered particularly intelligent—and in a certain sense they certainly are—are those who are completely detached from reality. I can name a book for you that, strictly speaking, contains not a trace of reality from beginning to end, and yet, from its own perspective, essentially encompasses the knowledge of the entire world, for it is a dictionary—and a philosophical one at that: the one by Fritz Mauthner, which today is, in particular, an idol of knowledge—not so much for experts—who, after all, see through much of what is amateurish in it—but for numerous laypeople or—if one isn’t allowed to say so—“journalists.” But anyone who approaches this book with a sense of reality may experience a peculiar feeling. Just try it once: approach this book with a healthy sense of reality. Start any article, read it through, reach the end—you’ve gone full circle. It’s as if you’ve looked at something that blinded you; then you turn around and look at it again. But you get nowhere. With every article, you ask yourself: Why was this actually written? For anyone with a sense of reality, reading this pretentious book is a torment. And yet it is a very clever book. I could only praise the book’s acumen and intelligence to the highest degree; but the result is a book in which every essay reminds one of good old Münchhausen, who tried to pull himself out of the swamp by his own hair. This book is also characteristic of much of what is thought today and has been practiced for a long time—and which lifts people out of reality and into the supernatural. But it is within this supernatural realm that the spiritual, the real, flows. How, then, did it come to be that human beings have lifted themselves out of reality?

[ 27 ] Nothing could be more understanding toward true Christianity and true religiosity than what is meant here by “spiritual science.” But if one considers reality—which is in many ways connected to the development of the last two millennia—one finds a remarkable stubborn clinging to the idea that: One must seek the spirit “beyond” external nature; one must regard external nature as something to be avoided if one wishes to reach the spirit. Go back to the earlier centuries, and you will see: it is a withdrawal from external nature and its mysteries; it is a search for a path other than that which is spread out in nature as spirit. Then came the natural sciences; with regard to the conception of nature, other necessities now presented themselves to human consciousness. But the earlier centuries had ensured that the spirit was not seen in nature; one wanted to find it apart from nature. Now nature stepped before people: it was de-spiritualized! But now people began to investigate what they had first made of nature—namely, nature stripped of spirit! This has been happening for four to five centuries. And because everything from this spiritless nature was seen as inevitably affecting human beings, human beings, too, became spiritless. The de-spiritualization of nature became a vampire on the human spirit. Nature entered into science, and its facts became irrefutable. I have often spoken of the admiration people today must have for the achievements of the natural sciences; but nature must not be viewed as devoid of spirit, otherwise it becomes a vampire, and then one can no longer find what lives and weaves within the human being as spirit. Then one finds only what the barrel organ plays. And what the barrel organ plays is down in the organic realm. There one grasps only the organic weaving and life, only one side of life, not the other, from which we set out today—the one that already contains the supersensible current within the power of memory.