The Rudolf Steiner Archive

10. The Super-Sensory Human Being III

The Questions of Human Free Will and Immortality in the Light of Spiritual Science

[ 1 ] The two significant mysteries of human spiritual life to be addressed in this lecture are not merely linked by chance; rather, I hope to show that, from the perspective of spiritual science, the overarching question of human free will and the question of the immortality of the soul are intimately connected and are best considered together. However, it will become particularly apparent in this line of inquiry that a spiritual-scientific examination must take a somewhat different path than other scientific approaches, for the simple reason that other scientific approaches—namely, as they are commonly practiced today—can usually point directly to the results that are already available. A spiritual-scientific examination—particularly of the kind that is to be practiced today—must point out more precisely how the researcher arrives at his results; and in this description of the research process, one must essentially seek what serves as a kind of evidence, a kind of proof of the matter at hand.

[ 2 ] Now you know that the questions of free will and immortality have been and continue to be discussed scientifically, from the earliest times of human thought right up to the present day. In the second half of the nineteenth century, attempts were made to portray these two questions as stemming directly from a childlike way of thinking. Recently, this view has been abandoned. Scholars have become more cautious, but the fundamental point remains unchanged. Essentially, one can say that philosophical examiners of these questions, no matter how cautious they may be, do not get much further than a kind of admission that human methods of thought are, in fact, insufficient to determine anything definite about these matters. I will not detain you with an overview of what has been presented to people in this regard, but would like to approach my topic from the perspective that has been emphasized in all of these lectures here. I would just like to preface this by noting that it is striking that, despite the serious application of every possible human means of thought and every possible acumen, ordinary philosophy yields little more than a kind of skepticism regarding these questions. This will not surprise you, especially in light of the recent remarks, if you consider that the highest revelations of the human being must emerge from the innermost core of this human being, and that this innermost core of the human being must be sought in the supersensible realm—that is, in a realm into which the ordinary powers of cognition, which are bound to the outer human organism, cannot penetrate. It is therefore not surprising that, before one enters into spiritual scientific inquiry, no particular light can be shed on these very questions. Researchers consistently find that they are working with inadequate means of cognition. Without being fully aware of it, they sense that within the human being, as it lives out its existence, there is a supersensible life; yet everything that this human being can perceive with the aid of the ordinary organism is either directed toward the sensory world or abstracted from it, or abstracted from it, so that when attempting to observe the innermost core of human being, one finds oneself in a situation comparable to that of, for example, the human eye. The eye can perceive the things around it, but it cannot perceive itself. Since the eye is an external sensory organ—that is, an external object—it can, of course, observe another human being, insofar as that person is a sensory object. But one thing is clear: one is only able to observe this human eye if one can take a standpoint outside of it. The observer of the human self—of the human soul-being in its essential core—is in a similar situation. He would have to be “outside” the human soul-being if he were to observe it. And one cannot say that another person can observe this human soul life, for to another, too, only the human physicality is revealed. It is not enough for another to direct their attention toward the soul being; it is necessary that the observer of their own being be able to actually step out of their own being in order to observe it. Perhaps another comparison will help us illustrate what is to be the subject of today’s reflection.

[ 3 ] There is another way to see the human eye: by looking at it in a mirror. But then one does not have the living essence of that eye before one; one has only the image of that eye before one. This comparison applies to what I wish to explain insofar as the methods that spiritual science must employ to gain insights into the questions we are discussing today require one, in a sense, to place oneself in a position where what one experiences as a human being within oneself and in and of itself is first revealed as an image, and that one places one’s actual human being in a situation that transforms what one otherwise has before oneself as living reality into an image.

[ 4 ] What is necessary to observe one’s own human nature is precisely this stepping outside of one’s own being. For even if one wishes to have one’s own being before one’s eyes as an image, one must stand outside that image. This can only be achieved through those methods of inquiry that I have referred to throughout my lectures this winter as a “fundamental tone”: by applying to the soul those inner processes—call them “exercises” or whatever one wishes—that lead to bringing the human soul out of itself, so that it can face itself objectively. It was only in my last lecture that I elaborated on some of what the human soul must do to attain this life of cognition outside the body. I need not repeat what I explained the day before yesterday; I would only like to point out that I have described in detail what the soul must do to attain what I am about to describe in the book How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?, in the second part of An Outline of Esoteric Science, and in the book The Riddle of Man. The point is that the human soul life, as it unfolds in everyday life from waking until falling asleep, must be intensified and brought to a state of “awakening”—that is, to a state that relates to everyday consciousness in the same way that everyday consciousness relates to the dull consciousness of dreaming. Just as one awakens from sleep to full waking life, so it is possible to awaken to a higher consciousness, which I have called “contemplative consciousness.”

[ 5 ] If, through the concentration of one’s life of thought, feeling, and sensation, one succeeds in intensifying one’s inner life to such an extent that one can enter into this contemplative consciousness, then one is initially able to set aside everything that otherwise stands in the way of a person’s everyday perception through the senses. One has moved beyond this sensory perception. One lives in a different inner soul state, living at first in what one might call imaginative consciousness. I call it imaginative consciousness, not because something unreal is to be represented, but because in this consciousness the soul is filled with images—at first with nothing but images, but images of a reality. Moreover, while the soul is filled with such images—and it sees very clearly that they are not themselves a reality but images of a reality—the soul still knows that it stands within the real context of the world, that it does not weave these images out of some void based on arbitrary whims, but out of an inner necessity. This stems from the fact that the soul has placed itself within the real context of the world and, from this context, does not create images in the same way as mere fantasy, but rather that the images it weaves retain the character of reality.

[ 6 ] It is of the utmost importance to take a close look at this first stage of spiritual experience, for errors can arise in two ways. One is that one might confuse what is meant here by the “imaginative world” with those images that arise from a pathological, abnormal state of consciousness—with all manner of visionary experiences or the like. But from what has already been discussed here, you will have seen how, even in the works of the spiritual researcher on the path to entering the spiritual world, all the necessary precautions are taken to strictly reject the vague drifting and hovering in all manner of visionary experiences. A vision enters the soul in such a way that one does not feel involved in its coming into being. It appears as an image, but one cannot participate in the image’s coming into being; one is not present within the process of the image’s formation. Therefore, one does not know its origin. The visionary image always arises solely from the organism, and what emanates from the organism is not soul-spiritual; it is perhaps a veiling of something soul-spiritual. The point is to make a precise distinction between the entire unconscious life expressed in all manner of visions and what the researcher of the spirit means by the “imaginative life of consciousness.” This consists in being present in the weaving of all these images in the same way as one is present—in whatever way possible—in fully conscious thinking that moves from thought to thought. There is no other way to penetrate the spiritual world than if the activity through which one enters is as fully conscious as the most conscious life of thought. The only difference is that thoughts as such are shadowy and faded, and that they are derived from external objects or arise in some way from memory, whereas what is meant here by “imagination” is woven by the soul itself at the very moment it arises.

[ 7 ] It should simply be noted that, on the other hand, this imagination must not be confused with what is rightly called fantasy. What human imagination weaves is also drawn up from the subconscious; however, this is often bound—especially when the imagination functions as Goethe’s did—to the inner laws of real life. But in what he weaves in his imagination, a person is not so deeply immersed that he is conscious of his own weaving. In constructing the image of the imagination, they are subject to an inner, real necessity. In imaginative experience, however, they do not weave as they do in the imagination, but rather in such a way that they surrender to an objective, cosmic necessity. It is absolutely essential to realize that what the researcher of the spiritual world must initially work with—as an objective reality appearing in his consciousness—is neither a vision nor a fantasy, but must be distinguished from these two—I would say polar—opposites as something standing in the middle. In fact, one’s position within the imaginative life is similar to that of a physical human being standing before a mirror. One knows: the person standing there is within a reality; he is a reality that feels itself to be one of flesh and blood, but nothing of this reality passes over into the mirror. In the mirror there is only an image; but this image is a reflection, and one recognizes it in its relationship to reality.

[ 8 ] This is how one stands—albeit now in the spiritual-soul realm—once one has, in the appropriate way, led the soul into the spiritual-soul world. But one knows at the same time that the first thing one encounters is a world of images, an imaginative world, and one also knows that this imaginative world has a relationship to reality, just as a reflection has a relationship to the physical human being walking in flesh and blood. This imaginative insight is, in a sense, the first step toward entering the spiritual world. What the soul experiences in imaginative perception is a certain elevation of ordinary soul life, an elevation because at every moment one lives in imaginative consciousness, one knows: if one ceases one’s own activity, if one does not engage in imaginative exploration—in other words, if one interrupts consciousness in any way—then the perception of the imaginative also ceases at the same time. This imparts a special nuance to the inner life of consciousness—the nuance that consciousness, as it were, feels inwardly empowered and, moreover, feels itself engaged in a continuous activity that emanates from within itself, an activity that it must not cease and in the face of which consciousness must not slacken for a single moment. Ordinary everyday consciousness, after all, is supported in its thinking by external impressions; it can surrender itself to these external impressions and therefore does not demand of the soul that it work as intensely as it must in imaginative consciousness. In contrast, imaginative consciousness thus represents something not found in ordinary consciousness. This is the first stage reached by the seeker of the soul who wishes to penetrate the spiritual world.

[ 9 ] A second stage is that the practitioner—who, in a sense, is making himself an instrument for experiencing the spiritual world—must now be attentive to what he experiences in this way through his imaginative thinking. They must acquire the ability not only to become aware of the images, but also to become aware of the activity just described, which must never be neglected while engaging in imaginative exploration. They must, so to speak, develop a heightened, invigorated self-awareness. Through this, however, something quite special comes about. It is only through this that one actually comes to grasp the full significance of imaginative insight. For one can know—if one has sufficiently prepared the soul for this—that with imaginative consciousness one arrives at nothing other than images; one has only a world of images before oneself, no reality at all. One knows it is a world of images, but merely an image of reality. However, as one progresses further in the process of spiritual development—by diverting the soul’s attention somewhat from the images and directing it more toward one’s own activity, toward the strengthened self-awareness that must develop there—one arrives at something even less familiar to ordinary everyday consciousness than the imaginative world. One comes to a point where, as if by drawing upon the self-perseverance of these sustaining forces, the images gradually ebb away and disappear. What one has first evoked now gradually fades away. But reality does not disappear; rather, in place of the images one first perceived spiritually and soulfully, something emerges that reveals itself from within the images—something that “speaks” from them. The images become, as it were, animated; they convey to you something similar to what the colors and sounds of external objects convey. Whereas one initially had only images, a spiritual-psychic reality now emerges from the images, and a second stage of supersensory consciousness begins—for which I have so far found no better term—despite the misunderstandings associated with it—than “inspired consciousness.” This occurs when the activity of the imagination is held—and held in such a way that, through the powers of this holding, the images, as it were, ebb away, and what can speak from them as reality truly speaks to the person. Then one perceives something extraordinarily significant, and in all these matters it is essential that one take no step in spiritual research without developing full consciousness. One must be clear about every step one takes. Anything vaguely mystical or dreamlike cannot arise on the foundation of spiritual science. What one becomes aware of is that the entire world of images one initially had was actually only a means of penetrating to reality. The visionary describes his images. The imaginative knower also has images; but he will describe them only in such a way that he regards them as the means to penetrate reality. He will not say that reality is given to him in the images, but at most: in the images, something like sense organs is given to him. The sense organs are also something that leads to reality, but one does not look at them directly when looking at reality. Thus, one does not look at reality by looking at or describing the images; rather, the images must first fade away. Just as the eye—if it were not completely transparent, if it were clouded and itself perceptible—could not see an external reality, so too can spiritual-soul realities not appear through the imaginative images until these images have faded away, have become a means, have become spiritual eyes and spiritual ears—albeit in a different sense than the ordinary eyes for seeing and the ordinary ears for hearing. That which the images are merely a means to is what already lies behind the images. What now expresses itself through the images is spiritual reality.

[ 10 ] But then again, it is a unique experience that consciousness has at this stage of its insight, which it has now reached. In the images, consciousness is strained; it must maintain its activity. And now, in a certain sense, precisely because it directs its attention to maintaining its own activity, consciousness has arrived at a state of all-encompassing solitude. Through its own activity, it gradually falls into a state of all-encompassing solitude. The images subside; the imagination ceases. But in contrast to what speaks through the imagination, consciousness now behaves more passively, more as a recipient. What it now takes in, it recognizes as coming from reality. It is placed in a situation as if effects of reality were coming from all sides, but reality itself cannot be reached. One does not stand within reality, nor does one stand opposite it.

[ 11 ] And once again, it is important to be fully aware of this: We are now dealing with experiences, with the effects of reality, not with reality itself. To enter into reality itself, a third type of consciousness is now necessary—what I have called intuitive consciousness. We will see later why I have drawn on a more familiar term here—one that is also more popular—but what is meant by “intuitive consciousness” at this level is something different from what is usually referred to as “intuition.” For the intuition referred to here is, after all, a very real inner process; it is not merely a feeling or a mere inner sensation. The point here is that one ascends to the third stage of consciousness, where one is neither as active—engaged in a sustained activity as in imagination—nor in a state where impressions of inspiration flow in from all sides. Rather, now that the liveliness of the images has already been eliminated, whatever impressions from inspiration remain must also be eliminated from consciousness. Consciousness must defend itself against inspiration through a certain strengthened inner force. It must, so to speak, temporarily—but only temporarily—enter a state in which it loses itself in that which so inspired it. It must reach a point where it can, so to speak, erase itself, submerge itself in the inspired material, only to resurface again—but this time to emerge from the inspired material in such a way that it now knows for the first time: What has arisen through inspiration is a spiritual reality. One must grasp in consciousness the inner experience one brings with oneself differently than what one carried down with oneself when one submerged into the inspiration. Only what one has brought up from inspiration provides full awareness of the reality of the inspired, and nothing can be regarded as a spiritual reality that has not entered into intuitive consciousness in this way through the three stages. This intuitive consciousness takes effect only after the soul has lost itself in inspiration. Just as a person loses themselves in sleep in the evening when they fall asleep, only to emerge from sleep again in the morning, so too does consciousness lose itself in the inspired experience, yet it retains the strength to rise again, bringing with it the aftereffect of the immersion—bringing with it, as a full reality of consciousness, what it has thus experienced in intuition.

[ 12 ] Everything that constitutes experience or knowledge of the spiritual world—and everything that is spoken about from within this spiritual world—is based on the interplay of imagination, inspiration, and intuition. Everything that has been developed in these lectures has come about in this way: the soul has truly applied to itself methods that are completely unknown to the majority of people today. For the majority of people know absolutely nothing about these methods, through which one comes to truly perceive the spiritual—which lives in the realm of our spirit just as the physical lives in the realm of our senses. But if one is able to penetrate this spiritual world through imagination, inspiration, and intuition, then one also finds within it the spiritual essence of the human being itself. Yet one finds the innermost core essence that lives within the human being—which is the human being itself and which reveals itself only through the outer physical organization—only when one stands face to face with oneself from the outside, that is, when one has stepped out of one’s own body. One comes to truly recognize one’s innermost being in such a way that it reveals itself only in images, in imaginations. And the outer physical body, in which one was otherwise enclosed, now becomes itself an imagination of the supersensible, so that only now does one come to know that which one was initially enclosed within. In this way, one comes to know human beings as we regard them today, as they give rise to this understanding through the two fundamental questions of free will and immortality.

[ 13 ] More than twenty years ago, in 1894, I endeavored in my book The Philosophy of Freedom to get to the bottom of the mystery of free will. At that time, I tried to speak in purely philosophical terms, so that this book could be read even by those who consider spiritual science, as presented here, to be sheer folly. I tried to answer the question of free will based on the most immediate inner observations available to ordinary consciousness, and I was compelled to do what is usually not done when free will is considered philosophically: to devote the entire first part of the book to a direct, unbiased examination of human thinking itself, not of thoughts. I had set out to ask: What does it actually look like when a person becomes aware of what is inwardly active in the soul as he forms thoughts? I asked: How does a person’s own thinking activity present itself to him? And at that time, although I did not draw the consequences in this book, I was already compelled—because the matter had to be presented in accordance with the truth— to point out that this experienced thinking—philosophers, in particular, had failed to understand what was meant by this—is, in essence, something that is experienced inwardly as entirely self-contained, to the extent that it cannot be compared at all with what is present in the rest of the soul life and what in that soul life is bound to the human organism. For the scholar of the spiritual sciences is fully aware that he stands entirely on the ground of the scientific way of thinking. Anyone who investigates the human life of the soul as it unfolds in ordinary consciousness between birth and death will find that this life of the soul is dependent—albeit in a different way than natural science currently believes—on the human organism. But anyone who approaches this work conscientiously and without prejudice will find that, while everything else is dependent on the human organism, true thinking is not. In thinking, the human being can rise above the organism.

[ 14 ] This is based on the fact—and today I want to go further than I felt it necessary to go in that book at the time—that human beings, in their constitution, possess more than just the product of progressive evolution, which is the sole focus of the natural sciences. In recent months, I have argued that such a view leads to a one-sided perspective on the whole matter, and that it has introduced into scientific thinking all the erroneous perspectives that are present in it today. One must also look at a regressive development, a devolution. The human organism is truly a marvelous structure; it does not merely exist within a form of life that can be described using the terms employed by natural science today—namely, that life proceeds in a certain upward development; rather, human nature incorporates a regressive development within itself, and the strongest manifestation of this regressive development in the human organism is everything connected with the sense organs and the head.

[ 15 ] It would be very tempting, if instead of one lecture I had forty at my disposal, to point out everything that could be cited from modern science as strict proof that the human organism exhibits an upward development, but that this upward development itself is held back, and that, on the whole, a regressive development is present. This is roughly expressed by the fact that the head is the most ossified part of the human body, the part that has most severely stunted what is otherwise a flourishing, sprouting life. Consequently, the head is precisely the organ of ordinary consciousness, in which development does not progress but is held back. While in many respects the rest of human life can be compared to a vigorous development based on saturation, what happens in the head must be compared to a continuous, slow breakdown of development. The nervous activity of the head—indeed, the entire activity of the head and also of the sensory organs—rests on the fact that the human being mineralizes in this region of his being; he breaks down; it is a slow dying, an incorporation of death toward the head. Consider the human being as he stands before you in a vigorous, upward-striving life, and how he then incorporates that descending life into his organism—his own destruction; this decay creates space, and as it makes room, something else takes its place—namely, the human soul and spirit. A person does not think because the same forces that otherwise act in their growth, in their sprouting, budding life, are also active in the head and, indeed, in the entire thinking organization; no, he thinks because these growing, sprouting forces withdraw, decay within themselves, and make room for what now takes the place of what otherwise, in the surging, billowing blood, induces a state of unconsciousness in the rest of the organism. Once one realizes that human beings develop their free thinking not by continuing development into the head in a straightforward manner, as natural science suggests, but rather that, in order to unfold thinking, development must become regressive, only then will one understand the connection between the human organism and thinking. One will understand how thinking intervenes in the organism, but that, in order for it to intervene, the human organism must first be bent backward, must first be broken down.

[ 16 ] I know that with these remarks I must strongly contradict what natural scientists say today; but I know that whoever correctly considers what natural scientists have discovered will find, in all of physiology and biology, nothing but clear confirmation of what I can now only hint at. And because this is so, human beings are in that peculiar relationship to their thinking whereby it is indeed observed, but its inner essence cannot be understood unless one grasps what I have just explained. When a person gives themselves over to their ideas, one can trace exactly how one idea links to the next, and how related ideas join together with one another. One can trace how what occurs in the course of mental life depends on the organism, provided one delves deeply enough. Psychologists call this the association of ideas. This association of ideas can safely be left to natural scientists to investigate, for it truly turns out to be a process in which the organism plays a role. But people also know that there are often moments in life when they cannot allow this association to run its course; for there would never be any logical control over thought if one were forced to let association run blindly. We know that it is one thing for ideas to well up and join together, and quite another to direct them according to logical laws so that they become “correct.” You need only pick up one of the most popular handbooks on this subject, and you will see that people are already aware of how something that does not belong to the organism intervenes in the purely natural course of ideas. What intervenes there is that which can exist within the human being only when the organism, with all its functions, first withdraws, when it first breaks down, when it adds regression to development.

[ 17 ] I am about to touch on a subject that is also frowned upon today; but it will likely not be long before an inner necessity leads people to it. One need only recall the significant lecture delivered in the 1870s by the famous physiologist Du Bois-Reymond on the “Limits of the Knowledge of Nature,” in which he spoke of the “mysteries of the universe.” Du Bois-Reymond was, in a certain sense, inclined to exercise caution and not to sail headlong into materialism. He thus established two such limits to knowledge: consciousness and matter. He rightly said: In material life, the same thing happens as in the brain—hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon atoms move according to certain laws; yet this becomes conscious to the soul, and even the simplest sensations that arise in consciousness cannot be derived from the movements of atoms, nor can any connection be established between the movements of atoms and these sensations. And then he says—and this is significant—that if one knew what is there where matter “haunts” space, one might also know how matter thinks. He does not, however, know what it is that he believes is “haunting” space. In a certain sense, he is right, but he is also right regarding what he considers the “limits” of his science. For with ordinary consciousness—the same consciousness one employs in ordinary science—one develops ideas, sensations, and thoughts; but all of this is actually quite distant from the processes of material life. And that is precisely why Du Bois-Reymond was able to point out: We do not know what “haunts” space as matter; if we knew that, we could immerse ourselves in these material processes, and we might then also discover what is connected to a material process as spiritual life. In a certain sense, he is right—even though his way of thinking is entirely materialistic—that even with ordinary thinking, one remains distant from the processes of spiritual life. One does not fully comprehend them; they are more like shadowy forms, and one does not penetrate to the core of these processes.

[ 18 ] The moment one develops one’s inner life in the way I described earlier—when one descends into imaginative consciousness—one also comes closer to material processes, and first and foremost to those of one’s own body. One is then no longer as distant from them as one normally is with ordinary, shadowy representations. Ordinary consciousness has absolutely no means of determining how the life of imagination and the life of thought relate to the processes in the brain. Hypothesis upon hypothesis has been put forward; but nowhere has anything emerged that would truly be satisfying in this regard, apart from certain anatomical and physiological investigations—which, however, are also very far removed from the true nature of things. But by moving into a different state of consciousness, one must draw closer to ordinary imagination. This leads to what still sounds paradoxical to many people today, but which can be experienced—and is experienced only through imaginative consciousness. Whoever can experience thinking—otherwise one merely carries it out, and it operates unconsciously—whoever can look with contemplative consciousness at what is actually taking place in thinking, thereby also comes closer to material processes; one is, in fact, driven toward a kind of materialism, but it is only a materialism that finds the spirit within matter. For they come to recognize—even if people still laugh at this today, there will come a time when they will not—that what underlies the material process in the brain is actually a feeling of hunger that lives within the brain, not one spread throughout the entire body. And through this, one discovers the breakdown, the regression. This manifests as hunger, and the counterpart of hunger in the soul is the life of thought and imagination. It is therefore a matter of a completely normal process in our organism bringing about this regression—that throughout our entire waking life we are always in a state of partial hunger, and it is to this hunger that we owe our consciousness; and just as we become aware of the hunger in our stomach when it growls, so we are aware of our thinking through the fact that our head is hungry.

[ 19 ] Externally, apart from all physiological factors, something occurs that, in a sense, can serve as historical evidence for what has just been said. You know that certain ascetics—who, admittedly, follow a false path rather than one based on the humanities in order to attain spiritual life—also fast. This “starvation”—which, however, is brought about not by a normal but by an abnormal way of life—is what leads people to become more aware of what is going on within them. This is what, in an abnormal way that is of no use to spiritual research, evokes a stronger self-awareness and thus a more intense spiritual experience. This instinct—to have spiritual experiences through experiences of hunger—is based, through an exaggeration of the true fundamental facts, on the reality that normal conscious life in imagination and thought is actually founded on a feeling of hunger, on a process of hunger in the mind. And as I said, if one discovers this through inner contemplation, one comes to realize that this regressive process exists, that degradation is in fact at its root, and that thinking does not appear as a phenomenon based on further development, but rather on the suppression of organic life, which it replaces. And once one sees through this, once one grasps this marvel of the human organism—that is, once one does not merely proceed as the abstract mystics do, who repeatedly proclaim: “To attain knowledge of God, one must become one with the higher self,” and so on—all of which are merely empty phrases—but rather, if one truly penetrates to self-knowledge and grasps the human being in such a way that one can say: “What occurs in this being is due to what manifests as a feeling of hunger in the human organism,” — when one penetrates to the concrete in this way, then one realizes that what lives as thinking in the human being is, curiously enough, an unconscious inspiration. Through this, thinking approaches the human being in its effects in such a way that he can judge mere associations of ideas as something external, because an inspiration approaches him that nevertheless remains unconscious. The researcher of the spirit delves into the activity of thinking—that activity which arises when the organism regresses—and recognizes: one is dealing with an inspiration. And if one examines, from the perspective I have just outlined, what underlies this inspiration—that is, if one dives into the inspiration and then resurfaces—then this is the path to discovering the spiritual-soul nature of the human being before birth or conception, to discovering what has actually become connected with what flows down through the hereditary stream from father and mother, grandfather and grandmother and so on. One arrives at what is embodied through conception; one arrives at what, in relation to the human being’s present in the body, is his spiritual-soul past. One arrives at a direct perception of the eternal in the human being.

[ 20 ] Then, when one advances to the level of intuition in the field just explored, one even gains insight into what, as a past earthly life, underlies the present one—what extends from the past into the present. Talk of repeated earthly lives is not based on anything that could be described as fantasy, but on very carefully developed research that, through complete independence, prepares the soul to perceive what is actually taking place within the soul’s own phenomena.

[ 21 ] When we seek to grasp senseless thinking in imaginative insight—which, however, vanishes because this thinking itself is inspiration—and when we immerse ourselves in it, we come to realize: Before taking on an earthly body, the human being was in a spiritual world into which he entered from his previous earthly life. One comes to know what lies before a person’s conception, and through this, the eternal. By being able to view thinking in this way—as that which specifically breaks down what comes from father and mother, which specifically presupposes the devolution of the evolving being—one comes to know how life here in the body is the consequence of the eternal within the human being. In the future, the perspective that was otherwise customary—albeit only in matters of faith—will be joined by another that will not merely ask, “What happens to a human being after death?” but will add the other question: “From what state of spiritual-soul life does a human being emerge as they lead their earthly life here?” The question of immortality will be even more important in the future, because people will come to realize that life here can only be understood as a continuation of a spiritual-soul life. And the first thing one discovers—as an unconscious inspiration constantly entering into life—is thinking, which is built upon the basis of retrogression.

[ 22 ] What I have just described regarding the regression of the human head and the sensory system is counterbalanced, as if by a polar opposite, by another aspect of human organization. Just as everything I have now described is based on a devolution that reverses evolution, so everything in humans connected with the development of their extremities—hands and feet and everything related to them, that is, everything that is an inward extension of the extremities, which is a great deal—represents another extreme in human beings and their organism. For those who have eyes to see what is all around them, the human feet and especially the hands are truly wonderfully formed things, even if that crude way of looking at things—which sees only the four ape hands and, slightly modified, the human extremities—fails entirely to notice the wonder of the human hands and feet. For what underlies the human extremities does not undergo a regression, not a devolution; rather, what is peculiar is that it goes beyond the extent of the organism’s other evolution—with the exception of the head. The extremities undergo an overdevelopment; they extend beyond the point reached by the head and the rest of the organism. Just as the rest of the organism degenerates, so the extremities develop a kind of persistence, shooting far beyond the ordinary measure. What is physiologically connected to the evolution of the human extremities constitutes an overdevelopment that goes beyond the ordinary measure, as viewed through a capacity for knowledge that is structured in three stages. With regard to the human organism—which is connected to the wondrous structure of the extremities—this insight reveals that one can only come to terms with it by advancing to imaginative knowledge. Only when one no longer views human beings in relation to their extremities as external physiology can alone perceive them, but rather when one penetrates to the spiritual foundation of the extremities, does one discover that a spiritual element is embedded there as well. But just as what lies within thinking already announces itself as inspiration—albeit in a very rudimentary form—so it is with the extremities. But here, what is actually striving to emerge—what causes the overdevelopment—can only be grasped through an image; it can only be perceived in this way. Of course, one need not stop at the image in this process of insight, but rather takes the image and seeks to go beyond it. And there, indeed, lies true reality! One proceeds from the image to the corresponding inspiration and to the corresponding intuition. What does one discover there? One discovers that which, admittedly in an indeterminate form, like a dark feeling—precisely as unconscious imagination—is present in every human soul, but which, in its essence, when grasped through inspiration and intuition, represents the essential being that emerges into the spiritual world when a person passes through the gate of death. Therein lies the spiritual part of our future. This seed is the breeding ground for what we need after death. And that is why overdevelopment exists—because otherwise, development would cease with death. This provides the basis for carrying over what is needed to have a spiritual-soul organization after death.

[ 23 ] Human beings are, after all, quite far removed from inspiration—and, in fact, from imagination as well. Consequently, what I have just described regarding human organization appears in ordinary consciousness in such a way that inspired thinking—and all true thinking is inspired—actually remains a mystery. This is the only way to explain it, as has been discussed today. Thus, it is not investigated at all in philosophy; rather, it is simply accepted. People write works on logic that deal with mere ascending, open-ended thinking. But no one can fathom where the soul gets the ability to unfold logic. One arrives at this understanding only when one recognizes that the soul was in the spiritual world and brought back from there the guiding principle for thinking, and that what we develop as logic is not developed in the present at all. All of this is content from existence before birth or conception; it has not passed away. We live the eternal life; we have not stepped out of the eternal life. This inspires us when we rise to a level of thinking that transcends mere imagination. This is proof, but the reality of the matter remains obscure. Therefore, in this realm, we encounter mysteries, but not answers.

[ 24 ] A person comes closer to inspiration simply by approaching the matter with feeling. Subconsciously, they possess the imagination, which is represented in relation to the extremities. That is why philosophers, too, speak little of life prior to birth, because it can only be recognized in a higher realm that is less inclined to enter ordinary consciousness. The thinking closest to the imaginative realm emerges in a dull manner. That is why it is much easier and more common to speak of what remains as immortality, but we avoid both the forces that inspire the soul and the forces we encounter through the imaginative, so that the images themselves may pass into the spiritual world and the preparation for the next earthly life may be created from these images. We enter the spiritual world with these images. What we carry into it represents, in a certain sense, our future.

[ 25 ] The kind of knowledge I have been speaking of—which rises through imagination and inspiration to intuition—makes it possible, just as one sees reflections in a mirror, to survey human life pictorially, while at the same time penetrating into the actual reality of that life. But something strange happens when one goes through everything that pertains to life before birth and after death: as one emerges in this way from one’s own physicality, as one’s own physicality becomes pictorial, what one otherwise experiences as the “I” flutters away and shatters. This is the perilous moment for insight, when the ordinary “I” shatters. It is, as it were, scattered throughout the world, feeling itself to be without consciousness.

[ 26 ] This feeling is a strange, significant realization. One realizes that what one has left behind—what one has emerged from—was, precisely for the ordinary “I,” the foundation. For the “I” that a person calls their “I” in everyday life, the physical organism is the foundation. This “I” begins with conception, with birth; awareness of it only begins later. This “I,” this immediate, present “I,” is bound to the organism; one cannot find it when one steps outside the organism. Yet it is precisely on this that the full consciousness of this “I” is based. Yet one experiences this “I” as self-contained. It would be terrible if a person were to experience as their “I” what the spiritual researcher experiences as the “I” in its dissipation when they are outside the body. How is this “I” experienced? It is experienced as having immersed itself; for if it is not immersed in the physical body, then the person is asleep; then the “I” is outside, and the person does not experience it. It is experienced within the body, specifically in that part of the human organism that is neither the regressing central nervous system nor the extremities, which extend beyond normal development; rather, it is stimulated in the rest of the human organism through the activity of the lungs and heart. It is stimulated by the fact that the human being is contained within his or her own organism. |

[ 27 ] What is this “I” that otherwise dissipates? This “I” becomes conscious by immersing itself in the organism. The spiritual researcher recognizes it as unconscious intuition. This is the intuition gained when the true “I”—which otherwise never appears in consciousness—becomes immersed in the organism, specifically in the human being’s middle organization. Consciousness of the “I” is based on unconscious intuition. That is why you often hear people speak of “intuition,” but much less often of “imagination” and “inspiration.” But there is a vague awareness precisely of this highest aspect, which appears in spiritual research as a process taking place outside the body. This is what Hamerling calls the “sense of self.” It wells up from the organism. Such is the organism as it lives itself. Unconsciously, imaginations arising from non-sensory thinking enter that part of the human being which is embedded in the extremities, and from there they flow out into the future. What lives in present-moment self-consciousness dissolves; it is only by being future-oriented that it is freed from this dissolution. This becomes evident precisely when one pursues the matter further. For there is now a threefold aspect to human nature, namely what constitutes the three members of the human eternal being: the past, that which lies before the earthly incarnation, which flows into the unconscious inspiration of the organism; then that which is experienced during earthly life in the unconscious intuition; and thirdly, that which is sensed as the human being’s essence after death in the imagination. These are three aspects of the human being, and they always work together within the human being. In truth, the human being is not the simple, monadic entity dreamed of by those who would prefer all knowledge to be quite convenient; rather, in truth, three “I’s” work together within the human being: the inspiring “I,” which lives in thought and is carried over from the spiritual world and from the previous earthly life; the intuitive “I,” which lives in the present physical body; and the imaginative “I,” which is carried over—just as a carriage carries its passengers—into the spiritual world, which is entered by passing through the gate of death.

[ 28 ] Now, in human beings, action—the act of will—can occur, which is internally connected to the organization of the limbs. It can occur in such a way that it follows from that organization. To attribute freedom of will to trivial life, to instinctive life, would indeed be nonsense. That is why, in The Philosophy of Freedom, I emphasized the need to ask: Which of a person’s actions are free? For one discovers that those arising from associations of ideas are not yet free. Human beings are free in certain actions, but not free in others. The freedom of action develops only from within the human being; and, as I have shown in The Philosophy of Freedom, only those actions that arise from thinking free of sensibility—that is, intuitive thinking—are to be regarded as free. To carry out such actions, a person must develop something that leads them out of themselves; for true thinking free from sensibility does not arise from the organism’s structure, but rather is based on a process of dissolution. What arises from the drives comes from the organism’s structure; what arises from the instincts does as well. A person must step outside themselves, even if unconsciously. But through what means does he unconsciously step outside of himself even in ordinary consciousness? When he performs actions in which, at the very core of his human being, he is quite detached from everything that is of a drive-based nature or an instinctive nature, while harboring the free thought: “It must happen,” and yet feels only as an instrument of what is happening. Anyone who can truly examine human life will find, upon observing how such actions take their place in life, that they take their place in life just as we relate to a person we love. When we truly love them, we accept them as they are; we look at them and transcend ourselves. Actions that can be viewed in this way—actions whose innermost impulse is love—are the free actions of the human being, provided this love is sustained by insight built upon non-sensual, intuitive thinking. I described this twenty-five years ago in The Philosophy of Freedom based on observation; today I describe it from the perspective of spiritual science. Thus, in a free human action, we have the triad: thinking free from sensuality, breaking down, directing the organism—love—action. This is the triad that lives within a free human nature: free intuitive thinking, love, action. But it must emerge in ordinary consciousness. What I have just described must, so to speak, underlie it.

[ 29 ] But the person who acts freely is not yet a clairvoyant; he has not yet attained a visionary consciousness. Just as spiritual life enters the poet and the artist, so does it enter him through what I have called in my book the moral imagination. If one were to look into the spiritual world at the spiritual counterpart of moral imagination, one would find imaginations; for what moral impulses are does not live within us. Emotionally, their reflection is found in the conscience; in terms of perception, their reflection in consciousness is moral imagination, which possesses the moral impulses. Speaking in the language of spiritual science, one says: The drives behind moral impulses do not lie solely within us, but are borrowed from the spiritual world; yet they enter consciousness as moral imagination. This is what underlies human free will.

[ 30 ] Let us take another look at what is expressed in the higher organization of the extremities, which is integrated into the human organism. This is not meant for the life that extends until death; it contains impulses that have significance after death. They are present, live within the human being, and thus accomplish something that has significance beyond ordinary life; they are not rooted in the organism. For the organism must go beyond its own level of organization in order to bring this about. There it brings about something. There it brings about something within the human being that has nothing to do with a mere scientific necessity, for this scientific necessity considers the human being in relation to everything that lies between birth and death. But when that which acts here, yet attains its full reality only after death, comes into play, then it is the “future self,” if we may put it that way. And what does this future “I” grasp? I said: free thinking. The past “I”—the triad of “I’s” within the human being—which the past “I” brings into the physical body and inspires into the human soul’s life, is what enables us to have free thinking at all—thinking that is free from mere imagination—and which also provides the impulses for moral action. But that would remain passive. It must, however, be seized upon by life-filled impulses. These come from the future “I.” In every free action, what constitutes the human being’s immortal essence comes to life. For the present “I,” which lives through the body and only attains its significance in the future through what is being prepared by the spiritual-soul aspect—into this present “I” the future “I” works, transcending it, with all the impulses and active forces that seize the free thinking of the past “I.” The immortal human being acts within the present human being in harmony with the future human being. This is what makes the human being a free being!

[ 31 ] One must first realize that the immortal essence of the human being lies in a free human act in order to understand that the natural sciences are quite correct when they speak of no free actions; for they do not consider—nor is that their task—the immortal essence of the human being. But until one grasps this immortal essence, one cannot penetrate to what rises from the depths of the subconscious and finds expression in moral actions. The human will is unfree in these drives of its own, but the potential for freedom lies within it. Human beings are beings who are increasingly liberating themselves. And the more that which lives within them as an eternal core of their being unfolds, the more freedom they attain. We are free because we are immortal; we are free with that part of our being through which we are immortal.

[ 32 ] This is the way to discover everything that natural science can never discover with regard to these two questions—free will and the immortality of the soul; and the less it claims to intervene in these areas, the more it will remain sound natural science. Yet what does intervene in the spirit and in spiritual life remains science. Humanity in earlier centuries and millennia, which still had a different spiritual life, did not yet need this science. But today we are drawing ever closer to the time when full awareness must dawn regarding what underlies human life. Humanity will increasingly need what the science of the supersensible life can offer. I have often explained: Only the spiritual researcher can penetrate the supersensible life; but what he says should be examined with ordinary consciousness, and one will be able to accept it just as readily even if one is not a spiritual researcher oneself—although anyone can become one today. When the spiritual researcher presents his findings to ordinary consciousness, they can be understood by ordinary consciousness—provided one does not allow oneself to be misled by that which, while fully justified within its own realm, constantly oversteps its bounds when it seeks to prohibit research into territories other than those of mere natural phenomena. Admittedly, many things lead one astray from spiritual research, and anyone who believes, for example, that the spiritual researcher may possess even the slightest inclination toward fantasy is greatly mistaken. Anyone who thinks it is easy to penetrate the spiritual world, and that, by contrast, ordinary research in clinics and laboratories is difficult, has no idea of the real circumstances. Essentially, all the efforts made in the realm of external science pale in comparison to what underlies true research when one seeks to penetrate the realms described today.

[ 33 ] But it is also necessary to look at this with an unbiased eye—how people often believe themselves to be unbiased, while in fact they are caught up in bias. I am reminded of this whenever I see, time and again, how mainstream philosophers address the questions discussed today by repeatedly stating: “Human beings consist of body and soul.” They know—and this has been the foundation of all our reflections this winter—that one cannot properly understand human beings unless one divides them into body, soul, and spirit. In fact, only spiritual science does this today. But the majority of philosophers still do not speak of body, soul, and spirit, and they believe they are thereby conducting unbiased science. One need only truly look into these matters. Why is it that philosophers today do not speak of body, soul, and spirit—and thereby cloud their own clarity on the matter? They believe they are conducting research without presuppositions, but in reality they are following the Eighth Ecumenical Council of 869! They simply do not realize that it corresponds to the dogma established at that time: that human beings must not be regarded as tripartite, but that one may speak only of body and soul, and may at most attribute spiritual qualities to the latter. What was a true horror throughout the entire Middle Ages has carried over into modern times; and when Wundt speaks today of body and soul, he believes he is speaking without prejudice, but in truth he is merely following the guiding principle of the Eighth Ecumenical Council. Thus, people are subject to the influences of the unconscious. Yet today’s humanity is not “authority-worshipping,” and therefore pays no attention to whether those who are regarded as authorities by non-authority-worshipping people arrive at their assertions from such underlying sources or engage in unbiased science. This is the one thing that presents itself to the observer.

[ 34 ] The other point is that it takes inner strength to rise to the level of imagination, to maintain that heightened state of consciousness so that it does not constantly slip away. One must not fall into the belief that one immediately enters the realm of fantasy if one does not proceed with one’s experience while remaining tethered to external reality; rather, out of an inner necessity, one must courageously dare to stand firm in the new experience in order to enter into the spirit. This inner courage is lacking in people; otherwise, spiritual research could advance more easily. Timidity and the fear of loneliness lie deep in the subconscious. And those who possess this timidity and this fear speak out, calling spiritual research a fantasy and believing that their arguments can refute it. If one examines their arguments, one finds that it is unconscious timidity, unconscious fear, and anxiety that are deceiving themselves and attempting to numb themselves through the arguments they put forward against spiritual research. But every researcher in spiritual science knows that whoever immerses themselves in spiritual science with regard to the spiritual, supersensible aspects of human existence can come to an understanding of these things. The truth, despite all the darkness that opposes it and no matter how much it is vilified and slandered, finds its way—as a profound German thinker once said—through the course of human evolution, even through the narrowest crevices and rock fissures; it finds its way to humanity. Humanity will come to realize that it is a supersensible being and will increasingly need supersensible insights not only for true self-knowledge but also for real, practical life. Therefore, by intuitively synthesizing what is expressed as a mindset—when presenting the ideas of spiritual science, which still seem so paradoxical today, to an audience—if one is serious and pays no heed to the misunderstandings encountered, one can draw attention to this prevailing power of truth and to this ever-living impulse. And this puts the words on one’s tongue—not as a cliché, but as a deeply held conviction: Even if individual aspects, as they are currently being researched, may still be marred or weakened by this or that error, the impulse of truth lives in what is meant to flow through spiritual scientific research. This is what one feels when one is immersed in it. That is why they say it—truly not as a cliché, but as an expression of life itself, connected to the spirit: Despite everything—the truth must prevail in this field as well!