The Rudolf Steiner Archive

1. Knowledge and Immortality

[ 1 ] Ladies and gentlemen! When a person takes a moment to turn inward amid the work and burdens of the day and tries to find their way in the life of the soul, the question inevitably arises: How are the individual facts of life, the individual experiences, connected to the whole of human destiny, to the great goal of human life itself? One of the questions that then arises in the soul is undoubtedly that of the significance of human knowledge.

[ 2 ] When we speak of knowledge, we may first of all mean that knowledge which relates to the immediate needs of practical life—to everything that enables us to understand the external world in such a way that we can put it to use in the service of our practical interests. The question takes on a somewhat different character when we consider the kind of knowledge that seeks to penetrate the deeper foundations of life, the mysteries of existence—the kind of knowledge that does not lead us to any immediately practical work or activity. In that case, it is said that human beings have an innate drive for knowledge and that knowledge is valuable in and of itself. Anyone who looks more deeply will hardly be satisfied with such an answer. What value would knowledge have if it were merely an inner reflection, merely a repetition of what exists out there in the world? Why should what is unfolding in the world have an effect in the external world and be repeated in one’s own soul only as if in a mirror? Is this really just the satisfaction of a spiritual impulse that yearns for insight that transcends the everyday? This is the question we will explore today: the goal and purpose, the nature and significance of human insight.

[ 3 ] If one refers to the concept of knowledge that many people hold today—which consists in saying that knowledge should provide us with a faithful representation of what the world experiences—then it will not be easy to relate knowledge to the great goals and tasks of human existence. One must ask: Is knowledge really just a repetition of external phenomena? Or does it belong to the forces that must work within our soul to advance it along the paths it must traverse in its existence in the world?

[ 4 ] This question cannot be answered by external science; it can only be answered if we take the whole human being into account. After all, external science provides us with insight only into what our senses perceive and our intellect grasps. But beyond this conventional science, there is something that is now attempting to become an integral part of our entire spiritual life—something that can be called spiritual science or anthroposophy.

[ 5 ] What does theosophical spiritual science seek to understand? It seeks to understand the whole human being. Let us first agree on what “the whole human being” means. When we look at a human being, we see two states within modern, everyday human existence that are strictly distinct from one another. These two states, which life presents to us, are so familiar to human beings that they do not even realize that the greatest mysteries of existence are hidden within them. We express these states with the words “waking and sleeping.” We recall that, since ancient times, various worldviews have called sleep the “little brother of death.” We can link these words to two others, namely “life and death.” In these words lies a large part of what we can count among the mysteries of existence.

[ 6 ] Let us try—based on what we ordinarily experience—to understand the alternating states of wakefulness and sleep. In the waking state, we try to comprehend all the impressions that constantly flow into our soul—impressions conveyed to us by the senses, everything that fills us with joy, pleasure, and pain; in short, what constitutes what we call our inner life. In the evening, we see this ebb and flow of drives, desires, passions, and so on sink into an indeterminate darkness. During sleep, it transitions into another state—that of unconsciousness. It would be absurd to say that the human being, as a spiritual being, disappears in the evening and is reborn in the morning. We must ask ourselves: Where is that which works within us throughout the day? Where is it when, in the evening, we allow our inner life to sink into an indefinite darkness? We are immediately pointed toward answers that cannot be derived from ordinary, sensory perception, for it is precisely that which is hidden behind the state of nighttime sleep that eludes this perception. The question of where the soul is at night can only be answered by theosophical spiritual science, because it ascends from the knowledge of the sensory to the knowledge of the supersensory, from the visible to the invisible.

[ 7 ] We must come to an understanding of the way in which theosophical spiritual science can arrive at such supersensible insights by taking another brief look at what truly fills our entire life during the day. We can say that during the day we live with our soul through external stimuli, through external impressions. In the evening, these external stimuli fade away, giving rise to the emptiness of the sleeping state. However, because in the normal course of modern life a person can lead a spiritual life primarily only when external perceptions evoke in the soul those [sensations] that we are currently experiencing, we can imagine that the soul’s inner work dies away, withers away, when the external stimuli are not present. Must it be so?

[ 8 ] One can see for oneself that this need not be the case by accepting the experiences of clairvoyant consciousness. What constitutes knowledge of the sensory world arises through stimulation from the sensory world. Supersensory knowledge can only come about when the soul is willing to engage in inner work to develop powers and abilities, even in the absence of stimuli from the external sensory world. The method of spiritual training provides us with the means to develop such inner powers. This method is intended for those who wish to gain insight into the supersensory world. This method can only be briefly outlined here. Those who wish to learn about it in depth can find it in the book *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?*. Here, we shall only briefly suggest how a person can find within themselves the abilities to ascend to knowledge of the higher worlds.

[ 9 ] The first is that a person learns, through a strong act of will, to artificially bring about what otherwise occurs only in a state of unconsciousness—namely, what a person experiences when sensory impressions cease. One must be able to put a stop to all external impressions; all external impressions must fall silent around one, just as they do in the evening when falling asleep. But this moment must take place through one’s will while in a state of full consciousness. If one could not awaken anything within one’s own soul, one would be like a sleeper. Yet even as all external impressions fall silent, he learns to unleash powerful forces; he draws forth from the deepest recesses of his soul what lies dormant there. No external effort is involved; these are intimate processes of the soul. It is a immersion in strong, powerful thoughts that are not imposed from without, but which the soul forms for itself.

[ 10 ] This is what is called meditation or concentration—a gathering of the thoughts. Without external impressions, we must experience pleasure and pain. The spiritual researcher gives rise within his own soul to powerful, strong thoughts that have nothing to do with the outside world—ideals as well as impulses of the will. This must have a stronger effect than external impressions; the soul must be intensely and powerfully moved by it. Were it not for a third factor, these sensations would act like volcanoes—and that factor is the strong effort of the will to maintain an inner stillness and calm despite these impulses. Then the spiritual researcher experiences—albeit perhaps only after a long time—the great moment that can be compared to the instant when a person born blind suddenly regains his sight after an operation. Just as the impressions of the external world flood into the soul of a person born blind who has undergone surgery, so too would what was previously unavailable to him now flood into his soul.

[ 11 ] Reflecting on this fact can make it clear to us that a [supernatural] world can only exist for us if the organ of perception for it is present. When this organ is awakened, a new world opens up. We must not pass judgment on what we do not know, but only on what we do know. These faculties, which are necessary for perceiving the supersensible world, are developed through meditation or concentration in the stillness of our soul. Then “spiritual eyes” and “spiritual ears” arise—to use an expression of Goethe’s. One might now object: Yes, it may be that the spiritual researcher experiences a higher world, but what do the spiritual worlds have to do with those who cannot ascend to them? — That is not correct. The spiritual eye is certainly necessary for perceiving [the supersensible worlds], but to understand what the spiritual researcher has to say, unbiased reason suffices—and therefore it concerns all human beings.

[ 12 ] Someone whose higher faculties are awakened can observe a phenomenon such as sleep. It is a state entirely different from that of wakefulness. Only a part of the human being remains in the physical world during sleep; the other part—the soul-spiritual aspect—withdraws from the physical body upon falling asleep and returns to its home, the spiritual world. One need not imagine the spiritual world as a separate place; it is all around us. Human nature is divided into two parts; while we are awake, these are united, but during sleep they are separated. Yet this does not fully explain human nature. We can form a rough idea of the two aspects that depart at night by comparing human beings to animals, which are closest to them among all visible creatures. We also find instincts, desires, and sensations in animals. Even if not to the same degree of perfection, they are nevertheless present in animals to a greater or lesser extent, and only those who cannot rise to a higher [level of contemplation] will consider them to be the same as in humans. We need only consider here something that is not usually emphasized in external science; we need only recall that, for example, in the German language there is a word that cannot be called out to us from the outside—[the word “ich”]. This name cannot ring in our ears [from the outside] when it signifies our own “I”; it must arise from our own inner life. All true religions have recognized this. This heralds that which in human beings is of the same essence as the Divine. Properly understood, “I” signifies the ineffable name of God, for Yahweh, correctly translated, means “I am”—regardless of what philology may otherwise interpret. This does not mean that human beings are to be made into gods. Just as a drop of water is not the sea, so too is the human being not God.

[ 13 ] What withdraws in the evening is itself divided into two parts: that which is the bearer of desires, passions, and so on, and that which allows all these sensations to converge within us and processes them—the “I.” Through the “I,” the human being becomes the crown of all creatures on this earth. But what goes out into the night consists of the “I” and the astral body. What does the human being leave behind? The physical body, which we share with every mineral. It consists of the same forces. The lifeless mineral, the crystal, derives its form from the forces dwelling within it; this is not the case with a living being. In the case of human beings, we see that their physical body is subject to chemical laws in only one instance, namely, at death. At death, we see what the forces imprinted on the mineral do to the body. In life, the body never follows these forces. What remains in bed at night is permeated and infused by another body, which we call the etheric or life body. This body prevents the physical body from following chemical and physical laws; it is a faithful fighter against them.

[ 14 ] Now we may ask ourselves: Why does this happen every evening—that a person must, so to speak, return to his spiritual home? Why must he withdraw into the spiritual world every evening? In the evening, external impressions fade away; fatigue overwhelms us. When the astral body and the “I” withdraw into the spiritual world, the human being falls into unconsciousness. The astral body is the bearer of pleasure and pain, drives, passions, and so on. Why does all of this disappear from our soul life? How is it that all of this dies away at night? We will soon understand why this is so. The astral body and the “I” are the bearers of pleasure and pain, of perceptions and concepts. But for these to enter a person’s consciousness, it is necessary for them to be reflected through the physical body and the etheric body. We perceive nothing other than what lives within ourselves. It is like a kind of echo brought about within us through the physical and etheric bodies. A person does not directly perceive what they feel; rather, what they experience through the astral body and the “I” is reflected through the etheric body and the physical body. However, it is the work of the astral body that brings forth what we call the life of the soul. It is actually the astral body that does the work, not the mirror—just as with a mirror, a person must be active for this or that image to appear. The astral body must work from morning until evening so that it can draw out of the physical body what we might call the content of our soul. The forces the astral body needs to work during the day, it must draw from the spiritual world. When these forces are exhausted, fatigue sets in, and it must draw new forces again.

[ 15 ] Sleep has a profound meaning. In the spiritual world, it is the source of everything we conjure up during our daily lives. When we look at our daily lives in this way, we ask: What significance does daily life have, if the soul must draw its strength from the spiritual world anyway? The soul and the “I” do not enter the astral world empty-handed; rather, every evening they take something with them from our outer world. Life during the day is not fruitless for the life of the soul. We need only look at what constitutes the essence of our soul in its deepest sense and what is carried over from our daily life into our night life. This becomes apparent indirectly, namely when we observe our soul during youth and during old age. This gives us the concept of development. In youth we see embryonic predispositions, though undeveloped, and later we see our soul transformed, with a richer content. By what means, then, can we be transformed? By the fact that every evening the soul forms a kind of extract from the external impressions we have received. We carry our daily experiences into the night, and by morning, what was the soul’s spiritual experience [the previous day] has entered the soul; this is added to what already exists, and through this the soul develops.

[ 16 ] One need only take a look at people who cannot sleep, and if one is a keen observer, one will notice how the soul’s progress suffers when the proper amount of sleep cannot be attained. We can only imprint something on our memory if we have a sufficient amount of sleep. Only through this can we develop the powers that lead us ever higher. What the world reveals to us during our daily lives, we imprint on our soul, and through this it becomes wiser. Knowledge is, first and foremost, an important means of our soul’s development between birth and death. But let us now ask ourselves how much transformation we are actually capable of achieving. Within what narrow limits are we confined? We can enhance our soul’s development. We can see this clearly in individual skills, for example, in learning to write. Writing encompasses a whole range of skills. When we look back, we see what a wide array of abilities was involved, how much work and effort, and so on, went into mastering the art of writing. Or let us think of the first attempt we made to draw our first letter, and of everything that then converged into the single skill of writing. From what we experienced there, we extracted an essence, and through such interweaving, a spiritual ability arises.

[ 17 ] Whatever has a deeper impact on our lives can develop only within very narrow limits in the span of life between birth and death. In those who explore the mysteries of the world or who, in deep pain, have lived through this or that life experience, one can even see this reflected in their facial features and movements. From decade to decade, this becomes increasingly evident, even extending into the physical body. But we can develop in this direction only to a very limited extent. Why? Because although we have our souls before us like a malleable material, we cannot work these into our physical bodies through the inclinations that shape us between birth and death—no matter how many experiences we have gathered. Let us take the example of music. If we do not have a refined ear, if we are unmusical, we are unable to develop within our lifetime the very ability that could transform our physicality in this regard between birth and death. We stand powerfully before the soul, but we are powerless against the realities of our physicality. But we know that when we face the external world and conjure up all these images, they are born out of our soul—not solely, but through its activity, for it could never conjure up such reflections if there were not something given from the outside. And this external world contains the very same forces from which our physical body is built. It seems so mysterious to us because we cannot penetrate it. From that same world, we ought to be able to conjure up a refined musical ear and so on. It is something like a veil, like a covering. But behind it lies something that, if we could master it, would give us the ability to transform our physical body just as we transform the astral body.

[ 18 ] We can gain knowledge, but we cannot put it to use; we cannot transform our body through that knowledge. There is, however, a way to transform our physical body just as we transform the astral body. Even if we recognize these forces, we could not apply them directly, for the physical and etheric bodies are given to us as dense matter. Let us refer here to a law that will be incorporated into modern spiritual life through theosophy.

[ 19 ] In the 17th century, not only laypeople but also naturalists believed that worms and fish arose from mud. If we go back to the 17th century, we find scholarly works describing how wild animals grew out of dead bodies—for example, hornets from a dead, battered ox, bees from a horse’s carcass, and wasps from a donkey’s carcass. It was [the naturalist] Francesco Redi who first articulated the principle: Life can only arise from life. There must be a seed of something living present for life to arise. — Redi was nearly burned at the stake [as a heretic] because of this. Today, anyone who claimed otherwise would be regarded as backward. Spiritual science states: The spiritual-psychic can arise only from the spiritual-psychic. Just as the earthworm does not arise from the mud, neither does the spiritual arise through inheritance from father and mother.

[ 20 ] We must distinguish between the environment of the spiritual-soul aspect and the spiritual-soul aspect itself. In spiritual science, this leads us to the law of reincarnation [of that which lives as the spiritual-soul aspect within the human being]. Today, those who have accepted this law are perhaps not exactly called heretics—fashions simply change. Today, the [truly] enlightened are labeled as fantasists, as dreamers. But in the not-too-distant future, people will no longer be able to understand how anyone could ever have believed otherwise. Thus, in what comes into being through birth, we must see the repetition of a previous earthly existence. And what lies between death and birth is a purely spiritual existence. When we look at a child with its still undeveloped features, we see what it has brought with it from previous earthly lives, and we can gain insight into something that is very important.

[ 21 ] Why can we develop only soul abilities during our lifetime? When we wake up, we find ourselves in the same body with the same organs. But when a person passes through the gate of death, the great moment arrives when they shed their physical body, and only what is spiritual and soul-related remains. Now they are no longer bound to the body. The conditions are entirely different from those during sleep. In the morning, when we wake up, we find the same physical body; we cannot destroy it and rebuild it. But when the physical body is shed at death, what we have absorbed in terms of knowledge during our lifetime is united with our soul. In accordance with the insights and experiences we have gained, we can now reshape them and vividly incorporate them into a new body.

[ 22 ] Thus, in every life, we build our body according to what we have gained in our previous life; we make it the product of our experiences from that previous life. Life experience in this present life is our existence in the next life. This is how insight works within us; it is one of the most important forces of existence that shape themselves. We are grateful for the insights of our past life; they have created a body in this life and preserve what we have gained in this life, and this will elevate us in the next life. Now we also understand why there can be a vast difference between different people when we consider the strength and weakness of their capacity for insight.

[ 23 ] Now you might ask: Why don’t people remember their past lives? That, too, is a matter of development. A four-year-old child cannot do arithmetic. But it would be a false conclusion to say, for that reason, that the child is not a human being, simply because humans can do arithmetic. — Wait until the child is ten years old. There comes a time for every person when they begin to remember. One can only remember what is present. Fichte rightly said that most people would rather consider themselves a piece of lava on the moon than a “self.” The understanding of what the “self” is is still lacking. Just as flowers can only be recognized through sensory impressions, so too can the spiritual realm only be recognized through spiritual research. From an intimate exploration of the “I,” it follows that the “I” must be present as a conscious concept before one can remember. Only when we have formed the concept of the “I” can we reflect upon ourselves. Thus, knowledge as self-knowledge leads us to structure our memory in such a way that we consciously expand life beyond the life enclosed between birth and death. If we can continue our work from one life to the next, if through knowledge we succeed in shaping ourselves, and thus the eternal within us awakens, then the knowledge of our development helps us to give form to all that is eternal within us. Let us now consider the work of knowledge and its significance for our entire life. It brings us immortality and gives us knowledge of our immortality.

[ 24 ] Immortality and knowledge go hand in hand. In a given life, our body appears to be something that has been shaped from our previous life. In many cases, we cannot yet make use of this knowledge in this life, but we need it to build ourselves a new body. Through this certainty, spiritual science takes on practical significance in life. It must not remain mere theory; rather, we must allow it to permeate us completely. We then see death in a new light. Knowledge has built our present body. As our body decays, we are freed from it and gain the ability to fashion a new body for ourselves. Thus, even if we look upon death with pain when it affects others, or with fear when it approaches us, it appears to us in a completely different light. If we can rise to a higher vantage point, we can say that we are grateful for death, for it gives us the opportunity to build ourselves a new body—for a higher life. The early spiritual researchers always recognized this and spoke of it. Goethe so aptly presents to our soul how we bring into this life from our past existence what we have earned in our previous life:

Just as on the day you were given to the world
The sun stood in greeting to the planets,
You flourished immediately and ever onward
According to the law by which you were set in motion.
So you must be; you cannot escape yourself,
So said the Sibyls, so said the prophets;
And no time, no power can shatter
A formed shape that develops with life.