The Rudolf Steiner Archive

9. The Hidden Depths of the Soul's Life

[ 1 ] Ladies and gentlemen! Allow me this evening to summarize some of what has been said regarding the spiritual-scientific understanding of the human being in the course of the lectures I have had the privilege of delivering to you here, and to present it from a particular perspective, so that in the next lecture, the day after tomorrow, we may successfully discuss one of the most important questions of our present spiritual life in a fruitful way: the origin of the human being.

[ 2 ] A person who occasionally takes a look at his own soul—at himself—will undoubtedly, in some cases, have the impression that not only is he faced with his own being as if it were something unknown, but this impression may even deepen to the point that this very being may appear to him as something that sometimes fills him with anxiety—perhaps even evoking a fear of the unknown. What takes place in our conscious inner life—what we experience from morning, upon waking, until evening when we fall asleep—truly often seems as if everything that lives in our consciousness rises up from unknown depths, just as the play of ocean waves surges and ripples up from the unknown depths of the sea. And although, when one observes this surging of the sea and the play of the waves, one can well surmise that something is happening in the depths, one often says to oneself: How little does what takes place on the surface actually reveal about the processes in the depths. And so it is at times with one’s own inner life. What takes place in our consciousness is like waves surging up from unknown depths, and since we ourselves are the stage for all this activity, the question of what is happening down there sometimes takes on an anxious quality. Indeed, this impression can deepen even further when we see how, at times, this or that feeling, this or that passion or impulse, this or that impulse of the will—which we cannot control, which are there to our dismay, and perhaps often also to our joy—surge up from the hidden depths of our inner life; we may even feel as if we were standing on the earth’s surface and, as it were, just as in an earthquake, the underground depths were beginning to tremble. It is the feeling of not knowing what is to come that weighs heavily on our mood. We often experience this mood in the face of what is rising up—things we know full well are completely beyond our control. We gain the best access to the hidden depths of the soul when we start from the familiar processes of soul life—that is, when we start from what we are aware of; and what, after all, could be more conscious to a person than what they have grasped, what they believe they have recognized, what they believe they have insight into from this or that branch of knowledge in this or that science, or what they believe they have recognized from their life experience? After all, what could be more conscious and familiar in our inner life than what we call our clear ideas? Yes, but when we survey these ideas, this knowledge of ours, this insight of ours—if we approach the matter without prejudice—then a feeling of powerlessness will arise within us in the face of this insight, a feeling, so to speak, of being cut off from the world in our understanding.

[ 3 ] Greek intellectual history tells us that a great philosopher was once asked how people actually approach life, and he replied: Those who seek to understand—and who truly succeed in doing so—behave like certain people at a fair. Just as some people come to a fair to sell this or that, and their interest lies in selling their wares, while others are interested in buying—so too, at every fair, there are those who neither want to sell nor buy, who have simply come to look at the things and experience life at the fair.

[ 4 ] The same is true of those who are discerning. They approach the marketplace of life not to interfere with conflicting interests, but to calmly and simply observe life.

[ 5 ] Now, it might seem that people caught up in everyday life have little interest in what the universal task of the truly knowledgeable is, but in a certain sense we must nevertheless say that every person, no matter where they stand in life, has a corner where they are a person of knowledge; and without being a philosopher, without being a person of knowledge, no one can truly walk through this life with satisfaction. Thus, in those moments when we are merely observing without becoming entangled in the “fairground life”—when we are philosophers—our soul possesses the qualities of one who is merely watching. And as spectators, standing a little off to the side, we actually always feel that way when we take in what are the most significant ideas in terms of the thirst for knowledge and insight. And what applies to the ideas of the life of insight applies, so to speak, to our entire life of imagination. There we begin to grasp something of what is called the powerlessness of the life of insight.

[ 6 ] Now one might say: Yes, you label those who seek knowledge as a sort of onlooker of life and make knowledge into something that does not truly intervene in the real turmoil and bustle of life. – But one gains an even deeper insight into this powerlessness of life when one observes how human beings seek to understand and recognize the hidden forces, how they operate in life, and how they can propel it forward and keep it in order. And yet, even when a person is completely permeated by the light that emanates, let’s say, from moral or other ideas, it may still be the case that their drives speak, their instincts and passions assert themselves, and that in reality they cannot at all follow what has dawned on them in their ideas. We must say: Ideas have no power to intervene in our inner life, to work and weave in such a way that we would align our inner reality entirely with our life of ideas. The power, the strength of the impulse—that is what ideas lack in relation to the reality of the inner life, and we feel the powerlessness of the life of ideas and the real impulses of life as a duality within ourselves.

[ 7 ] How do people here and there believe—as they have believed throughout the ages—that they can grasp important worldviews, indeed the whole world—and lo and behold: If these ideas had the power to truly transform what they seemingly contain into the impulses of life, then it would be easier to convince people of such ideas. Every time this issue arises again, one notices the powerlessness of these ideas in the face of reality, in the face of life.

[ 8 ] It is all too easy to understand why, especially for the artist—who is supposed to create from the very depths of his soul—he would become sober and dry if he were not fully engaged with his entire soul—we can see how he fears being absorbed into the soul’s process, for he feels: The moment [concepts built up] according to a certain logical sequence of thought interfere with the receptive impulses of the soul, the soul life grows weak. That is why one speaks of [the] dryness [of the life of the imagination]. The artist knows that art cannot have an effect if it is taken from the mere life of the imagination. Yes, one recognizes works of art by whether they are created from the life of the soul or from abstract ideas.

[ 9 ] Underlying such a feeling is the awareness of the powerlessness of the life of the imagination. And since our ideas are, in fact, what truly make us conscious human beings in life, and since we recognize that these ideas actually penetrate deeply into our inner life, the question now arises: Is that all there is to these ideas—what, so to speak, ripples on the surface without penetrating into the deeper regions of the inner life? Here we are faced with the “most primitive” question of the hidden life of the soul. Nevertheless, one can only enter into the essence of the deeper life of the soul—its sensations and feelings—by starting from the everyday—from this “primitive” question.

[ 10 ] Now we all know that what we experience in the conscious waking state unfolds as follows: Anyone who has an eye for the peculiarities of their inner life will realize that, in the course of what lives in their imagination, emotional and psychological experiences are intertwined with the images themselves. Only with the most remarkable images do we truly feel that we take pleasure in them or experience sorrow through them. This interplay of moods with the life of the imagination, however, is fundamentally always present. No one can say that anything takes place in their conscious life that does not entail some degree—however slight—of pleasure or suffering, hope or fear, and the like. We never actually experience pure imagination—a mere life of ideas in consciousness—in everyday life; rather, whatever takes place in our conscious life is always connected to what we might call a mood, a feeling, or a sensation.

[ 11 ] Over the course of a person’s life, however, this element of the life of the imagination behaves quite differently from that which appears as a state of mind—as a kind of accompanying phenomenon of the life of the imagination. You can see this when you try, after ten or twenty years, to recall something you have experienced more or less clearly in your imagination, so that you can recreate the event in your imagination. If certain things were linked—some associated with great pain, others with great joy—we will always realize: this joy, this pain, do not arise in memory with the same intensity and energy. If, for example, someone has experienced a death, they know that the pain cannot be relived in memory with the same intensity as it originally had in their emotional life. The same is true of joy. In our memory, therefore, mental images play a completely different role.

[ 12 ] The question may be raised: Yes, but now that the images we form of painful or joyful events remain vivid in our memory, where are the emotional states, where is the emotional life that was connected to these images? – Now, this question—as “primitive” as it may be—is not quite so simple. And many people will still dispute that an answer to such questions can be given using strictly logical methods. But much of what has been said about fundamental questions in spiritual research does enable us to gain some insight into the fate of the moods associated with these images. While ideas can be conjured up again from memory, the same cannot happen with moods. If we look at life as intently and thoroughly as is necessary to answer such a question, we find in every person we have known for a long time: It is this person’s entire state of being that is expressed in the fact that they are a more or less cheerful person, such that their cheerfulness is expressed not only in how they perceive the external world emotionally, but also in how they feel harmonious and healthy within their own constitution. When we speak of a person’s overall constitution, we must not separate their psychological experience from what we call their overall constitution; this also includes those moods that depend on our physical constitution—on how our blood flows and how thoughts proceed in our brain and nervous system.

[ 13 ] Let us consider a person’s overall state of mind at a certain moment, when he is not in a cheerful mood in his entire being, when he is melancholic or downcast, or weary of what presents itself as his overall state of mind; if we consider this state of a person and compare it to how we knew him in earlier days of his life, we will [...] find there moods, sensations, and feelings that do not enter into our memories. They do not dwell in those realms from which we draw our memories, but have descended into the deeper strata of life, where work is being done on the constitution that constitutes our inner life, yet which, as a state of mind, is also connected to our entire physical constitution. Whether we are full of joy and hope, melancholic and downcast, eager to work, tired, exhausted, or ready to lash out at anyone—this has come about because these moods separate from the life of the imagination and plunge down into the deep foundations of the life of the soul. Where, so to speak, our personal happiness in life is forged, we see a certain thread separating itself from the life of the imagination; we see that part which accompanies this life of the imagination plunge downward and work in the hidden depths of the soul, where our very being interacts with our personal state of mind. There we have an element that, while it arises from conscious experiences, always submerges into those regions where it can work on our entire life.

[ 14 ] At times, however, that which is so deeply submerged in our overall state of being is brought to the surface again, but brought to the surface in a certain way—not merely when our ordinary, everyday consciousness, through which we connect with external life, is temporarily suspended in a certain sense—what has been submerged there, we sometimes see rising up in the semi-conscious states of the dream world. That is why the images of the dream world appear to us in such a significant way that they transport us to distant, past times in our lives. Had we tried to recall in some way what had happened, we might have gotten a clear picture—or perhaps not. But what we experienced emotionally, we cannot bring to the surface. But anyone who examines these dream images will find that a person expresses ancient emotional states through the symbols of their dreams. For example, it may well be that someone has reached a respectable age and is no longer inclined to go out into the street with a paper cap or a toy sword and boss people around, as children do. They will have a recollection of what happened to them back then, but those moods can no longer exert their power in waking life. Instead, they take hold in dreams. And it is not uncommon for someone of a certain age to dream once every night that he is actually a major or that he is “traveling” in his dream. In his waking life, he may recall what he read in children’s books, but he no longer experiences the bliss he felt back then. Yet in his dreams, he does.

[ 15 ] Where everyday life ends, where a person feels the images of their imagination in a dream, there we find that the states of mind which play out and take effect in the hidden depths of the soul’s life rise to the surface—if they have not yet been used—and this is important—to work on our physical constitution. If they still dwell in a corner of our hidden inner life, then they surface in dreams. When someone is transported in a dream to earlier states of mind, the very way in which they emerge in the dream reveals to us: certain feelings have remained; they have not yet exhausted their power, which is why the half-asleep life of the dream brings them up into our half-consciousness—the dream images present themselves to us. Here we have an example of how we can penetrate the ceiling of our everyday [state of] consciousness, how, in fact, what lives in the hidden life of the soul can come to mind, but how these images are not governed by the external world; rather, they live entirely within the moods present in our inner soul life.

[ 16 ] This is something quite primitive, but it can lead our understanding to what can be explored through spiritual science from the hidden depths of the soul. For we see a characteristic of the moods that withdraw from our life of imagination; we observe a characteristic that they acquire, and one that is extraordinarily important: by letting go of the images, they gain a power. And we can say to ourselves: Whereas we previously spoke of the powerlessness of conscious cognition regarding the life of imagination, we can see precisely in this how spent moods transform themselves, or how moods—without any intervention on our part—present themselves to us as dream images in such a way that we lack the power to correct them through logic, [we see] how this emotional life breaks free from external experience through the senses, breaks free from external thinking, which is bound to the brain. Thus, this subconscious life of the soul acquires a certain power, a certain reality.

[ 17 ] To begin with, this reality is one that leads us only within ourselves, into our own reality. Dreams such as those just discussed are a reflection of what we have stored up in terms of fear and hope, anxiety and confidence in life. But we arrive at something that affects our inner state and finds expression in our dream life. In doing so, we do not step outside ourselves, but we come to know a reality and must say: These emotional states had to detach themselves in order to become real within us.

[ 18 ] How these constitutions—these states of mind down there—work, and how that which detaches itself from the ideas works, can be seen when one considers the training—often discussed—that one must undergo if one truly wishes to become a knower of the spiritual world. You will find—though this, of course, cannot be discussed in detail today—you will find the instructions on how to penetrate into what has descended into the depths of the soul and what causes us to appear healthy or sick, and which reveals itself only in fleeting dream images, in the book *How to Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds*.

[ 19 ] Through training, through imagination, [inspiration], and intuition—when the soul immerses itself fully—not in such an indefinite way as in the two cases mentioned—when the soul immerses itself fully, then the human being learns, albeit only as a first step, to know himself. All methods of meditation and concentration, in a certain sense, involve the study of deep self-knowledge. They do not lead to the kind of self-knowledge that one thinks one has exhausted by merely casting a casual glance at the forces with which one acts in everyday life; rather, they lead the person to that place within them where that deep individuality resides, in which those moods are found. One comes to know what lies dormant in the hidden depths of the soul, preserved as if under a blanket. And here one must become acquainted with the fact that when forces emerge from the soul—whether for one’s healing or illness—one can gain entirely new insights into the peculiarities of this hidden self.

[ 20 ] After all, only genuine findings from spiritual research can be cited. In particular, a person comes to understand how moods of joy, rapture, and bliss; moods of sadness and melancholy; impressions of ugliness or beauty; impressions of error and delusion; and impressions of truth or wisdom affect their entire being. Indeed, one comes to recognize that all of the above—the impressions we experience regarding joy or sadness, beauty or ugliness—are connected to the arising and passing away of something hidden deep within the human being, so that when we come to this realization, we no longer remain indifferent to the external world, but rather come to understand: Certain things that take place in the world have a truly destructive effect, taking something away; others are so enriching that they nurture us.

[ 21 ] We cannot say that at the very moment we—consciously or unconsciously—tell lies, we are actually destroying something. We cannot say that what in lies has a destructive effect on our being—and what in truth has a life-giving effect—is the same as the forces of becoming and passing away in the external world, but rather something akin to them.

[ 22 ] He who does not base his understanding on the point where the soul is either nurtured or destroyed by what takes place within his mind is not following the right path. Self-knowledge, which takes place in the hidden depths of the soul, is therefore not something that could have been entrusted to humanity at a time when humanity had not yet matured enough to [attain] this self-knowledge, which is connected to the forces of becoming and passing away; it must only now be incorporated into humanity. Weak humanity was spared from realizing how devastating lies and deception are, and how uplifting honesty and sincerity are. It is usually the case that people believe lies and deception—or honesty and sincerity—are things that can be judged only through concepts. But what exists without being subject to such judgment penetrates deep into our innermost soul life and acts there as a real force.

[ 23 ] Self-knowledge is the true starting point for all higher knowledge. A person who wishes to understand what lies beyond the sensory realm of the external world must delve deep into their own self and will come to realize that moral and emotional forces are not merely abstract concepts, but something that reaches down to the core and is decisive not only for our entire human worth but for the very essence of human existence. Just as we grow into the external sensory world through our body—which we wear as a garment of our self and which possesses the sense organs—just as we see this sensory world with the eyes of the body, hear it with the ears, and establish a connection with it through the intellect, which has its instrument in the brain, develop an inner re-experiencing of what exists in the sensory world outside of us—in other words, just as we enter into a relationship with the external sensory world through our outer human being, so too do we come into contact with the spiritual forces and impulses of the external environment through the human being whom we—as described here—develop within ourselves.

[ 24 ] When a person looks out into the world with their eyes, they perceive colors and shapes. Once they have discovered their true self, which lies within the deeper powers of the soul, what exists in the external sensory world no longer appears in the usual way; rather, the realities of the external world also rise up, and we come to know a new connection between things—that which stands between the beings of the external world.

[ 25 ] As we now take the first step into those qualities of the soul’s powers that have both destructive and constructive effects, we come to realize that the inner self expands, so that we experience it not only in its coming into being and passing away, but also as interacting with outer reality—with the spiritual reality of the outer world. Thus, images of the spiritual environment arise in these hidden depths of the soul.

[ 26 ] Human beings come to know the spiritual world indirectly through their own selves. Much of what appears simple to ordinary perception—which remains confined to the external sensory world—and much of what seems impenetrable or even random there is revealed to us through such insight, within which the self merges, in its hidden depths, with the external world. What is peculiar here is this: The deeper we penetrate into our own self, the more the horizon with which we are connected as an outer world expands; the more we dive into our inner depths, the more of the spiritual in the outer world we recognize. Diving into the powers of the soul means going beyond faith to gain knowledge of the spiritual world. For down there we are connected much more deeply to the essence of things than we can be through the senses and the intellect, which is bound to the physical brain. If one can say that consciousness has created a broader horizon for itself, then at the same time an expansion of one’s own self and a penetration into the spiritual worlds has been achieved. One reaches the hidden depths of the soul only by gradually penetrating the spiritual world outside oneself. In the process, for those who penetrate these depths through proper training—by observing all that we can attain through the insights of the higher world—a true understanding of the spiritual foundations of existence emerges. What emerges is what is described by spiritual science and what you can find in theosophical books.

[ 27 ] But it is possible—even though in our time an unquestionable insight into the spiritual world can be gained only through training— that certain individuals gain insights stemming from ancient hereditary traits—through the inheritance of clairvoyant qualities—insights that are nothing other than a descent into the hidden depths of the soul, so that an expansion of the hidden human being beyond the external world takes place, through which the human being perceives what otherwise remains hidden from the external life of the senses and the intellect. This gives rise to intuitions—all that a person can perceive without formal training—including the destiny of the soul, the destiny of the soul between death and rebirth in the sense of reincarnation. On the one hand, this can occur through formal training; on the other hand, these hidden depths of the soul can “push their way up” on their own. Like dreams, what lies in the deeper recesses and cannot be perceived by the senses or the intellect can be released; it can be brought to light through “second sight” or [deuteroscopy]. Insights can also be brought to light regarding the destinies of the human soul, even when it is not embodied in a physical body.

[ 28 ] We simply need to realize in what way one thing or another is beneficial or not for human beings; we need to realize that there is a tangible difference between seeing through spiritual training and the kind of seeing that, as it were, surges up of its own accord from the hidden realm into the known depths of the soul. There is a fundamental difference. When a person enters the spiritual world through proper training, such as that described, for example, in *The Secret Science*, it happens in such a way that, after penetrating the depths of the soul, the person consciously brings up the forces hidden there. However, visions can also arise with the full vividness of a play of colors and tones, corresponding to what we receive as sensory impressions. But while we receive these impressions in such a way that we know we must submit to the control of the external world, we allow the colors and sounds of the visions to affect us without doing anything about them—and then we become fantasists, dreamers. Such visions are beyond our inner volition, our creative power, and our spiritual willpower.

[ 29 ] Conversely—during our training, we must experience this in the hidden depths of our soul in such a way that we know: What is there has been brought forth by our free will, by our creative power. Only when one knows: “What you perceive is created by you” [gap in the transcript], for you must—because you are experiencing something spiritual that is otherwise imperceptible in the outer world—fill what you experience with colors and sounds; only then is a person protected from delusion. If the visions appear to him with the full vividness of a play of colors, then he is someone who is hallucinating. The moment what is seen presents itself as a sensory perception, it is a hallucination; as long as that is the case, it does not yet belong to the realm of true clairvoyance, but rather to the realm where the hidden powers of the soul emerge without the person’s conscious willpower and without deliberate training.

[ 30 ] When the things that a trained clairvoyant can control—in terms of how they present themselves to him—enter his mental imagination without such conscious willpower, and without the inner autonomy developed through training coming into play, then one is in the realm of untrained clairvoyance, and then the person is at the mercy of the forces that play a role in the hidden depths of their soul; then they are not free. Then they are subject to all the dangers they must face when they are in contact with the supersensible reality without conscious willpower. In the sensory world, every phantasm reveals itself for what it is. In the spiritual world, however, at the very moment when things present themselves of their own accord, it is no longer possible to distinguish objectively between reality and fantasy, and there lies the danger that the sphere of human will will be affected in some way, and that the human being—instead of facing the spiritual world as an individual—will be at the mercy of the forces at work in the hidden depths of his soul; just as the unconscious life of the soul otherwise surges upward, like the rippling of ocean waves over the ocean depths, so the “I,” one’s own personality, [is] as if tossed up and then plunged back down, [and one is guided from another direction, by] hallucinations [and visions], [...] carried by hidden depths of the soul, and it may indeed happen [that this] is presented to the outsider—to the one who wishes to investigate scientifically—as a phenomenon, as something definite, [so that the latter] can distinguish [between] what, of what he sees, is true objective reality, and what is fantasy; but fruitful observation can only arise when a trained clairvoyant exercises critical judgment.

[ 31 ] It can be a fruitful exercise to draw insights in this way from the depths of the soul, and since science is permitted to take [as its subject] everything, no matter where it may come from—which it must [then] incorporate into true knowledge—there can be no question of anything impermissible, [if] these things—which even the untrained clairvoyant perceives [and which] may be based on correct, useful perception—are examined, as they lead incredibly deep into the hidden recesses of the soul. What the objective, critical clairvoyant can contribute regarding the facts that arise through untrained clairvoyance can be extraordinarily fruitful, especially today. I would like to point out again and again that we now have a wonderful book—as I have mentioned on several occasions—that sheds light on clairvoyance from this perspective as well as from the so-called esoteric perspective: *The Mystery of Man*, written by Ludwig Deinhard.

[ 32 ] Thus, when discussing the hidden depths of the soul’s life and distinguishing between proper training and that form of clairvoyance which breaks free with elemental force and rises from the subconscious into the conscious, one must not overlook the fact that the latter must be examined with critical methods, whereas the one who has expanded his consciousness within himself can take on the role of the critic and exercise control themselves. A time will come in our culture when individuality will express itself more fully, when humanity will “enter” into what can be attained through properly trained clairvoyance, and when this will be integrated into culture. Once this is made clear to them, people will then be able to test it in life itself, in the ordinary things of life.

[ 33 ] There is yet another difference between the trained clairvoyant and the one who has “unleashed” his clairvoyance through elemental, primitive forces, namely that the trained clairvoyant first arrives at insights that are general; and he comes to understand how the visible human body differs from the supersensible human being, to understand how the human being, as a multi-part being, is endowed with visible and invisible parts, to understand what lies between birth and death—not merely in one life, but in many. He comes to understand everything that arises as experiences in this life—within the span of birth and death and between death and new birth—as well as to understand the origin of the human being and the course of the great world order, an example of which we will present here in the lecture the day after tomorrow. The clairvoyant arrives at an understanding of matters that concern all human beings, and he works his way through this process by taking each step with great caution, so that he first becomes acquainted with his own intellectual processes and does not recklessly make statements about the fates of any disembodied soul. He can work his way toward perceiving such individual circumstances and experiencing the spiritual forces at play in everyday life, but he advances from the general to the individual only with great effort. He first recognizes that human beings have an etheric body in general, but only later does he recognize the individual etheric body.

[ 34 ] Only in the case of the untrained clairvoyant is the opposite true when it comes to delving into the hidden depths of the soul; he begins with visions that actually need to be strictly controlled; he begins with the particular, with the everyday. What is peculiar is that, deep down, he has little interest in what are generally considered great insights. It is precisely among those who have retained an ancient, atavistic form of clairvoyance that one can observe a lack of interest in the things [that spiritual science must prove to be significant for all human beings]. And nowhere among clairvoyants are there people as haughty as those who claim to possess a form of clairvoyance handed down in a natural way.

[ 35 ] Thus we see that which leads us into the hidden depths of our inner life—and what makes us healthy or sick there—and we see that which connects us to the spiritual world. Now, it is natural that this does not come into being only through recognition—that it does not exist only when a person delves down and beholds it; it is just as true that it existed even before recognition as it is true that the whale existed before a person saw it.

[ 36 ] Thus, through our hidden inner life, we are deeply connected to the spiritual world that exists. Spiritual undercurrents come into play here, and we should not be surprised that a much deeper essence lies beneath than what rises to the surface and enters our consciousness. We see that the foundations that connect us to the spiritual world actually lie there, in the hidden depths, and that forces originating from the spiritual worlds are at work there. Only a part enters our consciousness, so that our consciousness is only a part of what we actually are. But this human consciousness exists precisely because the human being is able to elevate to a higher level that which can rise up from the hidden depths of the soul. For we see these things emerging in manifold ways—they might emerge distorted or embellished, things of which we otherwise know nothing—but what penetrates from the spiritual worlds into the depths of our soul and strives upward asserts itself in the sublime and the beautiful, which consciousness can control.

[ 37 ] What happens, then, when that which penetrates from the spiritual worlds into the hidden depths of the soul’s life is transformed on its way up into consciousness? Then it is the case that these impressions can find expression as artistic imagination—as that which no one but the artists can tell us about: “These things are there; they well up from the depths of the soul.”—And then we grasp the powerlessness of ordinary consciousness; we grasp how the artist seeks to lay bare the depths of his soul, even though he does not have them before him as the clairvoyant does, and how it seems more important to him to see how things interpenetrate one another.

[ 38 ] Everything a person can have in their consciousness without being stimulated by the outside world comes from the hidden depths of the soul. Even what each person needs to make this life a fruitful one must rise up from the hidden depths of the soul’s life. It is not only the poet who needs this, nor only the artist; the businessman and the engineer as well—everyone needs this enriching inspiration from these hidden depths of the soul. We can already see where these depths are truly rooted when what lies down there rises into consciousness. When it permeates a person and presents itself in such a way that it is perceptible, comprehensible, and experiential, then it depends on the way in which the person can receive it. If a person has the capacity not only to take in what can be perceived through the external senses and the intellect bound to the senses, but also has the capacity to take in—through images and beautiful imagination—what lives in the hidden depths of his soul, then he can express in images what he cannot draw from nature, but which lives in the hidden depths of his soul.

[ 39 ] But if a person is inherently prone to lying, then the hidden depths do indeed exert their influence, but in such a way that, on the path from the hidden depths to the manifest [the person, through that aspect of the hidden soul forces which he cannot control in relation to external reality, takes on the character and appears as a liar, a deceiver, or the like]. Thus we can see how these hidden soul forces can make one person an artist and another a liar. This is what one must recognize in order to penetrate into what a person possesses in his hidden soul forces.

[ 40 ] That is all we should aim to achieve for now: to recognize that everything that takes place in conscious soul life is rooted in the depths of the soul—depths that we find in so many other forms as well.

[ 41 ] In closing, I would just like to say—since time is pressing—that in our everyday lives, precisely in our consciousness, in our interaction with the external world, and in our perception through the senses and the intellect, we merge with this external world; that in the most important matters, we cannot distinguish what we have within—the core of our being—from the external world. Human beings are not capable of detaching the core of their soul from that with which they are outwardly intertwined. That is why they must take the path inward. They can take this path when they imagine how the sun rises from the dawn; what we experience inwardly in that moment can best be recognized by the fact that it is present in one person but not in another. And when we feel compassion for something our fellow human beings are experiencing, we cannot separate what lives in hidden depths from the sight of that compassion and pain; we become one with it.

[ 42 ] But there is a path that leads from this conscious inner life into something that can be gleaned from the faith of a man as great as Goethe: that what is significant is not what exists in the outer world, but what lives in the spiritual realm—and fundamentally, all the starry worlds, everything that is active in the outer world, must be included in this.

[ 43 ] If it does not awaken a life of its own within the human soul, if we remain stuck only in what connects us to the outside world, if we remain only in consciousness, then we will not penetrate into the spiritual realm. But we can find the path into the spiritual world.

[ 44 ] When we look back on the past and see: Our parents and siblings can tell us about this up to a certain point; but when we go back to the point where our memory awakens—then we see that we have not only gone through external experiences, but that something else is connected to these experiences: the bearer of our experiences, that which we call our “I.” By looking back on our lives, we can observe our own development. There we feel how we have become more and more mature, for we sense that we have gained life experience. There is one thing we must tell ourselves: The most important thing we have learned is actually something we cannot put to use in life. We have attained our greatest maturity through the mistakes we have made. It is only after we have done something that we know how to do it better. People learn the most important things through what cannot be repeated—most of all from what has passed. It is precisely through the most intimate aspects of our soul that we sense something has emerged within us, about which the materialist says: When a person passes through the gate of death, it disappears, or at most is handed over to the human race, to cultural life. – The spiritual person, however, knows that what he has experienced in his innermost being, he cannot pass on to anyone else. When he ventures into the hidden depths, it becomes clear that what we allow to mature within us can be fulfilled directly within us. When we trace our lives and realize that we were [...] born into certain family circumstances, into a certain environment, then something happens—when we do not perceive our destiny through ordinary consciousness, but appeal to forces that are somewhat hidden from ordinary consciousness— something that cannot so much become knowledge, but rather can become an impulse of the will, as we look back on our life and our destiny as it was when we were placed into life, but then resolve to turn away from the experiences of ordinary consciousness. Anyone who confronts destiny with ordinary consciousness, anyone who says that everything has befallen us by chance, will resent destiny; they will feel resentment. If we move away from these tendencies—such as antipathy and sympathy toward fate—and appeal to a force we can develop within ourselves, to the force of self-effacement—allowing our own will to be silent for a while, facing this fate with equanimity, and surrendering for a moment to the thought: How is it that this fate exists? After all, it continues through our “I.” Wasn’t our “I” there before?

[ 45 ] If we seek our true self by calmly contemplating our destiny, and if we now trace our true self further back, we find that through such a deeper contemplation of life, our true self merges with destiny, and we come to understand our destiny as if our true self were already contained within it and brought about by it before we even existed. Then we come to see that, with the best that is within us—and which we have allowed to mature—we pass through the gate of death, and that what we have experienced in previous lives rejoins our “I” as destiny in our next life. We see that it is at work in the depths of the soul, and when we leave this body, what we have acquired as forces continues to work within us to shape a new life for us. Thus we see our own hidden essence of this soul life building a new existence, see it becoming real down there, becoming constructive forces within the hidden life of the soul.

[ 46 ] When we view the world in this way, we rise from the hidden depths into the spiritual world. And the insight that penetrates into these depths is as truly connected to the spiritual worlds as thinking, feeling, and willing are the forces of our soul—to which the soul clings as to the bonds that penetrate from the spiritual world. By penetrating into these depths, the human being finds his connection with the macrocosm; the forces grow out of the microcosm, [and the human being grows] into the macrocosm, just as [it is depicted] in the drama *The Trial of the Soul*, [and every] soul can say to itself:

Worldly thoughts dwell in your mind,
Worldly forces weave within your feelings,
Worldly beings act through your will.
Lose yourself in worldly thoughts,
Experience yourself through worldly forces,
Create yourself from beings of will.
Do not end in the distances of the worlds
Through the dream-like play of thought ---;
Begin in the expanses of the spirit,
And end in the depths of your own soul: —
You will find divine goals,
Recognizing yourself within yourself.