The Rudolf Steiner Archive

21. Spiritual Science and the Future of Humanity

[ 1 ] Our consciousness retreats into darkness when we try to trace within ourselves what is out there in the world. Human beings cannot be observed as if in a test tube. The processes of the inner world elude consciousness.

[ 2 ] That is one side of the matter; the other is what lives in the soul. Soul life exists only when we experience it as we do in the external world. One cannot experience it solely through other people. As soon as it becomes external—for example, when experienced through others—soul life withdraws. The soul then vanishes into an indefinite darkness.

[ 3 ] Natural laws are concepts of spiritual beings. For the average person, concepts and ideas are merely abstractions.

[ 4 ] The humanities have only one tool: the human soul. Yet it is not something fixed or complete; powers and abilities lie dormant within it.

Waking and Sleeping.

[ 5 ] We do not have a passive relationship with the outside world; rather, we feel sympathy and antipathy. A sense of truth. As soon as one observes one’s passions, they change. Self-knowledge transforms a person. — Mystics turn their gaze away from the outside world and inward. A small example: When faced with a stroke of fate, one might ask: What strengths and abilities have I developed since then? Without this, we would not have been swept up in a chain of events.

[ 6 ] Discoveries of what is changing at the depths of the soul—of what lies there—give rise to temptations and trials. The Little Guardian of the Threshold. Through this, the human being reaches beyond themselves to the core of their human being. Just as the outer world is structured by the spiritual world, the inner world is structured by one’s own karma. Just as the edelweiss grows only in the mountains, so too does every being have a destiny according to its nature.

[ 7 ] Since Redi, a different belief has prevailed in science: nothing living exists without a seed of life. Thus, people will later ask: How is it possible that people did not believe in theosophy in the past? Everything has the same foundation—the great Monon—in both the inner and outer worlds. We are integrated into the spiritual world and the external world. A shared spiritual reality lies behind both. The world thus becomes transparent on both sides.

[ 8 ] The present age is one unlike any that has ever existed. The development of the future is driving us toward individuality in the future. Through our own souls, we must find our best place in life. Steam propels us forward; in the same way, truth is a driving force, not an abstract concept. In Fichte, for example, there was already a premonition of the spiritual world and of the possibility of transformation as human beings—the power of the soul—as early as [the year] 1811. [...] Even thousands of years ago, Zarathustra arrived at the same conclusion.