The Rudolf Steiner Archive

11. Truths and Errors in Spiritual Research

[ 1 ] This hostile attitude and resistance to the spiritual movement are most understandable to those grounded in our spiritual research. Schopenhauer also says: “Such is the fate of poor truth that, at the moment it appears, it initially seems paradoxical, and yet it cannot help it; its wingspan is so vast and wide that individuality perishes beneath it.”

[ 2 ] Today, the humanities have the natural sciences as their adversary—but not the true natural sciences. In 1909, Charles Eliot gave a speech on the future of religions, in which he stated: “Human beings possess within themselves—and must always possess—a physical body and a spiritual core, which they can explore only through an understanding of the spiritual and soul.”

[ 3 ] Two questions about life recur time and again: first, the question of human destiny, which elevates a person by crushing them, and second, the question of the nature of the human soul. These two questions gnaw at and torment the depths of the human soul. The hopelessness of finding an answer makes people sick, even physically.

[ 4 ] Two kinds of circumstances arise at the birth of a human being: one is richly gifted and full of promise, while the other’s prospects are bleak. That is how varied fate can be. And then there is the question of immortality. This gives rise, on the one hand, to fear and, on the other, to the desire for life to unfold in one way or another.

[ 5 ] One can believe in immortality for selfish reasons, and yet not believe in it from a moral perspective of self-sacrifice. But the individual, the personal, is what is most valuable. Will it disappear with death? It would be a violation of the world’s economy if something were brought to its highest potential and then lost. External science is bound to the senses and the brain; the soul and spirit cannot be explored through them. Spiritual science stands on the same ground as natural science. A plant consists of countless individual cells, [says Schleiden]. The human eye must make use of the microscope and the telescope for the stars. Human beings cannot penetrate the living body. The essence of the human soul cannot be reached by such external means. Human knowledge has certain limits. It cannot fathom the true nature of the soul. One cannot penetrate the essence of the soul after death and before birth through the power of thought or other means.

[ 6 ] One can [however] strengthen and fortify one’s inner spiritual life. One should simply not do so using external methods, such as spiritualism. Some researchers attempt to get to the bottom of the soul using external experimental methods. Rochas, the serious researcher, studied people in whom the external aspects of inner life could apparently be demonstrated. To do so, he used a medium. A medium is like a human automaton. Magnetic strokes extinguish the active life of the soul. As a result, the medium can experience a different state of the soul—for example, as if it were ten years old, then its first experiences, such as when it was just learning to write, and then as if it were an infant. It can then be transported to a state prior to birth—a result as dark as chaos. One can transport it further and further; it can feel like an old man, then like a young child. This is how the modern researcher seeks to explore the spiritual realm when he has the object before him.

[ 7 ] But the spirit cannot be brought down through external means, but only through pure spiritual experiences. The exploration of the soul is a purely inner process, possible only through inner methods. One’s own thinking, feeling, and willing can be strengthened by enhancing the power of thought, which in the waking state is bound to the external senses. This power can be sharpened through practices known as meditation and contemplation. First and foremost, these should be applied to the power of thought when, out of one’s innermost will, one concentrates on thoughts that do not arise from external stimuli. These thoughts have a self-educating effect in that they strengthen our power of thought through symbolic imagery—such as two glasses—to enhance the life of the soul. This is true even if it is called crazy or nonsensical. Yet there is something in life to which it refers: love. It is like geometry. Geometry, too, works with images and symbols—[as with] a medal.

[ 8 ] For some, this takes effect quickly; for others, it takes many years. Through effort, the organs are strengthened; all the soul’s power is concentrated on a single point. In this way, powers are drawn from the soul. One does not jump from one thing to another as one normally does. A quarter of an hour or longer [is sufficient]. Every thought while awake destroys a delicate structure in the brain, which is restored through sleep. Science already speaks of assimilation and dissimilation. The process of destruction that occurs when we think with the brain reflects our thoughts back to us. The materialistic thinker believes that our brain thinks. But it is an inner process. The brain is destroyed during ordinary thinking. The thought is reflected back by the brain and thus has a destructive effect on it. Concentration, meditation, and contemplation do not make a person drowsy. Only beginners complain about this. This stems from the fact that a person’s power of thought finds it difficult to detach itself from the brain. Then we perceive the brain as something that remains untouched. If a person wishes to experience the power of thought as such, they must free it from the brain. Then the person feels how the power of thought becomes a purely spiritual entity. These experiences are the most profound.

[ 9 ] When awake, one feels as though one is inside one’s skin. Now a sensation arises of being outside the body, of looking at it. What one previously called “I” becomes, like an object, its external physicality. This is connected to the feeling that one is drawn toward one’s body with a hundred and hundreds upon hundreds of forces. Once one has attained this, one knows two things: what one is in human life as a sleeping human being, and what draws one back to the body. Du Bois-Reymond understands only the sleeping human being, as he said. But the nature of air cannot be known through the life processes of the lungs. Awakening into spiritual-soul life is a process of drawing oneself in; falling asleep is when the spiritual-soul life passes over into our surroundings, just as when one exhales air. The amount of air we have inhaled belongs to the atmosphere, just as the spiritual-soul life belongs to the spiritual-soul world. The spiritual researcher knows what is experienced outside the body, as if the air could look down upon the lungs. Human beings come to understand the connection between their soul-spiritual nature and the body; they come to understand it in its independence from the physical body; they come to understand, even before birth, that it previously lived in the spiritual world, and how it proceeds even toward physical incarnation with a pair of parents; they come to know themselves in the prenatal state—all through the development of independent thinking.

[ 10 ] The next spiritual power that can become independent is the power of speech, which flows outward in actual spoken words. Humans have the Broca’s area; speech prepares it so that it becomes what it is. Science confuses cause and effect. Through motor forces, the larynx is set in motion during speech; something intervenes in the vibrating larynx, and from there the air is set in motion. Just as the power of thought is separated from the brain, so too is the power of speech separated from the Broca’s system [organ] by allowing meditation to be imbued with feelings and sensations during the meditation “Radiant wisdom flows in the light” [...].

[ 11 ] This is not an external, sensory effect; otherwise, one would not be considered a dreamer, but a fool. In this meditation, one seeks to unite in enthusiasm with the radiant, sovereign wisdom; then the power of speech breaks free from physicality. One lives within it silently and in stillness, retains something inwardly, breaks away, and experiences in the soul what leads even deeper than the first. One looks not only into one’s own previous earthly life [...], but also looks back on earlier earthly lives. Through this, it becomes certain that earthly life will be followed by a purely spiritual life, and that another earthly life will follow. Consciousness expands through repeated earthly lives. Thus the spiritual researcher, like the chemist, arrives at his conclusions. These are not arbitrary means, but means by which one arms one’s soul life, just as the eye is armed by the microscope. Then another soul force is equipped and strengthened: the one that manifests itself in blood circulation and the beating of the heart. In ordinary life, when we feel shame or fear, a spiritual-soul process transforms into something that even affects the blood—so profoundly that our blood must be detached and rendered independent.

[ 12 ] What happens when meditation is infused with will? “In the light, the ruling wisdom reigns and weaves.” Even with the will, one must fully immerse oneself in such a meditation; then we unleash soul forces that reach into the entire cosmos, allowing us to catch a glimpse of the origin and destination of our Earth. Then one sees: The successive earthly lives once had a beginning; the Earth once existed for the very first time. The Earth was once born out of a spiritual state; [it] will pass back into a spiritual state. There are also many other methods for achieving such results. One must become a spiritual researcher in this way, [which] is briefly outlined here. But to create a picture, one must be a painter; one does not [need to be a painter] to enjoy it. It would be a small thing if it were only for painters. To fathom spiritual truths, one must be a spiritual researcher; to understand them, one need only apply common sense, even though they are regarded as heresy or daydreaming.

[ 13 ] But errors are also possible. One attains higher faculties by developing them as described. In this way, one awakens to higher senses: spiritual eyes and spiritual ears—[as] Goethe [says]. But how does one attain healthy faculties? With diseased eyes, one sees imprecisely, with an obstruction in the eye or in twilight. Thus, one man saw incorrectly; he saw what was in his own eye—in which he had a foreign body—and shot at it with a revolver. The thinking, feeling, and willing that have been set free must be healthy. This happens when the starting point is healthy—namely, when one applies sound judgment, without fanaticism, daydreaming, or fantasy. Otherwise, with the newly liberated powers of thought and speech, one sees ghostly things that belong to one’s own soul just as the speck in the eye does. A freethinker’s almanac once stated that children should not be taught religion because they do not arrive at religious concepts on their own. But that is not logical, for a person does not learn to speak on their own either if they are placed on a deserted island. It depends on absolutely sound common sense. Otherwise, one falls into a state of powerlessness, or it is like being under anesthesia, when consciousness does not function properly. It depends on a healthy moral constitution of the soul, on the moral strength of life. Otherwise, a person does not love what arises in spiritual life, but rather spiritual impotence. Otherwise, we want to have everything in the spiritual realm [just as] in physical life. Then one perceives ghosts, like spiritualists or similar people.

[ 14 ] The soul brings its spiritual powers with it from previous earthly lives, not from an ancestral lineage. The present earthly life stems from previous earthly lives. We then learn to understand our destiny [when] we understand our past lives: Misfortune has made me the person I am today. — An Alpine plant thrives only where it is suited to its environment. Thus, the questions of destiny and immortality are resolved. We grasp immortality through evolution; we experience evolution. A sound mind and sound morality lead to spiritual research. Giordano Bruno expanded the blue vault of heaven; in the same way, spiritual research expands the boundaries of human life beyond birth and death. Away with the firmament limited by birth and death. We move from transformation to transformation. Once spiritual science becomes part of education, people will feel, as they grow old, that within them lives that which shapes the next life; they will experience immortality, the seed and core of the life to come.

[ 15 ] In closing, I would like to express a thought inspired by a quote from Goethe about movement. It appeared as early as in ancient Greece and has recently resurfaced. It was said: Movement does not exist; the arrow is always in one place, then in another, over and over again, but always at rest. Goethe refuted this theory as illogical, just as the squaring of the circle cannot be proven mathematically. Yet it can be proven—but in a different way. Goethe says:

You may spot something hostile,
Stay calm, stay silent;
And if they deny you the freedom to move,
Go right under their noses.

[ 16 ] Or you could also say:

Hostile things may happen,
But you, remain calm, remain cheerful,
And even if they deny the Spirit
Do not dwell on it any further.
In the end, even agree with them on this point,
Perhaps their spirit is in a rather poor state.