The Rudolf Steiner Archive

12. Spiritual Science and the Spiritual Goals of Our Time

[ 1 ] Spiritual Science does not seek to be a new religion, nor is it a sect. Its relationship to the natural sciences is expressed through an analogy: The spiritual scientist relates to ideas and concepts the way a farmer relates to his harvest; he sets aside a portion as seed grain and uses the rest. One can conceive of modern scientific concepts and ideas—or, in another sense, live by them. If one lives by a portion of what the natural sciences provide, taking it in the same way one consumes physical nourishment, then one comes to emphasize spiritual science. The natural sciences call for spiritual science. Consider the example of water in relation to the question: Can the soul-spiritual be recognized in nature? It is present in nature just as hydrogen is present in water. One stands firmly on the ground of spiritual science when one calls it “spiritual chemistry”; spiritual science seeks to separate the spiritual-soul aspects from the physical.

[ 2 ] Anyone who takes an interest in the things that concern them will notice that they retain them, that they develop a good memory for them; the health of our inner life depends on this memory. The ability to look back on our own lives all the way to our childhood depends on our attention; though this may seem easy, “the easy is hard.” This attentiveness can be heightened to boundless degrees; the art of driving this attentiveness farther and farther lies at the heart of what the spiritual researcher must do. This is called the concentration of the soul’s power. The objects one reflects upon must be placed at the center of one’s inner life through one’s own strength and activity. This concentration must be pursued with the utmost energy and the utmost patience. The only instrument is the human soul, and the only experimenter is the spiritual researcher himself. The spiritual researcher must first develop concentrated thinking within himself; the whole person must become attentive to self-chosen ideas, and therefore the spiritual scientific movement is like a continuation of the natural scientific one.

[ 3 ] In reality, it is concepts and ideas that the natural sciences have brought forth. They must be elevated to the status of symbols. Through this, human beings are able to separate the spiritual-soul aspect from the physical-bodily aspect, just as hydrogen is separated from water. I then no longer imagine within my body, but within the spiritual realm. One then knows what it means to think outside one’s brain. It is a sense of being outside the body, initially outside the brain. One then feels one’s body as an external object. Ordinary thinking is a strenuous process that wears down the brain; but usually one does not pay attention to this. The return to the physical brain brings with it a certain fear. Through the application of inner forces, the spiritual-soul aspect can be separated from the physical-bodily aspect. Imagination separated from the body becomes an inner play of facial expressions, a kind of mimicry. What is separated is something active, something dynamic. This inner play of facial expressions has meaning; otherwise, it reveals itself only hintingly when one makes a facial expression.

[ 4 ] Complete devotion is the second step. A person must completely extinguish everything within himself that thinks, feels, and wills, and submerge himself in the flow of world events. This devotion must be intensified to the point of boundlessness—to such an extent that the person brings his ordinary spiritual life to a complete standstill.

[ 5 ] Then he not only experiences himself in the soul-spiritual realm, but he also comes to perceive the spiritual-soul world and finds himself in the midst of spiritual beings. To understand any being, one must immerse oneself in the spiritual world. One must be able to carry one’s own being into these beings. I must experience the spiritual process as my own, and this arises from the cultivation of true devotion, driven to the point of the immeasurable. One must mimic with one’s facial expressions what is taking place within them. One must experience with them what they are experiencing. One cannot experience this passively; in the process of understanding, one must imitate them. This is then expressed in the nuances of one’s own spiritual life.

[ 6 ] Something else is developed through concentration and devotion; once again, one separates the spiritual-soul aspect from the physical. What one uses for speaking in ordinary life can be retained in the soul, rather than used for speaking. In the spiritual body, one can learn to speak inwardly, outside of the physical body. One must not even stir up what is stirred up in the brain, let alone what is stirred up in the rest of the speech apparatus when speaking. A person always thinks in such a way that speech resonates; even when merely thinking, the hidden speech movements take place inwardly. One should associate certain impulses of will with the mental images; for example, one should concentrate on the image of a luminous circle. Imagine that the glowing circle is the symbol of the wisdom that reigns in the world. One must concentrate not only with one’s thinking but also engage with one’s emotions. Then one learns to speak inwardly and can immerse oneself in spiritual beings—and only then can one immerse oneself in one’s own true spiritual being. With the spiritual-soul power separated from the power of speech, one can immerse oneself in what the soul is. Now this occurs: an expansion of the power of memory beyond birth and death. One then stands before the teaching of repeated earthly lives.

[ 7 ] A third element can be distinguished from the body as a soul-spiritual entity. The child cannot yet walk; it has not yet integrated itself into cosmic existence. Herder pointed out how human soul life, in its most intimate essence, depends on the human being assuming an upright posture and turning their face toward the distant heavens. This occurs through an inner force, through the human being themselves. — One can find the forces within the human soul through which a person becomes a true, heaven-gazing earthly human being, through which a person gives themselves their own moral and intellectual character. These forces can be found outside a body; if one experiences them in isolation, one experiences the spiritual beings; then one experiences that there are also beings in the spiritual world who do not attain physicality. You experience them only by using the power that makes you a human being who walks upright. Human beings experience this distinct guiding power as an inner physiognomy. It is through this that one experiences being in other spiritual beings. — By withdrawing oneself from one’s body, one pours oneself into a spiritual world; one knows how to penetrate that region which was formerly traversed only by faith.

[ 8 ] Can anyone become a researcher of the spirit today? No. Just as not everyone can or should become a chemist. — The researcher of the spirit can speak the same language as any other natural scientist. One need not merely believe what the spiritual scientist says—though such a lecture can, of course, only serve to inspire. Understanding is based on comprehending the language that is spoken. Just as one can understand the world of natural science, so too does the spiritual scientist describe it. What appears paradoxical need not necessarily be untrue: little by little, it is elevated to general understanding. The spiritual researcher stands before the true spiritual goals of the present. Natural science has lost sight of the spiritual goals of our time.

[ 9 ] Wilson, the President of the North American Union, repeatedly states in his various writings and reflections—and this theme runs like a common thread through many of his works—that when one looks at the present, one cannot help but notice how rapidly life as a whole has changed. A worker may go his entire life without ever getting to know his employers. The laws, conditions, and norms regarding the relationship between employers and employees that people once established are outdated, and our times have moved beyond them. — He considers it an absolute necessity that this be rectified: what people have conceived regarding coexistence has lagged behind what the times have brought about. Human souls have changed significantly, particularly in the nineteenth century. — Those who keep saying, “We don’t need a new way to rise to the spiritual world; we only need to rise to what once was,” should take this to heart. Such people do not want their goals dictated by the tasks of our time. Humanity cannot be harmonized by renewing old creeds. New inner longings and new mysteries of life are set before the soul. Souls live amid the mysteries of the world, which can no longer be solved in the old way—even if that old way is presented to the souls in the most perfect manner.

[ 10 ] Following the model of the natural sciences, we can penetrate the spiritual world. But spiritual science places demands on people that are still uncomfortable for them today; it requires heightened activity of the soul. People today love to observe things rather than participate. A modern philosopher literally stated the following in a journal: “When I immerse myself in the philosophies of Kant and Spinoza, I feel that the concepts become jumbled for me.” — How does he intend to remedy this? Through the cinematograph, through film! He wants to demonstrate in this way how two concepts unite into a higher one. The editor of this magazine article takes it very seriously, for he even includes a footnote in which he says that it would be commendable if this could satisfy an ancient human longing. So one shouldn’t be surprised if a sign soon appears above a movie theater reading: “Spinoza’s Ethics is being ‘filmed’ here!”

[ 11 ] People do not wish to act in the unseen realm in order to elevate themselves to the level of the spirit; they do not wish to work inwardly; they merely wish to observe. Spiritual science sets forth the opposite requirements. It demands that the soul be inwardly active, that it seek to experience the concept firsthand. You must participate creatively within yourselves in the creation and work of the World Spirit. Modern life demands that the soul of every individual develop inner activity and vitality; otherwise, the soul will be crushed by modern life. Only such a soul will be able to do justice to the life of the future. The counterbalance to the external world must lie in what lives within the soul through the exploration of the spirit. Thus, spiritual science is connected to the goals of our time.

[ 12 ] From what perspective is our era a time of transition? — Someone once said:

You will be like God and know the difference between good and evil!

[ 13 ] This is also connected to what humanity has attained as freedom. There is something paradoxical about the analogue [analogon?] for our time. It all comes down to the impulse embodied in the following words: If natural science were to remain alone, what kind of conception would humanity internalize? If one were to remain solely on the ground of natural science—on what many today wish to regard as natural science—then one would say that humanity stands only on a higher level than animals, that it has merely developed animal instincts to a higher degree. But if humanity were merely the most highly developed animal, then the quoted phrase would be transformed into this: “You will be like the animal.” If our moral matters consist only of heightened instincts, then ultimately there is only one thing left: “You will not distinguish between good and evil.” That would be the reverse of the Fall. This is what we are facing. Natural processes remain neutral with regard to good and evil and must not be conflated with them; otherwise, morality would be nothing more than convention.

[ 14 ] We need an elixir of life and inner harmony to prevent the loss of the soul; inner health, inner mood, and the inner strength of the soul that is to come—that is the main thing. This must come from a new understanding, from a new love for the deeds that our earthly existence demands of us. The goals inherent in the development of the Earth are those that spiritual science has in mind.

Just despise reason and science,
Man’s greatest power, [...]
Then I’ve already got you for sure.

[ 15 ] Mephisto certainly acknowledges the external sciences; the spiritual sciences are under attack. He is called the “Temptor” in the Bible. He may be called such because he not only tempts, but seeks to drive people into the yoke of slavery to mere natural forces, seeking to rob them of the freedom to enter into the spiritual realm.

[ 16 ] Spiritual science may be ranked alongside the best of what was once expressed as an intuition by the greatest minds of earlier times. Through spiritual science, the soul can feel strong, loving, and duty-bound, because it knows itself to be present in the spirit; spiritual science bestows upon the soul a sense of eternity. What one scholar of spiritual science has expressed is summarized below in terms of feeling. As a concluding thought for this lecture, let us quote, in accordance with our feelings, what Herder expresses in his *Ideas on the Philosophy of the History of Mankind*: “As I step through the gate of death from life into the spiritual world, I may regard the transformation of my life during the passage through death as something I anticipate as calmly and confidently as I experience the course of existence in the transition from waking to sleeping.”

Question and Answer I

Question: What is absolutely good or evil?

[ 17 ] Rudolf Steiner: Evil consists in an intensification of selfishness. The person in question is unable to bring his or her actions into harmony with the course of the world. The origin of this selfishness is explained in the book *The Threshold of the Spiritual World*. In the spiritual world, egoism is an organ through which a person can perceive. The possibility of evil rests on the fact that a person takes what, in a higher world, must be connected to the person—just as the eye is here—and brings it down into the physical world, where it does not belong. Evil in the sensory world arises from the misuse of human spiritual powers. Through earthly destiny, human beings will be educated toward goodness in their repeated earthly lives. — Minerals, plants, and animals cannot be evil in the moral sense. Human beings can transform their lower instincts and passions into noble powers. The lion’s rage, on the other hand, cannot be transformed so readily. Death means something entirely different for an animal than it does for a human being; one must base one’s understanding on facts rather than on concepts and ideas. By virtue of occupying a certain place, a thing is what it is in the world; however, it must not be placed elsewhere. Question: What is meant by the spiritual beings into whom thought, separated from the body, immerses itself?

[ 18 ] Rudolf Steiner: Eliot, speaking at Harvard University in approximately June 1909, said: “In all ages, it would have been self-evident to the human soul that it is something distinct from mere physicality.”

[ 19 ] Recognition of the spirit is not yet knowledge of the spirit, for the latter is knowledge of individual entities. One comes to know nature by getting to know it through individual entities—for example, individual flowers: violets, primroses, lilies of the valley, and so on. — Likewise, there are individual entities that do not descend to the level of physical corporeality, which present themselves as the continuation of the entire sensory world. We are speaking of concrete spiritual entities. A child who had never seen a living horse would claim: “A horse must always be made of wood.” As soon as one delves into the individual entities behind history, behind the beings of nature, one refuses to believe this; one says: “That doesn’t exist.” What the best of humanity have always sensed becomes truth through spiritual science. Herder says in his *Ideas on the Philosophy of the History of Humanity*: “Man is an intermediate being between the sensory and the spiritual worlds. With death, he grows into the spiritual world with the powers he has acquired in the physical-sensory world.”

Question and Answer II

Question: What is absolutely good and evil?

[ 20 ] Rudolf Steiner: This question does not pertain to the conclusion of the lecture. It is an entirely different question. What is good and evil must be determined from within the spiritual world, not from mere natural phenomena; one cannot speak of absolute good and evil in that context. One cannot make sense of good and evil if one wishes to speak only of the sensory world, not of the spiritual world that lies behind the physical-sensory world—but which, of course, permeates it and forms a unity with it. Human beings’ evil deeds—what one can justifiably call evil—are always connected with an increase in selfishness; when a person does not wish to bring themselves into harmony with the whole of the world, but only wants to follow their own will, they slip further and further into evil. In the spiritual world, selfishness is a higher sense organ; there it does not lead to evil; otherwise one would be cut off, unable to perceive anything in the spiritual world at all, for it is through egoity that one perceives in the spiritual world; there, it is something entirely different. One should not simply transfer one concept to another; this gives rise to so many misunderstandings and errors. For example, death is something entirely different for a human being than it is for an animal. — [A] knife is not merely [a] knife; it may be used for shaving [rather than] for cutting meat. — One must always approach the facts themselves, not the concepts or ideas. A quality is not absolutely good or evil, but only this or that in a given context. For example, if one asks: Is the lion’s ferocity good or evil? — the answer must be: When this ferocity appears in other beings, it can be used for the noblest of actions, whereas in humans it wreaks havoc. In nature, the lion’s power cannot simply be transferred to a noble being, but humans can do so; they can transform these powers into noble ones. One must apply what Schiller wrote to Goethe: It is necessary to take all of nature into account in order to gain clarity about what is at stake. This also applies to the spiritual realm. Spiritual powers must be misused in order to be evil. A stone cannot be evil, nor can a plant—unless one is speaking symbolically. Human beings are meant to be educated toward goodness precisely through their earthly destiny.

Question: How can concentration be used to increase the power of the soul?

[ 21 ] Rudolf Steiner: In the previous lecture, reference was made to my book *How Does One Gain Insight into the Higher Worlds?*. I would have to read my entire book to you here, but that would be too long even for the most willing listeners.

Question: What is body-free thinking, into which the soul immerses itself?

[ 22 ] Rudolf Steiner: Well, then you are simply detached from the body!

Question: How should one imagine spiritual beings?

[ 23 ] Rudolf Steiner: Simply by imagining the spiritual at all. It is like the saying: “That which is alive can only come from that which is alive.” Three and a half centuries ago, no one had yet thought to acknowledge this. A sense of the spiritual can first begin to glimmer from thought. Recognition of the spiritual is not yet knowledge of the spiritual. If someone were to say of every phenomenon, “That is nature, nature, nature, nature, nature,” would he truly know it? To doubt the possibility of spiritual knowledge is like a child saying, “My horse has always been made of wood; there can be no horse made of muscle and flesh.” Time and again, albeit in the most varied forms, one hears the underlying sentiment: “Something like that doesn’t even exist, because one cannot even imagine such a thing.”