The Rudolf Steiner Archive

18. Spiritual Science and the Spiritual Goals of Our Time

[ 1 ] For a number of years now, I have had the privilege of speaking here almost every winter on one topic or another in the field of spiritual science, as it is once again understood in tonight’s reflections. And it was precisely on the occasion of my last lectures, which I was privileged to deliver here, that I took the liberty of remarking that when one speaks today—in our present time—of spiritual science in the sense intended here, one is by no means speaking of something that is widely known or even popular in broader circles; that, on the contrary, when we speak of this spiritual science, we are speaking of something that is widely misunderstood and, above all, misinterpreted. Indeed, this spiritual science must contend with misunderstandings upon misunderstandings. One person, upon learning about the matters of this spiritual science through second-, third-, and sometimes even seventh- or eighth-hand reports, comes to believe that it is, above all, something like a new sect emerging into the world or some new attempt to found a religious community or the like. Others come to the conclusion that this spiritual science has its roots in fantasy and “daydreaming.” That it, above all, contradicts—in the most eminent sense—what today seeks to establish itself as a worldview, as they say, of genuine, true science.

[ 2 ] Perhaps I may, just occasionally, conclude this lecture by addressing some misunderstandings that are particularly relevant to us here and now, and may first devote the greater part of the lecture to our topic and speak today in general terms about the subject from which I have already been able to present some details for discussion here, so that I may then address some specific questions in the lecture on January 27 of next year.

[ 3 ] Above all, it may be said that spiritual science seeks to place itself within the spiritual life of the present, precisely in the way that this spiritual life has developed out of the scientific way of thinking that has gripped humanity’s spiritual life for the past three to four centuries. And it may be said that the most troubling misunderstanding is the assumption that this spiritual research could somehow come into conflict with the legitimate claims of true scientific rigor in natural scientific research. It is precisely this spiritual science that, from its own standpoint, will admire and acknowledge in the fullest sense—and indeed must do so, since it seeks to stand on the ground of a true and genuine view of humanity and the times—the great scientific achievements of our age, will acknowledge what the natural sciences have accomplished in transforming our entire cultural life, will acknowledge how the scientific way of thinking is at work and alive at every turn in our cultural achievements today, and how, particularly in the course of the nineteenth century, it has virtually transformed all external spheres of the rest of life.

[ 4 ] To what extent this human science, on the one hand, is fully embedded in the lineage of scientific development, yet on the other hand must go beyond its ultimate conclusions, precisely because it draws the ultimate and most genuine conclusions from what is often called “scientific thinking” today—this is what I would like to illustrate first through a kind of comparison, one that is simply meant to help us understand each other, but through which we do not intend to prove anything specific about what the humanities have to say.

[ 5 ] I do not wish to speak [of this]—for that would be, to quote an old, now-trivial proverb, like carrying coals to Newcastle—about what scientific thought has accomplished that is worthy of recognition with regard to the commercial and industrial aspects of contemporary cultural life; but I would like to begin by speaking of what scientific thinking has accomplished. Apart from the fact that it has permeated the various spheres of culture, it has brought about a certain education of human thought as a whole; it has transformed the nature of our thinking habits, our imaginative life, and the human soul’s need for knowledge to a far greater extent than is generally recognized. For this transformation has affected not only those who have been drawn to the natural sciences directly through their profession, inclination, or interest, but all souls; people simply think differently today than they did five or six centuries ago. People are accustomed to holding entirely different concepts regarding what one might call the prevailing sense of existence than they did in earlier centuries.

[ 6 ] This is not something brought about by caprice; rather, it is based on that inner necessity that had to unfold in the history of humanity, just as human life must be different for a sixty-year-old man than for a thirty-year-old man. These things correspond to the laws of historical life, and anyone who seeks to deny them must deny the inner truth of things. Those people who have not yet been affected by this transformation in thinking—and anyone who wishes to gain this insight will certainly do so in the appropriate way—these people will, if one may use the expression, be affected by it in difficult times, in a future that will very soon be upon us. Thus, if we may put it this way, centuries of scientific education have transformed the very core of human habits of thought and feeling. We may say this.

[ 7 ] How, then, does that which today seeks to make its mark on cultural development as a spiritual science relate to this transformation of human thought over the course of the last four centuries? I would like to help you understand this by drawing a comparison with your own perspective. Let us consider the farmer who harvests the fruits when they are ripe. The majority of the harvest is used as food for human consumption. However, if life is to continue, a portion must be set aside to be sown as seed, so that a harvest may ripen again the following year.

[ 8 ] We can compare this process in the natural world to what has been achieved in recent centuries through scientific discoveries. The greater part of this must be used to allow human cultural life to flow broadly in that direction; it is incorporated into major industrial achievements, commercial life, external social interaction, and the individual sciences; and the various branches of this culture flourish as the scientific way of thinking flows into them all. This aspect of human thought can be compared to the part of the seed that is used for human nourishment.

[ 9 ] But a part—and certainly not the least valuable part—of the thoughts that have taken root in the human soul only in the last century, a part of these inner achievements, of what we have learned about the mysteries of the world’s existence precisely through the natural sciences, can be used like a seed that is sown in the field so that it may bear new fruit. This is the part that we apply to what is referred to by the term “meditation,” or the concentration of thought. We can process this part of scientific thought and concepts inwardly with our soul, so that we allow them to take effect within our soul, allowing them, as it were, to germinate there. Under the influence of these thoughts, to which we devote ourselves in meditation—which we practice in the innermost, most intimate work of the soul—we can allow precisely these scientific ideas to affect our soul in such a way that they work, take effect, weave, and bring forth sensations and feelings—so that they cultivate this inner soul life in such a way that this soul life not only expresses the word “development,” so popular today, but actually enters into a process of development itself. It is precisely the scientific way of thinking, when processed meditatively, that transforms our soul, making our soul into something else. And it will soon become clear how, from this perspective, spiritual science is the true continuation of the scientific way of thinking. But with regard to this spiritual science, when such considerations are made—as is to be the case today—only suggestions and insights into the method of research can be offered, through which the spiritual researcher can immerse himself in contemplation—the means by which everyone can be convinced.

[ 10 ] Therefore, I would first like to draw attention to some findings of the humanities and then show how the humanities scholar arrives at these conclusions. At first glance, these findings seem so at odds with what people today believe and presume to possess as truth that they appear entirely paradoxical—as if they were something fantastical, or, to some, a figment of the imagination. The spiritual researcher, in particular, knows how alien these findings must seem to many souls of the present, and he is the least surprised when someone who wanted to be his friend walks away from him, taking with them the impression that a fanatic had been speaking. Every form of opposition, even hostile resistance, is fully understandable to the spiritual researcher himself, for he knows where such opposition may come from.

[ 11 ] Above all, there is something unique about spiritual research: it seeks, in a manner grounded in scientific thinking, to connect the human soul with its spiritual source; it shows that what a person carries as the deepest, most inner part of their soul is spiritual, a spiritual core; and that this spiritual core is connected to a comprehensive spiritual life of the world that lies beyond the sensory realm, and that it cannot be perceived or recognized even by the ordinary human senses or by the intellect, which is bound to these human senses. However, this method of research immediately reveals a profound difference between spiritual science and all other sciences. Every other science works with precisely the same means of thinking and perception that are otherwise inherent in human beings in everyday life. Just as a person is, just as he or she develops in the normal course from childhood to old age, and just as he or she develops a certain capacity for knowledge, so too does he or she approach the objects of contemporary scientific research. And whatever such a normal human being has to say constitutes the content of the sciences concerning the various spheres of life.

[ 12 ] The situation is quite different in spiritual research. It takes development seriously. It certainly acknowledges that the powers of cognition and the faculties of the soul that are initially inherent in human beings in everyday life cannot transcend the boundaries that separate the sensory from the supersensory, the material from the spiritual; but it also holds that human powers of cognition and the powers of the soul can be developed. It takes the word “development” seriously. And today we will speak of the soul’s intimate inner processes and activities through which the soul rises above itself and becomes capable of developing powers of cognition that are not those of ordinary life, but which lead within the soul to that which shines forth from the soul beyond birth and death—or, let us say, beyond conception and death—that which can be addressed within the soul as the true, immortal, spiritual core of the human being.

[ 13 ] In a sense, spiritual research does not have it as easy as other fields of research; it cannot accept people as they are, but must place demanding requirements on them. If you wish to become a spiritual researcher, you must transform your soul so that it is, as it were, guided beyond the ordinary state through your own efforts and explores with powers that are not present in everyday life. — So says spiritual research. It is these powers alone that lead into the realms of the spiritual world and to its beings.

[ 14 ] But then, when the soul is led outward so that it grasps its very own essential core as a soul, it first arrives at a truth that, in the truest sense of the word, represents the continuation of the findings of natural science—a truth that is still regarded as fantasy today wherever people have not examined it more closely— one arrives at the truth of repeated earthly lives—that truth which can be expressed briefly as follows: What we experience and achieve in this life between birth and death, we do not experience and achieve merely once. Just as we perceive our life when we look back on our childhood as far as we can, and just as we hope our life will be in relation to the remainder of life before death, so we do not live just once. We pass through the gate of death, we live out a life in a purely spiritual world—one that can be perceived only with the spirit—between death and a new birth; and then, with the fruits of this life, including those we gather between death and a new birth, we enter a new earthly life, which we will be able to look forward to in the future just as we can look back into the past at the earthly lives already lived by the individual human being. Thus we continually look toward earthly lives—unfolding between birth and death—and toward lives that unfold between death and rebirth in a purely spiritual world. Just as we present this truth in today’s spiritual life, it naturally seems fantastical to the vast majority of people. But all new truths in the world have seemed just as fantastical when they first emerged. It will always be the fate of new truths that they initially appear as fantasies; then they become something that can no longer be viewed in any other way; they then become self-evident truths. Then, when a person perceives themselves as if in an expanded memory, they can also explore the connections between this spiritual-soul core—which passes from life to life—and the spiritual worlds through which the divine-spiritual, which interweaves and permeates this life, also passes. But from what the spiritual researcher thus fully animates within himself springs forth for humanity that which it needs more and more—precisely in the present and especially in the future—for the cultural development of our Earth.

[ 15 ] I have thus presented some truths of this spiritual research. It will now be my task to show how the spiritual researcher arrives at these truths—that is, how the spiritual world is investigated and explored. One must not believe that this spiritual world can be investigated with the same senses we use in the physical world. It is a spiritual world precisely because it cannot be perceived by the senses. It is essential for the exploration of this spiritual world that the human being make himself or herself the instrument of that exploration. All other sciences have their external instruments. Spiritual research has but one instrument—albeit the most wondrous instrument we can find on earth—namely, the human organism itself. But this organism must be transformed in a certain way if it is to acquire, to use a phrase of Goethe’s, a “spiritual eye” and a “spiritual ear,” in order to perceive what is always present around us as spiritual reality—which, however, cannot be perceived unless a spiritual eye and a spiritual ear are developed within the human soul, where they otherwise lie dormant.

[ 16 ] How does one develop the faculties of the spirit through which the spiritual world becomes visible, audible, and perceptible to human beings? It is not tumultuous external processes, nor experiments that can be conducted externally in the same way as in laboratories or clinics, that bring about this transformation, but rather inner soul processes that the spiritual researcher can perform upon himself if he wishes to gain insight into the spiritual world. What I have to say in this description may seem quite ordinary to some. But it must be said: As commonplace as these things may seem, in practice they are among the most difficult things a human being can undertake on this earth, including all their other activities. Yet there is no question of any special miracles or of things that, in their simplest form, not everyone would be familiar with—when we speak of what the spiritual researcher must develop within his own soul if he wishes to engage in the genuine exploration of the supersensible. The powers of the soul that the spiritual researcher must develop are always present in the soul, but only in their rudimentary form, as needed for everyday life. The spiritual researcher need only develop these qualities to an unlimited degree. Here I must draw attention to something that is not only present everywhere in everyday life but is also necessary in the most essential sense. It is what we call attention: the soul’s attention to this or that thing, the turning of one’s interest toward this or that thing, as we experience it in ordinary life.

[ 17 ] Two things need to be pointed out. Many people need to reflect—though they usually do so only when things are no longer going well—on why their memory is deteriorating as they age. Why does memory deteriorate in the first place? If one delves deeper into the question of memory, one comes to realize that this is actually a matter of attention. What remains in our memory is what we focus our attention on intensely.

[ 18 ] One could start with something quite ordinary as an introductory remark when pointing out the importance of attention. Quite a few people get quite annoyed in the morning when they can’t find this or that item they set down here or there the night before. They’ve completely forgotten about it. For example, they can’t find their cufflink. Why does this happen? Well, they’ve forgotten where they put it. They can remedy that. A sure way to help is to resolve not merely to set it down thoughtlessly, but to think: “I am placing the cufflink in this spot; I am putting it there intentionally.” One will certainly make this awareness if one also applies attention to the act out of one’s own inner volition; then one will not forget it, and one will have the location where one placed the cufflink firmly in one’s memory. This can be extended to all other memories. If people would only realize that everything they bring into their voluntary attention is also taken into memory, then they would combine the problem of attention with the problem of memory, and training the memory can be summarized as training attention.

[ 19 ] And there is another point to be noted, one that seems even more important. It is essential for a healthy inner life that we be able to recognize in our memory the experiences we had up to that point in our childhood as our own. If we are not able to do this—if, say, in a person’s thirtieth year, their inner life is such that they cannot recognize certain experiences they had at the age of five as their own—then a gap in memory occurs, which is an unhealthy state. We are healthy only when we can trace our entire present self as a continuous thread. This depends on our ability to experience the events that come to us in such a way that they line up along a thread of memory through which our self, as it were, runs. And a person—this occurs in certain mental illnesses—can, as it were, develop a split self by believing that someone else experienced what he or she actually experienced. Such things happen. Then his or her healthy mental life is destroyed, torn apart. Much could be accomplished in the education of people—in many cases, it is evident that such a fragmentation of the “I” is taking place—much could be accomplished in their education if it were clearly understood that the power of memory is intimately connected with the way we direct our attention and interest toward the things of the world. Nothing other than attention—that is what belongs to the imaginative powers of the soul.

[ 20 ] It is this attentiveness that the spiritual researcher must develop to the point of no limit in what is called concentration of thought. To do so, however, a very ordinary, everyday soul force—endowed with immense inner energy and resignation—must be driven to a degree that it is never otherwise driven in external life. A person must bring himself to explore the state of mind he is in when he is attentive; he must become clear about this when he is attentive in ordinary life. His attention is aroused by external impressions, by what strongly affects him in a sensational way. The spiritual researcher, however, must transform his attention so that he is not compelled by anything external, but is able—solely through inner volition—to unfold that activity of the soul which is otherwise unfolded only in attention.

[ 21 ] The surest way to achieve this goal is in a manner that many people find extremely uncomfortable. For in order to achieve something truly certain, one must force oneself to direct one’s attention—and this is the surest path—toward that which is as uninteresting as possible in everyday life; toward that from which one would like to flee, that which is utterly uninteresting. If one can bring oneself to treat that from which one’s soul would otherwise flee in such a way that one places it at the center of one’s spiritual life, concentrating all one’s soul’s powers on this one thing, while—with regard to the rest of the soul—through inner willpower and through training the soul, one comes to be as if asleep, so that no eye nor an ear perceives anything from the outside, and all the cares of life fall silent: Whoever has thus silenced their entire being—as it is otherwise silenced only in sleep—but then does not fall asleep, instead concentrating on something they have placed at the center of their soul life through their own will, and now directs their soul’s attention to it in an unlimited way, will awaken powers within the soul that otherwise lie dormant there.

[ 22 ] This brings about what one might call—I do not attach any particular importance to the term—a “spiritual chemistry.” For when one develops one’s concepts and thinking, one accomplishes something in one’s own inner life that can be compared—and can only be compared—to the separation of hydrogen from water in a chemistry laboratory. When we have water before us, it is liquid. But when we separate the hydrogen from it, we have a gas that has entirely different properties than water. No one can perceive the properties of hydrogen and oxygen in water. And no one can recognize the spiritual destiny in the human being who stands before us every day. To be able to do this, the spiritual-soul aspect must be separated from the physical-bodily aspect. This does not occur through external processes, but through the elevation of what may appear so ordinary to human beings into the immeasurable. So that one can indeed say: “It is indeed easy, yet what is easy is difficult.”

[ 23 ] There are many details that must be observed. Here, only the principle can be stated. When the soul then heightens its attention as required, it succeeds—through that concentration of forces that are otherwise unconscious—in separating everything spiritual and mental from the physical body, just as hydrogen is separated from oxygen in a laboratory.

[ 24 ] If one continues to practice such inner exercises of the spiritual life, the day will eventually come when one can attach meaning to words that are otherwise mere phrases: “Now I know that I think, even when I am not thinking with my brain”; now I know that I can think and visualize inwardly, even when I do not use my body to do so; now I know what it means to step out of the body, to feel and experience in the spiritual-soul realm. This is achieved. And when someone steps out of the physical body into the spiritual-soul realm, they possess entirely different qualities and experience entirely different realities in their inner life than a person does while within their body. As some say, you can extract hydrogen from water, and then the hydrogen has the properties of a gas that burns; in exactly the same way, from the standpoint of an everyday materialist, one can laugh at what the spiritual researcher experiences when, through long, energetic exercises, he succeeds in lifting his spiritual-soul aspect out of the physical body. It sounds like empty phrases when he speaks of this. And yet I would like to describe the process—at least in detail.

[ 25 ] What the spiritual researcher experiences as he continues the exercises is, in fact, so utterly paradoxical that, from a certain point on, he feels: Yes, your thinking used to be such that—as you must say right now—in order to think, you had to make use of your brain—; now the spiritual researcher feels that he is actually thinking outside of his brain. He feels as if, with his present way of thinking—emancipated from the brain, as it were, and liberated—he could move through the spiritual realm, circling like the sun. He experiences himself in such a way that he now even knows: The way he usually thinks now proceeds automatically; it is bound to the brain. From a certain moment onward, one gains a very specific insight into this: When you are in your present state, you must slip back into your brain if you wish to make use of it again. One perceives one’s brain as something external beside oneself, just as one would otherwise have an external object—a table, a chair—beside oneself.

[ 26 ] Then comes that significant experience which enters so profoundly, so profoundly and so profoundly into the spiritual life of the spiritual researcher. It must recur frequently in life, but when it occurs for the first time, it is the most profound event, incomparable to anything else in life. It can, for example, occur as follows: One awakens in the middle of sleep as if from a dream—but it is not a dream; rather, it is a spiritual reality that outshines all other everyday reality. The experience can also occur in the midst of one’s outward daily life, yet it does not disrupt it, for true, proper preparation will never turn a person into a fantasist. Both in daily life and in the life of the night, the moment I wish to characterize in the following way may arise. It can also occur in a hundred other ways; I merely wish to offer a typical example. Something of what is being attempted to be described in words will occur to every person who becomes a spiritual researcher. He will describe what happens there by saying: It is like a room in which he finds himself. A flash of lightning strikes the room; he follows the flash, as if speaking to himself inwardly; he feels the elements striking his physical body in a flash, as if his physical body were being destroyed. From that moment on, they know themselves to be united with the spirit, apart from the body; they know that human beings carry a spiritual-soul element within themselves; this is the direct experience of every person who can have this experience if they so choose. Only from that moment on does one truly know what the core of the human being is in the truest sense of the word—what lies beyond birth and death.

[ 27 ] This experience can only be had in a spiritual way, not through external experiments. Anyone who demands that the spiritual be established through external experiments might as well demand that he extract some experience he had fifty years ago using some kind of powder so that it can be prepared in a way that is externally visible. Spiritual facts are not established externally. What spiritual researchers of all times have called “approaching the gate of death,” that is, to experience death in a symbolic sense—that is, what a person experiences in actual death when their eternal core of being detaches itself from the physical body—is experienced symbolically in a profound experience that so deeply imprints upon the soul of the one who has already undergone it, instilling in the soul a solemnity that can be expressed and felt with the words: You were connected, with the deepest core of your being, to that which, as the Eternal, spiritually permeates, lives through, and weaves through the world. That solemnity, however, is painful to endure and cannot be experienced without making the greatest efforts—efforts to which human beings are unaccustomed. Only by renouncing what is otherwise regarded as pleasure and joy—what one otherwise cherishes in life—and by giving up what one otherwise strives for in life for certain moments, does one attain this purest experience, which points toward the light in the spiritual world, as has been described. Then one attains something further when one adds the following to what has just been noted: One must also surrender everything that one perceives as desirable in everyday life—and do so with such complete devotion that one renders completely silent all that a person otherwise desires, all that one otherwise enjoys; that one surrenders everything that gives a person pleasure, and not in such a way that one has only a very specific sense of self within that surrender, but rather so that, during this surrender, one truly renounces all such activities that we otherwise call our complete devotion to the world—a world one otherwise does not truly know—so that one surrenders without any compulsion and without anything in life that would otherwise prompt us to surrender. This must be added; it is through this that we sense the spiritual world into which we have entered, through what we call the spiritual state.

[ 28 ] One must not, however, imagine this perception in the spiritual world to be the same as perception in the external world. The external world stands before us in such a way that we say: Out there is an object that I see with my eye, or that I perceive with my other sense organs. Spiritual states can only be experienced when, through devotion, one becomes one with those states. We do not experience these states outside of ourselves, but rather as they enter within us. We must immerse ourselves, becoming one with the spiritual states that come toward us. Hence this perception of spiritual states occurs when a person heightens their inner thinking through attention, and when, through devotion, we make this thinking the organ of perception for the spiritual states.

[ 29 ] What one experiences and perceives inwardly can be called a spiritual expression. Just as in everyday life one unconsciously expresses one’s spiritual states through facial expressions, so too does one become one with the spiritual world through the processes described, because one feels at one with them. Thus, as the soul experiences, it is driven to a play of facial expressions; it becomes fully engaged, fully active, as it immerses itself in these states. By experiencing the spiritual world, it undergoes something similar internally—in a spiritual-soulful way—to the play of facial expressions on our face. Reliving is the perception of the spiritual world—an invisible, supersensory reliving. This reliving is attained, as it were, through this spiritual chemistry, through this detachment of the life of imagination from the instrument of the brain.

[ 30 ] Similarly, one can separate the faculty of speech from the instrument that otherwise serves speech. When we speak—that is, when we must use our body as an instrument—a certain part of the brain is active externally, specifically the part that leads to the larynx. Anyone who studies the mysteries of human speech knows that, even when we think, finer inner movements take place than the coarser outer movements of speech. Now, as a researcher of the soul, one must be able to grasp that inner activity of the soul which is otherwise expressed through speech. What is otherwise necessary to produce sounds and words—the spiritual researcher must detach it from the sound and the word; he must retain it as an inner activity within, not allow it to become a word, not mold it into words; he must retain it inwardly in such a way that not even the parts of the brain that are otherwise active during speech are called upon. In this way, he detaches the power of speech from speaking; he learns to retain within the soul what otherwise vibrates inwardly when one speaks. Then he does not speak, but what otherwise floods and pulses through the soul in words—that is a powerful force, a force through which he performs not only inner facial expressions but also what might be called inner gestures, inner gesticulation, and body language. Then it is not merely intermediate states of the spiritual world or intermediate processes that come to our perception, but the spiritual world itself is unveiled and revealed within us when we are able to imitate it through inner gestures. And it is only through the power of language that we will be able to imitate the processes of the spiritual world.

[ 31 ] One can [thus] put oneself in the place of the beings, into the actions of the real spirits that surround us. Only by immersing oneself in their gestures, by becoming one with them, can one perceive these spiritual beings; through this, one gains insight into the spiritual world, but one also gains insight into one’s own presence in the spiritual world. Once one has, so to speak, chemically separated the power of language from speech, the moment has arrived when one truly expands one’s memory beyond one’s previous earthly life, when one recognizes that these are not mere theories; when one knows that our life did not begin yesterday, but is the continuation of many previous lives. From the moment one can imitate the spiritual world through inner gestures using the power of language, one knows that our present earthly life is part of a whole chain of earthly lives. Through inner gestures, one reaches the spiritual core of being, which represents the eternal.

[ 32 ] There is something else that must be separated from our activity. This, however, is more difficult to understand. I would like to express what I mean in the simplest way possible. When we recall our childhood, we must admit: In childhood, we were all four-legged beings. We walked on all fours. Through our own inner activity—which was most certainly carried out but left humanity with no memory of its inner life—we raised ourselves upright. And one need only consider what it means for humanity, as the cultural being of the Earth, to gaze out into the celestial sphere with its face! This has completely changed its orientation in space. Human beings have made themselves into the beings they are. We should rekindle in our souls that inner impulse in later life—the one that inspired us back then, when we made ourselves into upright beings and thereby first shaped ourselves into human beings.

[ 33 ] This brings us to a third force of the soul, which we separate from our physical life. We have already needed this force in the past of our present life. We will no longer need it in later life, for then we will be able to stand upright. But now we bring forth that power through which we have raised ourselves up; we apply it, and we become aware of it. Back then, it was at work without our having drawn it into our soul; we were content to transform ourselves from creeping beings into upright beings through the inner application of this power. The spiritual researcher learns to recognize in this power a wondrous soul force. Through this power, he comes to experience not merely the spiritual realm—as through the state of thinking—and the gestures of spiritual beings—as through the separate power of speech—but he comes to experience the spiritual beings themselves, to become one with them, as it were, to become one with the spiritual worlds, to work and weave within them. Through them, one comes to recognize that human beings entered the Earth as spiritual beings, and by bringing these forces with them, they became, as earthly beings, precisely what human beings have become. They became human beings by bringing the body from a horizontal to a vertical position. Only human beings use this force in the universe to transform themselves from quadrupeds into bipeds. When one discovers this force inwardly within the soul, one enters into the innermost being of other spiritual beings—into the innermost weaving of those who interweave and live through the world. These are beings who have other tasks to perform, for they must bring something different into the world than human beings do. One gains insight into earthly conditions through the concentration of attention; one recognizes spiritual beings by sharing in their experiences, by unfolding within the spiritual world precisely that which gives human beings their spiritual physiognomy as human beings. Through inner physiognomy, one brings about a state of oneness with the spiritual beings. Inner gestures and postures lead to the perception of processes in the spiritual world; but spiritually animated physiognomy—such as that which gives human beings their upright physiognomy—leads to the recognition of that which human beings can only experience and live through in the spiritual world, in union with other spiritual beings.

[ 34 ] Here, the paths that lead the spiritual researcher into the spiritual worlds are briefly hinted at. These paths cannot be particularly popular. Today, they are such that one must say they run counter to a characteristic of the human soul: the human soul’s desire for comfort. This desire for comfort has gone so far today that the soul will only acknowledge the existence of something if it can passively surrender to whatever is rushing toward it. If one demands of this soul that it first take action itself, that it experience for itself what was previously nothing to it, and that it recognize the object only through its own experience, then this goes against the comfort of today’s soul, which wants to be passive, which does not want to conquer truths but rather to have them given to it.

[ 35 ] Therefore, spiritual research aligns itself with the goals of the present in such a way that these goals of the present want nothing to do with spiritual science, because—precisely in the most spiritual sense—these goals are directed toward passivity. Spiritual science demands the development of those soul forces that are based on activity and that, when pursued, lead into the higher, supersensible worlds; for the spiritual can be experienced only through inner activity.

[ 36 ] Modern people, however, often form ideas about the spiritual that are nothing but fantasy. They imagine it as an external object that commands them: “I am here; you must acknowledge me.” In doing so, they are very far from a correct understanding. The following was expressed in a newspaper in a rather philosophical manner: When one delves into Kant or any other philosopher, all the concepts are so abstract that one must ponder them at length before finding one’s way into them. Can our age remedy this? And precisely out of the spirit of our age, he [the author] finds that these concepts can be made concrete. Everything is to become concrete, even the spirit. Yes, even that which every person knows to be invisible—human thought, the thought itself—should become vivid. And how is that to happen? Well, take Spinoza, for example, who is said to be difficult to understand for people who want to make everything vivid; approach him in such a way that one uses the cinematograph. Why not? One could do the following, according to the person in question. This is no fairy tale, but has been seriously proposed in light of the goals of our present age. One shows how Spinoza arrives at thoughts that seem so difficult. Through the concept of the expansion of thought, one illustrates how the entire ethics—up to and including God—are interrelated, converging into higher ideas. One could use cinematography to make the whole of Spinoza’s ethics tangible, starting from individual forces. This is a goal of our time. And the editor of this journal, who is publishing the essay, adds the following comment: “Thus, one might finally hope that the ancient masters of humanity—through what most people today evidently regard as nothing more than a game, namely the art of film—might be brought closer to people in a manner appropriate to the present.”

[ 37 ] However, the humanities cannot keep pace with the goals of our time. These goals of our time are rooted in passivity, and even if we were to talk for hours about the goals of our time, this passivity of the spirit is the necessary counterpart to what could be said in private about these goals. That much can certainly be said.

[ 38 ] If one looks closely, the spiritual life of humanity is no different from the rest of nature. What is gained on one side must be taken away on the other. One cannot help but admire the audacity of the mind’s inventions that find application in technology. Humans will even subdue the unruly air; but all of this is achieved, after all, through the deepest spiritual passivity.

[ 39 ] But that is precisely why our time is so ripe for developing the spirit itself in its activity. Indeed, more than anything else, our time demands that we make the spirit active within us. The innermost moral, intellectual, and emotional powers are brought to the fore through the habits of thought and feeling acquired through spiritual science. Thus, on the one hand, due to the education that humanity has already received under the influence of what is truly admirable in itself, spiritual science is viewed as something paradoxical, something fantastical, or perhaps even as something entirely different; yet, on the other hand, this opposition actually blocks the very goal. This opposition is necessary. Just as when one presses an elastic ball for a long time, [and] it finally unleashes that force which is perceived as an elastic counterforce against the pressure, so too must the soul come to a state of strong and ever-increasing passivity precisely through the admirable achievements of thought, so that it may yearn for inner activity. Unconsciously, it already longs for this activity today. And all activity can become the force through which the soul is liberated and redeemed, if spiritual research is allowed to operate within the framework of contemporary spiritual culture.

[ 40 ] With just these few hints, I wanted to show today how spiritual science seeks to position itself within the entire spiritual fabric of the present.

[ 41 ] Looking back on what has just been discussed, one will find it entirely understandable that spiritual science faces opposition after opposition from a wide variety of quarters. One source of this opposition comes from those who believe that spiritual science threatens religion or other institutions. This will not seem incomprehensible to anyone familiar with history. In Copernicus’s time, the fact that the Earth orbits the Sun was just as fantastical as the idea of repeated earthly lives is to our contemporaries today. At that time, people believed that Copernican astronomy endangered religion; just as people today once again believe that religion is endangered by theosophy’s teaching of repeated earthly lives.

[ 42 ] One can feel more at ease with such a belief when one considers that even an eminent scholar and philosopher—who, admittedly, was also active in the field of cosmology—came to realize that truth is invincible while speaking about Galileo. He said, for example, that today the Church has learned no longer to see in Galileo and Copernicus what she once saw in them; rather, today she has learned to point out that discoveries in the realm of science reveal the glory of divine revelation all the more brightly to humanity. Science, in the true sense of the word, serves to praise religious life; it is not meant to critically contribute anything detrimental to true religious life, properly understood.

[ 43 ] The fact that it is not understood this way everywhere was something that quite a few of our friends—who are planning to erect a relatively modest building nearby to serve as a venue for spiritual science and various other studies—came to realize. Many of these opinions were particularly instructive, even though they were certainly sometimes expressed from a perspective deeply imbued with the idea that spiritual science is actually nothing but fanciful nonsense and mere daydreaming. Yes, it was interesting from a cultural-historical perspective when I, too, was presented with the remarks made in various places about the building. It was interesting to view things from this perspective as well. Truly, one could admit that spiritual science or its adherents have a bit of imagination, but they certainly do not have as much as those who have at times written the articles in question.

[ 44 ] At most, these can be compared to the article—which also came into my hands—about a parapsychologist who is quite close to me, and which describes the wild fantasies he expresses. One simply cannot get enough of his flights of fancy, and then one moves on to the second section, where, however—probably out of sheer recklessness—he recounts the very worst flights of fancy regarding birth, kinship, and ancestry. Truly, even if he had some imagination, even if he were inclined toward fanciful speculation par excellence [?], he would never rise to such a level of fantasy—especially a fantasy that speculates about external ancestry, kinship, and so on.

[ 45 ] One can read the strangest things. For example, it is said that a Buddhist temple is to be built on the site. Just as modern chemistry is far removed from what was once practiced as “chemistry” in distant Asia centuries or millennia ago, so too is modern spiritual science far removed from what Buddhism is. It takes more than just a little imagination to speak of Buddhism. Today I have tried to examine—albeit inadequately—what the adherents of spiritual science actually want. Perhaps some insights can be gained from this. But that will have little in common with the image of these spiritual scientists as strange people, as portrayed in the newspaper reports. One remark, which has appeared in at least thirty newspapers, has particularly caught my attention. There we learn of a peculiar trait of the spiritual researchers: they can make it rain. It has been emphasized everywhere that the cornerstone was laid in the pouring rain. What kind of people must these spiritual researchers be, that they can specifically order rain so that, protected by it, they can lay the cornerstone? Admittedly, if that were the case, they would certainly be very dangerous. But if you get to know those who are involved in the Dornach construction project more closely, you’ll realize that they enjoy sunshine just as much as you do; that they certainly didn’t order the rain and didn’t shy away from working in the rain. It would even have been a sunny day for the cornerstone-laying ceremony if not for the fact that some of the members whom one would have liked to see there had arrived on a later train. That is a more trivial explanation, one that doesn’t make for much of a story, but it sounds somewhat better to say: These people must have certain reasons for working at night and in the rain. Although this wasn’t actually said, it lingered in the subconscious and can be inferred from the words. But reality does not look quite so interesting. As for everything else, the future will show just how inaccurate the fantastical views were that have been spread in the outside world about this site, which is to be a place of activity in the sense indicated in this lecture. This lecture was not given to speak about this site, but since it is being given, I may address it with these few words, because spiritual science has, so to speak, caused an unwelcome sensation in this region.

[ 46 ] If one were to ask, “Why is this structure being built?” Well, isn’t it true that train stations are built so that people can ride the train? They are built in such a way that the trains can enter and exit. To that end, the stations must be functional. We must regard as the characteristic feature of this structure nothing other than that which is useful for the purposes of spiritual science—that which is capable of causing the soul to vibrate, when the word of spiritual science is spoken, in the way necessary to bring the soul into contact with the spiritual world. To evoke that state of mind necessary in our time to prepare the soul to receive the spiritual world, it is essential to speak not merely through words, but also through one’s surroundings. What can otherwise be expressed only in words must be infused into the interior architecture. Through symbols that are artistic in the truest sense, the interior architecture should create a structure that can serve the cultivation of spiritual culture in a spiritual way, just as a train station properly serves its material purposes. Although the comparison may be trivial, it is nonetheless accurate.

[ 47 ] People will increasingly come to realize that what spiritual science is capable of doing for the human soul is, in fact, connected to all the goals of the present. By appealing to the active aspect of the soul—indeed, to that which can only be awakened through activity within the soul—spiritual science simultaneously addresses, through the results of its research, the most important activities of the soul; and more and more, those souls capable of being active in the truest sense will yearn for spiritual science. Spiritual science, however, will have to appeal to those powers of the soul that are only truly coming into consideration from the present onward, but which must also influence all the goals of human culture; above all in artistic life, so that, just as in ancient times spiritual science developed on the one hand and art on the other from the common source of spiritual life, so too here artistic activity will proceed in parallel with the current of spiritual science. And a modest beginning toward this end is to be made in the architecture of the site being built in Dornach. The architecture is to speak to those who are drawn to it by the longings of the soul, through the form of those same spiritual mysteries that can otherwise only be stammered about in words. Spiritual science has one hope. Just as many opponents as may arise against it in the present—the fact that it corresponds to a necessity of the heart and the human soul—will become evident from what it has contributed to culture. Just as scientific and religious prejudices were unable to halt the Copernican revolution, so too will the truths of spiritual science not be hindered by the prejudices coming from these opposing sides. What lies within the organism of human development and becoming occurs with the same inevitability with which a young person grows older and matures according to inner laws. Just as this natural quality is inherent in humanity, so too will this spiritual science mature. And just as natural science has intervened in external life and transformed external material life, so spiritual science will intervene in the social, moral, and spiritual conditions of the life of the soul. Just as we travel differently today—by train—than we did two centuries ago, so too do different longings dwell in the soul today than those that lived in the soul two centuries ago.

[ 48 ] Desires must be satisfied; we can see this in the following curious incident, which is worth recalling once again when comparing something external with something internal: When the first railroads were to be built in Germany, the Medical Council was consulted. The Board replied that no railroads should be built, otherwise people would suffer severe nervous distress if they were to ride on them. And if individual people still wanted to ride, then the tracks should at least be fenced off with boards so that other people would not become dizzy. That was the judgment in 1837. Yet the railroads run. That is how life goes. And spiritual science will make its way through spiritual life, just as the obstacles posed by its opponents will seek to assert themselves. Spiritual science will demonstrate—precisely to those in whose hearts it is meant to take root—how unfounded all the prejudices held against it are. Science will see how spiritual science becomes its very best ally, how that which science—by limiting itself to the external—cannot attain, it must receive from spiritual science. It will realize that this spiritual science contradicts the natural sciences just as little as there is a contradiction in the following for sound thinking: Three people may be standing before us, one and two others in front of him. The question arises: Why is one of them alive? Well, because he has a lung inside him and breathes air in and out. — Nothing at all to object to that. But the other says: I know he is alive for another reason as well. I found him hanged eight days ago; because I cut him down, he is alive today. — Everyone is right. The natural scientist says, quite rightly: When certain characteristics appear in life, we have inherited them from our parents, grandparents, and so on. He deserves credit for pointing out what is passed down through the line of inheritance. The spiritual researcher says: What develops within the wondrous mystery of growth is something the human being brings with them from previous earthly lives. There is no contradiction here; both are true.

[ 49 ] And religious reservations will fare just as those regarding Copernicanism did. Those who stand on the ground of revelation nevertheless feel at one with all those spirits who have recognized the truth from their own perspective; whatever spiritual research is meant to be, that is what it will become, and once spiritual research has become an achievement of our time, then those people blessed by this cultural progress will have counted these spiritual goals of spiritual research among their own; as soul-spiritual beings, they will have known themselves to be in harmony with spiritual and soul research; they will have grasped their standpoint in relation to the spiritual world.

[ 50 ] Just as it feels a kinship with all other minds sincerely committed to human progress, spiritual science also feels a kinship with Goethe, and I would like to summarize today’s reflection from this perspective using his words. In response to all those who harbor prejudices against spiritual science, it must be said: If people believe that spiritual science endangers religion or other things, then the spiritual scientist, whose soul is moved by spiritual science, walks through the world knowing that the words spoken by Goethe are true—words meant to suggest that whoever truly allows science and art to penetrate their soul enters into them in such a way that their soul is truly moved by religion; and that only those who lack the true gift for science and art in the proper sense are not gripped by religion in the true sense of the word. Therefore, allow me to characterize the position of spiritual science in relation to the goals of all ages—and of our own time as well—with Goethe’s words, saying with Goethe:

Whoever possesses science and art,
also possesses religion;
Whoever does not possess those two,
let him have religion.