The Rudolf Steiner Archive

16. The Humanities and the Spiritual World: Perspectives on the Goals of Our Time

[ 1 ] Ladies and gentlemen! Since I have had the opportunity on several occasions in recent years to speak on various specific areas of the science of the spirit, including here in this city, please allow me this evening to present to you some fundamental principles from the field of the science of the spirit, so that in tomorrow’s lecture I may then outline some of the consequences and benefits of the science of the spirit for practical life and for the life of the soul.

[ 2 ] The science of the spirit, as understood here, is by no means something that can be said to be popular or even recognized in wider circles in our time. On the contrary; from a wide variety of sides and perspectives, one will have to hear, time and again, the most diverse objections raised by opponents of this humanities discipline. Wherever one wishes to promote it, one must be prepared for the most varied misunderstandings that will be directed against it.

[ 3 ] As I have done before, I would like to take this opportunity, right at the outset, to emphasize once again that to anyone standing on the ground of this spiritual science, it seems not only unsurprising but entirely natural that the perspectives taken here should encounter opposition and be subject to misunderstandings. Indeed, it is precisely those who stand on this ground who will be fully aware that, given the habits of thought and imagination of the present age—and given the general, one might say, universally recognized or believed goals of our time—this spiritual science must, for the time being, still encounter opposition. In this respect, it is, after all, not much different from that which it seeks to continue in our present age. As strange as it may seem to some, it must nevertheless be said that this spiritual science is—or at least seeks to be—the continuation of what, with regard to nature, emerged [through] modern natural science in the beginning, at the dawn of modern spiritual life.

[ 4 ] Just as people in those days went directly to nature itself by setting aside traditional views and established customs, so spiritual science in our time seeks to go directly to the world of the spiritual, to the processes of the spiritual. And one can say: Nothing is more unfounded than the claim, made by some quarters, that spiritual science—as understood here—is in any way intended to oppose natural science. It is precisely those who truly understand this spiritual science who will fully recognize and properly appreciate the significant progress and the great blessings that the natural-scientific worldview and mode of thinking have brought about.

[ 5 ] The humanities, in seeking—one might say—to apply the model of the natural sciences to the realm of the spiritual, cannot directly apply the methods and modes of thought customary in the natural sciences to this realm, for the reason that a true adherence to the scientific mindset requires something different when it comes to the study of the spiritual.

[ 6 ] But before I move on to our actual discussion, I would like to use a kind of parable to illustrate how this spiritual science is a continuation of scientific thinking. This parable is not meant to convey anything specific, but only to express the relationship between scientific progress and what spiritual science aims to be.

[ 7 ] When we turn our spiritual gaze to the work of the farmer who sows his grain seeds at the appropriate time of year, we find that these grain seeds sprout and that by far the greatest portion of them is used for human nourishment. Only a small portion of the seeds sown is used to be returned to the element of earth and to become grain once again. Thus, I would like to examine what scientific thinking has brought us over the centuries in light of the demands of spiritual research. Natural science has brought us—one might say—a complete transformation of the face of our Earth. It has intervened in all aspects of human life, right down to everyday life. For everywhere around us we can find what we owe to modern natural science. In addition to all this, however, we also owe it an insight into the interconnections of worldly phenomena—the realm of the senses—which humanity could scarcely have imagined before. But there is something else we owe to it: it has brought forth a body of ideas, concepts, and notions; these have taken root over the course of the last three centuries, especially during the last one. People’s minds had to come to terms with these ideas. They had to answer the often perplexing question: How can the soul attain a state of inner harmony when it must reconcile itself with the ideas and concepts that scientific thinking has brought forth, and with the feelings that arise from this scientific thinking?

[ 8 ] I would like to compare the new ideas, concepts, and notions that have been instilled in our souls over the past few centuries to the relatively few seeds that are sown to bear new fruit the following year—in contrast to the portion of the harvested fruit that is used for human consumption. What is used for human nourishment—in the realm of scientific thought—can be compared to what has been scattered throughout our external cultural life, what has been utilized for human benefit and for understanding the interrelationships in the sensory world. But what has been brought forth in the form of new ideas, concepts, and imaginings sinks into our soul; it is entrusted once again to the element from which it emerged. We are to live with this, and we are to try to bring our innermost soul forces and soul harmony into harmony with it. In contrast, we should ask: How is it possible to have security, hope, and a joy in work in life?

[ 9 ] We should not focus solely on what is theoretically presented to us through scientific ideas and concepts, but rather on what the soul experiences through them. For it is precisely these scientific ideas—when used in the way that will be indicated in the following discussion—that, through themselves, point the soul in the most beautiful direction toward the spirit. They lead the life of the soul directly into the realm of the spirit. Although this is a conclusion drawn from personal experience by all those who have engaged more closely with spiritual science as understood here, it must seem strange to those who have not done so when it is said that this spiritual science aims to be a true successor to the natural sciences. For precisely because it enters the spiritual realm, the scientific method must take on a different form—precisely in order to remain true to the scientific spirit.

[ 10 ] And to bring this concept to life, I would like—to make myself clear—to first compare spiritual science, in terms of how it arrives at its results, to a kind of spiritual chemistry. Not that I intend to say anything particularly special with this comparison, but it may help us reach a common understanding of what is meant by the following remarks. When we have water before us, we cannot tell by looking at it what components it contains in the sense of modern chemistry; the fact that it consists of hydrogen and oxygen cannot be determined by external observation. Through the methods of chemistry, we can come to know that water has entirely different properties and characteristics: it is liquid; it extinguishes fire. Hydrogen itself can burn and is gaseous. The fact that something like hydrogen is contained in this water can only be known by separating this hydrogen from the water.

[ 11 ] In much the same way, but using spiritual methods, something must be done with the human being himself for the sake of spiritual science. Just as he appears to us in the outer world, he cannot be recognized in his constituent parts, any more than water can be recognized in its constituent parts. That which constitutes the human being’s spiritual-soul nature—the very thing for which every soul yearns to know—is, in ordinary life, as bound to the body as hydrogen is bound to water, and, by its very nature, cannot be recognized within the body, just as hydrogen cannot be recognized in water.

[ 12 ] Now, the methods by which we separate the spiritual-soul aspects from the physical are not as robust, nor are they directed toward manipulations in the sensory world, as the chemical method by which hydrogen is separated from water. But they are no less to be taken in a strictly scientific sense. These are methods that take place entirely within the life of the soul itself. They are delicate, subtle processes of the soul’s life. One cannot penetrate the mysteries of spiritual life through external manipulations. The only instrument available to human beings for penetrating the spiritual world is the human being himself—specifically, his spiritual-soul life.

[ 13 ] How is it, then, that—hypothetically speaking—when we have this spiritual-soul aspect within us, we separate it from the physical aspect with which it is linked in everyday life? The methods used do not rely on anything particularly miraculous; they are extensions of soul activities familiar to every person in daily life; these soul activities simply need to be expanded to boundless strength. This, however, requires a sense of resignation and devotion in the life of the soul—a state one must first train oneself to attain. You will find a detailed description of the method by which the soul comes to penetrate the spiritual world in my books *An Outline of Esoteric Science* and *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?*. It is, first of all, something that every human being recognizes as a soul activity, something needed in everyday life, something necessary for the health of the soul—in other words, something the soul employs in ordinary life. For the purposes of spiritual science, however, it must be intensified to the infinite. It is what one might call: directing one’s attention and interest toward something. We all know, of course, that in order to cope with life and find our bearings in the world, we cannot simply go about our business indifferently; rather, we must direct our attention to a wide variety of things. And the more we do this, the more it becomes, so to speak, our own, the more we carry a trace of it with us throughout the rest of our lives, and the more we have become connected to it.

[ 14 ] And attention is intimately connected with another faculty of the soul, the importance of which for life everyone must recognize—namely, what we call the power of recollection, or memory. One might even say: In a certain sense, the question of a good memory in the human soul is the same question as that of the exercise of attention. An object to which we turn our attention only fleetingly fades from memory. An object to which we turn our attention—and indeed turn it repeatedly (for this repetition is often crucial)—becomes part of our inner being.

[ 15 ] Anyone can see for themselves, in the most ordinary aspects of daily life, how important attention is for memory. Let me give you a trivial example: Who hasn’t woken up in the morning to find that they couldn’t locate the things they had set aside the night before? If you practice, say, not just putting your cufflinks down, but paying attention to the act of putting them down and linking the thought to it: “Now I am putting this object there”—then tomorrow you will go straight to the spot where you put the object. In other words: the power that inscribes into our memory what is to be inscribed—that is attention.

[ 16 ] And anyone who has taken even a brief look at the inner life of humanity will often have noticed, or at least heard of, signs of that unhealthy state of the soul, which consists in the human soul being unable to recall what it has experienced as if those experiences were its own. In the face of such an unhealthy spiritual life, we speak of a splitting of the “I.” It can happen to such a soul that things it has experienced itself belong, as it were, to another “I.” Although this radical form of the condition occurs less frequently, it does occur.

[ 17 ] But it is not uncommon for the self to be disrupted in its full context and continuity when it comes to gaining a clear understanding of one’s own past. This could be prevented if we were to apply the sound pedagogical principle more fully in life—that of arousing attention and interest in what is important in our environment—just as the connection between attention and a healthy mental life should play the most crucial role, particularly in education.

[ 18 ] Thus we see that attention is something we need in everyday life. The researcher of the soul must develop this attention—that is, the activity exercised by directing the soul’s power toward a specific object, by withdrawing it at that moment from other objects and concentrating it on a specific object—the researcher of the soul must develop this activity of the soul’s life, which manifests itself weakly and faintly in everyday attention, into unlimited strength; that is to say, he must undertake, time and again, to perform such spiritual exercises that serve as an unlimited strengthening of what otherwise manifests as attention or interest in the life of the soul. In spiritual science, this is referred to by the technical term “concentration of thought or feeling.” All powers of the soul can be concentrated again and again, drawn together to a single point. This must be repeated over and over again, for it often takes many, many years to make the soul a true instrument of spiritual research. To achieve this, one must repeatedly engage in the activity of focusing the soul’s powers on an idea or a feeling that one has brought into the center of one’s inner life solely through one’s own will. The best approach is to bring into one’s inner life an image that one has truly constructed oneself—for example, a symbolic image or a metaphor; one is far too accustomed to what has been borrowed from external life; greater effort is required when one focuses one’s soul life—all the forces that are otherwise scattered—on the processes of the soul, on an arbitrary composition that one repeatedly brings into the center of one’s soul life. Through this, a state gradually becomes possible for the human being in which one’s spiritual-soul aspect—which is otherwise poured out into the physical-bodily realm—can be grasped by the very same force that is concentrated there, and is finally freed from the physical-bodily realm. There is no other practical way to convince oneself that there truly is a second human being within us—a spiritual-soul human being—just as hydrogen is contained in water—unless one grasps this spiritual-soul human being by permeating it with what, in infinitely intensified form, is the activity of ordinary attention, and thereby strengthens this spiritual-soul being within oneself to such an extent that it rises above the physical-bodily realm. In this way, it is lifted out of the physical-bodily realm just as hydrogen is separated from water through chemical processes.

[ 19 ] If everything that has now been discussed in principle is undertaken by the soul in the manner described in the books mentioned earlier, we can extract the spiritual-soul aspect from the physical-bodily aspect through purely soul-based activities.

[ 20 ] If this truly succeeds, then a great change takes place in a person’s inner life. One gains entirely new inner concepts of life. One is, so to speak, seized by something within oneself of which one previously had not even a proper conception. Above all, one is led in this way to a certain concept, to an idea with which one can now associate a meaning—namely, what it means to be outside one’s body and yet lead a fully conscious life within oneself; to be able to grasp oneself inwardly, to comprehend oneself inwardly, without doing so through the instruments of the senses, through the physical instruments of the brain.

[ 21 ] The next thing that happens to the spiritual researcher on the path described, once he has progressed far enough, is that he enters a state that can be compared in ordinary life only to something that occurs involuntarily. The person reaches a point where, just as the external sensory world seems to fade away when falling asleep, this sensory world now, in a sense, lifts away from the person, just as it does when falling asleep. But the person also experiences that he feels his physical body passing away in complete stillness, in complete inner serenity—and now fully consciously, as otherwise happens unconsciously during sleep. Nothing that might otherwise stir within the body through everyday activity stirs at that moment. The person has emerged from the physical-bodily realm with his spiritual-soul aspects.

[ 22 ] For the first time, a person now gains an idea of what it means to stand before one’s own body, just as one would otherwise stand before an external object. In ordinary life, one has an idea of what it means to experience oneself only when one is, as it were, inside one’s body; through this, the body is connected to oneself; one relates to it quite differently than to other things. Now, however, one’s own body becomes an external object that one faces, just as one used to face other external objects. Yet one does not face it in the same way as it appears to us physically, as long as we make use of the instruments of the physical world. How it stands before us, how we face this body—this becomes apparent in a shattering experience that a person may undergo on the path to spiritual research.

[ 23 ] What I am now about to describe can be experienced in a wide variety of forms and in many different ways. In a small book titled *A Path to Self-Knowledge for Human Beings*, I attempted to describe it in a typical form, showing how it can occur. This description will give you an idea of what the spiritual researcher experiences at a certain stage. But, as I said, it is only a typical form; it can always be different. Let us say that a person is in the midst of their outer life, or even as a sleeper during sleep. This event can occur both during sleep and while awake; if it proceeds correctly, it will never in any way disturb a healthy soul life. In the midst of waking, in the midst of sleep—in such a way that it is more than even the liveliest dream—this experience can overcome us, so that we feel something like what [I] would like to put into the following words—one can only stammer out what the soul is experiencing there: What is happening to me? It is as if lightning, as if fire, were flashing through the air; as if the space in which I am were illuminated by lightning; as if my own body were being pierced by lightning and destroyed by the elements. What matters here is not merely what I can describe in words, but rather what kind of inner experience one has at this point in the soul’s development. What matters is that from now on one knows: One has experienced through the image what it means to live in one’s spiritual-soul life in such a way that one is lifted out of the physical-bodily realm; that the image of the physical-bodily realm stands before one. But it is an image that cannot help but present the bodily realm in a state of destruction.

[ 24 ] And then you come to realize what you’re actually experiencing when you’re able to truly immerse yourself in what you’ve felt. You come to say to yourself: Yes, when you are living your life, your spiritual-soul aspect is indeed an independent being. But the way you experience everyday life is bound to the physical body. Throughout your entire life—even natural science admits this—the spiritual-soul aspect is destroyed within the physical-bodily aspect. By using our physical body from morning, when we wake up, until evening, when we fall asleep, as a tool for what arises in our soul, in our thoughts and feelings, we are constantly destroying it. Fatigue is an expression of the destruction of the soul life. Sleep is the compensation. Our experience of the soul depends on the fact that, fundamentally, we are constantly carrying out a process of destruction upon our body, which ends with death. This is illustrated by the following image: the moment you become aware that your soul-spiritual being is an independent entity capable of emancipating itself from the body, in that very moment you experience your physical body as if it were being destroyed before your very eyes.

[ 25 ] Spiritual science—not as it must be viewed in our time in light of the scientific education that humanity has enjoyed for centuries, but as it has evolved through the various epochs—has always existed; it is just that very few people have known anything about it. But those who were aware of it also knew the shattering moment in the life of the spiritual researcher that I have just described, and they described it by saying: “I have come to the very threshold of death.”—That is to say, one has come to know, in a symbolic sense, what death is; one has come to know how, in death, the spiritual-soul aspect triumphs in its independence from the physical-bodily aspect. From the moment one has experienced this, one knows what it means to live independently in one’s spiritual-soul aspect. One knows that this spiritual-soul aspect, in its separation from the physical, is something that possesses qualities entirely different from those of the physical.

[ 26 ] But in a certain sense it is entirely true that what constitutes progress toward the spirit is linked to difficulties in inner life; it can even, in a certain respect, become a kind of inner martyrdom. Above all, patience is necessary so that the soul’s power may be concentrated to such an extent that the soul-spiritual, emancipated from the physical, can grasp its own independence. — I wanted to describe this to you exactly as it happened, not because I wish to speak in general terms, but because I want to recount the living experiences of the spiritual researcher himself.

[ 27 ] From that point on, one knows what it means to live outside one’s body, especially [in] relation to thought. One now associates a specific meaning—a meaning full of reality—with the statement: “I now know that I think, that I can form mental images not as I do in everyday life; I now know that with the soul that has emerged from the brain, purely in a spiritual-soul manner, I can form mental images.” And because I do not wish to speak in generalities, I do not want to shy away from something that, of course, at first glance may seem highly open to criticism: At the moment one has the experience described, one experiences oneself in one’s thinking—which, during the moments when one steps out of one’s own body, is no longer bound to the brain; one feels as if outside the brain, living in the environment surrounding the brain. And one knows: If you want to think again as you do in everyday life, you must submerge yourself back into your brain. You begin to regard it as something external into which you must submerge yourself.

[ 28 ] One thing is necessary once one has progressed to this point. And what I am about to mention here as essential can also dispel the objections of those who are unfamiliar with spiritual science and who, from the standpoint of modern science, would like to classify what the spiritual researcher experiences as a hallucination. They speak of something about which they have no idea. For the spiritual researcher, in particular, knows how to distinguish at every moment between a hallucination, an illusion, and what he actually experiences as a spiritual reality. Even in ordinary everyday life, it is no different: through life itself, one learns to distinguish reality from mere imagination. In ordinary life, one can easily distinguish between the idea of hot iron and the actual sensation of hot iron when one touches it. The same is true when one truly immerses oneself in the spiritual world in the manner described.

[ 29 ] But what is necessary is that one feel what one is experiencing right now so deeply within, feel it so thoroughly imbued with this inner power, that one is fully immersed in it with one’s own will. For let us bear this in mind: What one experiences as a world of imagination that lies outside the body must arise as an experience in such a way that one does not initially perceive it as an external entity, but must feel it just as one feels one’s hand, one’s foot, or one’s eye; one must feel it as a spiritual sense organ. One must first know precisely: What you have developed within yourself is a part of your spiritual-soul being; it is something within you that you must use soulfully just as you would otherwise use your hand to grasp or your eye to see by looking into something.

[ 30 ] First, one develops the organs in this way. One creates something within oneself that is as subtle as a dreamlike fabric in relation to external reality, yet one experiences its reality. One works with one’s spiritual-soul being; one is fully engaged with one’s will. One must experience something in this new entity—which one has drawn out of one’s body—that can be described as an inner play of expressions. Just as one is able to express one’s thoughts and feelings through one’s facial muscles, and just as one expresses in one’s gaze what one experiences soulfully, so must one now develop the ability to have a clear, conscious inner control over this spiritual-soul entity that has been drawn out of the body. One must be able to express oneself through this being. In short, one must have the feeling: In what you have created out of yourself, you are present with your will. Not as in dreaming; a dream presents images to us, but these images arise without our will. It is different when, through genuine spiritual scientific development, we bring about a state in which we experience something outside our body. There, we ourselves are the agents who cause an image—which appears with the utmost intensity—to vanish or move from one place to another. We are so deeply immersed in this world of images that we master it, that we can stir it up.

[ 31 ] Just as we have come to be through the exercises we have undertaken—which, after all, are essentially nothing more than the training of outward attention to the point of infinite spiritual-psychic concentration—we are initially able only to make ourselves into spiritually and psychically independent beings. We have not yet reached the point where we can perceive other spiritual processes and spiritual beings that surround us. In order to do so, we must add to the category of exercises—which, in a sense, fall under the heading of “attention”—others that are entirely opposed to attention.

[ 32 ] But spiritual progress depends on the fact that we do not practice in a one-sided manner, but rather that we alternately exert our soul in practice toward one direction or the other. We must engage in the most intensive exercises to increase our attention. At the same time, however, we must perform an inner practice that is precisely the opposite. We must also do the opposite, which occurs in ordinary life as well. For example, when one person loves another devotedly, so that they feel as if they have lost themselves in that person, or when a person, in prayer or other religious experiences, is completely devoted to something that concerns them. This devotion, which we experience just as we do attention in everyday life, is, in turn, heightened to infinite proportions. We must truly bring about, entirely at will and through a strong act of volition, the suppression of all external sensory perception, as otherwise occurs only in sleep. One gradually acquires the ability to suppress, so to speak, everything necessary for everyday sensory life—even down to the involuntary muscles and other organic faculties— to be wholly and completely devoted, with the exclusion of everything active in ordinary sensory life, with one’s soul to what is initially conceived by us as the divine-spiritual—which stands above all concepts and which interweaves and surges through the world. In particular, one must strive to suppress everything that otherwise occupies us in our judgmental activity. One must accept the arbitrary nature of everyday activity and, in the deepest serenity and devotion, live consciously of nothing other than the expectation: What will come to you when you suppress everything arbitrary that otherwise made an impression on you, and when you are devoted to what you are about to come to know? — This devotion must be heightened to the point of the infinite; then the moment will come when we can make use of what we have developed in our spiritual and psychological being, emancipated from our self.

[ 33 ] Then the images we have imprinted within ourselves will become such that we connect spiritually, as it were, with a spiritual world; but in such a way that we now connect with this world not passively, as in everyday life, but actively. In the everyday world, we are outside the object we are looking at. If we want to enter the spiritual world, we must immerse ourselves in the object and be absorbed into it; we must become one with it—as one as we were previously only with our own soul.

[ 34 ] Just as we express what lives in our soul through our facial expressions, so too, when we immerse ourselves with sufficient devotion into a true, real spiritual world—so that we recognize it within ourselves, so that we live in the activity of our spiritual-soul life—we express within ourselves states of the spiritual world. We experience them through inner facial expressions as we immerse ourselves in the spiritual world, which we can grasp only by actively immersing ourselves in it. We must acquire a spiritual expressiveness in the spiritual world; we must acquire the ability to express ourselves.

[ 35 ] Then we know that a spiritual world is always around us, just as, for example, the world of language is also around a deaf-mute child, but the child knows nothing of it; it does not manage to reach this world of language, even though its speech organs are perfectly healthy. It is unable to imitate or express what it cannot hear through the gestures of language. Just as the world of words surrounds the deaf-mute child, so too is the world of spiritual beings and spiritual processes always present around every human being.

[ 36 ] And just as a person need only open themselves to the external world and imitate words in language, so too must a person—as a spiritual-soul being—open their inner being to the spiritual world through devotion, in order to express what they experience through mimicry by making use of what they have cultivated within themselves. For the spiritual world is received only through active engagement, not passively. What we do not experience within ourselves—as through an inner mimicry of the spiritual world—cannot be revealed to us. We must become one with the spiritual world so that, in what is revealed to us as we immerse ourselves in the spiritual world, we develop the spiritual mimicry that then brings us to the living awareness: “You are now experiencing states of the spiritual world.” What I have described can be experienced by detaching the power of thought from the physical instrument, the brain.

[ 37 ] But there is another power within us that can be freed from the physical body—namely, what is called the human power of speech, and, connected to it, the power of memory. Both belong to the same type of soul activity. Just as we have separated our thinking from the physical body, so too, if we continue our exercises, we will become capable of grasping the spiritual-soul power through which we otherwise speak. Consider this: when I speak to you now, my spiritual-soul aspect is active. But this activity is first transmitted to the brain, then to the speech organs, and then into the air. At first, it is a spiritual-soul force that then flows outward. If, through the continuation of our intensified devotion, we manage—without speaking, indeed without producing that inner, subtle vibration (acknowledged even by modern science) that resounds like a soft, inaudible speech even during ordinary thinking—if we manage to to exclude everything in speech that is bound to the body, but to develop within the spiritual-soul realm what is otherwise poured into speech—that is, when one allows the power of speech to remain within, when one becomes silent in regard to what is expressed in speech, yet still applies that power inwardly—then one reaches a further stage in spiritual exploration. One arrives at a point where one experiences not only that which is

[ 38 ] something external that one might call one’s body; one now comes to realize: You are an independent being who can detach yourself from your inner, everyday soul life. One detaches oneself—just as one once did from the body—from what constitutes ordinary thinking, feeling, and imagining. And the same capacity that one develops in speech is also developed in memory, by accumulating external impressions and stimuli over the course of one’s life. The soul force that inspires speech is at work in memory.

[ 39 ] But now, when one finds oneself outside of one’s everyday inner life, one experiences yet another shattering event. For now, as if looking back, one experiences one’s entire past life up to the point where one can normally recall it—a moment in childhood. What one has lived through appears before the soul in vivid images, in ever clearer and clearer images, but not in the way ordinary memory works—rather, in a completely different way.

[ 40 ] I’d like to illustrate this with an example. Let’s assume we’ve done something that is morally questionable. We look back on it. It appears to us in a vision, and it shows us: By doing this, you have strayed from the true image of humanity that you are meant to embody. That is how far you have set yourself back in your process of becoming human. — It stands before you, as it were, as a warning, so that you cannot help but say: Until I have overcome, through another life and through corresponding good deeds, what I now perceive, I must always look upon it whenever I experience myself outside my own inner life.

[ 41 ] This is true of the good, this is true of the bad—of all the experiences one has gone through. Like a comet’s tail, one drags one’s past life behind them; but now transformed in such a way that it shows you what you must do—so that you may appropriately make amends for what should not have been done, and so that you may appropriately put what you have accomplished to use in the world. What one experiences in this way through one’s own life comes together to form an outwardly complex overall experience. It is, as it were, permeated by an inner force that one perceives, a force of which one now knows: It has always been within you; you simply did not perceive it—the force to eradicate a deficiency; a real force, something you have attained as a capacity to apply fruitfully. Now one gains a complete picture imbued with inner reality: a plant develops from the soil. It unfurls leaf by leaf, condensing its life into a tiny seed. But within this seed, life is so condensed that it holds the potential for a new plant to form. Just as there is a physical force within this seed, so one realizes that one carries within oneself—by virtue of what one has lived through, and which one recognizes in its true form only when one surveys it—a force like a germinative power that must continue to work as a result of what one has experienced. From now on, one knows: When death comes upon you, there is within you a spiritual-soul germ that passes through the gate of death and lives on, just as surely as the germ of the plant lives on. A spiritual seed that always overcomes death springs forth from within you. From that moment on, one knows: When the body falls away from you, your spiritual-soul essence passes through death and enters the spiritual world.

[ 42 ] If one now applies this insight to the study of a life entering the world—the life of a child, which, after all, represents the greatest mystery for the spiritual researcher—if one studies the life of a child with this insight, or even one’s own life in childhood—for from now on one can look further back into one’s own life— or if one observes a child, it becomes clear from the way abilities unfold one by one as the child develops, from the way the child’s features become increasingly established and defined, and from the way talents emerge—it becomes clear: Just as a plant grows from a seed, so too does that which sprouts from the spiritual world emerge. This is the very same thing that we previously recognized as overcoming death. It enters the world again, and our spiritual-soul life develops through what we have carried through death. Now we know what the repetition of earthly life means. We know that we live in cycles; that we live between birth and death in a physical body, that we then pass through death and live in a spiritual world. We know that every birth means: Something descends from the spiritual world and unites with what comes from the father and mother. It transforms the fruits of a previous life, which extend into this life through one’s destiny.

[ 43 ] By emancipating the power of language within us—by taking what we, so to speak, squander on language in life and, through special moments of practice, developing it inwardly so that it remains in the soul—we thus immerse ourselves in the spiritual world, where we find ourselves, passing from life to life, because we now experience not states but processes of the spiritual world. In this way, we ascend from states to processes.

[ 44 ] In practical terms, this means that the spiritual researcher—who previously perceived only states, extending them like spiritual tentacles—now grasps that which lies outside himself. But now the spiritual researcher experiences that, with his emancipated soul life—which has also taken in the power of speech—he steps completely out of himself and immerses himself in other beings to such an extent that he knows: You are now moving from being to being in the spiritual world; you are living yourself into the spiritual world. Most often it will be this way: Until one has attained complete proficiency—that is, until one reaches a state of direct experience—one must try to surrender oneself to this extent; then one feels as if awakened into a different state.

[ 45 ] This is how one experiences events: by truly participating in them inwardly, rising with them and sinking with them. One could say: events in the spiritual world are now experienced not through inner facial expressions, but through inner gestures. Just as one experiences events in the outer world through movement, so too must one participate in the movement of the spiritual world; one must go along with the events. One thus ascends from inner facial expressions to inner gestures, and through this gradually perceives not only states but also events of the spiritual world.

[ 46 ] And finally, if one practices this more and more, if one truly cultivates it systematically, just as described in my book *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?* , if one continues with the two categories of inner practice—those that fall under the category of attention and under the category of devotion, which we also call concentration and meditation—then, my esteemed audience, one finally arrives at a third, a third that I must describe as follows.

[ 47 ] There is something reserved for human beings—I know that this is open to criticism from the standpoint of a superficial, external science, but it is nevertheless true; I simply lack the time right now to prove it, but it can be proven—human beings have an advantage over other creatures on Earth in that they only truly become the beings they are in the world over the course of their lives. For when we come into the world, we must crawl on all fours. Other beings—the animals—are not dependent on this from the outset; rather, unlike human beings, they are endowed with innate powers that give them the position they are meant to occupy in life. Human beings must, in the course of their lives, elevate themselves to that which one can say: It is this that actually makes them human in the physical sense. Time and again, significant thinkers have pointed out what it is that makes a human being a human being: the fact that they rise from the ground and freely turn their face toward the world. But human beings must first become this themselves. They possess an inner orienting force through which they bring themselves into alignment with the cosmos, through which they are human in the physical sense. Inner spiritual and soul forces exist for this purpose. But in ordinary life, these forces are entirely poured into the physical body.

[ 48 ] Well, ladies and gentlemen, just as one can emancipate the power of thought from the physical body, so too can one emancipate the forces through which we, in the physical sense, become human beings in the world. And just as one can allow what would otherwise pour forth through language to remain within the inner life of the soul—thereby arriving at an inner gesture—so too can one emancipate the forces of uprightness inwardly through practice. Then, through the use of these inner forces, one comes to understand beings in the spiritual world who are different from human beings. The fact that we know only human beings in the physical world stems from the fact that we have used the forces—which are the forces of uprightness—to make human beings what they are. If one practices emancipating these forces inwardly, one comes to know beings that are somewhat different from human beings. Through this, one arrives at an inner physiognomy. One imitates the forms of the other beings with whom one then comes into contact. In short, one now enters into a living communion with the spiritual world. One takes on the physiognomy of the beings with whom one comes into contact. I would like to repeat what I have said: Through inner mimicry, one attains certain states; through inner gesture, one experiences certain processes; through inner physiognomy, one comes to truly know the spiritual world as such.

[ 49 ] I have tried to show you in a concrete way how true spiritual research becomes attuned to the spiritual world, and how human beings truly come to grasp a spiritual world. Spiritual science is just as much a science as chemistry, physics, and so on. What this spiritual science can present to humanity need not be accepted on authority any more than the findings of other sciences. Tomorrow I will describe how this spiritual science can become a part of human life.

[ 50 ] When we consider the goals of our time, we may say to ourselves: It is precisely the great, admirable advances in the natural sciences that have accustomed people to recognizing—more or less—what they are supposed to accept as true only when the truth is presented to them in such a way that they can remain passive. Every step in spiritual research [however] shows us that we must actively immerse ourselves in the spiritual world; that we must first create the means of expression for what we wish to perceive. Just as activity relates to passivity, so does spiritual science relate to natural science. One need only take a look at the conditions of our time to find that people are inclined to say, “That’s just fantasy”—when something does not present itself in a way that allows them to remain passive. Thus, fundamentally, everything in spiritual science runs counter to the currents of our time.

[ 51 ] But on the other hand, it is a fact of life that whenever something has surged to its highest point, its opposite comes into being. For those who can delve into the souls of the present, it becomes quite clear that deep within the hearts of people today there lives a longing to experience something of that activity through which human beings can recognize and embrace their eternal, their immortal, and their connection to the divine. It is entirely natural that, on the one hand, opposition upon opposition is directed against spiritual science, because an education grounded in the natural sciences has led to passivity. But in the depths of the soul, a longing stirs—a longing that awaits fulfillment. Many souls live in the present who are unaware that their insecurity, their not knowing what to do with themselves, stems simply from the fact that they long to connect with the spiritual and are unable to do so. They yearn for spiritual science.

[ 52 ] That is why we can say: No matter how much what initially approaches the souls from the outside may seem to run counter to the goals of our time, in truth the souls yearn for the goals that spiritual science sets for itself. One could point to many things that come to us in the present to show how people today want to be completely passively devoted to the external world; how they want to receive everything they are supposed to accept as true from outside themselves. People are happy to attend a lecture advertised with the note “with slides.” No claim is made to anything other than passive participation—simply watching and receiving sensations that are, at most, supported by words. The situation is different when a lecture without slides requires active participation of the soul.

[ 53 ] And that is essentially how it is, in the broadest sense of our lives. After all, one thing has managed to take hold in our time: An essay was recently published in a very widely read magazine that contains the following; the author is a respected philosopher; he is rightly admired for many things. I would also like to take this opportunity to mention that I always make it a point to cite only opponents whom I can also respect; and I would now like to name a respected man for you. But this man has arrived at a curious idea. He says: When you read Kant or Spinoza, it’s difficult to read; the concepts just go over your head. Surely there must be an easier way. After all, today we have photographs, film, and the cinema. Show people Spinoza sitting there grinding lenses. That would be the first image. It transforms. It shows how the thought “substance” arises in his mind. The thought of substance appears. In the next image, “Thinking and Extension,” and so on. Spinoza’s *Ethics*—that is the title of the work I just mentioned—it will be a wonderful prospect for the future to be able to walk past a movie theater one day and read on the posters: “Spinoza’s Ethics” or “Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason.”

[ 54 ] Ladies and gentlemen! I mention such things only because they show you, in a grotesque way, where the goals of our time are headed, and how they are opposed to the goals of spiritual science, in which everything is directed toward strengthening the activity within the human being, making the human essence ever more and more independent. The person who published the aforementioned essay in his newspaper says that one must have great hopes if such a thing could be realized; that would fulfill people’s metaphysical longing. The spiritual researcher, however, cannot hope for this fulfillment. He must therefore be prepared to be criticized as “superficial” because he cannot expect much from Spinoza’s *Ethics* and Kant’s *Critique of Pure Reason* in film.

[ 55 ] I need not go into further detail about the specific goals of our time; I need only highlight the general character of passivity that has come to define them—a passivity that was bound to arise; it was bound to arise because, through the remarkable intensification of external life, people have become accustomed to engaging in activities over which they have no control. But the more the people of the present wrap themselves in such passivity, the more the longing will awaken for that activity of the soul through which human beings can first feel themselves to be eternal, independent, and autonomous beings—autonomous even from the body— [can]—a being that overcomes death because it possesses within itself powers that have nothing to do with being born and dying, but which point back to earlier earthly lives and forward to a future and eternal existence.

[ 56 ] I merely wanted to characterize; I did not intend to go into detail about what I would call a glimpse into the future of human development.

[ 57 ] What is the purpose of this activity? Tomorrow we will consider what the humanities are meant to be as a source of life. But what can they lead to?

[ 58 ] Now, let us consider the fundamental character of our time, the worldview that seeks to construct a picture of the world based solely on materialistic and sensory facts. People are not very consistent; otherwise, they would have to say: According to this worldview—as it tends to take shape in the sense of a misunderstood Darwinism—human beings are said to have elevated themselves purely, without any spiritual-soul aspect having united with their physical-bodily aspect, which arose from the animal realm; human beings are said to have risen from the animal realm; and the faculties of thinking, feeling, and willing, the capacity for religious contemplation, and so on, are supposed to be merely an intensification of what manifests itself in animals at a lower level.

[ 59 ] It is superficial to speak of living in a transitional period when it comes to certain matters. Every era is a transitional era. But one may say—and this is what matters—that with regard to such matters, this era is a transitional one. And I would like to ask your permission to suggest—perhaps somewhat grotesquely, but all the more clearly for it—how spiritual science seeks to position itself within the goals of our time. People are simply not consistent enough; otherwise, one could deduce the following directly from the materialistic way of thinking: Whatever may be meant by what the Bible presents at the beginning of human development—the appearance of the spirit symbolized by the serpent—what message does this symbol convey to us?

You will be like gods, able to distinguish between good and evil.

[ 60 ] However one may interpret this symbol—it is a significant word, a word connected to everything we call “freedom” in human beings. A magnificent word that cuts deep into human nature: “You will be like gods and know the difference between good and evil.” ” If one were as consistent as the serpent was—especially if one is a materialist or a monist—then one would not obscure, inconsistently obscure, what one ought actually to say in this context: Everything into which human beings can immerse themselves is an elevation of what manifests in the instinctual life of animals. It is as if the tempter were standing before us, calling out: “You will be like the animals, and will no longer distinguish between good and evil.” For if everything is subjected to the objective, physical laws of nature, then everything proceeds just as animal life proceeds. Thus, the Tempter’s words stand before us as the goal of our time: “You will be like the animals and will no longer distinguish between good and evil.”

[ 61 ] True progress for the human being lies between these two extremes. So that humanity may rise above what it can gain merely from contemplating sensory reality—to which it may only passively surrender itself— [to this end] spiritual science must intervene in the cultural world and provide it with goals that lie in the activity of the soul—goals that place human beings in the world in such a way that, in the proper balance between the divine and the animal, they may better find their progress in the development of freedom and all that is human.

[ 62 ] With these true goals of spiritual science, one is, however, in harmony with all those individuals who, in the course of human development and out of a deep contemplation of the soul, sought to gain a sense and a feeling for the true nature of the human being. Even though in earlier times it was not possible to articulate—as it is in our time, because we have the model of the natural sciences before us—what spiritual science can clearly articulate today, it was felt and sensed by all those spirits, all those individuals, who took genuine human progress seriously. They were far, far from allowing the direction of their thinking to lead toward a goal that must be characterized as follows: You will be like animals and will no longer distinguish between good and evil; your thought will be nothing more than the highest activity of your brain, just as magnetism is the highest activity of what can occur in the material processes of iron.

[ 63 ] How many great minds could speak to us from across the centuries through poetry and thought! Let us conclude by citing just one, in whose words I would like to summarize, in accordance with my own feelings, what I wanted to present here today. Let me quote a statement by Schiller, who also once sought to clarify the nature of humanity’s relationship to the emerging animal world; how this relationship stood in the formation of the Earth when humanity appeared alongside the other beings. Indeed, even more profoundly than he could have sensed it, we would like—drawing on spiritual science as its most important result and summarizing it intuitively—to express Schiller’s words, knowing that such a statement expresses humanity’s true position in relation to the universe:

Now the dull barrier of animality fell,
And humanity stepped onto the cloudless brow,
And the sublime stranger, the thought
Leapt from the astonished brain.