The Rudolf Steiner Archive

12. The Nature of Spiritual Science and Knowledge of the Supersensible World

[ 1 ] Ladies and gentlemen! It is impossible to immediately convince anyone—or even to attempt to do so—with a reflection in the field of spiritual science such as the one to be presented this evening, and it would be naive to assume otherwise. For spiritual science as such—as it is understood here—is in the early stages of its development, and it is only gradually seeking to take root in cultural development and in the spiritual life of human beings. Today, what spiritual science has to offer stands in stark contrast to the familiar notions held by the broadest circles. And it is far more natural—I would say far more to be expected—that, in the face of things that must be said this evening, objection upon objection will arise, and that these things will be regarded as fantasy or daydreaming. This is far more to be expected than it would be if these things were to meet with immediate approval. In particular, anyone who has become familiar with the field of spiritual science or its findings will not assume that they can easily convince anyone of anything. Rather, the findings of spiritual science must, very slowly and gradually—as has always been the case with intellectual progress in the world—become integrated into the habits of thought and the entire way of conceiving of time.

[ 2 ] And so it is only too understandable, indeed self-evident, that from many quarters—and many more could be cited than are intended to be mentioned in this introduction—objections and contradictions, even mockery and derision, must be raised against the findings of spiritual science today. Above all, the most obvious objection, so to speak, is that spiritual science contradicts the well-founded achievements and concepts of natural science, which has made such great, such tremendous progress in our time. Today’s lecture may perhaps shed some light on this very objection. But objections also arise from other quarters—and, as will likely become clear in today’s and tomorrow’s lectures, I would say these are understandable but unfounded objections.

[ 3 ] A religiously inclined person, a member of this or that religious community, easily believes—and I say again: understandably—that spiritual science might somehow be hostile or antagonistic toward people’s religious deepening and religious life. And in particular, there are still very many people today who are convinced that spiritual science—by seeking to lead the soul to a world that is neither the world of the senses nor the world of ordinary reason, but rather a world of spiritual beings and spiritual forces — must inevitably fall into all manner of superstitious notions and could somehow spread them among those who wish to become adherents of spiritual science.

[ 4 ] In particular, I would say that the ridicule of certain contemporary views must indeed be evoked when the humanities assert their most fundamental principle; this most fundamental aspect, which consists in the fact that the human being, in his totality, in his wholeness, is not merely what he appears to our external senses, what he appears to be to his own external senses, and what he appears to be to the intellect bound to the brain and the nervous system. It goes without saying that, from certain points of view today, not only is this regarded as a fantasy, but there is also mockery when it is said that this physical human being, as studied by conventional science, this physical body, which many today must regard—I must say—as the only reality, is not the only thing that can be recognized in a human being, but rather that this physical body is merely one part of the entire human being.

[ 5 ] A subtle, spiritual human being—as spiritual science has shown—reigns, as it were, supersensibly and invisibly within this physical body and underlies it; and in a certain sense, as we shall see, this spiritual being is even the agent, the producer, the creator, and the active force behind the physical body. And when spiritual science speaks of calling this second, supersensible, invisible body the etheric body, it is, as I said, quite understandable that such a finding is dismissed as a blind assumption or ridiculed as a flight of fancy. And if spiritual science cannot be content merely to identify, in addition to this physical human being, the spiritual human being just described, but must assume, beyond this, an even higher aspect of human nature, and if, from some quarters, this higher aspect of human nature is then called the astral body—for reasons to which we shall return today—then, as I said, it would be almost naïve to believe that such assumptions would not be mocked from the perspective that is often regarded today as the only scientific one.

[ 6 ] In the course of our discussion today, we now wish to provide some justification for such supersensible aspects of human nature by presenting to the soul’s gaze the manner in which spiritual science can arrive at such assumptions, and what the spiritual scientist must do in order to be permitted to present such assumptions to human understanding.

[ 7 ] True, genuine spiritual science is entirely in harmony with natural science as it has developed, with all its marvelous achievements. Indeed, it is not only in harmony with it, but it even seeks to be a true and genuine continuation of scientific inquiry as it applies to spiritual phenomena—to the phenomena of the spiritual world. And when, with regard to the life of the soul, the radical natural scientist says today: Do we not recognize that this life of the soul, as it unfolds and manifests itself in the human being, stands in an intimate connection, in a relationship, with physical phenomena? Or can we not see from this that this life of the soul is, just like light and the heat of a flame, materially dependent on physical, material life? If the natural scientist today—and I do not say this out of some irreligious sentiment, but out of his most genuine conviction—puts this forward, then it must be said that true spiritual science, as it is now beginning to develop, does not contradict natural science with regard to what it truly has to say about the matters indicated; on the contrary, it stands on equal footing with natural science in regard to all that is a legitimate finding of natural science.

[ 8 ] If we consider the life of the soul as it first manifests itself in life—as we pass through this life between birth and death—if we observe this inner life of the soul, and if a person gains insight into their own inner spiritual life through self-knowledge, then we can say: This life of the soul unfolds in thinking, feeling, and willing. And fundamentally, in these three activities of the soul—thinking, feeling, and willing—we have before us the scope, the horizon, of the life of the soul. And if anyone, who does not yet stand on the ground of spiritual science but feels the need to I would say, to understand something of the human being—to accept that there is something that passes through the gate of death and remains in a spiritual world after death—if such a person were to look at the ordinary thinking, feeling, and willing that present themselves in human everyday life, and then, for some philosophical or other reason, were to say: “This thinking, feeling, and willing has nothing to do with the material processes in the human body,” and if someone were to try in this way to save the human soul from physical destruction or from physical nature in general, then the natural scientist would come and say: But just look at it: all it takes is some minor injury to the nervous system, and this thinking, feeling, and willing can be undermined as a result. So this thinking, feeling, and willing life of the soul—just as light and heat depend on the flame and on the fuel—is dependent on physical processes. If these are interrupted in any way, then thinking, feeling, and willing simply cannot take place properly.

[ 9 ] Physiology, psychology, and medicine are able to cite all manner of plausible reasons intended to demonstrate that this thinking, feeling, and willing are entirely bound up with these material processes of the nervous system—indeed, with physicality itself.

[ 10 ] Furthermore, it is pointed out: One can see, after all, how in youth the life of the soul develops along with the development of the physical body; how in old age, when the activity of physical processes declines, thinking, feeling, and willing also decline. Does one not see—as the scientific thinker may rightly say—that what is called the life of the soul is really nothing more than an effect of physical-material processes? Is there anything left—as the natural scientist may ask—that could be said to pass through the gate of death into a spiritual world as a living inner being?

[ 11 ] Time and again, scientists draw attention to an age-old contrast regarding the explanation of human spiritual life—a contrast that is already evident in Plato’s wonderful dialogue on the immortality of the human soul, which follows *The Death of Socrates*. There we see how Socrates raises his objections against Simmias, who says: “Ah, this entire spiritual life of man—we can conceive of it as something like the playing of a lute, the sounds of a lute, and the lute is the physical human body.” When the forces of physical human life unfold, it is as if the strings of the lute, as they vibrate, produce sound and create a harmony of tones; similarly, the activities—the material processes of the human body—give rise to the life of the soul, and the moment the lute is destroyed, the harmonies of the lute also cease. But the moment that which brings about material processes in human beings is destroyed, that which arises like the resonance of human activities also ceases, and the life of the soul also ceases.

[ 12 ] And it may even be said, ladies and gentlemen, that if one does not start from the subjective needs of human life—from the longings for a life free from the body—then it is very difficult, provided one has even the slightest sense of the underlying forces behind contemporary scientific concepts, it is very difficult to escape what natural science has to say from its own perspective in the direction just mentioned. It is difficult to escape this because the reasons that must be cited to show that spiritual life—as we know it, as it unfolds in everyday thinking, feeling, and willing—is demonstrably dependent on physical processes. The reasons that can be put forward for this are compelling for anyone who is able to see through the underlying forces of these reasons—who is at all capable of engaging with what contemporary natural science has to offer in terms of general knowledge of the world, what it has to say.

[ 13 ] However—and this must be particularly emphasized—in light of everything that has been said so far, the humanities stand entirely on the foundation of contemporary natural science. And there is—though I cannot, of course, truly mention the full scope of what would need to be mentioned here—there is nothing that can justifiably be raised by natural science in the direction indicated that true, genuine spiritual science would contradict. True, genuine spiritual science must fully acknowledge that this thinking, as it presents itself to us in everyday life, and this feeling and willing, as they present themselves to us in everyday life, are the results of physical-material processes of the body and must therefore cease the moment the body ceases its activity with death. Everything that natural science has to say regarding this everyday life of the soul—and this is, after all, its sole concern—must also serve as a valid premise for true, genuine spiritual science.

[ 14 ] But now this true, genuine spiritual science is just beginning to emerge, as it leads to paths of spiritual research that, going beyond ordinary thinking, feeling, and willing, are able to reveal other contents and yet another aspect of the human soul. Yes, spiritual science tells us that what a person experiences in ordinary life as thinking, feeling, and willing is entirely dependent on physical processes. But behind this thinking, feeling, and willing lie other soul forces—soul forces that are invisible and imperceptible to ordinary soul life, that exist independently of the physical, and that pass through the gate of death when the body undergoes dissolution.

[ 15 ] Ordinary thinking takes place in such a way that, in everyday life, we perceive things through the senses and link our thoughts to these perceptions. Spiritual science, in particular, must admit in the most serious sense that what we do in this way is entirely bound up with the material processes of the nervous system. The actual life of the soul does not come into play at all in everyday life, not even in thinking consciousness. This life of the soul, as we shall see shortly, lies behind ordinary thoughts and ideas, and it is this life of the soul that brings about the material processes. And because these material processes take place in the nervous system, images are formed by the true life of the soul. These images are our thoughts. In a sense, these images have no reality other than the reflection we see when we stand before a mirror.

[ 16 ] As human beings, we stand before a mirror—this is meant to be a comparison, but it is meant to convey more than a mere comparison—and when we cannot see ourselves, we see our reflection. The reflection is there only as long as the mirror stands before us; it depends entirely on the nature of the mirror. With regard to our inner life—our true inner life, which spiritual science is only now discovering and which does not consist of ordinary thinking, feeling, and willing—we stand, dear friends, like a person before a mirror who cannot see themselves; and what this person does is to set in motion unconscious processes in their nervous system. But this turns the nervous system into a mirror, and thoughts and ideas are reflected back from this mirror. Thoughts and ideas truly exist as such only as long as the nervous system is able to function. Just as the mirror image has no reality in and of itself, so too does what we call our thinking in the ordinary sense have no reality other than an image reality—a true image reality. It depends on the fact that mental life is reflected in the material processes of the nervous system.

[ 17 ] That which lives in thought—the very power of the soul, which can be compared to a person standing before a mirror to whom his thoughts appear only as an image—this very power of the soul must first be discovered through spiritual science. And in earlier lectures, I have already pointed out from this very place the way in which the real, underlying life of the soul—that is, what is present in thinking as the soul force underlying it—can be recognized within the mere pictorial existence that we experience in our everyday thinking and imagination.

[ 18 ] I have drawn attention to this—you can read all the details in my books, in *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?* and in the second part of my *The Secret Science*, I can only hint at the fundamental principles of these matters now, given the limited time—I have already indicated what must then take place within the soul so that what is reflected in thoughts and images may become self-aware, so that the soul’s life may truly take hold in that element which remains entirely unconscious to it in ordinary, everyday life. What the soul must accomplish within itself consists of intimate inner processes and experiences of the soul itself. If we rely solely on the thinking and imagining we engage in during our ordinary daily experience, we will never discover the true, supersensible soul life that reigns and dwells within us and that passes through the gate of death, even when the body is destroyed. To do this, we must engage in certain inner, intimate processes within our thinking—our everyday thinking—which are called meditation and concentration of thought. I can only briefly hint at this.

[ 19 ] While we normally allow one thought to follow another in accordance with the usual laws—those imposed on us by the world—in meditation and concentration, through the inner strengthening and exertion of thought, we attempt, by an act of inner will, to place certain thoughts—which we form entirely on our own or receive from somewhere else—at the center of our attention. We strive not only to allow ourselves to be guided by the world in terms of thinking, but also to concentrate the powers of the soul inwardly in such a way that these powers of the soul remain directed toward a single train of thought over a prolonged period of time. In this way, we strive to develop an inner activity of thought that one would otherwise never develop in life, and to focus all the inner strength we can muster on a single thought; this is called meditation, or concentrating on a single thought.

[ 20 ] What matters is not merely that one thinks a thought, but that this thought—not prompted by any external cause, but arising from within—is brought to the center of one’s consciousness and lingers in the soul for some time; that one, as it were, surveys this thought inwardly; that the soul is focused on it. What matters is not what this thought expresses or whether it is true in relation to external phenomena, but rather that the soul concentrates inwardly. What matters, therefore, is the soul’s inner experience—that which it experiences through thought activity drawn from its inner strength. It does not matter what the soul imagines. That is why it is better to place a symbolic image—one that does not represent anything external—at the center of one’s consciousness. What matters, then, is that one directs inner forces—which one would otherwise not need—toward this act of imagination. It is then, however, necessary to have a great deal of patience and perseverance, because it sometimes takes years to develop—as it were—an inner habit of thinking, cultivated through this concentration, to such an extent that what lies hidden behind thought—that which is, as it were, active within thought but does not appear to ordinary consciousness—rises up into consciousness. So when one, often over the course of many years, with patience, energy, and perseverance—and I am not speaking merely of one’s thinking, but of the inner forces underlying thought—brings forth from the hidden, deep recesses these inner forces, then one realizes what it means not merely to think, but to shape one’s inner experience in thought and to give it power through thought. What emerges from this, my esteemed audience, is an entirely new experience of life—something a person cannot have unless they have developed their thoughts in the manner described. As I said, you can read the details in the books cited; I can only outline the principles here.

[ 21 ] What, then, does one find when one experiments, as it were, purely mentally and spiritually within oneself? Well, my esteemed audience, what one finds there I can best characterize with the following words: Ordinary thinking—how far does it actually go? If one truly observes this ordinary thinking—as it develops in human beings in everyday life—with an open mind, one must conclude: It extends as far as what we call “remembering,” as far as memory itself, as far as the unfolding of memory. We have, after all, been able to point out that what actually lives in thinking stands before the physical body as before a mirror, and that what constitutes ordinary thoughts is reflected back from the body. But then this thinking, this imagination, develops such thoughts, such mental images, such ideas, which, in a sense—as is commonly believed—take root in the life of the soul, remain there, so that one can later look back and, without any external experience being present, find an echo in one’s own soul life of what one has experienced in the past. Essentially, all philosophy and all science are based on the fact that human beings can develop memory, that they can look back on what no longer exists. And it is precisely in relation to what we can call memory that the spiritual scientists’ scientific worldview—when truly understood—is in complete, complete harmony. One must not, however, believe—and advancing natural science in particular will prove this; what I am now about to present as a finding of spiritual science will prove itself—one must not believe that something like a photographic image of an experience remains in the soul, to be recalled in memory. Nor should one believe that anything remains in the nervous system which, when it becomes active again, bears any resemblance to the experiences one had years ago—or even yesterday. Admittedly, the conceptions held today by those who base their views on natural science are, in a sense, inadequate. But the direction of natural science is precisely toward what needs to be said here.

[ 22 ] What actually remains when we have an experience now, and then days or years pass, and later we recall what we experienced from the wellspring of our memories? What remains then? Does an image remain? No.

[ 23 ] Ladies and gentlemen, it is precisely the natural sciences that will prove that what remains in the body as a memory looks, so to speak, no more like what we are recalling than the letters written on a piece of paper. And we read what we remember just as we read those letters. It is precisely the natural sciences that will prove that this memory bears a resemblance to subconscious reading—that what remains in memory is nothing but signs that must first be interpreted by the deeper life of the soul. Just as someone who would describe a letter—saying, “There is a letter that has a vertical stroke, an upward stroke, a curve; there is a letter that starts with a curve, then has vertical strokes, and so on”—is not really reading —just as that person is not reading, but rather, just as someone who has learned to read does not describe what they see on the paper but, through their ability to read, forms certain mental images that have nothing to do with what is written on the paper—so it is with what remains as signs in the physical organism in relation to what we then have in our truly experienced memory. This memory is a form of inner reading. As I said, natural science will prove this, precisely from its own perspective. It will increasingly move away from the fanciful notions it currently holds. You will soon see that spiritual science can arrive at the insight just expressed when we discuss other types of spiritual scientific concepts.

[ 24 ] Thus, in his thinking, man comes to elevate, as it were, the mere perception of mirror images to a kind of reading backward, to a subconscious reading backward. This, too, is a kind of mirror; but what is reflected are only signs—not a real image—but signs that we later summon through what we possess within us as a spiritual force, leading to what then becomes the revival of memory. Let us realize from this that when we weave and live within our memories, we are actually weaving and living within a true spiritual realm. At the very moment when thought transitions into memory, a deeper, purely spiritual-soul force is already at work within that thought—though we usually do not want to admit it. For when we remember, we cannot, for example, conjure up the process that has remained in the brain—that would be nothing more than a description of the letters—but rather we must recognize the spiritual in the signs. We live and exist within a real being. We are in memory within a real inner experience. Memory is that through which human beings rise from thinking, feeling, and willing—which are still, in the broadest sense, bound to the physical—to the spiritual. And when a person sufficiently trains their will, they become aware that when they live in memory, they live in the soul—in the soul that is independent of the body, insofar as the physical realm contains only the signs.

[ 25 ] If one now strengthens and enlivens one’s thinking through meditation and concentration—as described in principle—in the manner indicated, one comes to transform this thinking itself into something it is not in ordinary life. This thinking then gains inner activity. It is just as with this thinking as when one stands before a mirror and, through such keen inner activity, manages to erase the reflection and then becomes aware of how one stands there in one’s inner soul power. So it is with thinking in concentration. One erases ordinary thoughts, but one comes alive in the power of thinking, and one then realizes: One comes alive in something that is no longer conditioned by anything in the body; one becomes aware of something entirely new. One also notices the difference, which lies in the fact that ordinary thinking is entirely bound to the body; if the body does not reflect thinking back as a mirror image, it is not there. Now, however, one becomes aware that there is a form of thinking that is independent of bodily experience. As I said, it is still difficult today for people to readily step outside their habitual conceptions and ways of thinking to admit that there really is an inner power of the soul underlying thought, which becomes so conscious that, by having this inner experience, a person becomes entirely independent of the body. So that one can say: The thinker, by experiencing himself in the power of thought, slips out of the body through his own thinking and becomes independent of the body. Now he can also judge that this inner power of thought is indeed something independent of the body. Through concentration, a real process has been achieved; the soul has become something else—it has become that which can know itself independently of the body.

[ 26 ] And now, precisely when one has engaged in such exercises with patience, perseverance, and energy—through which one has come to experience an inner strength that grows ever greater—something occurs that is indeed significant; a tragic inner experience sets in. I would like to say that it is this: These are the processes that, fundamentally, everyone who seriously engages in these methods of spiritual research must experience; the fact is that, by concentrating and by developing the soul forces that underlie thinking, we feel increasingly alive within ourselves. But this only goes so far. A certain point in the inner experience is reached at which this inner strengthening ceases, at which—without exaggeration—a burden, the full weight of an unknown world, settles upon the soul. And then the possibility of continuing to experience this strengthened thinking disappears. One feels as if this inner experience is being extinguished by an unknown power. If one were to do only the exercises I have listed so far, one would indeed, through these exercises, reach a point where—as if under a kind of immense inner strain—one feels one’s soul dissolving into nothingness.

[ 27 ] Therefore, no true spiritual-scientific method may recommend only what has now been described to you as the path into the spiritual world. Rather, other exercises must proceed, as it were, in parallel with this meditation and concentration. For you have seen how the practice discussed so far develops and engages the soul forces underlying thinking. We would truly encounter phenomena that, like the immense resistance of an unknown power, would tear us apart if we were to pursue this practice one-sidedly. In addition to this thinking, the human will—which is more of an active soul force—must be developed. Only when a person begins not only to deepen their thinking through this meditation and concentration—seeking inner strength for this thinking that is otherwise hidden in the deep wellspring of soul life—but also undergoes an inner, intimate cultivation of the will, will they truly arrive at the right path.

[ 28 ] Now, it is of course possible—and here I refer once again to the books cited—to make one’s life of the will increasingly serene through intimate, inner spiritual practices, so that one can increasingly rid oneself of the ordinary egoistic drives and passions of the human soul. But I would like to describe those exercises through which one can most reliably attain an inwardly developed spiritual life, just as one attains the development of the life of thought through the other method. Here we must approach something that enters human life in such a mysterious, often terrible way—and in any case, always remains unfathomable to ordinary experience. This is what we call human destiny. Not that we can develop our will in relation to fate in the way that will now be described. But what is to be characterized here is, in a sense, an attitude toward human fate—the next path through which we can attain this inner cultivation of the will within ourselves.

[ 29 ] How does this fate affect people in everyday life? Well, it is often said that misfortunes befall us. This or that happens; we may be moved either positively or negatively by what befalls us; we may take this or that course of action in response to these blows of fate, but in this life, between birth and death, we will experience fate as a power that shapes our lives—a power toward which we can only relate as we would to an inscrutable, enigmatic force.

[ 30 ] But if one looks at this human life with an open mind, one arrives at a different perspective on this fate even in ordinary life. Let us try to understand what makes us what we truly are at this very moment in life—that is, not in an abstract sense, but in reality—let us try to understand what makes us who we are in reality. We can do this or that; we do this or that; we are capable of exerting this or that power, of rejecting this or that. Let us reflect on what enables us to do these things, on how we have become the whole human being that we are now, on what makes us who we are. If we look back on our lives, we will find that so many years ago, this or that happened—something that intervened in our lives as if by chance. Had it not happened that this or that came our way, we would not have done this or that; we would not have developed this or that strength, nor would we have acquired these or those inclinations. The way we are constituted today is the result of what fate brought us back then. Years later, we see it quite differently. We see: Fate has shaped us. After all, we wouldn’t even be able to write today if we hadn’t lived in the second half of the nineteenth century, when we were taught to write.

[ 31 ] What, then, is this thing we call our “I”? What is it other than, in the course of life between birth and death, the very result of our fate—the result of what has flowed into us, of what we now want simply because we choose to want it—if fate had not shaped our will, had not forged our will? When one confronts fate in this way, one realizes that one’s “I,” one’s self, is in fact a product of this fate; that this fate has, as it were, solidified within our self, within our “I,” just as the mass of the mineral has solidified within the crystal. We are shaped by our destiny. What we want now has, so to speak, coalesced from everything that our destiny has shaped.

[ 32 ] If one immerses oneself in this thought abstractly, it does not mean much, my esteemed audience; but if one looks upon it with one’s entire inner life of the soul, with the totality of one’s feelings and sensations—as if upon something entirely substantial, something fixed—then one begins to develop certain feelings and certain sensations toward this fate. One may develop a sense of gratitude toward this destiny for having shaped one into what one is now, even if it has dealt one blows as terrible and painful as they may be. One feels many other things as well. But everything one feels in this way can be characterized by one common trait: One grows together with one’s destiny even in the life between birth and death; one learns to recognize how one is a product of this destiny, how destiny is embedded within what one is. Through this, one grows together with the entire current of one’s destiny. That which one holds within oneself as a sense of one’s own individuality—one tears it out of oneself and identifies intimately with the current of destiny. But this must not remain an abstract thought; rather, it must be a deep, inner experience in which the soul frees itself from this physicality and, as the “I,” no longer feels merely within its own skin, but truly feels itself to be within the current of its destiny. One looks upon one’s destiny and says to oneself: This is you; you would not be what you are if it were not for destiny.

[ 33 ] Just as the power of thought, as described earlier, frees itself from the body, so too does such contemplation—but this contemplation must take hold of the mind, the feelings, and the will—free the human being from the body and flow out into destiny.

[ 34 ] But it doesn’t stop there—and this is what is peculiar—for as a person simultaneously engages in the exercise of the power of thought that I have described and the other exercise that tears him away from himself and identifies him with his destiny, he—this person—comes to stand before a truly new world. If we were to perform the mental exercise alone, we would arrive at what is described as: “It is as if the entire course of world history were waiting for us.” But if one performs the entire exercise simultaneously—the one that relates to the will, through which a gaze toward one’s destiny can take shape—then the mental exercise is also stimulated.

[ 35 ] These two exercises stimulate one another and create something entirely new from the soul, tearing the soul out of the body. And while in ordinary recollection a person must still be living in their body for the images to emerge—the images of memories of past experiences; after all, there must be traces present in the physical body—we are able to develop a world of images when the will is trained at the same time and the power of thought truly becomes independent of the body; a completely new world, previously unknown to us, emerges. This exercise of the will must simply proceed in parallel with the exercise of thought.

[ 36 ] Why do I call this exercise, which relates to fate, an exercise of the will? Because it leads a person to truly say to themselves: This fate did not merely befall me; rather, I willed it. Just as the will I develop is derived from fate, so too have I shaped my fate out of my own will. When a person performs this exercise of the will, they come to tear their will out of themselves and identify with their destiny. And so, by deepening their thinking—and thereby discovering a new power of the soul, a new power of thought—and by tearing their will out of themselves and developing it into a new power, he comes to have before him not merely a world like the world of memory, but a world which he experiences in such a way that, as he experiences it, he knows that he is independent of his body, that he lives in the purely spiritual-soul realm.

[ 37 ] To help us understand each other better, let me add that human beings do, in a certain sense, know what I have just described as a world of images that appears before them when, through meditation and concentration, they discover a hidden power within themselves. People are familiar with what I am talking about, but they experience it in a purely chaotic way—through chaotic mental images and fragments of imagination. When a person falls asleep each night, dream images can, as is well known, arise. But what do we actually see in these dream images? Well, you see, when a person lives in their dreams—as is the case in ordinary life—there is nothing special contained in these dreams. But when one gradually comes to discover the power of thought as a deep-seated force within oneself, then one knows that with the soul—with which one steps out of the body—one is now also outside the body during sleep; only, one remains unconscious of this.

[ 38 ] One is not in one’s body while asleep; one has left the body along with what one has discovered in the manner described. But since one has not yet developed these powers, the soul remains unconscious when it is outside the body. But dreams can arise. They arise because the human being is bound to the body by an inner force. While awake, the body reflects the life of the soul in thinking, feeling, and willing. Dreams take shape from the fact that the body reflects the life of the soul. People do not understand what is happening here. For only as a researcher of the spiritual can one realize that one is truly outside one’s body during sleep. Only the researcher of the spiritual can grasp that the body, when outside, is an object for the sleeping soul. Because people do not yet have a full understanding of these things, they interpret everything in relation to ordinary life. Only when one delves deeper into the life of the soul, as I have described, does one arrive not merely at a dream life—not at all merely at a dream life—nor at something pathological or somnambulistic, but rather at a life that also unfolds in images, yet images of which one knows that they signify something real, that they are not mere reflections.

[ 39 ] What, then, do these images mean? As one develops the soul power that underlies thinking, one encounters something akin to a power of memory that is no longer bound to the body’s signs, but develops, floating freely, within the spiritual-soul realm. This is by no means a matter of what is known as somnambulic clairvoyance, but rather an inner life emerges that, in terms of its structure, is akin to the power of memory. And now one can learn to decipher what one realizes belongs to oneself, but which lay within one without one being consciously aware of it; this is the world of images. One gradually comes to realize that this is the world from which our physicality—our physical life—was first formed. From what one thus becomes aware of, one recognizes that it has united with what came to us physically from our father and mother through heredity, with what reveals itself to us within this physical body as our self, and with what has descended from the spiritual world and permeates and shapes us from within. One learns to recognize oneself as coming from an existence that preceded one’s birth—an existence in a spiritual world. An imaginative world comes to meet us. In this imaginative world, however, everything is contained that, in terms of spiritual forces, unites with the physical materiality one has inherited from one’s father and mother. The eternal spiritual-soul aspect is contained within this world—this eternal spiritual-soul aspect that now works within the physical body, reflecting itself in thinking, feeling, and willing; the true life of the soul, which cannot be explored through scientific methods, and which lies behind everything we know as the life of the soul in ordinary life. It is this that now, through the gateway of death, enters once more into a spiritual world. And our life is thereby directly encompassed by lives that unfold in the spiritual world, in a spiritual existence. This becomes, for true spiritual research, an experience, a genuine inner experience.

[ 40 ] And as the spiritual researcher progresses to this point by applying this inner art of experimentation, he experiences not merely what he now recognizes as his spiritual-soul experience; he experiences not merely what is so easily ridiculed; but he truly experiences that there is an ethereal, a finer existence, that [he] finds a finer body underlying his physical body, which descends from the spiritual world and returns to the spiritual world. He experiences not only that, but just as we do not merely have eyes and ears, but just as we ourselves experience the things of the world that exist outside of us, so too, at the moment we enter into our own spiritual being, we can come into connection with the spiritual being that underlies all existence. We enter an elemental world, a world where spiritual experiences and spiritual processes take place that we did not previously know, processes that lie behind all physical experiences and events. What spiritual science speaks of is not philosophical speculation; it is not something invented—it is the result of the most serious research. However, this research does not take place as it does in a laboratory—with external objects and instruments in external procedures—but rather unfolds through direct, inner, and intimate experiences of the soul itself. The soul-spiritual realm must be explored through methods applied to the soul-spiritual aspect within the human being. Certainly, great harm is done to spiritual science by the fact that people who believe they are already versed in this spiritual science speak of all sorts of foolish nonsense—claiming that one can attain it without self-sacrificing work within one’s soul, without a work within one’s soul that is far more difficult and far more self-sacrificing than the work involved in external natural science.

[ 41 ] If people repeatedly believe that anyone who has applied this spiritual-scientific method to their own soul can proclaim anything they please about the spiritual world, then they have a naive view of these matters. The work required to explore even the smallest aspect of the spiritual world demands genuine inner efforts on the part of the human soul. The soul must first detach itself from the physical realm in order to enter the spiritual realm and explore the specific area it wishes to investigate. And one cannot say that the rules by which the soul rises to a body-free state of cognition can be written down in a little booklet and then declare: “Follow these rules, and you will enter a realm that leads into the spiritual world.” Rather, one must say: What is to happen there varies according to the prerequisites one brings with oneself. This cannot be captured in individual rules; rather, one must recognize inwardly through direct experience: “Now you are facing a truly new world, a completely real new world—not a world of fantasy.”

[ 42 ] Once we have thus examined our own spiritual-soul life and come to realize that, through this spiritual-soul life, the human being simultaneously enters a spiritual-soul world of supersensible processes, we may ask again: What happens when a person also develops their will, initially through the example of destiny? Where does a person arrive when they say to themselves: My will is embedded in the entire flow of my destiny; I say “Yes” to everything that has affected me; I myself have flowed forth from what constitutes the stream of my destiny; I am not within myself, but within the stream of destiny? If one truly makes this an experience—becoming one with destiny—then one comes to experience something even higher within human nature. One does not merely come to experience what I have described as existing before birth. Rather, by developing the will, we experience a core of our being that lies deep within our soul. And we gradually come to recognize: Yes, this destiny—it is truly the case that only the human being who identifies this destiny with his or her very being can truly grasp it. Just as someone who has never heard of natural science, when seeing lightning, thunder, and other forces of nature out in the world, cannot unravel the “why”—as these phenomena stand before such a person’s soul as utterly incomprehensible—but these processes can be explained to the person who has studied natural science, so it is with destiny through the method of spiritual science. Something enters into destiny that is our own deeper essence. We flow out into our destiny. But as we flow out into destiny with our entire being, we come to know the inner core of our soul.

[ 43 ] However, we must then learn to use the insight we have gained in this way to analyze this destiny. Just as natural phenomena were deciphered only after centuries upon centuries, so too must we learn to decipher destiny in order to find an inner order. Then we discover that what presents itself as our destiny—when we identify with this destiny—reveals to us what we were in past lives. And as we come to know the inner order of our destiny, we learn that this destiny is connected to past earthly lives. Such an understanding of our life does not arise merely from an overview of our present earthly life; rather, we recognize that our destiny contains what has already existed for us once or even repeatedly as an earthly life—what has now shaped that which we have imaginatively recognized in images as the core of our being—so that it manifests itself as it now stands before us. What we explore through deepened powers of thought, we learn to relate to our supersensible life before birth and after death. And what we explore through the deepening of our life of will and destiny, we learn to understand as pointing us back to past earthly lives and forward to future earthly lives. As this destiny merges with our inner world of images, we know that this world of images is like a core that grasps our destiny, carries it over into a life between death and rebirth, and leads us once again into a new earthly existence.

[ 44 ] In this way, we come to know an aspect of human nature through the deepening of thought. We come to recognize, as it were, our ethereal essence—that which, as the supersensible body, underlies our physical body—as a soul force. When the spiritual researcher speaks of an etheric body, this etheric body is discovered through a method just as reliable as the chemist’s discovery that hydrogen can be separated from oxygen. Just as one cannot tell by looking at water that it contains a substance that burns—hydrogen—even though water extinguishes fire, so too, when a human being stands before us, if we regard the person solely with ordinary intellect, we cannot see that a supersensible human being lives within this physical human being and is capable of extending his or her life beyond birth and death; but this can be investigated through spiritual science using scientific methods that are just as reliable—albeit inner ones—as the method just mentioned, thereby elevating spiritual science to the status of a true science. That which underlies the human being as an ethereal entity—it is not speculation, nor some fanciful notion, that leads to this realization, but rather a real experience, an experience, however, that must first be cultivated.

[ 45 ] As we proceed further and deepen our will, we come to the point where we can now also grasp the astral human being—the term “astral” human is one that is easily ridiculed, but this term is justified, as we shall soon see—we come to grasp the astral human being; that human being who evolves from life to life and who then becomes aware that he is no longer bound to his physical body, but is connected to the entire world. In this way, the human being learns to recognize himself in his astral body, being dependent on the entire cosmos, in which the laws of the stellar world prevail. Therefore, to use a figurative expression, this human being—who is not bound by the laws of what we experience between birth and death, but rather by the laws of the entire world—can be called the astral human.

[ 46 ] You see that anyone who approaches spiritual science can truly live in the belief that, in a sense, with this spiritual science we stand at the threshold of a spiritual development. The spiritual scientist—as I have already mentioned here—is unconcerned when told: ‘Yes, you’re making a claim here that you simply cannot make if you let your five healthy senses speak.’ You are no doubt aware—as was also said—that when Copernicus tried to make it clear to people that the Earth does not stand still and the Sun revolves around the Earth, but rather that, conversely, the Sun stands still, so to speak, and the Earth revolves around the Sun. That, too, contradicted the five senses quite strongly, and it took a long time for people to adjust their ways of thinking to what was a better truth than the earlier one, which had corresponded to the five senses.

[ 47 ] What is explored from the depths of being must first find its way into people’s understanding, despite the world’s resistance. The spiritual researcher is confident that this will happen, but it takes time.

[ 48 ] And similarly, one can say: Yes, what the spiritual researcher must describe as a world that stands above the ordinary sensory world differs greatly from what human beings perceive in this world. It must be different. For with regard to everything that ordinary soul life encompasses—this thinking, feeling, and willing, which natural science can speak of only when it becomes psychology—the spiritual researcher is in complete agreement with the natural scientist. He will not speak in an amateurish way of immortality regarding that which lives out its existence merely in images—[which] must vanish along with the mirror of the brain and with physicality in this form. But this is precisely what is distinctive about spiritual science: that it agrees with natural science in all that it presents, and that it never claims that spiritual science must oppose natural science, for the spiritual scientist fully acknowledges all the valid findings of natural science. It is only through his methods, however, that he discovers what cannot be present in ordinary life—and yet what is, in fact, the eternal, immortal essence of the human being, who passes through births and deaths and repeated earthly lives, and who bears within himself the character of the eternal.

[ 49 ] When the natural scientist comes and says, “From my point of view, I must reject this”—then the spiritual scientist must say to the natural scientist, “Give your reasons.” Then the natural scientist gives as his reason: “Psychic life depends on the brain.” The spiritual scientist will say: “You are right.” He will agree with the natural scientist on everything. But he will say: “Only after one has stood on your ground does the exploration of spiritual-soul life begin—a life that has to do with forces entirely different from those about which natural science is entirely correct.” Therefore, it is indeed a misunderstanding—albeit a perfectly understandable one—when objections to spiritual science are raised from the standpoint of natural science. Spiritual science is well aware of the value of natural science. And it would be amateurishness in the field of spiritual science if it were to oppose natural science. Nor can one say that the spiritual scientist in any way cultivates superstition.

[ 50 ] This spiritual science leads into a real spiritual world. By discovering the real spiritual world—not the spiritual world dreamed up by those who merely want to dream of a spiritual world but cannot find it—it effectively combats superstition. Spiritual science is precisely what can and will bring healing to all superstitious notions. Superstition flourishes where spiritual science is not accepted, yet people still wish to enter the spiritual world. Spiritual science leads people into the spiritual world in a fully satisfying way and shows them the true course of spiritual events behind the sensory world. It shows people that their soul, as a spiritual being, is present within this spiritual world and that, before birth, it formed for itself from within this spiritual world the very body with which it exists in this earthly life. Thus, by discovering a real spiritual world, we counteract an unfounded spiritual world such as that which underlies superstitious beliefs.

[ 51 ] And as far as the relationship between spiritual science and religion is concerned, one very often encounters misconceptions. I will have to go into this in more detail tomorrow in my lecture, which will focus specifically on the institution we are to establish as a center for this new kind of science—spiritual science—about which I have taken the liberty of speaking to you today only briefly, to stimulate your souls, certainly not to convince you, but merely to provide inspiration.

[ 52 ] The aim will be to understand how spiritual science must be cultivated within a building whose artistic design can truly serve as a setting for this spiritual science, and to explain what is meant by this building and what is meant by integrating spiritual science into the artistic endeavors of our time. In doing so, we will also shed some light on the extent to which it is unfounded for religious minds to believe they must regard spiritual science as something hostile to religion. Today I would like to say only this much: While it is true that natural science, with its concepts, leads people away from religion and alienates them from religious ideas, spiritual science—by showing people how the spiritual world is a reality, how the spiritual world truly exists—stimulates the human spirit in such a way that even those who consider themselves enlightened can once again find a deeper religious connection.

[ 53 ] Spiritual science cannot replace religion. It cannot dissuade anyone from their religion. For the purpose of religion is different from that of spiritual science. Religion must be cultivated alongside spiritual science. But because spiritual science presents itself as a science of the spiritual world, it does not—unlike natural science—lead the person who seeks enlightenment away from religion; rather, it leads them toward religion. And so those who are sincere in their religious life must welcome spiritual science as the movement that can also lead enlightened people back to deeper religious experience, to religious contemplation, and to a true, genuine faith.

[ 54 ] But I would like to speak about that tomorrow in connection with what I will have to say about the care center that is to be built for spiritual science over in Dornach. But what I have tried to outline for you today as the foundation of spiritual science should ultimately be something that can be summarized as a fundamental feeling of the human soul. For this is the distinctive feature of spiritual science: that it does not merely stimulate our intellect, which is, after all, bound to the brain, but that it speaks to what lives in every human soul, regardless of all differences. One need not believe that one must become a spiritual researcher, but anyone can become one. I also ask you to read more about this in my books.

[ 55 ] One need not be a spiritual researcher, but the spiritual researcher speaks to what is within every human being, to what lives in every human soul. He speaks to that part of the human being that passes through births and deaths; to that which is eternal in the human soul. And what the spiritual researcher speaks can be understood by every human soul who simply clears away the debris and obstacles within themselves that have arisen from today’s habits of thought. And this, in a sense, will be the future development of spiritual science: there will be individual spiritual researchers, just as there are individual chemists, who will place the results of their research at the service of all. There will be individual spiritual researchers who, through what has been described as the spiritual-scientific method, will be led up into the spiritual world, and they will be able to speak about this spiritual world. But what they will say about this spiritual world will be able to inscribe itself understandingly into every soul, once the many prejudices that still exist today have been cleared away. This, in turn, will be able to generate a new life within the souls—a life that the soul needs in the face of the ever more complex circumstances of the outer world, which, in the present time, present such a sad picture to us everywhere we look in the non-neutral countries. But even setting aside such aspects: We can recognize that the soul will need these strong life forces in the face of circumstances that are becoming ever more and more complicated. Spiritual science seeks to give the soul these strengthened life forces, which will inspire within it an inner fulfillment and strength capable of withstanding everything that will flow into the soul—more so than has ever been the case in the past.

[ 56 ] And so I would now like to summarize—not as an intellectual judgment, but as a statement of feeling—what I have sought to awaken in your souls through these reflections. For what matters is not what we retain and know about spiritual science through our intellect, but rather what is stirred within the soul as direct experiences of sensation, feeling, and emotion—that is what matters.

[ 57 ] And what the words of this lecture were meant to inspire—I would now like to bring it all together into an overarching impression that, as a kind of conclusion, will summarize the lecture and bring it to a close:

They speak to the human senses
The things in the vastness of space;
They affect the human soul,
Changing as time goes by.
Experiencing itself, the soul grasps
The boundless expanse of space,
Unrestricted by the passage of time,
The realm of the spirit’s essence
In its eternal uniqueness.