The Rudolf Steiner Archive

13. Supersensory Knowledge and Its Value for the Human Soul: A Spiritual Scientific Reflection in Light of Our Fateful Times

[ 1 ] Ladies and gentlemen! For quite some time now, I have had the privilege of giving lectures here in Vienna each year on topics related to what I take the liberty of calling the spiritual-scientific worldview. The friends of our spiritual-scientific worldview here in Vienna have felt that, even in these turbulent and fateful times, it might not be inappropriate to give two such lectures from this spiritual-scientific field this year, and this is likely because this spiritual scientific field touches upon the deepest depths of the human soul—those depths in which the human soul is connected to the forces we call the eternal, to those forces to which Goethe’s words refer: “All that is transitory is but a parable.”

[ 2 ] It is precisely these depths of the human soul that are the focus of spiritual science—from which arise not only life’s most bitter disappointments and its most severe trials, but also the admirable deeds that are being accomplished in our time in such a significant way for the benefit and progress of humanity. Spiritual science, ladies and gentlemen, is based on a perspective on life that is by no means among the accepted ones in our time—a perspective that is completely rejected, for a wide variety of reasons, even by the most highly educated among our intellectuals; rejected, on the one hand, because it is considered to be in complete contradiction to everything that the scientific worldview of our time has produced; and, on the other hand, as we shall see, is associated in a completely misleading way with the shallows of human superstition; and, furthermore, because it is mistakenly regarded as a perspective that deprives many people of what gives them stability and security in life—namely, a firm adherence to their religious faith.

[ 3 ] I hope, distinguished guests, that all three misunderstandings regarding the spiritual-scientific perspective can be at least somewhat dispelled by what today’s presentation will endeavor to offer. Nevertheless, it must be stated from the outset that opposition to spiritual science—indeed, even the accusation that spiritual science completely contradicts what is widely referred to today as “common sense”—that all these challenges and accusations are perfectly understandable precisely to those who stand firmly on the ground of spiritual science. And they are so comprehensible, so understandable to such a person, that he must repeatedly remind himself how, in the course of human development, what appeared to a bygone era as self-evident—as the sole expression of common sense—must be replaced by its complete opposite.

[ 4 ] We must constantly be reminded of a turning point in human development such as the one experienced at the time when modern science took hold of the human worldview. Back then, when Copernicus introduced a new conception of spatial relationships in the universe, it was then that people had to break with everything that for centuries—indeed, one might say millennia—had been regarded as what the five healthy senses reveal and what common sense can grasp. The human soul clings to what it has become accustomed to—even in its thinking and imagination—just as—though this is a grotesque example—there are people who, after moving into a new apartment, still mentally return to their old one when they walk home in the evening. Just as people in such a grotesque example demonstrate how attached they are to their habits of thought, so too are they with regard to the great questions and perspectives of worldview. For centuries, humanity has been educated and has become accustomed to a worldview that is opposed to what spiritual science seeks to bring to the present and the future. And so one would be more surprised today if—I might say—at first glance, anyone who has never heard of spiritual science in the sense intended here were to immediately agree with anything at all, rather than if one objection after another were to arise upon such a first encounter with this spiritual science.

[ 5 ] Ladies and gentlemen, in my last lecture here I attempted to shed light on the paths that lead to this spiritual science. Today—since I would like to touch briefly in the second part of my lecture on what the spiritual scientist can and may feel in our fateful times—I will be able to suggest only briefly and in outline form how spiritual science arrives at its insights, at these insights that are so contested today and seem so difficult to grasp.

[ 6 ] The first objection—which must quite understandably arise, especially in the minds of those living today who are among the most highly educated—is that spiritual science, in everything it has to offer, seems to contradict what has been established on the solid ground of natural science. It is difficult to see that this very spiritual science aims to provide for our time and for humanity’s immediate future—in the realm of spiritual insight and the realm of soul-knowledge—what natural science has provided for external, spatial, and temporal knowledge and its application in practical human life. It is also difficult to see that this spiritual science, when considered thoroughly, is in the most perfect harmony with all the admirable progress that natural science has achieved over the course of the last few centuries—indeed, that this spiritual science seeks to be nothing other than the continuation of the natural-scientific worldview in the spiritual realm. However, precisely because it aims to be this, it must, as a spiritual-scientific method, relate to all human activities—especially the most intimate human activities of thinking, feeling, and willing—in a completely different way than the external, currently accepted science.

[ 7 ] Although it is often claimed that spiritual science is not in harmony with people’s religious feelings, this opinion, too, is based on a complete misunderstanding. In fact, the opposite is true. Indeed, one can say: While external natural science has often truly alienated people from religious sentiment—and has led many to believe they are particularly enlightened when they reject all things religious—spiritual science, because it scientifically directs the soul toward the spiritual, will actually strengthen religious life in people’s hearts. It will lead people back to religion in the most beautiful sense of the word, whereas conventional natural science has alienated them from it.

[ 8 ] Above all, let us consider the path that spiritual science takes to reach its insights. This path is described in greater detail, above all, in my book *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?*, to which I must refer, since here I can only provide a few—I would say, rough sketches—of the spiritual scientific path.

[ 9 ] Human thinking and human imagination must be approached in a completely different way for the purposes of spiritual science than they are for the purposes of external science and external life. How, then, do we behave, esteemed audience, when we place thinking and imagination in the service of external science and external life? We proceed by using what our senses reveal to us in the external world to form concepts, mental images, and ideas about our surroundings. And we are rightly satisfied with this external view of the world when we find that our ideas and mental images provide us with pictures of what is happening out there in nature and in human life. In the ordinary course of life, people strive for a mental image of natural life and historical life. Yet the very power of thought, which is used in the manner described above for ordinary science and ordinary life, must be employed in a completely different way when one embarks on the path of spiritual science, the path of spiritual research.

[ 10 ] For the spiritual researcher, it is not a matter of reflecting on what the senses reveal to the human being externally; it is not a matter of using thought to create an image of an external, perceived reality, but rather of using thought as a living force that finds its full expression in the pure inner life of the soul, I might say, in a form of self-education applied to the soul. Thought is not used as a representation of external reality; rather, it is used in such a way that it is experienced within consciousness. And it is experienced inwardly in such a way that the soul focuses on this thought, focuses it in such a way that it directs its attention for a long, long time solely toward a single thought or a single train of thought, so that what one thinks is not what matters, but rather that inner effort of the soul, that inner exertion of the soul that one must live through when, through inner effort and inner concentration, one focuses all one’s attention on an inner point, on a thought, on an idea.

[ 11 ] Where ordinary science and the thinking of everyday life end, there the work of the spiritual researcher begins. What must be kept in mind as a closed chapter for ordinary science is taken up by the spiritual-scientific method and, as it were, planted like a seed in the soil of the soul. The question is posed to one’s own experience: What does that thought—to which you have directed your entire soul life, excluding all attention to anything else—what does it do within you? What does that thought do when you surrender yourself to it completely, when you forget everything you have ever perceived, everything you are now perceiving, your habits, your experiences, your inclinations, and your passions—when you live solely and exclusively in this thought, immersing it completely in your soul life?

[ 12 ] One helps oneself with this spiritual-scientific method by not even taking a thought that is borrowed from external life. With such a thought, which depicts something from the realm of external life, one is too strongly tempted to focus on the external truth of the thought. But in this case, it is not this external truth that matters, but rather what the thought brings about within us and what we experience when we allow the thought to work as a living essence within the soul. Therefore, it is best to, as it were, fix an allegorical thought—a thought that does not depict anything external—within ourselves. Let me put it this way: The thought “Wisdom shines in the light” is a simple thought; it is certainly not a truth in the sense of an external science. But that is not what matters; what matters is that such a thought be placed at the center of soul life and that all the soul’s powers, as I have just described, be directed toward this thought for a certain period of time. It is only with the experience of the thought—beyond which external life and ordinary science do not extend—that research in the spiritual realm truly begins. If one does not associate the word with any mystical concepts in the pejorative sense, such a life and activity of thought—which must be sustained for a long, long time with patience, perseverance, and inner energy—is called meditation in thought, or concentration on specific thoughts. These are, in a sense, technical terms of the spiritual scientific method.

[ 13 ] The spiritual researcher, esteemed audience, can—when describing these things—basically do no other than speak as a chemist does when briefly describing the methods he uses in his laboratory to glean this or that from the forces of nature and natural phenomena. The spiritual researcher must enter an inner laboratory of the soul—a place where one seeks what pertains to our spiritual happiness, our spiritual elevation, and all the deepest mysteries, pains, and questions of the soul. And he can speak only of what he experiences in this purely inner laboratory—of the experiences of that which cannot be perceived externally, which cannot be presented to the outer eyes, but is experienced solely in an intimate inner, yet objective—not subjective—inner experience. The task of spiritual science is to gradually incorporate the existence of such inner, spiritual laboratory work into the spiritual culture of humanity as a firm worldview.

[ 14 ] Every single objection raised from the perspective of the scientific worldview, esteemed audience, is just as well known to the spiritual researcher as are the general arguments that can be made against his research. For example, the spiritual researcher is aware that it can be claimed that whatever the soul attains by fixing its attention entirely on the lingering of thoughts in the inner life of the soul is merely the soul’s ability to suggest things to itself—that everything it arrives at in this way is a kind of self-suggestion. Certainly, the spiritual researcher is aware of this, but to those who are unfamiliar with spiritual science—and know only what modern natural science has to say about the methods of suggestion—it is unknown that, through the specific way in which the spiritual researcher directs himself purely inwardly, with full awareness and using all the soul forces he has consciously developed, toward a particular thought or an inner experience —it can also be a volitional experience—, [just as] this spiritual researcher lives inwardly in that part of his soul which is lulled to sleep in hypnotic suggestion. Precisely that which is lulled to sleep during hypnotic suggestion—while the outer physical body, I might say, mimics the soul’s functions—is precisely what is developed through the method of spiritual science; it is precisely those forces that are drawn forth from the innermost life of the soul, over which sleep and paralysis are spread in ordinary suggestion. All methods of spiritual research aim to make inner experience independent of outer physical experience, to awaken within inner experience those powerful forces through which thinking and imagination unfold a life of their own.

[ 15 ] And when, over a sufficiently long period of time, the spiritual researcher has worked in this way in the “laboratory of his own soul,” then there occurs within him—and it is not a matter of doing this, but rather of waiting for it, just as one must wait for a plant until it blooms, until its growth forces have developed through the objective context of the world to the point where it blooms— then what must appear to our current way of thinking as fantastical, dreamlike, absurd, and paradoxical will come to pass.

[ 16 ] For what is achieved in this way, esteemed audience, is a complete separation of the spiritual-soul experience from the physical, bodily experience. Just as improbable as it seems to someone who has never heard of chemistry that the water before them can be broken down—through the forces of electricity or by other means—into hydrogen and oxygen, and that hydrogen, which is entirely different from water, can actually be extracted from water, just as improbable as this must seem to anyone who has never heard of chemistry, so improbable must it naturally seem to anyone who is unwilling to engage with spiritual science that there are such inner—I would say, inner-growing—thought processes through which that which in the human being is not subject to birth or death, nor is it subject to external life, but rather passes through births and deaths as the eternal essence of the human being—that this is truly separated from physical conditions and that, in its independence, in its eternal significance—of which “all that is transitory is but a parable”—it is scientifically grasped.

[ 17 ] It stands to reason that, especially in our time, objections arise at every turn against what is asserted in this way. It is only natural that someone who is, so to speak, trained in the newer, well-founded habits of thought would come along and say: “Well, here we go again—the spiritual researcher comes along and talks about how there are inner methods of psychological experience through which the soul-spiritual can be detached, so that it appears in its original essence and independent of birth and death, just as hydrogen appears when it is detached from water, from all of water’s properties and its entire behavior.”

[ 18 ] Can we not see that this leads into the darkest depths of superstition, given that the natural sciences have so thoroughly demonstrated how mental and emotional experience depends on physical experience, and how this mental and emotional experience develops as a person grows from childhood through the years? To the same extent that physical functions develop, so too does psychological and spiritual experience grow. One sees how spiritual life wanes again in old age when physical functions decline or are gradually impaired; one also sees—and this is precisely thanks to the great advances in psychiatric research—how damage to even a single part of the human brain or nervous system can shut down psychological functions. Does one not notice here how everything psychological and spiritual, in the most eminent sense, is merely an effect of the physical and bodily? Now the spiritual researcher comes along and explains that this spiritual-psychological aspect can be separated from the physical and bodily.

[ 19 ] Yes, distinguished audience, if the spiritual researcher were to feel compelled to rebel against the well-founded assumptions of modern natural science, then he could have no hope of ever introducing his knowledge into people’s worldview, for it is precisely this modern natural science that rests on sound grounds, even if it still includes one or another hypothetical or unsubstantiated element among its assertions today. Its entire mindset, its entire inner orientation in life, is fully justified and leads to humanity’s greatest achievements. Spiritual science will not deny this, but will admit it just as readily as any natural scientist or anyone who professes to follow natural science must admit it.

[ 20 ] But, ladies and gentlemen, spiritual science in the true sense of the word is not based on a different foundation than natural science, not even with regard to everything that natural science can address. When we consider ordinary thinking in everyday life and in ordinary science, how does it appear to the spiritual researcher? It certainly appears to him that this ordinary thinking—that is, what human beings bring to bear in terms of thought and imagination in ordinary life and in ordinary science—is, in the strictest sense, bound to human physical life, and in a narrower sense, to the human nervous system. And insofar as natural science today already shows the beginnings of an understanding in this direction—one that promises to yield much more in the future—the spiritual researcher stands entirely on the ground of natural science. But for natural science, it is only a matter of ordinary thinking, of the inner power of thought that has not yet been detached from the physical body. It is precisely the spiritual researcher who is familiar with what is thought in everyday life and with what can be conceived in ordinary science. All this thinking of everyday life is just as bound to the physical body—if it is to come into human consciousness—as the image that is to appear to us of ourselves is bound to the mirror before which we stand.

[ 21 ] It is precisely spiritual science that recognizes, through the connections it perceives as it proceeds along the paths that have been described, that what has now been described as a higher power within the power of thought—and to which spiritual science can arrive—is reflected actively reflected in the organs of physical life—and that nothing can enter life between birth and death, into consciousness, other than that which appears to consciousness through the physical body, which mirrors the life of the soul. Just as a person stands before the image that the mirror reflects back to them, and just as they do not see themselves but rather the image that the mirror reflects back to them, so too does the soul—endowed with the power that is first discovered through spiritual research—stand behind what is everyday thinking; and everyday thinking is a fleeting reflection, mirrored from physical life. All the insights that natural science can provide within its field are true because they deal with that which has not yet been demonstrated as the actual force lying behind ordinary conscious life—a force that passes through births and deaths and belongs to a world entirely different from the one we perceive with our senses.

[ 22 ] Thus, one can say: Spiritual science does not reject anything that natural science asserts; it merely explains that one can go beyond the realm of natural science just as one goes beyond the practical techniques of everyday life in scientific chemistry. And anyone who wishes to oppose the humanities from the standpoint of the natural sciences does not do so because the humanities cast doubt on anything pertaining to the natural sciences; rather, he opposes the humanities out of sheer tyranny, out of a desire to accept nothing other than what he himself deems acceptable. One must artificially adopt the position that no one is permitted to know anything other than what one knows oneself if one wishes to reject the legitimacy of spiritual science in continuing the path of natural science.

[ 23 ] But now, distinguished guests, as I have already said, the spiritual researcher can, in a sense, allow others—those who have not yet approached spiritual research—a glimpse into what is his “soul laboratory.” For this life within the spiritual researcher’s “soul laboratory” brings forth many things that are not part of ordinary experience and perception. Spiritual science is not connected merely with those experiences associated with external science; rather, it is connected with the deepest upheavals of the soul’s life, with the innermost tragedy of the soul’s life, with the soul’s ascent to solitary, icy heights, and with its plunge into the terrible abysses of existence.

[ 24 ] Certainly, distinguished guests, the first steps in spiritual research—as outlined in my book *How Does One Gain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?*—can be easily taken by anyone, and everyone can thereby convince themselves of the truth of what the spiritual researcher points out. But when one follows the path of spiritual research to its conclusion, it leads through experiences such as those just described. Above all, at the very moment when, through the method that has been described, one succeeds in detaching the inner power of thought from the support it has in the brain—at the very moment when one, with one’s thinking, steps out of one’s body into one’s soul-spiritual experience—I may say this because it is literally true — at that very moment when one truly beholds the eternal forces of the human being in the soul, at that moment one feels, as a researcher of the spiritual, as if one could, I might say, experience growth within a plant.

[ 25 ] Let us suppose that the plant could experience—it could experience all its own individuality, all its own essence, as it unfolds from leaf to leaf, toward the flower, toward the colorful blossom, and then, having developed into a colorful blossom, it would have to immerse its entire being in the forces that form the seed—a seed that is not at all destined for this present life of the plant, but is meant to carry this present life of the plant forward into the plant that will develop from this one in the future; the plant would experience, by concentrating all its vital forces into this seed, as if, in gathering these forces together, it were precisely developing what is like a dying off, a withering away of the outer being that has developed in the leaves and in the resplendent blossoms. It would experience it as if it had to cause that which it was to wither away itself, so that it might live on through the seed. This is how the human soul must experience it when it truly goes through what has just been sketched out before you with a few strokes of a pencil.

[ 26 ] Dear friends, the spiritual researcher experiences how he becomes more and more immersed solely in that which connects his soul to what he has taken into his thoughts. But this does not appear to him now in his soul life as if he were merely experiencing something new, but rather as if he were now living within forces that, by their very nature, are forces of death for outer life—forces connected to everything that causes outer life to wither away, everything that paralyzes outer life from day to day, from hour to hour. And so it is as if one had stood within life, having felt all the joy, all the pleasure in life—all the justified joy, all the justified pleasure in life—and willingly applied all one’s energy in life; and now, in order to recognize the truth, one must step out of this life, yet turn precisely toward those forces that continually combat this life. One might say that from the sociability of life, from the convivial communion with nature, its beauty and sublimity, one must enter into solitude, where one is truly at one with oneself, where one can turn one’s gaze only toward one’s own most intimate, innermost powers.

[ 27 ] Now, ladies and gentlemen, it might seem as if this whole process of spiritual research were something highly unhealthy. But we must bear in mind that it is a process of knowledge. Just as nothing in this hall is altered in its outward appearance by the fact that my eyes are directed toward this hall, that my thoughts envision this hall—just as this knowledge changes nothing about this hall—so too does the process I have just described change nothing about the inner life of the human soul. Everything that the spiritual researcher experiences is therefore knowledge; everything he then perceives through his knowledge lies beneath the surface of every soul life, unnoticed by outer life. The spiritual researcher is convinced only by observing what truly lives within every soul. Within every soul live the forces that ceaselessly, hour by hour, minute by minute, second by second, draw sustenance from life, just as the plant seedling draws sustenance from the present plant.

[ 28 ] Only through this contemplation, my dear friends, through this deep immersion in the destructive forces of life, can one come to realize how death is constantly being overcome. For just as one sees that life is sustained by the ceaseless activity of forces from birth to physical death—forces that the spiritual researcher experiences firsthand—so too does one become convinced, precisely through spiritual research, that these same forces also overcome death, which, like a gate, closes off physical life, and lead the human being into the world of the spiritual. Spiritual science does not understand death as one seeks to understand it out of fear of death or out of the expectation of another life; rather, spiritual science understands it by guiding the soul’s spiritual powers of cognition to a direct perception of death and then seeing how death works within the human being throughout the whole of life, so that when the soul takes stock, it can be overcome by the very same powers that are thus always at work in the depths of our souls.

[ 29 ] Yet another difficulty arises, dear audience, for those who explore the spiritual world—as I have said time and again—in an inner laboratory of the soul. This other difficulty is that when thinking, when imagination, has thus detached itself from the physical, when the human being now knows: ‘You now live in the spiritual-soul realm in such a way that you are not in your body, that you move purely within the fabric of the spiritual-soul realm itself’—when a person has developed to this degree in their inner spiritual laboratory, then they live in soul forces that are the least, the very least, related to what we call our powers of memory. And when we consider everything that depends on our powers of memory—how our entire daily life could not exist if we did not recall in the next moment what we had experienced in the previous one, if throughout our whole life we did not remember what brings coherence to our existence—when we consider what memory and recollection mean, then we will be able to understand how differently those forces act upon the soul—forces that must literally come to a halt before the power of memory, forces that in no way appeal to the ordinary power of memory in everyday life.

[ 30 ] Thus, when the spiritual researcher first reaches the point where he truly becomes free from physical life in his spiritual-soul life, his imagination flits by like a dream that one can no longer remember, and only when one patiently continues, time and again, the exercises that have been described—the exercises in meditation and concentration—does a different power develop in place of ordinary memory, which must not be involved in this process; a power we might call an “inner force of habit.” We become able to carry out habitually, time and again, what we have thus acquired as an inner experience. We perform, as it were, the inner gesture anew time and again. Spiritual science cannot operate on the basis of memory; rather, it transcends this ordinary fundamental force of life—memory—and instills in the spiritual-soul aspect, which has been liberated from the physical, such habits that one can repeatedly perform anew the inner acts that must be performed in order to feel oneself standing in the spiritual world with one’s free spiritual-soul aspect.

[ 31 ] If I may, esteemed audience—and this is only to clarify something—touch on a personal matter here, let it be this: When one speaks of things that are experienced through the external senses, it is the case that if one, I mean, for example, have given a lecture once, one remembers how one gave it, so that when one gives it for the twelfth or thirtieth time, one presents it from within in a completely different way than the first, second, or third time, when one had not yet fully committed it to memory. When speaking in all sincerity about matters of spiritual science, this is not the case; rather, the content of spiritual science must be brought forth anew each time through the inner gestures ingrained in the soul. It makes no difference at all whether one speaks about something for the first time or the hundredth time, because, fundamentally speaking, memory is more of a hindrance than a help. Of course, one can always recount from memory what one has said about the content of spiritual science, but the person who stands honestly and sincerely on the ground of genuine spiritual science feels an inner obligation to present what he himself has experienced with ever-renewed vitality. Therefore, they must experience it anew again and again, for they do not present it from memory, not through knowledge, but through a skill they have acquired.

[ 32 ] But our entire inner spiritual life is transformed in yet another way. When we proceed in this intimate, soulful manner as described—repeatedly performing such inner acts of will, which we can now call purely imaginative—through which we place simple thoughts at the center of our consciousness and become completely absorbed in them—then we do indeed experience something through our will. But this life of the will is different from the one that underlies external actions. What underlies external actions gives rise to a life of the will in which the will itself lies dormant. For in truth, the way in which a person intervenes in their will with their thoughts—which is, after all, an age-old philosophical enigma that need not be addressed further here—the connection between thought and external action lies in the deepest recesses of the soul’s life. But it is precisely into these deep recesses of the soul’s life that spiritual science must descend if it is to ascend to supersensible knowledge. And by repeatedly reviving, time and again, the object of meditation and concentration in thought—by carrying out, out of inner will and from strong inner forces of the soul, time and again—for repetition is what matters—what one has once accomplished, other processes of the organism, distinct from those of external action, arise in the soul. Such processes arise in the soul that do not unfold like external actions—where we must always intervene with our thoughts—but rather those that repeat themselves with regularity; I would say, automatically within.

[ 33 ] What often bothers those who engage in the methods of the humanities is that, as they practice and repeatedly focus their souls on this or that thought—but they must do so repeatedly, patiently, energetically, and persistently— that is often what is disturbing—how mechanically the entire inner process becomes, just as breathing does for the body, where we are also unaware of how the impulse to breathe takes effect. While, on the one hand, we elevate ourselves to the highest spiritual state of wakefulness—that of consciousness, of thought itself—which leads us to what lies behind thought, to the inner experience of the power of thought, the very activities we perform in ceaseless repetition become almost mechanical, so that we gradually learn to sense how something takes place in this detached life of the soul that is so peculiar to it, peculiar in its rhythmic sequence, just as breathing is peculiar to the body in its rhythmic sequence. We experience our physicality as external to us, and we experience our soul as set apart from the physical, yet in such a way that it is as if engaged in inner activity, and through this inner activity it now stands in relation to the body.

[ 34 ] This, in turn, is linked, ladies and gentlemen, to what one might call the deepest inner emotional upheavals. Just as one ascends into a solitude—a solitude that extinguishes all experience of the external world—when one turns to one aspect of the soul’s expressions of power, which essentially constitute our entire everyday life, so, on the other hand, one descends as if into an automatic life, into the life that unfolds within us but without our intervention. Just as, on the one hand, we become fully active—so active that we are not even supported by memory—so, on the other hand, we become aware that there is something within us that acts of its own accord, something we can only observe, something we can only watch unfold. Truly, it is so that we feel, as if enchanted, as if spellbound, within such an automatism of life that accompanies us through life; we feel all the despondency of life, all that which reveals the heaviness and weight of life—all of this can overwhelm us; and anyone who does not arrive at the stage of insight just described through the proper method and sufficient preparation may easily sink into complete despair regarding the inner life when he sees what lies within him.

[ 35 ] For, once again, it is only through insight that we become aware of all that lies within us—that which, at the very foundation of life, is a kind of automatic life force—when we see how we are placed within life and what runs through the human being like the mechanism of a clock—but in a spiritual sense, not mechanically as in a clock— that which is spread throughout the entire universe as the cosmic life forces permeates us. There one learns to empathize with the entire universe as a part of it, as a fragment of this universe; yet one feels within it as if one were completely alienated from oneself, as if one had become petrified, a fossil in this life. Then one realizes that everything one experiences in this way is merely insight into what lies deep within the soul. And this is an everlasting struggle between that which becomes petrified within us, striving toward automatism, and, on the other hand, that which rises into spiritual solitude toward everlasting activity—an inner war, an inner life of struggle that is hidden from us in the face of everyday life. What has been described lies at the very depths of our soul. And from such an inner life of struggle—from a struggle that takes place within every soul, which the spiritual researcher merely observes—from such a life of struggle, he draws his insights. And what you now find in the literature of spiritual science has been drawn from the depths of the soul, drawn from this life of struggle.

[ 36 ] Certainly, I say that anyone can go through the early stages of spiritual research, and through this, everyone today can convince themselves that what spiritual research presents is true. But what one must go through when reaching decisive turning points in spiritual knowledge—that stems from soul experiences filled with struggle, wildly turbulent, and tragically lived through; it stems from regions of the soul that stir everything stirs everything up, and one gains a reverent view of life as a whole and of what reigns throughout life as the wisdom that weaves through it, when one becomes aware that in everyday life, human beings have been granted the grace of a veil woven over all that lies at the bottom of their soul.

[ 37 ] But humanity is evolving, esteemed audience. And the era in which people could live solely in a state of consciousness veiled from what reigns and weaves in the depths of the soul is drawing to a close; a new era is dawning in which humanity, through its natural soul forces, must fulfill its deepest longing to become acquainted with what lives and weaves in the depths of the soul. Just as, at a certain point in human development, people had to be awakened from the belief of earlier common sense that the Earth stood still and the starry sky and the Sun moved around it, so must—this lies in the forces of Earth’s development— humanity must be awakened to the fact that all soul life is built upon such a foundation as has just been described.

[ 38 ] Humanity must recognize that what we carry through life—our worries, our triumphs, our joys and sorrows, our vitality, our disappointments—and what we admire in our fellow human beings in terms of their deeds—that all of this is achieved through a victory that takes place against the backdrop of subconscious psychological experience. The fact that we live because forces at work behind the sensory world must, in the most intense struggle, achieve that which brings us joy and through which we fulfill our lives—this will give humanity strengthening spiritual power in the future, when it comes to know how, through unknown powers behind the sensory world, that which constitutes the substance of its life— as well as the suffering and the triumphs of life—are won through a fierce struggle by unknown forces behind the sensory world, so that in this realization—in the awareness of what life truly is—we find the strongest assurance of life. This will give human beings a vivid sense of their connection to the spiritual forces that stand behind the sensory world.

[ 39 ] And when a person thus surveys the two realms of struggle—the life of thought detached from physicality and the life of will detached from physicality—when he thus surveys these two realms of struggle, he enters into that understanding of repeated earthly lives which today seems so fantastical — even though Lessing established it within the spiritual life of modern humanity — to the habits of thought. And he enters into the true interrelationships of human destiny, which present us with so many enigmatic questions.

[ 40 ] What I would like to touch on today is that when we look at life, it appears to us through what it manifests in everyday life—how it is brought about by victories and wars waged by unknown spiritual forces, though forces that can be recognized; and so, when we recognize life, we also recognize the great events of history in a different way than usual.

[ 41 ] Indeed, distinguished guests, even in our fateful present, we are facing events that are difficult but also hold the promise of greatness. The question may be raised: What feelings can be aroused by what we are now witnessing—bold acts of courage, bold acts of overcoming life’s challenges, noble acts of self-sacrifice—and how might this affect a soul that is receptive to what spiritual research seeks to offer humanity? After all, we are not living in a trivial age! For months now, the events unfolding around us have presented themselves—one may well say, on a scale and with a significance—unprecedented in human history since the dawn of conscious historical experience. If one compiles a list of the various peoples standing on the side of the opponents of the Central European powers—even without counting minor tribal differences—one arrives at twenty-one different peoples from the most diverse regions of the world. And if one counts the various peoples fighting on the side of the Central European powers—again, disregarding minor tribal differences—one arrives at fourteen individual nations engaged in battle; so that one can say that, across a large part of the inhabited earth, thirty-five nations—disregarding minor tribal differences—are currently at war with one another. And when, from the perspective of spiritual science, one turns one’s gaze to what is intervening in such a momentous historical way precisely in our time, oh, then a very special nuance of feeling arises from this view.

[ 42 ] What does it actually mean when the humanities essentially seek to be nothing more than a continuation of the natural sciences? Yes, ladies and gentlemen, as Goethe so emphatically stated, we will only arrive at a true science when we no longer view nature—that which visibly surrounds us—in terms of expediency, when we no longer ask: “Why does the ox have horns? So that it can butt,” but when one realizes that the ox butts because it has horns—when one views everything causally, not in terms of utility. If this is the distinctive feature of the external worldview, if it is precisely the greatest minds who have fought for this causal worldview—to inquire everywhere into causes—then spiritual science, too, is grounded in the principle of inquiring into causes, but into the deeper causes that elude sensory perception.

[ 43 ] But with regard to what is happening around us—to historical events—something else must develop precisely as a counterpoint to spiritual science. When one sees how these mighty forces are at work around us, when one sees how humanity suffers amid these mighty events and performs the most daring feats of heroism, then, in observing what the human will brings forth, one is led—precisely to the feelings (this cannot be proven, because it is based on a transformation of the entire life of feeling)— then one is led by these feelings to view everything in this life, into which one has been placed, not in terms of how causes prevail, but in terms of what must emerge as goals, as effects, from what is fought for in fierce struggle, from what is achieved through great sacrifice. Just as in the life we are observing, we must look everywhere at the causes, so too, in what we are experiencing—as we have today’s experience before us—we must look everywhere at the effects. And these effects—oh, these effects—become meaningful to us above all because, from the standpoint of spiritual science, we can place ourselves in a position to see how what is called Central European spiritual life truly forms a whole.

[ 44 ] Oh, this Central European intellectual life—how was it essentially achieved, and how does it differ, in its distinctiveness—and I do not wish to make any value judgments here—from that intellectual life by which it is now encircled and besieged as if within a mighty fortress! For those who can grasp the spiritual connections, this distinctive character of Central European intellectual life becomes fully apparent. One might say that the blossoms reveal what reigns in the roots. And so, by way of example, let us turn our gaze to a flower of Central European intellectual life—a flower that is well known to all of you here, esteemed audience, one that you have all often allowed to pass through your souls—to that which, as if from the very depths of Central European intellectual life, has blossomed as a flower of that life itself: the great spirit of modern times, Goethe, has created in his *Faust*. And let us point out just one aspect of this *Faust*. There, at the beginning of the *Faust* narrative, stands this Faust before us as one who has gone through life and learned in life everything that can be learned through ordinary thinking:

Alas! I have now studied philosophy,
law, and medicine,
and, unfortunately, theology as well!
I have studied them all thoroughly, with great effort.
And here I stand, poor fool that I am,
just as wise as I was before.

[ 45 ] Goethe wrote this in the midst of the striving and fervent longing of his youth in the 1770s. This is how what could be achieved at that time in external thought and external research affected his Central European sensibility. Now we see this Central European intellectual life passing before our eyes: ever since Goethe wrote this deeply moving scene from *Faust*—which has, of course, become almost trivial today, though if one allows it to affect the soul in its elemental originality— profoundly moving Faust scene—which has now become almost trivial—since Goethe wrote this and lived through it in his soul, minds have been at work within Central European intellectual life who, with bold intellectual courage and bold philosophical curiosity, have attempted to penetrate the sources of life in a truly Faustian manner.

[ 46 ] Today, people misunderstand the great idealist thinkers of Central Europe—Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, and the others. One need not even address the substance of their work; in the strictest sense, one can even be opposed in many respects to what they produced, but one need only look at the innermost, most honest, and most sincere quest for truth and the path to truth from which they strove and which they were prepared to follow, and one need only look at how such thinkers truly brought to life this Faustian saying—to expand one’s own self into the self of the entire world, to experience what exists throughout the cosmos.

[ 47 ] How different is a thinker like Johann Gottlieb Fichte, who is so deeply rooted in Central European culture in the most eminent sense, from those who stand before us. From the innermost core of human will and thought—from thought sustained by will, from will permeated by thought—he seeks to grasp that which lies within man, through which man can unite, within his own self, with the eternal, divine Self that reigns and breathes throughout the world. And so, as he himself demanded, there was a unity in what he lived, thought, and philosophically aspired to—such a unity that, when, due to his wife’s illness—which she had contracted while nursing soldiers—and the illness he had contracted from her, in the final hours of his febrile delirium, he, the most Central European of philosophers, still lived, even in his feverish delirium, within the immediate reality of his time—the reality through which Central Europe sought at that time to free itself from the tyranny of Western Europe; the philosopher Fichte lived through Blücher’s crossing of the Rhine. Even in his feverish fantasies, this great, powerful personality—who inwardly stirred the very fabric of life and who, at that time, had invigorated and strengthened his people through his mighty “Addresses to the German Nation”—left an indelible mark.

[ 48 ] We see them passing by, these thinkers. And we could say something similar about the others—even if we do not agree with the content of their thoughts—in reference to their great, formidable aspirations. We see the finest forces of Central European culture passing by in their prime—the very forces that we may believe are now at work in the East and West on battlefields in an entirely different capacity for the benefit and progress of Central Europe; we see them at that time rising into the light of the spirit.

[ 49 ] And now let us ask ourselves, distinguished guests, suppose Goethe had still been alive in 1840—still alive at that time, when Fichte’s intellectual feat, Schelling’s marvelous artistic conception of the universe, and Hegel’s magnificent logical picture of the universe had swept over Central European culture—oh, these thinkers, they truly presented philosophy to humanity in a new form, and when we consider that Fichte wrote a *Natural Law*, that Hegel wrote a *Natural Law*—they also revitalized jurisprudence; Schelling published a medical journal and delved deeply into medicine; and, fundamentally speaking, all these philosophers wanted to be theologians. But what if Goethe had begun his *Faust* in 1840 instead of 1770—what would he have placed at the beginning of the *Faust* epic? He certainly would not have placed it at the beginning of the *Faust* epic—even though these great, formidable thinkers had traversed the intellectual sky of Central Europe—even so, he certainly would not have written:

Now, thank God,
I have studied philosophy under Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel,
law, and now medicine as well,
and here I stand, deeply satisfied—I, a wise man!

[ 50 ] No, he would have started in 1840 after all:

I’ve studied, shh! Philosophy,
law, and medicine,
and, alas, theology too!
I’ve studied them all, with great effort.
And here I stand, poor fool that I am,
just as wise as I was before.

[ 51 ] This is precisely what distinguishes Central European culture! This Central European culture will only gradually be understood in its deepest essence by those who live within it. This Central European culture is truly the expression of what is also written in *Faust*: “Whoever strives with all his might, we can redeem him”—eternal striving. And once a stage in this striving has been attained, the striving itself leads beyond that stage. One is born a Frenchman, an Italian, or an Englishman, and one knows what one is; but what it means to be a Central European, one must cultivate within oneself; what makes us Central Europeans, we must attain not just once, but continually, through the fervent striving of the soul. In this way, it becomes something individual in the highest sense; in this way, it becomes something at which every person must directly participate, something that must be achieved anew time and again.

[ 52 ] If, once again, just to clarify something, I may draw on a personal experience, I can say: Since I am Austrian, I spent my childhood here in Austria in the 1960s and 1970s—a time when there was still complete opposition in Austria to everything that was taking place in the German Reich abroad, when it was still difficult for Austrians—including Austrian Germans—to look out with satisfaction at what was happening in the German Reich. And then we lived in defiance of what first had to be overcome—namely, German individualism—so that the empire could be forged that now fights alongside Austria against the besiegers of the great Central European stronghold.

[ 53 ] Everything must be earned in Central European culture. One might say—if the word is not misunderstood—that in other nations, in other territories, one is born into who one is; in Central Europe, one is dependent on acquiring all of that—to quote Goethe once again: “What you have inherited from your fathers, acquire it in order to possess it.” But this gives rise to a mindset that, like a magical breath, pervades all of Central European culture; it forges together what constitutes the Central European peoples—even across all national differences—and consciously strives toward what one is. And this also guarantees that everything that has already been achieved in Central Europe must be continually elevated and elevated through unceasing striving; that the spirit of striving—I would say the Faustian spirit—must be sustained.

[ 53 ] Everything must be earned in Central European culture. One might say—if the word is not misunderstood—that in other nations, in other territories, one is born into who one is; in Central Europe, one is dependent on acquiring all of that—to quote Goethe once again: “What you have inherited from your fathers, acquire it in order to possess it.” But this gives rise to a mindset that, like a magical breath, pervades all of Central European culture; it forges together what constitutes the Central European peoples—even across all national differences—and consciously strives toward what one is. And this also guarantees that everything that has already been achieved in Central Europe must be continually elevated and elevated through unceasing striving; that the spirit of striving—I would say the Faustian spirit—must be sustained.

[ 55 ] Oh, distinguished guests, while I cannot, of course, go into all the details of our fateful times—what has recently taken hold of the world in a materialistic sense could only have emerged from struggles, then precisely that which must spread from Central European spiritual life will increasingly extend across the wider world, across the territories of all those peoples who today still oppose this Central Europe—it must develop out of struggle and war. And the strengthening of the soul’s power—when we consider that through spiritual science we can show how, in individual human lives, that which is the essence of life develops upon the very foundation of war and struggle that lies beneath the soul, as we have had to describe—

[ 56 ] Now, in external life, esteemed audience, people are time and again witnesses to and participants in struggles, and these struggles must exist. Just as these struggles are otherwise veiled from the individual by a benevolent veil within the soul, so must we be placed within these struggles in external, historical life, from which what constitutes the substance of external, historical life must then develop. Just as what Greek life became for the world developed through struggle against the mighty Persian armies, and just as what came from Roman and Latin culture into the entire world culture developed on the basis of fierce struggles, then that which is contained in the Faustian striving—and this Faustian striving extends even into the souls of those who know nothing at all of Faust—must spread on soil drenched with the blood of our noblest, in an atmosphere permeated by the feelings that can develop only today, in our fateful age.

[ 57 ] It has often been emphasized—especially in Germany and abroad in recent times—that it is due to the conditions of modern development that this war is, in essence, being waged solely for external purposes; that it is being waged so that the boundless diligence expended in foreign industry and foreign trade may have free access to the world. Certainly, such statements are entirely correct, and they should not be contested in any way. After all, as far as our external lives are concerned, we live more or less in a materialistic age, and even what we achieve through the heaviest sacrifices, we achieve for the sake of material goods. But we are certain that from this Central Europe, even if only material culture is carried out into the world through the gates opened by the struggle in the most diverse foreign regions—even if perhaps not by the fathers themselves— then through the sons of those who venture out into foreign lands in industry and commerce, what will be brought to everyone everywhere is that which springs from the spirit that found its most exquisite expression in that Faust who wishes to “stand on free soil with a free people,” who seeks to attain freedom and life only by conquering them anew each day.

[ 58 ] And when we look at the distinctive character of this Central European spiritual life—the way it has forged the peoples of Central Europe together—when we look specifically at this Faustian character, then we must say: This Central European spiritual life is destined to give the soul to the world-earth body, to incorporate the soul into the earthly development of humanity. It is very strange that, for example, we hear from the northwest—we can hear it every day, esteemed audience—that those mighty external material conquests which, for example, the inhabitants of the British Isles have made, are supposed to culminate in this— as if to mock us, as if to insult us here in Central Europe, such words are shouted at us again and again from abroad, that everything that is to be undertaken must be undertaken in the name of freedom, of the liberation of the peoples.

[ 59 ] Well, ladies and gentlemen, there is no denying that the inhabitants of the British Isles have made great conquests in the realms of external and material life. But let us consider on what basis these conquests were made! From 1856 to 1900, England waged 34 wars of conquest, conquered [four] million square miles of land, and made 57 million people new British subjects—all in the course of about 44 to 45 years, 34 wars of conquest! From this arose the material culture that the British Empire alone was able to spread throughout the world. From blood and death, from suffering and pain, from countless sacrifices—just as with the life of a single human being—must arise that which, in the course of history, matures into the assets of life for humanity.

[ 60 ] And if we wish to shed light on Central European spiritual life, particularly in comparison with what spiritual science reveals to us about the individual human being, we will say: If we look at its effects, if we look at the goals hidden within what today is soaking the ground with blood, then what presents itself to us as such an effect is that the threatened territory must be reconquered. Just as, in the course of life, a person must continually reclaim their body anew after a few years so that it may serve as an instrument of the soul, so it is also in the outer, historical life: Central European humanity must reconquer the territory so that it may all the better encompass the soul, through which this Central European humanity becomes capable of carrying into the future that which is rooted in the very depths of its soul life.

[ 61 ] Oh, when we look at it this way—comparing it with what spiritual science says about the life of the individual, esteemed audience—and consider what we can perceive in external life during this fateful time, then it becomes more than just intellectually comprehensible to us; but it becomes comprehensible to our whole heart; it becomes so comprehensible that we know what is being prepared for the future—because it can only be prepared through struggle and war—and so we learn, in a certain sense—no matter how painful the individual events unfolding around us may be— we learn to grasp it as serving the great development of humanity, precisely because we must feel ourselves engaged in it with every moment of our lives. And so, through a truthful contemplation of the individual life, human beings themselves are reconciled with the most fateful events unfolding around them.

[ 62 ] Let me summarize what I have just said in a few words, in which I would like to express—in a way that resonates with my innermost feelings—what I have developed as individual findings of spiritual science. I would like to express in a few words what spiritual science must impart to the human soul in its most intimate life, so that through this imparting a fundamental feeling that understands life and a fundamental will that permeates life may emerge. What I have taken the liberty of saying can be summarized in the following words, which the soul, strengthened by spiritual science, can make the fundamental values of its own being:

Where sensory knowledge ends,
There stands the gate,
That opens the realities of life
To the soul’s existence;
The soul forges the key,
when it grows stronger within itself
in the struggle that the powers of the world
wage on their own ground
with human forces;
when it drives away through itself
the sleep that shrouds the powers of knowledge
at the limits of the senses
with the spirit.