The Rudolf Steiner Archive

2. The Eternal Forces of the Human Soul from the Perspective of Spiritual Science

Ladies and gentlemen!

[ 1 ] In our immediate present, the subject of today’s reflection on the human soul is likely to be particularly relevant. In an age in which fundamental processes raise such profound mysteries—along with all that is painful and, at the same time, all that is uplifting—the mystery of the human soul and the question of any eternal powers that may reside within it present themselves to that soul with particular intensity. Even though this enigmatic question—which forms the subject of today’s reflection—is, of course, always one that must engage human thought and human feeling in the deepest sense. Over the course of many years, I have spoken about the very question that underlies today’s reflections from various perspectives—all of which lie within the realm of spiritual science, the nature and character of which I have, of course, had the opportunity to discuss so often. And today, I would like to address this topic once again from a particular perspective. Ladies and gentlemen, much of what those esteemed listeners who have already attended these lectures on several occasions have heard will appear again today within a certain context, but I will attempt to address certain topics already touched upon over the years from a different perspective.

[ 2 ] When the question arises as to what lies within the human soul—through birth and death, for example—as something that transcends the temporal, as eternal forces, then people usually think that this eternal aspect of the human soul must be explored on the basis of what one finds when observing one’s own soul life or the soul-related course of human events in the world as a whole. Such a view—if it concludes that something eternal is expressed within ordinary human soul life—that is, human thinking, feeling, and willing as they manifest themselves in time—is, as is as is well known, the more or less crudely materialistic, positivist, or strictly scientific approach. It has also been emphasized here on several occasions that spiritual science, as understood here, by no means seeks to develop any kind of opposition to the great achievements of today’s scientific worldview. On the contrary, it seeks precisely to fully acknowledge the profound validity of the scientific worldview; it seeks precisely to be a continuation of the scientific spirit and scientific way of viewing the world, extending beyond the sensory realm into the spiritual. When one turns to what unfolds in the human soul in everyday life—as the content of thought, as the content of feeling, as the impulses of the will—then, relatively speaking, the scientific way of thinking will have an easy time raising objections to all manner of claims put forward by a more or less spiritually oriented science of the soul. Conversely, this or that worldview—which also considers itself to be based on spiritual science—takes scientific objections far too lightly. One must always bear in mind that the scientific objections that speak against the existence of a separate soul entity within the human being—against a soul entity that existed before the human being entered sensory existence through birth—or, let us say, conception—and that continues to exist after the human being has passed through the gate of death— these objections to the assumption of such a soul entity—which are raised today from the scientific standpoint that seeks to develop into a worldview—are by no means easy to dismiss. For if one simply arrives at the conclusion, using the ordinary methods of contemporary thought and research, to acknowledge an eternal reality based on this or that characteristic of soul life, then those who have become accustomed to, and settled into, scientific thinking—and I say explicitly, will rightly be caught up in—will find themselves confronted by the objections that are raised, for example, in the following way: “Yes, certain spiritually oriented thinkers claim that a distinct soul entity, to be conceived separately from the physical body in human beings, exists.” And yet the entire observation—the course of human life—shows how closely connected the manifestations of the soul are with physical life. One can observe how, as physical processes develop from early childhood onward, mental and soul processes also develop to the same extent as the physical body transforms, is reshaped, and—as is often said—becomes more perfect, although this is [merely] a relative concept; one sees how, along with all this, the powers of imagination, the powers of memory, and the capacity for purpose and meaning also fully develop. And when one observes that, parallel to a certain series of phenomena, another series develops—so that it becomes increasingly clear and evident how the former series of phenomena—in this context, the sensory-physical—must exist as a foundation for the latter, for the second series of phenomena, the mental and emotional ones—then one is justified—I would say— just as the light of the flame must necessarily be thought of as connected to the candle, so one is justified in thinking of the soul-spiritual phenomena as dependent on the physical-bodily ones. And when one then observes how, with the impairment of the physical-bodily in this or that form, certain soul forces and certain spiritual powers are simply shut down—when one can observe, almost clinically, how diseases of this or that bodily organ, of the nervous system, or of the brain shut down certain soul processes— then one is justified in speaking of how dependent the psychological and spiritual realms are—as a function, so to speak, as a result—on the physical and bodily. I can only hint at the entire line of thought being pursued here, the direction of the objections that can be raised against a hastily concocted theory of the soul. And in the face of the great, powerful, far-reaching results of natural science that bring about human progress, one must listen fully to such objections. Indeed, one can say even more. These objections—which, of course, could be multiplied in number—these objections, when one engages with them—that is, when one truly learns to think scientifically—dispel much of what is traditionally advanced in support of the independence of psychological and spiritual phenomena and in favor of the assumption of a distinct soul entity, based on the reasons so often cited.

[ 3 ] Well, spiritual science, as it is understood here, does not at all take a standpoint from which it must in any way contradict natural science. And, as we shall see in a moment, it proceeds in a completely different way than much of what is traditionally advocated even by conventional psychology. In a certain sense, spiritual science fully agrees with natural science when the latter presents all that it has to offer—based on careful observation—regarding the fact that thinking, feeling, and willing, as they manifest within the human being between birth and death, depend on the physical organization and on everything that develops within this physical organization.

[ 4 ] Spiritual science will not directly and immediately counter any of the objections or conclusions raised by this side against certain views put forward from the standpoint of a conventional theory of the soul. For spiritual science can say “yes” to what is presented in a positive sense by the natural sciences. Spiritual science takes the position that everything that becomes manifest through human soul forces within ordinary life is in fact bound — just as natural science conceives it, and as it will conceive it ever more clearly as it develops — that everything that unfolds in the temporal course of soul life between birth and death stands in such a connection with the physical as natural science initially conceives it when it takes shape as a worldview. And with the very means of thinking, feeling, and willing—the means of soul development that are also those of ordinary psychology or the science of the soul—one cannot approach what underlies the temporal aspect of human soul life as the eternal. The temporal aspect of human soul life is bound, even for spiritual science, to the physical organization. Just as a sound, if it is to be physically audible, is bound to an instrument and cannot otherwise be brought into the physically audible world, so the soul life that we initially know—the soul life present in our physical existence—is bound to the physical instrument and depends on it in its characteristics and in its healthy and diseased course.

[ 5 ] But spiritual science shows—and here, in a higher, spiritual realm, it becomes something similar to what natural science has become under the influence of recent research trends in the sensory realm— it becomes a spiritual art of experimentation—only that what one experiments with is one’s own soul life, and—that one does not deal with experiments externally, does not perform external acts, but rather that what one experiments with is the soul life itself. And the processes that come to light in the experiment are intimate, inner, psychological processes—psychological processes that all share a common character: the common character that they lead one, in the course of research, beyond what constitutes the course of everyday psychological life. If one keeps thinking, feeling, and willing within the limits required for external physical life, then one can gradually penetrate with this thinking, feeling, and willing into those regions where the eternal aspect of the human soul is revealed. The powers we possess in ordinary life must—to use the expression—be strengthened inwardly, transformed inwardly, developed into something other than what they are in everyday life, so that, once they have become something else—once they appear in the soul in a different metamorphosis than they do in everyday life—they may then enter those realms of existence in which what underlies the human soul as the eternal can reveal itself.

[ 6 ] First, we can consider one of the fundamental forces of our inner life: thinking itself. This thinking, which serves us in our everyday, physical life, is capable of development. It can be developed. Just as, under certain conditions, we can bring the forces of nature into an experiment so that they reveal the secrets of nature or the laws of nature, so too can we place thinking under certain conditions where it reveals and discloses something other than what it can reveal in its—I would say—form that is given to us of its own accord. For this, it is necessary, above all, that this thinking be made present in our inner life in a stronger, more intense way than is good, necessary, and useful for everyday life.

[ 7 ] I have often said here that this intimate inner process in spiritual science is called “meditation”—it is a technical term, just like any other. That intimate inner process that thinking must undergo within itself so that it, as it were, transcends itself; for the spiritual researcher to strive for a thought to be present in the soul in a way that it is not otherwise present. And what matters is not that the thought as such, with its content, is present, but that the thought—let me say, for example, a specific thought—is held for longer than we are otherwise accustomed to. To hold thoughts in our soul so that the human being becomes aware, through the act of holding this thought, of the inner process necessary to be, if I may say so, a thinker. This is what matters: to persist in thinking differently, to think differently than one otherwise does in everyday life and [also] in ordinary scientific life. When one places a thought—and it does not matter at all whether this thought reflects something externally real or not—when one places a thought at the center of one’s soul life, when one puts oneself in a position to concentrate all the power of one’s soul life on this thought, to gather it within this thought, and one now holds and maintains this thought, thereby unfolding the possibility — and this ability can be acquired through gradual practice — to see, as it were, how the act of holding a thought is carried out, of persevering in the power of thought, then one experiences — however strange this may initially seem to external physical life, to one’s usual daily life, and to ordinary scientific life — one experiences something special through this thinking.

[ 8 ] The point here is that, in such an inner process, it is best to use a thought that is not arbitrarily drawn from one’s other thoughts. For if one simply brings such a thought to mind, there is a possibility that all sorts of things in the soul that are connected to this thought will surface along with it. And one can then succumb to some illusion or delusion and experience something special, while only subconscious, unclear emotional or sensory impulses attach themselves to such thinking. It is better to take a thought that one has acquired from somewhere—I mean, through some advice or in some other way, drawing precisely from what spiritual science brings to light—a thought that one has not otherwise linked to one’s inner life, a thought that one can thus grasp in its simplicity, one to which nothing can cling that might deceive us —if one places such a thought at the center of one’s inner life and repeats it again and again: It certainly does not happen quickly; it takes months, often years, before one is able to make even the simplest observations in this area. But it can also happen very quickly; that depends entirely on the capacity for devotion that one can develop in such an inner process. If one can truly feel this particular behavior of the soul inwardly—experience it from within—then this experience is what sets one on the path to advancing one’s thinking, to taking the power otherwise experienced in thinking beyond what it is in everyday life or in ordinary scientific life. The specific aids available for carrying out such an inner exercise in the proper manner are described in my book *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?* and in other books that follow on from the one just mentioned. The fundamental principle, the essential point, lies precisely in directing the inner activity of the soul in a direction that is otherwise unfamiliar to it, but which is aimed specifically at concentrating on becoming inwardly aware of and experiencing the power that underlies thinking.

[ 9 ] If one performs such an exercise—which I can only hint at in principle—again and again, then one does indeed come to experience that hidden forces are present in [our inner life], forces that are constantly at work but are not brought to consciousness in everyday life or in ordinary science. One does not create something new by behaving as has been described, but rather brings to consciousness what is always already present. Everything depends on finding inner composure, inner peace, and devotion to a tranquil, collected spiritual life in order to develop that inner self-observation—so that the process described, the experience of active powers of thought, is truly something. Then, however, once one has come to grasp that something is revealing itself that one did not know before, and as one continually deepens this acquaintance with the previously unknown, the most significant inner processes of human soul life begin to unfold as a result. Then one experiences processes that shed inner light, of which one previously had just as little inkling as someone who has never learned that, through specific processes in a physics laboratory, water can be decomposed into hydrogen and oxygen—just as that person has no inkling of what lies within water. In the former case, these are external processes in the physics laboratory; in the latter, in the life of the soul, they are inner efforts, the unfolding of inner forces, which bring the unknown—I might say—up from the dark depths of existence. What is brought up in this way brings to consciousness something that those who sought to find the path to the spiritual have always actually known. The path to the spiritual worlds has, after all, always been sought, depending on how human forces acted in the course of human development. It was found differently in various ages than it must be found today. Just as nature was viewed differently in earlier times, and must be viewed differently today under the influence of modern scientific thinking than in the past, so too is the path to the spiritual worlds different today; and it is this path—the one that can be taken today in light of the stage of development humanity has reached—that will be the focus of discussion here. But on all the paths that have been taken, one thing confronts us time and again: that at first there appears something like a word, like an abstract word, which can be picked up here and there when speaking of mystical beings, of revelations about the unknown worlds, about the hidden worlds. It is the word that the one who truly wishes to explore the forces that underlie the human being as spiritual entities must, on his path of inquiry, approach “the gate of death”; that he must draw near to the experience of death on the path, if he is to continue along the way I have indicated.

[ 10 ] As simple as it may seem: the essence lies not in what can be described as simple, but in the effort one makes to engage the soul in this direction again and again, as has been stated. What one arrives at through this path, however, is something that brings an understanding of the ancient saying: On the path of inquiry into the spiritual depths of the soul, one approaches the gate, the threshold of death.

[ 11 ] I will now simply describe where the path I have hinted at leads. It begins with a gathering of all the powers of the soul, and what is gathered there is the particularly concentrated power of thought. One gradually experiences this gathering of the soul life. By gathering the soul life in this way, one penetrates ever deeper and deeper into an understanding of true human nature. Admittedly, this is a realization that is not so much conveyed through concepts, but rather through the experience of how this strenuous, self-strengthening thinking brings one into a state of mind, a mood, through which one introduces into one’s soul experience something that, I might say, brings one particularly close to what it means to be human in the world. For if one comes to know thinking in this way, then what first enters one’s soul life is—I would say—a feeling of being connected, as if from the outside, to the human physical organization; one learns in this way, by being guided through the inner soul work I have described, to approach the human being in a new way, one comes to know something in the human being that one did not know before. One comes to know in the human being—in a living way, as wonderful as that may sound—that which is connected to the human being here in earthly life between birth and death, and whatever constitutes the sum of those force-structures that we carry within us, and which, by always living within the human being, wear down that which constitutes the human organism and ultimately bring about death.

[ 12 ] What one comes to experience there is that human beings, as they must live here on Earth, always carry within themselves a sum of forces, an organization of forces, a configuration of forces that modifies itself over the course of life, but which ultimately always amounts to the consumption of the external physical organism. And fundamentally, what one comes to experience is a shattering one, filled with inner tragedy. One comes to know something like a second human being within oneself—a spiritual human being within the physical human being. But this spiritual human being is the one who continually consumes the physical human being. And now one comes to know—just as in a physical experiment one comes to know the nature of some substance or element that can only be revealed through the experiment—so now one comes to know what the actual force within oneself is, what the activity within oneself is, which unfolds as thinking and everything connected with thinking in physical life here.

[ 13 ] When one has carried this line of thought to its extreme, as described, one comes to recognize what this thinking, as thinking, depends on; it depends on the fact that within the complex of forces that wears us down as physical human beings—that consumes us as physical human beings—there lie forces that underlie thinking. And one comes to understand this profound statement: Thinking depends on those forces that gradually wear a person down and even bring about their death. We come to know a close connection between thinking—we are, after all, starting from ordinary, everyday thinking, which we simply push, so to speak, to its extreme limit—and a deep connection between this thinking and the destructive, consuming forces within the human being. We discover the kinship between death and the highest thing we initially unfold here in the physical world: thinking. That is why this experience is so shattering. We cannot help but fully agree with the living, inner experience of the natural sciences, precisely from the standpoint of spiritual science.

[ 14 ] In our vivid inner experience, we come to realize that we are actually able to think because we have brought [the] forces of death to a particular point of development that transcends the rest of the living world. This, however, creates a special inner mood in the spiritual researcher. This brings forth in him everything that arises from inner experience: With your thinking—as you can unfold it here in the physical-sensory world—with this thinking, you are bound to the physical body. As long as this physical body can endure being used up—being used up by certain formative forces—you can unfold your thinking!

[ 15 ] But then, once one has had this experience, it becomes clear at the same time that there is indeed a second human being within the human being—a human being who, here in physical existence, consumes the outer human nature, yet is a complete being; a second human being within the human being who, just as he lives in our physical existence, lives by devoting himself to the consumption and depletion of the physical organism. One does not create through thinking what one experiences here; one learns to observe it. One comes upon something, so to speak, and at the very moment one comes upon it, one realizes that it is always there within the human being. One comes upon such a thing; one discovers this inner human being within the human being. But one also discovers that this human being has nothing to do with the specific external physical organization, but rather that it is active within it. That which underlies the physical organization—indeed, even the consuming forces within it—that, dear attendees, can only be discovered by driving one’s ordinary soul life beyond oneself. In this way, one discovers a second human being within the human being, who, admittedly, initially has the peculiarity of consuming ordinary physical life. But it is precisely in this consumption that this being performs the activity which, in this ordinary life, takes shape from within as the activity of thought.

[ 16 ] But one also notices—and this can only be the result of observation, the kind of observation gained in the manner described—that what gradually consumes the physical human organism in physical life is also what built it up. One can only arrive at that aspect of the human soul life which has passed through birth or conception in order to clothe itself in the physical body through experience. And when one has taken this experience as far as has now been outlined in broad strokes, one does indeed gain insight into human nature, to the extent that one can say to oneself: You have discovered within yourself that which, with consuming intensity, causes your thinking to shine forth during the life between birth and death, but which also brought you into this physical life; that which, before you began to think, built up your physical organism for thinking.

[ 17 ] Throughout one’s physical life, one is always expending mental energy, and one discovers that this energy was present even before thought illuminated its first thoughts; that this energy has transformed into the very energy that gives rise to thought. But before it was transformed, it was already there, for nothing in our world simply comes into being; rather, it transforms. That which underlies thought before thought was kindled first built up the very organism that expresses itself in thought, which it in turn wears away through thought.

[ 18 ] And so we look beyond birth or conception to that which has entered the physical world from a spiritual world. But as we explore this, there is—I would say—something bound up with this inner experiment that is influenced by that state of mind arising from the experience: As long as you stand between birth and death, your thinking is bound to the fact that this second human being carries out its activity within your physical organization. You are connected to it.

[ 19 ] And what is truly unsettling is that, once one becomes acquainted with this inner experience from this perspective—as has just been described—one is left with no perspective: Where does this force go once it has consumed the physical body? At first, one can only conceive of it in connection with the physical body. One knows only that it is indeed the force that brought the human being into the sensory world, into sensory existence; but how it is to emerge into the spiritual world when the human being faces death—how it is to re-enter the spiritual world—of that one can have no experience as yet. One can understand, in the manner suggested, how—I would say—the path of development emerged from the spiritual realm to build up this human being and bring him to the point where what has been built up is once again shed, and in this shedding the magnificent quality of human thinking appears. One must now develop what might be called meditation or inner concentration in an entirely different way if one wishes to make further progress. It has, after all, been emphasized that the inner activities of the soul have been directed, through this first experiment I have described, toward a particular unfolding, toward a particular development of thinking.

[ 20 ] However, one can also bring about a special unfolding of the soul life—an unfolding that leads beyond everyday life and a purely scientific life—by developing not thinking, but the will, the will that underlies the very way we actively move through life. We speak of this will in everyday life and in ordinary scientific thinking. But when we speak of it in this way, we by no means encompass everything that lies within it. Just as thinking has the hidden side I have just described—which leads to the kind of endpoint I have indicated—so too does the will have a hidden side, only this one turns out to be quite different. To come to know what underlies the will, it is not enough merely to develop the will as it accompanies us in life when we are active; one must, so to speak, develop within oneself the capacity not merely to act, not merely to be active, but to be active with a much greater share of one’s soul life than one is accustomed to in everyday life. One must be able to connect one’s will more deeply with what constitutes a volitional impulse than one usually does in everyday life. One can accustom oneself to this inner concentration of the will—in contrast to the earlier concentration of thought—as a contraction of the life of the will, by creating moments, creating brief intervals—they truly need not be long, but they must be repeated again and again if the practice is to bear fruit—by creating moments in which one withdraws from the outer world, and look inward at the world of one’s wishes, at the world of one’s desires, at the impulses of the will that one can unfold, at those impulses of the will that one can align with the great goals of humanity in such a way that they shine forth in the soul when the ideals of humanity shine forth — in short, when one can engage with the will inwardly in such a way that one can bring this will more strongly into the field of attention than is possible when one directs this attention toward the outward form one gives to the world. By allowing this or that impulse of the will to flow out into what one is doing—when, for example, one reflects by saying to oneself: “You did that,” and then tries to recall the impulse of will that lay within it. When, in looking back on one’s life’s deeds, one focuses on how the impulse of will [was incorporated], when one observes how one intended to act, how one directed the course of one’s will—in short, when one becomes intimately acquainted with the forces of will.

[ 21 ] Once again, I am saying something that, in its essence, seems quite simple: But all the fruit of these activities depends on the human soul being led, again and again, into the kind of activity and experience just described—as a concentration of the will—so that one truly experiences what can be experienced in this way: that one experiences, as it were, a rebirth within oneself; that one feels permeated and empowered by what previously eluded one’s attention—by a new human being; once again by a new human being, but now by a human being who lives through one as an inner being of will.

[ 22 ] But that is not yet the important discovery. This inner warming of oneself, this inner illumination, this inner strengthening through the impulses of will with which one has become familiar—with what will can be in a human being, with what pulses into our actions as will—this inner interwovenness, this growing familiarity—ultimately leads to an unfolding of the will, so that one makes the discovery: Within this will lies something that is like a germ, like a seed within it—something that is always there, present in one’s everyday actions, yet which eludes us, to which we pay no attention, and which remains unconscious. But it is present there as a living force—one that, in turn, must evoke a very special mood of the soul, precisely because it is, in turn, a kind of shattering experience. Once one has come to know, through the path of the special unfolding of thought that I have described—in the manner in which I have described it—the experience of death in living imagination, in living experience—that is, by unfolding the will—one learns to recognize something else: one learns to recognize, in living contemplation, the essence of human suffering, the essence of pain. For one does indeed immerse oneself in the essence of pain; in the essence of that pain which is a deprivation intensified directly to the point of living experience. For that which one knows how to bring forth—like a germ, like a seed—from the will—that is, by having experienced it—proves to be that which at first has no place, no position within oneself—just as one is as a human being in this present life.

[ 23 ] You have the experience that arises when you have told yourself—and you must tell yourself this, for this realization imposes itself upon you—then you feel: There you are with your physical constitution, with whatever you can experience with other human beings at all; there you stand in this life. What you experienced there through what you are—as a human being of will—gives rise within you to a seed of will, an inner, now transformed new human being. But this human being is incongruous with what you are at present. He is so incongruous that—as you become aware of him—he feels like a knife piercing the skin.

[ 24 ] Of course, since this is expressed in physical terms, it is meant only symbolically. But one comes to understand how suffering is caused when something that belongs to one’s inner being comes into conflict with the outer manifestation of one’s being—with what happens on the outside. One sees that what one is able to accomplish here in life is, in essence, out of step with what is developing within as the seed of the will.

[ 25 ] Just as anything that destroys the body—I would say—is inappropriate to the human organism, so too is that which is now developing as a seed of will—for the time being, no better name can be found—as a seed of will; something that is always there, as unconscious pain in the depths of the soul.

[ 26 ] But it becomes a deeply moving experience when one discovers this capacity for pain, this potential for pain in human beings. For every specific pain, every specific suffering, is of the same nature as this suffering that one thus discovers.

[ 27 ] Spiritual research is by no means something that proceeds in such an abstract and uniform manner as external research; rather, it is something connected with human feelings and inner experiences that reach into the depths of life.

[ 28 ] The nature of suffering, then, is something one comes to know in this way. And so one comes to know, side by side, that which is deadly within the human being and, as something deadly, unfolds the most magnificent powers of thought; one comes to know that which lies within the human being as suffering at the very foundation of the soul, and that which lives in the powers of the will; one comes to recognize that this will would not exist if unconscious pain did not lie at the very foundation of the soul. But one also comes to recognize—by bringing these two poles of otherwise unconscious soul life into one’s consciousness, so to speak—how they belong together. And in beholding them—and one can only come to recognize this through spiritual experience, one can only learn to recognize it through beholding, through spiritual experiences—one comes to recognize how one must be taken up by the other, so that what must be separate here in human physical life, so that [the human being] can unfold this physical life between birth and death—what must be separate here must mutually enrich one another, must come together, so that the human being can pass through the gate of death and once again enter into a spiritual life after death. For what one learns to recognize in this way is that what we have come to know as this second human being—who contains death within himself—can be redeemed from the physical bodily organization.

[ 29 ] That which can have a redemptive effect on this second human being is the seed of the will. And as the former—the human being who has united with death, so that death slowly consumes life—is released from the physical body when the physical body no longer serves him, then the moment has come when the seed of the will can take hold of this human being, and where that which is otherwise only death-bearing unfolds into new life, which now enters the spiritual world and carries into that spiritual world everything that the human being has developed as a will impulse—everything he has brought to life within himself by virtue of being a being with sensory will. And even what we develop as our most intimate soul life is, after all, connected to the will. The will radiates throughout the entire soul life. That which we unfold through this subconscious seed-being of the will takes hold of our image-human—who has carried us into physical existence—and carries him out again, so that the human being can now pass through the spiritual world between death and a new birth. For the life that now begins after death begins in exactly the opposite way to how physical life begins here.

[ 30 ] Through spiritual science, we can come to know the elements of which this life is composed. But try to perceive what might be characterized as the essence of this living being that passes into the spiritual world through the gate of death—what is it? It is what one experiences when one has taken thinking to its utmost extreme, what appears before the soul—I would say—as the very farthest end of the perspective of thought.

[ 31 ] And this is united with the element of will—that which, in a different form of consciousness, is precisely what we carry with us through death. And if we now compare what we carry through death—which is initially the content of consciousness—with what we develop in our human life between birth and death, we see that in ordinary life we first develop the outer physical form; consciousness emerges from it only later. Spiritual science, however, as has been indicated, has shown us that this physical bodily organization has only just been built up.

[ 32 ] We thus trace, through birth or conception and death, those eternal forces of human nature that must be brought into the field of research through education and the elevation of consciousness. Now, in this spiritual science, we do exactly what, in essence, someone who wants to get to know the full scope of plant life does. What does that person do? He observes how this plant life unfolds in the flower, in the fruit, and in the seed. He then traces how, from this very same seed—which develops at the apex of the plant—[a new beginning] arises, [how] this beginning in turn develops, and he sees that the end and the beginning are the seed.

[ 33 ] Thus, by bringing out of consciousness that which passes through the gate of death—which is the fruit of this earthly life—we perceive it in such a connection with that which, as a seed, as a beginning, underlies earthly life. And as we look out through the gate of death—I might say—we see the seed of a new life; [we see] this seed also sprouting in the life that begins here on earth. But this gives rise to the prospect of repeated earthly lives.

[ 34 ] What seems so grotesque to people today, but which Lessing—at the dawn of modern intellectual life, drawing specifically from German culture—perceived in such a marvelous way: the concept of repeated earthly lives, which ultimately appeared as the ripe fruit of Lessing’s intellectual life in his literary testament, *The Education of the Human Race*, is the task and possibility of spiritual science, in that spiritual science grasps that which acts as the eternal in human nature.

[ 35 ] And so one can say that that which [can be] grasped as the Eternal is quite unlike even the most subtle philosophical concepts through which one has hitherto sought to grasp the Eternal in human nature. The mistake that was made in this area, ladies and gentlemen, and which, so to speak, exposed this study of the soul—as it was—to all the challenges of natural science, which had reached such a high degree of perfection—the mistake that had been made was that one always thought one had to base the life of the soul on something more or less finely substantial—even if only as refined matter, as refined substance—but as something to be experienced in external life. The error lay in seeking the life of the soul in a stationary entity to which, as it were, the phenomena of the soul are attached. For what one thus presupposes in the life of the soul as such a substance of the soul cannot in reality be found; the findings of natural science detach the phenomena of the soul from this premise. Rather, one must live within these phenomena of the soul themselves, and what one then finds is something purely spiritual, containing the eternal forces of the human soul—a purely spiritual life that can be grasped only in the consciousness of the human soul. It is precisely when one becomes thoroughly—I might say—accustomed to the simplest concepts of natural science that one sees what, admittedly, very few people can see today: the complete harmony between meaningful scientific concepts and such research in the spiritual and psychological realm.

[ 36 ] Perhaps you, distinguished audience, know how the entire state of motion, the force, and the direction are transferred from one billiard ball to the other. This is precisely how one can direct the motion and direction of the two billiard balls—by understanding how the same state present in one ball is transferred to the second. One would make a mistake—one that is, of course, glaringly obvious—if one were to imagine that something inside one billiard ball were to “jump over” into the second. Nothing material, nothing substantial passes over, yet the state that is transferred is determined by the state of the first ball. It is something that is entirely unrelated to what happens to the first ball in an immediate, sensory sense.

[ 37 ] Thus, one must separate everything that one conceives of as the eternal forces of the human soul from what one can somehow conceive of as substantial, from what one can also somehow conceive of as being contained within ordinary thinking, feeling, and willing. One must develop it purely within consciousness. For what is carried out into the spiritual worlds is consciousness itself; for these are, after all, nothing but elements of consciousness. And what ordinary pantheism, for example, cannot grasp is precisely this: that what passes through the gate of death is that which is characterized by consciousness. And so—this thought could, of course, be elaborated upon to the greatest extent, for spiritual science is capable, through its methods—as I have often hinted at, and as will be done in later lectures—of further exploring the realm of the supersensible worlds to show in detail—how this human soul, between death and a new birth, once again develops those forces: Just as the seed develops and unfolds the powers of the new plant, so too, in its passage through the purely spiritual world between death and a new birth, does it unfold that which in turn develops into a human organism—corresponding to the powers of the previous human organism from the earlier earthly life—in a new earthly life.

[ 38 ] One looks beyond the individual earthly life to the cycle of repeated earthly lives. And through what has been described as an inner soul experiment, this is indeed strictly applied—in accordance with the scientific mindset and scientific way of thinking—to the spiritual aspect of human life.

[ 39 ] Just as the findings of the scientific way of thinking were so unfamiliar to people until relatively recently—so much so that everything rooted in old ideas resisted them—just as unfamiliar as those ideas were, so too are the findings of spiritual science, of course, to contemporary thinking. But those who follow the development of truth through the evolution of humanity and who come to understand the laws governing the development of truth can imbue themselves with the awareness that, just as the scientific way of thinking has prevailed against all opposition, so too will spiritual science prevail against prejudices and all opposition.

[ 40 ] Certainly, to those who believe they stand firmly on the ground of natural science—certainly, the spiritual-scientific worldview, as it so often appears today, must seem far more paradoxical to them than Copernicanism seemed to people who, in their earlier conception, believed the Earth to be at the center of the universe and that this universe was bounded above by the blue vault of heaven. I have stated this here many times before. But regarding what those people had moved beyond—the belief that the celestial world in which they lived was bounded above by the blue firmament—just as those people had moved beyond that and convinced themselves that this blue firmament is not actually a boundary at all, that the spatial world is infinite, that worlds upon worlds are embedded in space; how they came to realize that this blue firmament is the product of their own imagination, which extends only so far—so will people learn that what unfolds in the life of the soul between birth and death is truly limited to the period between birth and death only because, in the first place, human imagination limits itself. Such a spiritual firmament exists, but it is actually nothing. Beyond birth and death, the forces of the human soul are embedded in the infinity of time. And just as worlds upon worlds can be observed in space, so too can human lives upon human lives—which belong together yet diverge—be observed in the infinity of the succession of time.

[ 41 ] Of course, the person who—through what he recognizes as the findings of spiritual science—is imbued with the truth of these findings of spiritual research—he can very well understand why opposition to this spiritual science must still arise today. Better than others who do not stand on the ground of the spiritual researcher, the spiritual researcher can understand when this or that person, after perhaps hearing for the first time—or at least initially—what seems so grotesque, perhaps so foolish, so fantastical—when he has heard this, and then says: “It is truly strange what grotesque fantasies, what swamp flowers of the human imagination, are emerging today in our so-called progressive culture!” Such opposition is quite understandable, just as one could understand everything that arose against Galileo, against Copernicus, and their worldview. —By which, of course, no historical comparison of any kind is even remotely intended.

[ 42 ] But it is not only what has just been mentioned; many other things also enter the horizon of human consciousness, so that what would otherwise strike our soul as inexplicable mysteries of life becomes explainable as a result.

[ 43 ] Let us see how spiritual research leads us to these concrete results: that within the human being there is a second human being who is, as it were, the bearer of death, with whom the seed of the will unites so that something living may arise in the spiritual realm, carried through the gate of death. If we see this, then we can also—I would say—approach even the most unusual mysteries of life with such an insight.

[ 44 ] And even today, when presenting findings from the humanities, one must not shy away from putting forward ideas that might seem quite wild and fantastical to some, even if one is completely serious about such research findings.

[ 45 ] Human life does not end merely because this inner human being, whom I have described, gradually consumes life so that he may unite with the seed of the will, pass through the gate of death, and make preparations for a new life in a spiritual world between death and rebirth. We see such deaths occurring all around us in our present time a hundredfold, a thousandfold—deaths that are violently imposed from the outside, as human beings make sacrifices to a great, meaningful context—deaths that violently bring a person’s life to an end from the outside. Then we see that what exists there as a formative connection, like a second human being—who, however, so to speak, ceases to be animated between birth and death, so that he can become alive precisely at the moment of death through the seed of the will— just like this second human being, before his life cycle on earth is complete, before he has brought forth from within himself, through thought, all that he can unfold as thinking in the manner indicated today—that this second human being separates from the physical body.

[ 46 ] Then we are faced with the remarkable fact that the outer physical organization is taken away prematurely by a [rifle] bullet or the like from the outside—this, of course, must not arise from one’s own decision—that the physical organization is torn away from the outside, that is, by external physical circumstances, as happens to so many flourishing human lives in our present time. Thus, the external physical form is taken away from the second human being, and the life-giving force unites with this second human being, the human being of death. In other words, we see that which, in physical life, had the potential to unfold as further thinking, entering the spiritual world prematurely. But in the spiritual world, it is just as it is in the physical world. Just as we know from the physical world—ever since we learned the law of conservation of energy—how heat arises from work, how work is transformed into heat, how everything is transformed, and how nothing in the strict sense comes into being in the sensory world but rather everything is transformed—so it is now in the spiritual world. The forces that were present—enough that these forces could have continued to act for a long time—remain present, but they are transformed. And now something arises—as I said, and I’ll say it again: even if it may seem quite paradoxical, quite strange, quite wildly fantastical, but it is an honest product of the way of thinking that develops on the ground I have once again attempted to characterize today in a few strokes from a certain point of view—for those who honestly investigate this field, other phenomena in human life arise alongside the deaths that occur prematurely in this way.

[ 47 ] Is it not marvelous, esteemed audience, that through the kind of research characterized here—and once again this evening—that through this kind of research a connection is established for our perception, for our consciousness, between the expanding physical world and the spiritual world? And is it not clear to any reasonably thoughtful and sensitive mind that spiritual elements continually enter our physical world, that these spiritual elements sustain and enliven physical life? In one particular area, we see—I would say—the spiritual reaching into the physical development of humanity in a way that is beneficial to human progress.

[ 48 ] When we consider human life as it unfolds from one historical epoch to the next, we see that what enables people to create out of their own powers consists of two elements. We acquire one kind of strength through our upbringing as children, through the development of our faculties, and through gradually acquiring them; so that one knows exactly what one has done—whether it was the educator who did it, or what one has achieved through self-education and self-discipline—in order to arrive at this or that development of the soul’s powers.

[ 49 ] But there is another realm of powers to which we, as human beings, [gap in the transcript] are particularly grateful, in that we sense that a completely different world extends into these powers. And when I speak of these powers, I am not referring merely to the powers that manifest in the great, divinely gifted geniuses; rather, every human being, even in the simplest of circumstances, needs something of what—even if only a small amount is present in many—we call the genius-like, creative powers—those powers of which we know we have not attained them ourselves, but rather they have been, as we say, “poured into us through divine grace”; they have been “bestowed” upon us. We possess them because they are within our nature, permeating us as our divine heritage. Whether we seek out these powers in the simplest of people who need them, or whether we see them manifesting for the benefit of humanity in the creations of the great geniuses—these powers are there. They represent a penetration of spiritual elements into the unfolding sensory life of history, in that the will of the human being unfolds in historical life just as it acts through the geniuses.

[ 50 ] And when the spiritual researcher has developed his soul to such an extent that he can now observe this phenomenon—the manifestation of genius-like forces—with the opened spiritual eye that he acquires precisely when he is able to observe such phenomena, as has been indicated, a special connection then becomes apparent between these genius-like forces and sacrificial deaths, the deaths of martyrs. Just as one finds, in the lived experience of the individual human soul life, the seed of the will placed side by side with that which animates what acts as the bearer of death in the individual human physical organization, so too, when one looks with the soul’s eye—which has been trained through meditation as described—one perceives the connection between what, in history, seeks to express itself as “genius forces”—to use this term—one perceives the connection between these forces, which appear as genius forces, and that which has prevailed as sacrificial deaths.

[ 51 ] As mysterious and wondrous as this connection is, it is a connection like that of cause and effect. One begins to learn what is still so unfamiliar to today’s human understanding of the world; one learns that one can look back with reverence upon the divine, wisdom-filled interconnection even in historical life. One learns to recognize that sacrificial deaths, martyrdoms, and the premature withering of human life constitute causes. Behind the sensory and intellectual connections, it is revealed that these sacrificial deaths, these martyr’s deaths, give rise to the effects of those abilities that manifest as genius in the course of human development, thereby gradually unveiling the mystery.

[ 52 ] And just as one recognizes that which, in nature too, manifests as an effect of a completely different kind in its connection to a cause that appears quite different, so too does one come to understand cause and effect in the life of the individual—insofar as it is rooted in eternal forces and passes through birth and death—but also that which is situated within the historical context.

[ 53 ] And so it is that spiritual science opens up a perspective on the significance of such historical epochs as our own. In a completely unbiased, by no means forced way, an inner understanding arises—I would say—of what happens in such epochs. And an inner understanding arises of why causes must be created through sacrificial deaths for something that will later emerge in human life as forces that will serve this human life for its salvation and progress.

[ 54 ] Truly, by coming to understand the interconnections of human life through the spiritual sciences, insight spreads into much that is otherwise incomprehensible and painful. The foundation of the hopes that today permeate the Central European population is like an infinitely vast field of pain and suffering.

[ 55 ] Now, spiritual science is truly not suited to turning human beings into dull-witted creatures by attempting to console them in a trivial way over their pain. We have just seen that suffering, at the deepest level of the soul, must be recognized as one of the elements that lead human beings into spiritual life. As a person comes to know the eternal forces of the human soul—forces that guide the soul through the gate of death under all circumstances—and as a person even comes to understand the significance of those forces that remain unspent in the lives of people who pass through the gate of death due to an early death—and as a person views these forces within a broad historical context, so that he can say to himself: Even if a dear friend must die, the wise guidance of human progress requires this of me. — When a person says this to themselves, they truly grasp this workings of wisdom in all worldly phenomena. But this must not be taken as mere trivial comfort, as banal consolation. The individual pain we feel is justified; the individual suffering that weaves through our soul is justified; we will indeed learn to be strong in suffering if we keep open the horizon beyond this world that spiritual science reveals to us; we will be strong in suffering. We will learn the meaning of suffering, but precisely because of this, we will not be tempted to dull the intensity of life by trying to console ourselves in a superficial way. Everything joyful, but also every pain in life, will not be trivialized but rather deepened when we come to know the depths of life through spiritual science.

[ 56 ] I have been able only to hint at how human beings can find the way by being guided to view the processes of spiritual life in a manner that is just as clear—one might say—scientific as the way in which external natural processes are viewed today. And this is an entirely different way of viewing things, one that must first develop from within the human soul.

[ 57 ] The greatest figures who have lived throughout human history have pointed toward this way of seeing things. It is our calling in the present to draw humanity’s attention to this way of seeing things and to incorporate the results of this way of seeing into cultural life. What Goethe called the “spiritual eyes” and “spiritual ears”—and which develops from the spiritual organization of the soul just as the physical eyes and ears develop from the physical body—is what is meant here. It arises in a manner as appropriate to the spirit and the soul as the physical body arises in a manner appropriate to nature. And when, in this context, it is said that a person’s powers of perception must be developed into clairvoyance and clairaudience so that they can look into the spiritual world, it must never be forgotten that what is meant here as truly spiritual-scientific clairvoyance and clairaudience is the exact opposite of what is so often referred to as clairvoyance or even clairaudience. The very findings of spiritual science, dear attendees, are prone to being belittled by many people precisely because they speak of the development of special abilities lying dormant in the soul—abilities through which the eternal forces of the human soul can be explored. And it is, once again, a consequence of the scientific mindset to relegate what is commonly and trivially called clairvoyance and clairaudience to the realm of hallucinations, to the realm of illusions; and in any case, not to seek paths leading into the spiritual world through the development of such abilities as are commonly called clairvoyance and clairaudience in everyday life. Here, too, I would say, spiritual science stands entirely on the ground of sound scientific research, for those abilities that truly unfold as new soul abilities along the path that has been outlined today—and which, as I said, can be found described in detail in the books mentioned—these abilities that develop in this way are spiritual abilities; they are the very faculties that the soul develops precisely when it becomes independent of the body, when it no longer acts through the body’s organization. Whereas what may occur in ordinary life—pathologically, as a hallucination, as an illusion—consists precisely in the fact that it is, as it were, a caricature, a shadow image of true clairvoyance and true clairaudience. Yes, spiritual science leads us precisely to the realization that the correct path to perceiving the spiritual worlds is the one that develops the forces capable of counteracting ordinary clairvoyance—that trivial form of clairvoyance in human beings—so that the kind of clairvoyance commonly known does not manifest itself.

[ 58 ] For the kind of clairvoyance that has been described today as true clairvoyance can only be attained through the path indicated. The clairvoyance that is commonly known consists precisely in the fact that its powers are developed within the physical-bodily realm; that they are powers which come into being precisely because the spiritual exerts a more destructive influence on the physical than in ordinary thinking. Ordinary thinking represents the normal state: how the second human being exerts a destructive influence—and must do so—so that human life can develop in the right way. The development of so-called clairvoyance that veers into the hallucinatory, the illusory, and the visionary reveals, as spiritual science [as I have described it here], a phenomenon that must be characterized: that this second human being develops stronger destructive forces. Consequently, however, what can be experienced in this caricature, in this shadow image of true clairvoyance, is much more intensely connected to the temporal human being than ordinary thinking—everyday thinking—is connected to this human being. If a person, by falling into pathological hallucinations or pathological illusions, attains some form of soul life that is often admired, then what can be brought into their soul in this way is something far more transient than the ordinary, transitory ideas and things of life. One attains the eternal forces of the human soul only when one develops thinking and willing in the manner described to a higher level—to a supersensible, rather than a sub-sensible, point.

[ 59 ] Ladies and gentlemen, there is, after all, an intrinsic connection between the remarks I made yesterday and what I am presenting today—without choosing to tie it to anything that has emerged in the development of contemporary worldviews— what has been developed today nevertheless stands in a certain objective connection with what was discussed yesterday—with that which was linked to the worldview of German Idealism. Not in a connection that would, so to speak, follow logically and inevitably; let me now, in closing, point out the relationship between what was considered yesterday and what is being considered today. Rather, the connection lies in the feelings that can indeed flow into our souls today. I therefore ask for your forgiveness if the transition to the conclusion today is not chosen with strict logic, but rather in such a way that it arises from the feelings that must fill us with joy today—if we are indeed sensitive people—[when the transition to the conclusion] is formed from these feelings.

[ 60 ] Yesterday we saw how the worldview of German Idealism expresses an aspiration such that one of its leading figures—the most national of German philosophers, Johann Gottlieb Fichte—seeks a powerful unfolding of the element of will, which progressively creates the human self from moment to moment. There we see emerging within the scope of the worldview of German Idealism a striving that arises directly—as described yesterday—from the substance, from the spiritual substance of the German national character; there we see a striving that points toward the meditation of the will. In the history of the world, it has become a fact that the soul can follow a path that we have today described as the meditation of the will.

[ 61 ] And if we look to the other pole—to Hegel, within the worldview of German Idealism—we see in his thought—which pushes logic so far that even the World Spirit, with which the human ego seeks to unite, becomes a pure logician— we see this line of thought taking the path that need only be pursued further. And this line of thought does not lead to where it led Hegel at a certain point in his psychology, but rather into that weaving of spiritual life to which Hegel has not yet arrived, but toward which his striving leads if it is continued with this energy. And in a similar way, Schelling—indeed, every personality who unfolds within the true worldview of German Idealism—also stands at the starting point of what the researcher of the spirit must today regard as the path to spiritual science itself. This is how world-historical events present themselves to us, and our time will excuse the fact that we are directing our gaze specifically toward these world-historical events. No matter how one may position oneself within the broader context of spiritual world culture, no matter how one may seek something that so intensely embodies a striving which can find its continuation solely in spiritual research—one will not find it elsewhere in such an inwardly intense manner as in the worldview of German Idealism in particular.

[ 62 ] One can see what the researcher of the spirit must strive for today, given the needs of evolving humanity; one can see it dawning, as in a kind of dawn, in Hegel’s pure thought and in Fichte’s intense meditation on the will—which had progressed so far even within Fichte himself that he once spoke of that sense through which one explores [supersensible] things—which, as Fichte put it to his audience in his final Berlin lectures, can be recognized just as little by ordinary human sense as the sense of color can be recognized by the blind. If one allows this thought to truly sink into one’s soul, then one can arrive at a further elaboration of this idea, which might go something like this: If one attempts today to treat precisely this as the element of spiritual research—as that which must be dear to one if one wishes to introduce it as a new element into the spiritual progress of humanity— if one attempts to characterize it properly, one finds it justified in its necessity, historically justified, when one looks back on the development that the German national spirit underwent at that time when—as was hinted at yesterday—the worldview of German Idealism was most magnificently and most fully unfolded. Just as if the German national spirit itself, through the personalities characterized yesterday, had fallen into meditation in order to make the first step toward something that holds the promise of the future, so does what is accomplished on the stage of German Idealism appear to us. Does this German Idealism, does this meditation of the German national soul, of the German national spirit, speak to us in such a way that we must say: It carries within itself the forces of many far-reaching future developments?

[ 63 ] Does the fact that the German national spirit, the German national soul, has developed such meditation over time—that it has taken such a path toward something that serves as a seed for a future fruit—does this not demonstrate the vitality, the resilience, and the moral strength of the German national spirit, of this German national soul, in the present? Can we not already see germinating within that seed what must become fruit in the future? Should that which reveals its fruits precisely by containing them as a seed be allowed to perish at the hands of a world of enemies? That which is predisposed—that which thus carries within itself the necessity of its own unfolding—will unfold and take shape in the world, even if enemies who rise up against it seek to contest its very existence.

[ 64 ] Thus, in every sensitive German soul, the German national spirit feels connected to the forces that reach into the future; thus, it hopes for its own fulfillment in the future; thus, it hopes for its victory over all opposition; and thus, full of confidence, this German national spirit lives on into the future in everyone who can feel it.