The Rudolf Steiner Archive

7. How Can We Explore the Supernatural Nature of Human Beings?

Ladies and gentlemen!

[ 1 ] In earlier lectures I have had the privilege of giving here on topics in the spiritual sciences, I have repeatedly indicated that anyone who stands on the ground of this spiritual science, as it is understood here, is fully aware that, with regard to this method of bringing human research into the spiritual worlds, —naturally arising from current habits of thought, from everything we are accustomed to regarding as the pursuit of truth today—and that it is entirely understandable to the spiritual researcher himself if, at first, what he has to present is regarded as fantasy, daydreaming, or perhaps something worse. Nevertheless, since it is possible to continue this evening’s reflections the day after tomorrow, I would like to structure what I have to say today as if, for the time being, the most obvious objections—those that might be raised against spiritual science from the perspectives of natural science, religion, and so on—were to be completely disregarded. This evening, I would like to consider spiritual science—the essence of the exploration of the supersensible worlds—in such a way that all objections are set aside for the time being, so that the day after tomorrow we may delve all the more deeply into what can be described as objections or apparent refutations from a wide variety of perspectives.

[ 2 ] Essentially, ladies and gentlemen, all profound human thought and inquiry has always aimed to recognize the very essence of the human being as a supersensible one, because in the exploration of the human essence it becomes, shall we say, self-evident to the observer—for example, the philosophical observer— it becomes self-evident that the methods of inquiry to which one is accustomed in the sensory world cannot reveal the true nature of the human being; or at least—even if one believes that in all that the senses perceive, in all that the intellect bound to the brain can investigate, even if one believes that one can encompass the essence of the human being within these things, as the more or less materialistic form of monism believes, it always follows—that for a deeper philosophical or scientific examination, what can be said about the nature of the human being from such perspectives leaves deeper needs for knowledge unsatisfied, and that one still has the feeling, the sense, that something must be able to come from some source that reveals the nature of the human being outside the sensory world.

[ 3 ] I would like to draw attention to one of the very first thinkers in the spiritual development of humanity, who, through the most strenuous thinking, endeavored to point out—even to his students at the university and his listeners directly during his lectures—how one can, in one’s inner spiritual life, emerge directly from that which obscures the essence of the human being to that in which it can be found. This thinker is Johann Gottlieb Fichte. And in what one might call a paradoxical way, he attempted before his listeners to direct the soul toward the manner in which it should, as it were, move in order to find its way from the sensory into the supersensory. For example, at the beginning of his lectures, he said to his listeners: “Try to think of the wall.” — Well, that was, of course, easy. The listeners tried to put themselves in the state of mind in which they were thinking of the wall. So after he had let his listeners think of the wall for a while, he said: “Now, try to think of the one who thought of the wall.” — And this, delivered in the immediately compelling manner characteristic of Fichte’s oratory, had a stunning effect on the audience, so astonishing that our contemporaries, who recorded this very scene, describe just how astonished the audience actually was, how one could see that they were now straining to imagine the one who had previously imagined the wall—how, in a certain sense, thinking faltered, how it did not dare to go as far as the point to which it was directed.

[ 4 ] Goethe, who approached questions of knowledge above all from a truly human standpoint—namely, from the standpoint of fruitful life—once made a statement that—one might say—is properly illuminated precisely by referring to Fichte’s demand in the manner just described— Goethe said that, in a certain sense, he had acted wisely by avoiding thinking about thinking. He sensed this quite keenly—he, who in everything he undertook spiritually sought to perceive immediate life—he felt that this attempt to think about thinking initially leads a person into a kind of impossibility if he adheres only to ordinary thinking. And yet, anyone who begins to explore the supersensory worlds can initially rely only on thinking, for they soon realize: What the senses can teach them, or what can be deduced from sensory phenomena, still raises questions that, in a sense, lead a person outside their true nature. In thinking, they are at one with themselves, and they can hope at first—they can cherish the expectation—that if they truly enter into the inner movement of thought with the power of their soul, something might emerge there that leads to the true nature of the human being.

[ 5 ] But it is precisely a peculiar phenomenon, ladies and gentlemen, that the further one takes one’s thinking—as it arises in ordinary life—and the more one strains to think in this way, the more intense the doubts become that this kind of thinking can somehow open a door into the world where the true essence of the human being lies. Indeed, based on what one experiences inwardly through thinking, one ultimately arrives at the conviction that one cannot really—let me use this trivial comparison—think about thinking any more than one can wash water.

[ 6 ] And yet: The true methods, the true path to penetrating those worlds in which the essence of the human being can be recognized—or, as we shall see later, actually experienced—nevertheless lead through thinking. But they lead through thinking in such a way that this thinking is not accepted as it presents itself in everyday life or in conventional science, but is developed in such a way that, through this development, it essentially becomes a completely different spiritual force than it was before. And this is essentially the foundation of any understanding of the exploration of the supersensible worlds: that one first learns to experience how, through a certain inner process, thinking can become something entirely different in the human soul than it initially is in external life and in ordinary science.

[ 7 ] I have often had the opportunity here to point out the essential elements that must occur in the treatment of thinking so that this thinking becomes a completely different spiritual force than it is from the outset; and so today I do not wish to revisit, in principle, what thinking must accomplish in order, so to speak, to emerge from itself and become a completely different spiritual force. I simply want to mention a few things that characterize what one actually achieves when one treats thinking in a certain way—purely and inwardly, in a spiritual sense—so that it becomes something entirely different from what it is to begin with. You can, of course, find detailed descriptions of the methods by which one can treat thinking in this way in my book, *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?*, You can find it in the second part of my *Secret Science*. Today I want to emphasize only that certain inner processes are described there which thinking can undertake, but which are of a purely soul-related nature—a certain way of taking ideas into one’s consciousness and relating to them, ideas, connections—and relating to them, and so on—so that the soul thereby becomes capable, by infusing thought inwardly with something unfamiliar to ordinary thinking, of experiencing something within the very process of thinking; this is what I wish to mention first. And these experiences one arrives at are a first step in the exploration of the supersensible worlds. For what one experiences precisely through strengthening and invigorating one’s thinking inwardly through meditation—and the specific methods of meditation and concentration are described in the books mentioned—by strengthening and invigorating one’s thinking through meditation and concentration, one comes to realize that this thinking—which one employs in ordinary life and in ordinary science—is, as it stands, simply unsuitable for the exploration of the supersensible worlds. One notices this particularly in that, by devoting oneself to this ordinary thinking, one does not at all bring to consciousness within this thinking the forces that can lead into the supersensible worlds. And even more so than the mere materialistic theorist, through such thinking exercises—through a genuine inner experience of thinking—one gains the full conviction that the thinking one engages in during ordinary life, between birth—or let us say between conception—and death, necessarily requires the physical instrument, the physical organism. And because the physical organization is necessary for this, because this thinking proceeds in such a way that everything it accomplishes makes use of the physical instrument, this thinking cannot free itself from being immersed in the sensory world; and therefore, through this thinking, one cannot enter any world other than the one in which the very essence of the human being cannot be found. And precisely by bringing all external perception to rest in meditation—by, so to speak, arbitrarily shutting off the senses; by also bringing the inner emotions, feelings, and sensations to a standstill; and by devoting oneself purely meditatively, inwardly, to specific thoughts in order to concentrate all the powers of the soul upon these thoughts and thereby strengthen thinking— one realizes that it is the binding of thought to the physical instrument that prevents one from entering the supersensible worlds. For it is precisely through meditation that one comes to realize—that one clearly recognizes—how one makes use of the body in order to think. One becomes convinced of this through experience, to a greater extent than the theoretical materialist can prove: One lives with this thinking within the bodily, physical organization. But one also realizes that, by living within the bodily, physical organization, this bodily, physical organization makes something specific possible that would not be possible without it—that it, this bodily organization, gives thinking something that thinking would not have without this organization—if I may first utter this paradoxical statement. This will be confirmed by the further reflections of the evening. For what one notices is that, as one thinks, something of the thought must remain behind in a healthy soul life. Every person knows what must remain behind. These are the memories. It must be possible for something to arise in our soul life alongside thinking that we designate by the word “memory.” Anyone for whom what they think would vanish immediately at the very moment they think it would not be an ordinary human being in our external physical world. Everything rests on the fact that we can preserve thoughts in memory. And now, precisely through an inner, methodical examination of thought in the direction indicated, one realizes that the physical organization is necessary for memories to remain from thought. And with that, one also realizes that, in a certain way, one can detach thought from the physical organization. One cannot, however, detach the very thought that becomes memory.

[ 8 ] What I have just said leads the researcher of the spirit down a very specific path. It leads him to recognize that memory, as we humans initially possess it, is a force that has significance only for the physical-sensory world, and that this memory must first be detached, so to speak, from the activity of thinking, from the actual act of thinking. I would like to say: Just as the chemist uncovers the secrets of material nature by separating substances from one another in the laboratory, so too must the spiritual researcher proceed with the individual processes of the soul. Except that his analysis—his spiritual-scientific analysis—consists of purely inner soul processes, and the synthesis—the reuniting of what has been separated—all the more so. Thus the necessity arises to separate from the actual act of thinking that aspect of thinking which leads to ordinary memory, to ordinary recollection. But how can this be done? The question now arises: How can one—in a sense, just as certain substances are treated physiologically so that substances dissolved within them are precipitated out through certain processes, leaving the dissolving substance behind—how can one extract from thinking that which leads to memory, to recollection, so that something remains? This is achieved, my dear friends, by repeatedly and consistently, through faithful repetition over long periods of time—even if only for very brief moments during the day— devote time to lingering within thoughts or images—or whatever they may be—and that one places the true value not on ensuring that this remains in one’s memory, but rather on paying attention within the soul to what one is doing, thus becoming absorbed in the act of thinking. Then one notices that something is alive within this act of thinking—something that one actually always carries within oneself in everyday life and in ordinary scientific research, but which remains unconscious, which does not penetrate into consciousness. I can make myself understood regarding what is actually meant by this if I say the following: Let’s assume we are performing an external task related to our business or our profession. Through this, we produce this or that over and over again. After all, a person must choose a profession that leads them, so to speak, to the same occupation day after day. For external life, the main thing is, of course, that what can be produced through our actions is actually produced. The result—that is the main thing. But very often something else goes hand in hand with this, and we can very well—even if it relates to external actions—regard it in external life as something important and essential. By carrying out the same professional activity every day, we become more and more skilled; our hands and our other actions become—I would say—more and more alive within us, so that we not only produce the result but also experience an intensification of the activity within ourselves. One may often fail to pay close attention to this intensification of the activity. But it can be observed.

[ 9 ] What I have described here in relation to external life—where it naturally has an entirely different meaning—the spiritual researcher must now apply to the inner experience of thinking, specifically the kind of thinking he engages in during meditation, when he immerses himself completely, so to speak, forgetting his entire surroundings and the actual experiences he has otherwise gone through, when he immerses himself in what we might call meditation or contemplation. And there he will find—provided he does not overdo the individual meditations—I will speak more about this later—he will find, as he repeatedly and anew engages in such inner thought development with intensity, that he learns to observe, not the thoughts themselves, but the activity of thinking. As this process intensifies, he realizes that an activity of thinking is taking place. And by, so to speak, experiencing himself within his own activity of thinking, by grasping it, by strengthening this activity of thinking so as to perceive it—in such a way that, whereas it otherwise remains unconscious in ordinary life and in ordinary science, it now enters his consciousness— he gradually takes into his soul that which he can now detach from the memory work of thinking. For the continuation of such exercises, as they have been described, yields a very specific result. They result in the person gradually immersing themselves in the moments they can evoke themselves, in the person gradually immersing themselves in a new activity that thinking now performs, such that for this new activity, memory indeed ceases to play a role and there is only an experience within the activity of thinking. One could describe it this way: by developing their thinking in the manner indicated, a person experiences that their thoughts slip away, and they live and weave within the activity of thinking—initially within inner activity. What is peculiar is this: Once one has grasped this point—where one thus lives in inner activity—one realizes that for this kind of inner soul activity, what in ordinary life is memory is initially absent. Something else is present. And I would like to use a comparison to point out how the entire inner life of the soul has now actually been transformed through thinking.

[ 10 ] A certain experience of the poet Grillparzer is known from his biography. I do not wish to cite this experience because Grillparzer, in terms of his capacity for insight, held the view expressed here, but rather because—I would say—there was a spark in what Grillparzer experienced that points toward what—I would say—must be artificially brought about in order to bring about the exploration of the supersensory essence of the human being. Grillparzer had conceived the entire framework of his *Golden Fleece*. He had devised the plot, conceived the individual events and how they interrelate—in short, he had grasped his drama *The Golden Fleece* in thought, in his imagination. What was remarkable was that he later forgot it exactly as he had grasped it. He could not remember it at all. And lo and behold, one day while playing the piano—the very same pieces he had played during the time when he had conceived the idea of *The Golden Fleece*—the memory returned; the whole thing stood before his soul once more. How did that happen? Well, this indicates to us that through the inner activity—which, while playing again, was the same as before—through this inner activity, he was once more led to, as it were, contemplate the entire content of the thought inwardly. As I said, this is on the path toward what is actually to be considered here—but it is indeed on the path. One need only continue along this path accordingly.

[ 11 ] For this is the peculiar experience that the meditator, the spiritual researcher, comes to: that he finds himself, as it were, dying within—but of course only during the times when he is engaged in spiritual research— the ordinary memory dies away, and that—not in terms of memory, but through other activities—the activity into which they once immersed themselves can arise again and again. This activity recurs again and again. And lo and behold, once one has become accustomed to this for a while—that is, to separating the activity of thinking from the thoughts that can remain as memories—one notices that the entire mood of one’s soul life has changed under the influence of these exercises. One does, however, notice something when one has reached a certain point in this development of spiritual exercises; one does indeed notice something that can have a somewhat unsettling effect on the soul: One realizes that one can have experiences that simply do not leave behind memories, and because they do not leave behind memories, [but] are like surging and weaving processes of experience—real dreams, so to speak—but dreams that exert a great dominion over our inner spiritual life. And so one notices this very soon in—I would say—a consciousness that has become empty, which can no longer retain memories of what it immediately perceives to be taking place, not through the same mental activity of remembering, through the effort to bring thoughts to mind, but as if they were pressing in from the outside, just as sensory objects press in from the outside; thus, one’s own experiences initially press in from the outside. One gains a more or less complete impression of one’s earthly life, stretching back to the moment one usually remembers. The thoughts appear as realities. The thoughts appear as something alive. They approach one like living beings; not as they appear in memory, but as living beings they approach one.

[ 12 ] In general, thinking takes on a completely different character under the influence of the exercises we have done. It truly becomes an entirely different spiritual power. And I would like to use a comparison to point out once again how surprising this change in the activity of thinking can seem. Imagine you have a statue, a sculpture, a work of art before you; it is shaped. Imagine that a moment might come when this statue, this work of art, began to walk, to live. Then you would initially perceive something that violates the laws of external nature. Of course, that cannot happen. I wanted to offer this merely as a comparison, because something occurs in the life of the soul that can indeed be compared to it. With the thoughts one usually has in everyday life—and which lead to memories—one tends to have the impression, in one’s own inner experience, that these thoughts must be passive images reflecting the external world, that they do not, so to speak, live internally. And if they were to lead a life of their own, then the life of the soul would play itself out through the inner life—through the independent life of the thoughts—in fantasy, in dreams, if not in something worse, if not in hallucinations. In ordinary soul life, thoughts truly have something that can be compared to the forms of a statue. Of course, this is not meant to detract in any way from the value of sculpture. That would, of course, be foolish. But the dead statue can, in a certain sense, be compared to what unfolds as the logic of thought in the ordinary activity of thinking—where we are not aware of the actual activity of thinking itself, of that which connects thoughts, brings them together, and then separates them again. While the statue cannot transition into activity or life, the inner logic—the inner weaving and life of thoughts—can now enter into consciousness and become inwardly alive; “logic,” as it were, can emerge from the statue as an inner, living logical entity, which one now experiences as if one were immersing oneself in an entirely different world. From this moment on, one knows: that which one first peeled away from memory—the activity of thought—has itself become detached from its dependence on the physical organs. — As I said, I will discuss all possible objections from the perspective of natural science the day after tomorrow. — But what the spiritual researcher experiences at this crucial point in his development of the soul’s powers is that he now knows: You have torn the thought process away from the physical body; you have stepped out of your physical organization with your soul, insofar as the soul moves in thought; you are no longer inside your body.

[ 13 ] As paradoxical and strange as this may seem, it is a reality. The possibility exists—but only through inner experience—to observe this separation of what is spiritual and soulful within us from the physical body. What the spiritual researcher experiences there has been described at various times with a single word, one that has already been mentioned here in earlier lectures, but which may be mentioned again and again because it represents something that has an infinitely profound effect on the soul when it has reached the point I have just spoken of. For indeed, the development that the spiritual researcher undergoes, dear friends, is such that the individual stages are connected with inner upheavals and inner struggles, some of which we must also come to know. This has no objective value. But when speaking of the paths and methods through which one explores the supersensible nature of the human being, this, too, must be mentioned. Now, however, it must be said: It is only in the manner I have described that spiritual research can actually emerge in our time. Everything that arises in the ongoing development of human culture must, after all, occur at a specific time. Just as the modern scientific way of thinking emerged three to four centuries ago—made possible by external circumstances and by the inner developmental conditions of humanity as a whole—so too was it not possible in earlier times to approach the inner soul forces in the manner now described. It first required centuries of scientific training for humanity to precede this, so that thinking might acquire the strength within human development to undertake such a task at all. Yet in earlier centuries and millennia, there were always people who, following different spiritual paths and drawing on different developmental forces of the soul, also penetrated into the spiritual worlds—along paths of development that are no longer appropriate for today’s advanced humanity. These paths must be altered, just as the way of viewing nature has also been altered in the course of development. But in their own way, spiritual observers from the most diverse millennia have also reached the point referred to here, where they were seized by a force living within the world—a force that is, so to speak, a living, weaving power of thought, an objective power of thought that surges and weaves through all things. They have arrived at this insight, and they have described this point—in relation to what the soul can experience as deeply unsettling when it reaches it—by saying: Here the soul arrives at the gate of death. And indeed, one knows something about this arrival at the gate of death that has a shattering effect precisely because it presents itself inwardly before the soul; one knows: by having driven the activity of thinking so far that this activity has been transformed in the manner indicated, one enters into such a coming to life of thinking. Yet one faces an inner—not a physical—danger. Not a danger—I will discuss this the day after tomorrow—that has something to do with the [gap in the transcript], of course, but one faces a danger.

[ 14 ] One faces the danger of being unable, on a purely inner, psychological level, to bring into the world one is now experiencing that which is otherwise one’s ordinary, everyday self-awareness. One faces the danger of entering a world in the face of which one is powerless—spiritually, purely spiritually powerless—to bring one’s sense of self into it; a world in which one seems, in a sense, to lose oneself at first, so that one actually ends up standing at the threshold of a world, but as one steps forward, it is as if one had to leave oneself behind. This losing of oneself, this no longer having oneself—that is, at first, a shattering experience. And this experience, fully lived through, truly experienced inwardly so that it is embedded in one’s soul, allows one to experience something else now; it allows one to experience the realization that: Yes, this sense of self that you have there, this sense of self that arose once in this life—at the point up to which you otherwise recall having begun to refer to yourself as an “I”—this sense of self is, in the most eminent sense, even more so than the other soul forces, bound to the physical body. And now that one has emerged from the physical body, one faces the danger of no longer being able to say “I” to oneself, of losing oneself. One comes to recognize what is snatched away when one passes through the gate of death, when the spiritual-soul aspect is in reality separated from the physical-bodily aspect through death. One truly comes to—I would say—experience in a living, theoretical way what death is in the spiritual-soul sense, objectively.

[ 15 ] This is the shattering experience. And that is why those who knew anything about it described this experience as drawing near to the gates of death. But one must follow the path that has been described leading to this significant experience; one must go through it. Only when—dear friends—the exercises described in my book *How to Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds* and in the second part of my *Esoteric Science* are followed, and when one undergoes these exercises in the soul, does one develop an understanding of how these exercises are shaped by soul experiences. Alongside this path, which has just been described, one develops another that runs, so to speak, parallel to it, and which protects one—when one has, so to speak, approached the threshold of death with one’s consciousness—from truly losing oneself there. So the spiritual researcher, the meditator, has something else to go through as well, so that he does not lose himself at that particular point, but can carry himself into the world he has now entered. Just as, in order to reach the point described, a development of thinking was necessary—a separation of thinking, of the power of thought, and of the activity of thought from that which leads to memory in thinking—so, for the other path, a very specific development of the activity of the will, of the will itself, is necessary, which in turn is to be attained through inner spiritual exercises.

[ 16 ] And it must be said that this development of the will is based on the fact that one now, in turn, separates something from the will that one has exercised in ordinary life—something that is connected to it in ordinary life—as it were—if I may use this chemical analogy—something that falls out, is peeled away from ordinary volitional activity. In our ordinary volitional activity—especially when one examines this activity scientifically—one knows that nowhere in ordinary life, nowhere—not even in the most ideal activity—that in everyday life and through ordinary consciousness, the will is never experienced in any other way than as being filled with inner emotions, with affections, with what constitute the motives of the will. These must be present; otherwise, the will would not function in everyday life.

[ 17 ] Now, in order for the spiritual researcher to be able to follow the other path—which runs parallel to the first—he must perform exercises that enable him to separate the will, [which enables him to have the experience] of separating the will from everything that must be connected to it—because motives must live in the will that arise from our physical being, from our ordinary soul life, and so on—to separate the will from everything that constitutes the very essence and value of this will for ordinary life. Of course, this separation must not take place for ordinary life—otherwise a person would be useless for ordinary life, or perhaps even worse—but only for those moments, for those times when a person wishes to explore the spiritual worlds; then they must create the conditions to experience a will that is free from the ordinary will. And here, too, there are exercises that are applied to the will so that the will can detach itself. You will find these described in the books mentioned.

[ 18 ] Above all, while the exercises of thought aim to strengthen the faculty of thinking—to immerse oneself in experienced thoughts that are brought to the center of consciousness—these exercises of the will aim to give one ever greater control over the ability to suspend ordinary volitional activity, and to bring calm and inner peace to one’s entire inner life. Ordinary inner life is permeated by the remnants of volitional motives, worries, and all other feelings—in short, by whatever surges as a living force from ordinary inner life into the mind. The exercises are designed to teach one to suppress all of this at will. And this is where the spiritual researcher is able to bring about something that, in ordinary life, can otherwise only be brought about involuntarily.

[ 19 ] To describe this, I must point out something that occurs cyclically, as it were, in everyday life—namely, what one always experiences in the course of a twenty-four-hour day, provided one leads a reasonably regular human life: the alternation between waking and sleeping. We need not go into further detail today about what happens within a person as the transition from wakefulness to sleep takes place. But everyone already knows from trivial, everyday observation of life that, first of all, sensory activity involuntarily subsides—in a certain sequence that could be described, though the description has no particular value here—and that then even what remains last—the inner sense of self, the inner experience of one’s own being—also subsides. And then the person remains in a state that, in the most eminent sense, must be described as unconscious.

[ 20 ] The spiritual researcher then comes to the conclusion that when a person is asleep in this unconscious state, their soul is nevertheless still present. And through this, he comes to realize that by developing his will in a certain way, he can now bring about a state that, on the one hand, is similar to the state of sleep and yet, on the other hand, is so radically different from it that one can say: It is the opposite state of sleep. The development of the will aims to ultimately shut down all sensory activity—to bring about with sensory activity the same state that is otherwise achieved in deep, unconscious sleep; likewise, to bring about, through all thought activity, all feeling activity, and everything that lives in the motives of the will, the suppression of the entire sensory and ordinary life of the soul through volition. And then one realizes—once one has acquired the powers to achieve this, that one is truly capable of bringing about such a standstill of physical, organic life as otherwise occurs involuntarily during sleep—that one need not remain unconscious, that one does not actually fall asleep, but rather experiences this transition in a conscious state. The power that leads one to suppress organic activity—this same power now leads one, by a different path, to lift the spiritual-soul consciousness out of the body, to lift it out as an act of the will, so that one is truly no longer unconscious outside one’s body as in sleep—I need not explain these remarks today, because nothing depends on them—but rather that one stands consciously in sleep and knows: You are no longer in what lives within you. But consciousness has not vanished. Consciousness remains intact, along with self-awareness and the ability to recognize yourself as an “I.”

[ 21 ] That is why this state is radically different from the state of sleep, because in sleep one is, in fact, unconscious, whereas now one steps out of one’s body with full consciousness in such a way that one surveys this body, seeing it before oneself just as one would otherwise see a table or an external object. In this way, one consciously emerges from the physical body and knows that one is outside it, because one now observes the physical body as an external object, just as one would otherwise observe external objects.

[ 22 ] To someone who has not yet received any information about such things or is unable to grasp them, this naturally seems like something entirely paradoxical and fanciful. Nevertheless, it is a real process—much more real than any process the soul can otherwise bring about—and through it the soul now succeeds in bringing the experience of the self in volition, in the act of willing, to full consciousness.

[ 23 ] But now, ladies and gentlemen, one experiences something which, when described, must at first be accepted as a matter of course—as if one were merely trying to express oneself figuratively, as if one were referring to a mere thought, something symbolic, perhaps even something allegorical. But that is not the case; rather, one experiences something that is entirely real within oneself. One experiences that in this will—which is thus detached from ordinary mental activity but is now conscious—one experiences something that is always within oneself, yet is not like something at rest, not like something substantial, but rather like a spiritual-psychic life of consciousness: One experiences a second human being within oneself, one who is always present in every human being but who cannot be brought to light through ordinary consciousness alone. Certainly, when people say in ordinary life that a human being carries a second human being within them, they very often mean something figurative, something imaginary. That is not what is meant here; rather, what is truly meant is that a person comes to realize: You carry within you a second self—a second self that truly possesses consciousness and that observes you in everything you otherwise do in ordinary life through your willful activity. One is never alone. In the depths of our being there is a true being that is developing and that observes us—a being that is in constant activity—and whom, if one continues with exercises such as those described, one comes to know more and more precisely. Indeed, one first comes to know it in such a way that, before one can really become acquainted with it, so to speak, one must once again overcome a shattering inner soul experience. I have described the other soul experience that spiritual researchers have called—and continue to call—“reaching the threshold of death.” Now, however, one arrives at a soul experience that can be described by saying: One experiences in a comprehensive way, spiritually and soulfully—and indeed, all of this is meant to be spiritual and soulful—one experiences in a comprehensive way, spiritually and soulfully, only now what is actually present in the world, surging through and interwoven with this world, in terms of pain and suffering. In a sense, one experiences the foundations of the suffering and pain that weave through and animate the world. Only now does one learn to recognize what pain and suffering are in the soul. And one must do so. For it is only through experiencing this pain, through living through this pain, that one develops the ability to grasp, comprehend, and experience—directly and inwardly, in a spiritual-soulful way—this inwardly conscious being that dwells within one. One might say: The person who has an open heart and an open mind toward what surrounds them in the world will perceive what surrounds them in the world, in many respects, as something beautiful, as something sublime, as the blossoming of the world. Anyone who goes through what has been described knows that, as if from the fertile soil of the pain that surges and weaves through the world, the blossom of all beauty, all sublimity, and all glory in the world rises up.

[ 24 ] Certainly, esteemed audience, there may be people who, in their human wisdom, say: Yes, something like that could indeed cause one to despair of the wise guidance of the world, even of the wisdom of God; for why has God not arranged things so that the beautiful, the magnificent, and the sublime appear without the foundation of pain? Such people raise objections based on human wisdom, without being able to feel and experience the iron necessities of existence in their depths. The one who asks, “Why isn’t the sublime, the beautiful, the blossom present in the world without the foundation of pain?” stands roughly on the same ground as a person who demands that a mathematician draw him an equilateral triangle whose sum of angles is not 180 degrees. There are, in fact, necessities. These necessities in no way contradict the wise guidance of the world. Just as the flower of a plant must develop from the root, so too must everything that is sublime and beautiful in the world develop from what is now experienced as suffering at the very depths of the soul—a suffering one must endure. It is precisely this that leads to a deeper understanding of life and the world; it is precisely this that shows us in which fundamental element of life beauty, sublimity, and wisdom are rooted, and that these could not exist at all—that the power to experience them could not exist at all—if the power were not acquired through the fact that this power itself grows out of suffering.

[ 25 ] But this raises the question: Why do we experience suffering precisely at the moment when we are inwardly experiencing this inner observer, this inner, conscious soul being? Why at that very moment? It begins with this—and I would like to describe these things precisely, even though doing so may make me more difficult to understand—it begins with the fact that, as one pursues the development of the will and truly experiences what is inwardly observing, as if weaving and living within the newly developed activity of the will, one comes to experience it. When one first experiences this, it feels as if it contradicts everything one has otherwise experienced in one’s soul life—in this life—ever since one can think. The person who experiences it this way has, to an immensely heightened degree, the feeling one might have, for example, when one has carried out some careful intellectual work and then someone comes along who thoroughly refutes that work, presenting it as something that cannot stand as it is. I would like to say: Just as one experiences a vivid refutation, so does one feel what emerges from the depths of the will. A very strange, very peculiar experience at first! Precisely the fact that something enters into the life of the soul that begins like the pain of a refutation of one’s own soul life—precisely what begins in this way, what is experienced in this way—intensifies and gradually becomes such that one truly experiences what one might call: one feels oneself within the stream of pain that flows through the fertile soil of existence. But then it is precisely this experience of suffering that makes—I would say—what springs forth from the will ever more concrete, ever more essential. And then one experiences what is actually there, what emerges from the will. One gradually learns to understand why it appears in the form of pain, for one learns to understand: You are now actually experiencing that which you cannot otherwise experience in your everyday life through thinking and willing; that which underlies it all, that which, in essence, has developed throughout your entire life in the depths of the soul, that which you have now grasped at the stage when you began to become a spiritual researcher— you are experiencing what is otherwise hidden in the life of the soul, what remains when everything in the life of the soul that is bound to the instrument of the outer body has fallen away. One experiences that which passes through the gateway of death, that which, when we die, enters a purely spiritual world; and because what now enters a purely spiritual world is initially suited to living in a spiritual environment—yet is not adapted to the life we have developed, which now stands within this life without being adapted to it— That is why it initially manifests as suffering, in the form of pain and sorrow. It is something that develops so that it is destined for a different kind of experience. And now we know how that which passes through the gate of death when our body decays is present in the soul—that which truly dwells within the soul as an immortal essence. One experiences it now, but through inner experience, just as a plant would feel if it could experience how, in its growth, it gradually prepares the forces that then lead, in the flower, to the seed which—after passing through another life, through the soil of the earth or the like—can develop into a plant of the same kind. One senses a seed of life, a new seed of life within oneself. And just as the seed of the plant develops from the plant’s own forces and can become a new plant, so one now experiences that this seed of life—which one may initially experience as embedded in pain—passes through a spiritual world and can in turn become a new human life, a repeated earthly life. One experiences only this: while the plant seed can be destroyed by external circumstances unfolding in space and time—so that not every plant seed develops into a new plant—in the spiritual world, which comes into being once a human being has passed through the gate of death, no such obstacles exist; rather, as has just been described, it passes through the spiritual world and must reappear as a new earthly life, must once again seek a body into which it can integrate, which it shapes, and in which it unites with that which comes from the father and mother—that which lies in the stream of heredity—which it organizes throughout and leads to a new earthly life.

[ 26 ] The spiritual researcher, then, esteemed audience, as he follows the path I have described, comes, so to speak, to two inner elements of the soul—to the element of the soul in which he feels threatened: ‘You may lose yourself’; but he also arrives at the other element of the soul, which gives him an awareness of the thinking that is otherwise unconscious within him. The consciousness he otherwise possesses is in danger of being lost. But with the consciousness that arises from the flow of the will, one can now enter the world; through it, one can be led into the world that one thus experiences. And there it becomes apparent that, whereas if one were to experience only what lives within the will as a new seed of human life, one would feel only pain; yet precisely when one performs the exercises in the right way, these pains reveal themselves merely as something that unveils the world’s mysteries—but in reality, what happens is that one now carries this consciousness, lying at the very depths of the soul, into what one would otherwise perceive as emptiness—an emptiness in the face of which one would feel powerless if one were to sense it. There it ceases to be painful; there it awakens to a life just as our senses otherwise awaken when they have matured out of their embryonic state and can perceive the sensory world.

[ 27 ] As the two elements I have described unite, they now become a new sense—what Goethe calls the “spiritual eye” and the “spiritual ear”—which now actually exists in reality. Thinking, which has been developed to the point described, unites as an activity with the new consciousness, and the soul experiences within itself a fully developed spiritual human being—who is now entirely outside the physical realm within the human being—and lives in harmony with this being; and this spiritual human being is now within the spiritual world. Now, by being in the spiritual world, this spiritual human being receives something I have already alluded to—something that is like a higher stage of remembrance, not a remembrance that arises from thoughts recurring, but from the fact that what exists in the spiritual world appears before one as a living entity. Now, what was experienced during the time we lived through before uniting with a physical earthly body—the time that elapsed between our last death and our last birth (or, let us say, conception)—also appears as a living entity. The experiences of earlier earthly lives emerge. A higher form of memory emerges. As paradoxical as it may seem, it is something that can be developed just as truly as other abilities are first developed in the course of life from the childlike state of the soul—abilities that then become capable of physical life and will one day perceive themselves again as spiritual beings within the spiritual world. One experiences oneself as a spirit in the spiritual world. And just as truly as he is surrounded here in the physical world by physical beings of the same nature as his own physical organization, so truly is he now in the spiritual world as a spiritual human being among beings of a spiritual nature. Such spiritual beings who never enter physical life, who have their task in the spiritual world; such beings who, like human souls, alternately lead a spiritual life between death and a new birth, or a physical life between birth—or shall we say—conception and death—all of this now becomes, I might say, a spiritual-objective world. However, one must not imagine that this spiritual-concrete world is in any way a mere repetition of the physical world. — The more specific details in this regard will be discussed the day after tomorrow; but today I shall merely mention that the entire way in which one now experiences the spiritual world is different; for example—well, esteemed audience, when I give an example, I must of course, since speaking of truths about the spiritual world still carries a certain stigma today, distance myself even further than is already the case from the way of thinking that is customary today. Let us suppose, with regard to the spiritual experience in this person—who has developed out of the other person—that we are dealing with a soul, a human soul, that passed through the gate of death years ago. It can certainly happen that, in the way that the spirit can perceive the spirit, one feels the influence of this soul of the deceased upon oneself. But it is not as some might imagine—as I said, this will be discussed the day after tomorrow—it is not as if one were seeing a refined material image; it is not as if one were seeing a nebulous ghost in the sense that trivial, superstitious clairvoyance believes—but in a completely different way does the spiritual enter into our consciousness, which we have just explained as arising from the stream of will. And to characterize the manner in which the spiritual is now experienced, I must say something like the following: Let us assume that, as human souls, we have thoughts. These thoughts live within us. Let us assume that a thought could experience itself; then the thought would say: “I am within the human soul.” The thought would not, as we do, project an external world onto itself, but rather it would know itself to be in a world; it would know that it is inside a world. I could also say: Instead of looking, it experiences being looked at, being experienced itself. That is what it experiences. Thus, our connection with the spiritual world is now much more real than our connection with sensory things—but in a different way. That which lives in the spiritual worlds enters our consciousness, so that the consciousness—which we ourselves have first carried into the spiritual world in the manner described—becomes aware of other consciousnesses that are now coming together with it; the consciousness knows itself as experiencing alongside spiritual beings.

[ 28 ] It can therefore happen that a soul from the spiritual world—which may be a human soul or some other soul that has never incarnated in a physical body—that wishes to help us or is drawn to us, is experienced by us as living within our consciousness. We then realize that in our ordinary earthly life, the spiritual world is actually always alive within our consciousness. But because we lack this awareness, these spiritual beings are not yet present in our ordinary consciousness. However, one can learn to sense—when one has a spiritual task to perform, one that specifically requires inventiveness—that the activity of the soul of a person who has long since passed away is involved in this inventiveness as it flows into our consciousness. Such experiences can be had.

[ 29 ] It goes without saying—and this is not said out of immodesty—that one must mention personal experiences, personal research experiences, or, so to speak, what one has discovered. But it has happened, for example, that a soul who died years ago—one who possessed a very special inner artistic ability—carried this inner artistic ability through death and is now assisting with certain artistic endeavors. The person who has now acquired spiritual perception in the manner described knows how to distinguish what comes from himself, even though it might flatter his pride and vanity more [to attribute all of this exclusively to his own genius]; he knows what lives within him and what specifically [gap in the transcript] comes from the spiritual world and its beings.

[ 30 ] And if someone were to say—as I mentioned, we’ll go into this in more detail the day after tomorrow—if someone were to say, “Ladies and gentlemen: Yes, all of this could be an illusion; it could all be a hallucination”—then for today, let us simply reply that there are indeed certain philosophical schools of thought that say: Everything you see with your eyes is, in reality, merely a creation of your eyes themselves. One need only recall Schopenhauer’s idea: that the world is merely an idea—an idea that became so intense in a man who once stood before Goethe that this man expressed the conviction to Goethe: “If I have not opened my eyes, then the sun is not there!” A more recent natural scientist, who is by no means averse to including the frontier areas of natural science in his field of research, said: “Well, yes, but it has turned out that the man has long since died and can no longer open his eyes—yet the sun is still roaming about in outer space.”

[ 31 ] I myself know what kinds of objections can be raised against this; but in essence, it is nevertheless true. But it is precisely [gap in the transcript] that justifies these philosophical objections. Human beings learn to discern what in the real world is real and what is merely a thought, an experience lived only within the soul. Just as a person can learn this with regard to the external sensory world only through life, so too, with regard to the soul-spiritual experience—which has developed as described—[only] one’s own soul can justify itself and, if I may use these terms, recognize perceived entities and events as real. Once one is able to do this, then all objections that might be raised appear just as the objections of the philosophical idealist—in the technical sense—appear against the reality of the external world. Even in the external world, reality can only be experienced. There is no proof that can be derived logically; only in life itself does one learn to distinguish the real from the dreamed and the hallucinated. And how the life of the soul remains healthy and learns to distinguish the hallucinated from the experienced—that is what we shall discuss the day after tomorrow. In this way, one learns to distinguish the dreamed from what is real. And so it is in the spiritual world as well.

[ 32 ] So today I wanted to take these reflections only as far as the point where it becomes clear how, through an exploration of the spiritual world, a person can come to an understanding of their own spiritual nature, which belongs to this spiritual world. This particular view of the spiritual world, which is based on the inner development of the soul, could only emerge during the era of modern natural science, which, in a sense, served as a preparatory phase for the spiritual education of humanity. And it is quite understandable that, as humanity has for some time become accustomed precisely to what constitutes the greatness of the modern scientific way of thinking, it has strayed from even considering it possible that the soul can truly come to a knowledge of the spiritual world. Just as every person—even if they are not a spiritual researcher—can take in the knowledge of this spiritual world and recognize its truth value, just as someone who is not a chemist can make use of chemical products and chemical truths in everyday life—I will speak about this the day after tomorrow. And today I simply wish to point out that it is perfectly understandable to the spiritual researcher that those who have become accustomed to mere external natural science and have come to know the soul forces that contribute to this external natural science, and have learned to utilize these soul forces and their development as a research method—the method that has brought about the brilliance, the heights, and the great successes and achievements of modern natural science, which are fully recognized by spiritual science— [it is entirely understandable to the spiritual researcher] that those who have become acquainted with these soul forces could, for a time in the course of human development, come to believe that there can be no science whatsoever beyond that which is founded solely on the development of sensory perception and of thinking bound to the brain—that is, to the physical organism.

[ 33 ] But what can truly be experienced, esteemed audience, testifies that the realm of true knowledge can be extended into the spiritual world, that human beings can truly explore their spiritual-soul nature—which passes through births and deaths—in repeated earthly lives. And if a brilliant, more recent natural scientist of the nineteenth century rightly emphasized that the perspective of those cognitive powers which have brought about successes precisely in the natural sciences cannot lead us beyond the realm of sensory nature, nor can they penetrate to the foundations of existence—if this brilliant natural scientist, Du Bois-Reymond, therefore pronounced his *ignorabimus*, his “not knowing”—it was precisely because he had become accustomed to those cognitive powers that are capable only of fully penetrating and mastering the external sensory world. And he has stated that if one wishes to undertake anything to know something other than external nature, then, as he says, “supranaturalism” begins—that is, immersing oneself in the spiritual world. However, he says, where supranaturalism begins, science ends. He does not yet know—and it is entirely understandable that he could not have known—that those powers of cognition which have been sharpened and strengthened precisely through the observation of external nature cannot lead into these spiritual worlds—that these powers of cognition, as we possess them—namely, thinking and will—must first be transformed so that they develop in a different way than they do in ordinary science. Then they must become animated, gain strength, and rise up into the spiritual world.

[ 34 ] And so one must say: There is certainly a one-sided truth to the “Ignorabimus,” to what Du Bois-Reymond says—one cannot penetrate the spiritual world with the very powers of cognition that have made natural science great. But one can develop those powers of cognition—exactly those same powers—through an inner, spiritual-soul method, so that one can then, through the powers of cognition thus developed, aspire toward and penetrate the spiritual worlds—[namely] when knowledge does not remain merely the passive knowledge that has contributed to the greatness of external science, when knowledge becomes a living one — in the transition from the statue to living logic, to inner life —, when, so to speak, the soul itself becomes living, living logic, and this logic can be experienced and lived through in what it finds in the flow of the will. For that which the spirit is—esteemed audience, let me conclude with these words—can only be experienced by awakening knowledge to life and allowing it to live as LIVING knowledge in the living world of the spirit; by allowing life itself—which human beings otherwise lead bound to the sensory and physical organs—to lead to knowledge, to living knowledge! Through knowledge becoming living knowledge, through the discovery of a new human being, an inner human being, within the human being—through this, the human being ascends into that world in which he exists as a spiritual being amidst spiritual events and among other spiritual beings; through this, he ascends into the world where his true origin, his true purpose, and his true meaning lie. More on this the day after tomorrow.