The Rudolf Steiner Archive

2. The Manifestations of the Unconscious in the Life of the Soul from a Spiritual Scientific Perspective

[ 1 ] Ladies and gentlemen! In yesterday’s lecture, in which I took the liberty of characterizing the nature of spiritual science as it is understood in these reflections, I pointed out how this spiritual science did not arise in the present out of the whim of a single individual or a few people, but rather how it has become a necessity precisely through the rise of natural science, which has achieved such great successes; how it must stand alongside this natural science, because this natural science, precisely in order to achieve its own brilliant results, was and is compelled to develop such methods, such forms of research, and such a way of viewing the world that are actually useful only when one wishes to survey and understand the realm of external nature, but which prove unsuitable when one wishes to come to know the realm of spiritual life in its true form, in the way it can be accessible to human beings.

[ 2 ] I went on to point out yesterday how, however, this scientific school of thought, in a sense, asserts between the lines of its work that only the human drive for knowledge directed toward the sensory world can lead to true science, and how, in doing so, this scientific school of thought condemns from the outset any attempt to develop a science of the spirit based on other—albeit no less rigorous—sources of knowledge.

[ 3 ] Now, ladies and gentlemen, one might say that the natural sciences not only make existence and emergence—as we might still say today—difficult for the spiritual sciences in this regard, but also that the particular scientific mindset fostered in this field gives rise to habits of thought and modes of perception that are averse to genuine spiritual research. Nevertheless, what spiritual research seeks is an irrepressible—truly, irrepressible—goal of the human soul. Therefore, precisely in a time when, on the one hand, spiritual research is rejected by established science, and on the other hand, patterns of thought and ways of feeling are being formed that make this spiritual research unappealing—precisely in such a time, when people turn to science because of general educational prejudices— it is precisely in such a time that the need to know something about the spirit must awaken all the more.

[ 4 ] And it is awakening even among natural scientists. But there, people are accustomed to devoting themselves to a kind of thinking and research that proceeds on the basis of what external, sensory nature presents in terms of facts, entities, and events—what can be gleaned from it through experiments. People are accustomed to focusing on that which is directed and guided by external factors. And so, even where the need has arisen—even among those who think in scientific terms—to learn something about the eternal and the immortal aspects of human nature, people still wish to explore this realm in the same way they explore the realm of nature itself.

[ 5 ] In that case, one can only rely on very specific phenomena—phenomena that, in a sense, do not require one to prepare the soul through all sorts of exercises, as I explained yesterday, so that it may explore a certain field. A certain reluctance arises to explore that which one must, so to speak, first summon to mind, because it is hidden from ordinary consciousness. One would also like to explore the spiritual realm by approaching something that presents itself outwardly in the same way that natural phenomena present themselves.

[ 6 ] For this reason, a certain realm—one that, so to speak, extends into human ordinary consciousness, mysteriously extending into this consciousness—a certain realm of existence has been the subject of repeated consideration in recent times: the vast realm of what is today summarized by the term “unconscious,” a term that is as broad as possible—or, one might say, rather vague. And since spiritual science is often confused with certain realms that are thus brought into the unconscious—classified within the category of the unconscious—spiritual science itself is compelled to clarify, through its own methods of research, its relationship to this realm of the so-called unconscious. And so I have taken the liberty of announcing, as my second lecture, a consideration that, from the perspective of spiritual science, focuses specifically on the manifestations of the so-called unconscious.

[ 7 ] Of course, since this is a vast field, I can only consider certain aspects of what is generally regarded as belonging to the realm of the unconscious. And today we shall examine the phenomenon of a vast, wondrous realm that, in its outward manifestation, is well known to every human being: the phenomenon of the dream life. Next, dear attendees, we shall examine those other phenomena through which so many today seek to gain insight into what underlies the human being as a psychological and spiritual entity—namely, the phenomena collectively referred to as somnambulism, which include everything that many people today still study in the hope of gaining such insight: the phenomena of mediumship and the like.

[ 8 ] But then there is a sphere of human activity within the realm of the unconscious that everyone is familiar with—one that is, so to speak, a constant companion in every person’s life—yet which we sometimes hesitate to examine, because we believe that doing so would strip this realm of its magic: I am referring to the realm of artistic creation, of which anyone can be convinced, through mere observation, that it belongs to a certain extent to the realm of irrational, not fully conscious human activity, but rather flows from a certain unconscious or subconscious source within human nature.

[ 9 ] And finally, among these realms of the unconscious is that very mental activity of which I spoke yesterday as the method of spiritual research—it is that mental activity to which the spiritual researcher seeks to prepare his soul, in order to look into the spiritual realm in such a way that one can truly recognize the spiritual that surrounds human beings and to which human beings belong. Today I would like to subject these groups of unconscious phenomena to a certain kind of examination before you, though I must limit myself to a strictly spiritual-scientific perspective.

[ 10 ] The realm of dreams—everyone is familiar with it, and yet, for those who begin to explore the realm of dream life more intimately, it becomes, in a sense, ever more wondrous. Human dream life is a realm that one really only passes by without astonishment if one views it superficially. The more intimately one observes it, the more one senses that there is something in this dream life that points to what manifests as the higher nature within the human soul—even if it may manifest chaotically within the dream life itself. Of course, we bring our personal, egoistic interests into every realm, including this realm of dream life; and so it came to pass that the most superstitious and unscientific interpretations became attached precisely to dream life—interpretations that, of course, would have to be ruled out if we were dealing with a truly insightful interpretation of this dream life.

[ 11 ] Anyone who believes they are viewing such experiences from the world of dreams—which relate to all manner of superstitious hopes—from a scientific perspective will not be able to do justice to a scientific examination of the world of dreams. But on the other hand, one need only look at this dream life to find that the ebbing and flowing dreams of human sleep or half-sleep fit into human existence—into the entirety of human life—in a remarkable way. On the one hand, we see how dreams can be viewed through partially active sensory stimuli. Everyone is familiar with something like this—let’s say he falls asleep near a light. If he were awake, he would see the light near the source of light. He falls asleep. The light makes an impression on their eye that is not processed in the usual way, and they may dream—following the impression of the light that has not fully taken effect—of a conflagration, to which they then link all sorts of dream images! He can weave an entire inner drama around these sensory stimuli. And one could tell many stories—if one wanted to—about all kinds of dreams that arise from sensory stimuli.

[ 12 ] On the other hand, we have those dreams that arise more from the human physical state of mind, from a person’s overall emotional state—whether the person is in a certain general mood, for example, a mood that appears to them as a lukewarm bath in which they feel at ease while lying in bed and dreaming comfortably. Or when they dream of a blazing stove and wake up with a pounding heart, so that the heart has been symbolized in the dream by the stove. Here we are dealing with what plays out in the dream as a result of the organism’s inner stimuli.

[ 13 ] And then there is the other vast realm of dreams, which is linked to memories—to what lies in our storehouse of memory, from which, through the impressions of recent days, some particular aspect is drawn forth and, with inner drama, unfolds before us once again in a dream. Through such—I might say—pedantic categorization, however, everyone is reminded of what they already know well about the wondrous world of dream life. Some peculiarities of dream life, which are indeed more widely known, are already sufficient to introduce us to what we will then consider regarding the essence of the dream.

[ 14 ] Everyone knows, after all, that in a dream one is actually a completely different person than in waking life. Dream images, for example, conjure up scenarios in which one might commit a crime that one would never commit in ordinary life. The dream images show one in a moral state that one would strongly condemn—a state one could never find oneself in during ordinary life. The sequence of dream images reveals that they lack what is called the application of ordinary logic. The logical linking of dream images is something that rarely occurs in these dream images, and when it does, the logic of the dream is, in turn, merely a dreamed-up logic; we recall something in a dream-like manner that we have already thought through logically, and the logic appears to us as if it were coming from memory. But it becomes clear to anyone who can observe the life of dreams that they are not able, during the dream itself, to apply logic to the dream.

[ 15 ] One peculiarity—I want only to highlight the aspects that can help us understand the nature of dreams from a spiritual-scientific perspective— a particular peculiarity of dream life is, in fact, far too little appreciated even by those who deal with it philosophically, in science, or in any other way, and we shall see that we can appreciate it all the more when we consider other phenomena of life that belong to the unconscious realm of life. It is the fact that, in dreams, we do not actually step out of the overall state in which we find ourselves while sleeping—in relation to the external world and our own body. I have, however, indicated that there are dreams that arise in response to external sensory stimuli; in such cases, it seems as though we are relating to the external world in the dream, even though we are unaware of it while dreaming.

[ 16 ] This is only apparent. We do not perceive sensory impressions in the same way as when we are awake, but in a symbolically transformed form. Something must first happen to them; they must be transformed into an image. We cannot take in the sensory impression itself. We have no connection to the external world when we dream; our senses have no connection to the external world; we are cut off from the external world in a dream, even though dreams ebb and flow, just as we are cut off from the external world in dreamless sleep.

[ 17 ] And again, the other realm of life in the sensory world—the realm of action, the realm of bodily movement, of activity through bodily movement—is excluded from normal dreaming. It is, after all, already an abnormal dream when someone transitions from dreaming to sleepwalking or the like. A normal dream proceeds in such a way that we have the impression of doing this or that. But this “imagined” performance of an action or activity is not carried out through our motor system; we do not establish any relationship with the external world. It all remains confined within us, just as we ourselves are confined within ourselves when we are asleep in the dream state. Thus, even with regard to our own body—not to the sense organs, not to our motor system—we do not have a real relationship when we dream. The normal dream is something that extends into the life of sleep, something that flows through the life of sleep, but it does not place the dreamer in any different relationship to the outside world, in any different state, than he is in dreamless sleep.

[ 18 ] This realm, which can be delineated as I have just done—this realm of dream life—must be distinguished—and we will address the important distinctions in the essential consideration of dream life shortly—from everything else that occurs in human life in such a way that, so to speak, the unconscious, which does not belong to human consciousness, enters into this human life. There are reputable researchers who believe that the dream image as such—the image of the normal dream—should be regarded as equivalent to a hallucination. A hallucination is also something that, like visions and the like, rises from the subconscious into human consciousness; a hallucination is also an image.

[ 19 ] But, ladies and gentlemen, anyone who compares a hallucination to a dream image is seriously mistaken. Above all, it must be emphasized that a person who dreams does not, through dreaming, fall into a state over which their waking consciousness has no control. A hallucination, on the other hand, must be characterized by the fact that the person is powerless against it with his waking consciousness. The hallucination intrudes into ordinary consciousness, and one must realize that the reason for this is a change—albeit a hidden one—in the human body itself; it is some part of the human body that gives rise to the emergence of hallucinations.

[ 20 ] In the face of changes occurring in the human body, the soul and the spirit of the human being are initially powerless. Only from the body can that which the human being is powerless to confront arise. The dream enters human life while leaving the physical constitution and structure of the body unaltered, so that when a person returns to waking life, they find themselves in their normal physical state. And they will then be able to have—I would say—the proper state of consciousness toward the dream if they do not incorporate it into their ordinary life, as the person experiencing a hallucination does with that hallucination.

[ 21 ] Even the mere observation of a hallucination clearly shows that we are dealing with something very different from a dream image and that is bound to the human body. But one can also clearly see in hallucinations, obsessive thoughts, and the like that they arise without any stimulus from the external world—that they arise, if not from the physical nature, then at least from the inner nature of the human being; and this is what is characteristic of hallucinations, of visions, and of obsessions: that this physical nature of the human being acts without—as is otherwise the case in waking life—the participation of those organs that connect the human being to the external world of reality, to what exists within the sensory world of reality, in the production of the hallucination, the vision, or the obsessive thought—without the involvement of those organs that connect the human being to the external world of reality, to what exists within the sensually perceptible world of reality. This is no longer the case when that state enters human nature which is designated by the term “somnambulism.”

[ 22 ] One might say: Through somnambulism and mediumship, human nature is incited to transfer the irregular physical constitution—which is experienced in healthy individuals through inner perception—to the relationship between the human being and the external world. The senses—and, in a certain sense, the human musculoskeletal system as well—are affected by the inner irregularity of the body’s organization when a person acts as a somnambulist or medium. Consequently, it may happen that the somnambulist does not perceive what is experienced in the world in a normal, regular manner, but rather—because he does not engage his senses as they are formed by the world, but instead allows them to be influenced by the nature of the body—perceives the environment in a way that he does not during ordinary sensory activity.

[ 23 ] This is where one enters a realm that has a sensational effect on people—a dangerous realm, a seductive realm. It tempts people to seek out all manner of mysteries in order to gain insight into something they want to know but that does not reveal itself in everyday life. We can see that even people with a sound scientific mindset, based on a scientific worldview, repeatedly arrive at a sense of inner dissatisfaction; that they develop a deeper longing for knowledge of the spiritual realm; and that they then somehow attempt to satisfy this longing for knowledge precisely in the realm we are now discussing. One can see that great natural scientists can be completely captivated by what they encounter in this field as “wonderful revelations.” One could cite many examples from history and contemporary life in which natural scientists—who are extraordinarily significant in their own fields—when they seek to explore the spiritual, repeatedly turn to phenomena related to somnambulism in order to experience, through them, some revelation concerning the spiritual realm.

[ 24 ] Among the many cases, I will mention just one of the most recent, which involved the English philosopher and naturalist Sir Oliver Lodge. Sir Oliver Lodge lost his son on the French front. Even before his son was drafted to the front, a friend of his had written to him from America, saying that something would happen to his son, and that when it did, the soul of a person who had long since passed through the gates of death would stand by his son’s side to help him. At first, of course, this friendly hint was expressed in rather vague terms. One might have thought that the son would face danger in the war and that this soul of the long-deceased person would intervene from the spiritual world to protect him. One might also have thought something entirely different. In short, the son fell on the battlefield.

[ 25 ] Now the person who had written to Sir Oliver Lodge from America thought he could, of course, put the matter this way: since the son had died in battle, his soul would now be in the spirit world, and that soul would be met in the spirit world by the soul of a friend who had been there for a long time. At the same time—and I can say this after a careful study of this case—at the same time, mediumistic individuals were, so to speak, introduced into Sir Oliver Lodge’s circle. And Sir Oliver Lodge, who wrote a detailed book about the entire situation—a book that truly presents itself as a work written in a strictly scientific manner, as a book written by someone familiar not only with the scientific way of thinking but also with all the scrupulousness that must be characteristic of a scientific researcher—well, mediums were introduced into Sir Oliver Lodge’s circle. He carefully records what these mediums expressed and revealed as manifestations of the son’s soul from the beyond.

[ 26 ] The entire course of the phenomena was such that Sir Oliver Lodge, in observing what was taking place, proceeded—I might say—like a chemist, with the same meticulousness. Now, many details are listed. What was decisive for Sir Oliver Lodge and for others—for this case has been much discussed, caused quite a stir, and convinced journalists who, from the outset, are rather unreceptive to such matters due to their disposition—what was decisive was the following: Through one of the mediums, a message came from the son, allegedly from the spirit world. This message stated that the son had been photographed on the battlefield where he fell, together with a group of other comrades. It was also stated that several photographs had been taken, as is usually the case. The report described the position of the son’s hands in one photograph and in another, where it had changed slightly, as he posed for the pictures. The photographs were something that no one in London knew anything about; they simply did not exist.

[ 27 ] And lo and behold: After two or three weeks—the mail takes a very long time these days—the photographs themselves arrived, two or three weeks after the experiments had been conducted, and it turned out that the descriptions provided by the medium were correct. This was startling to Sir Oliver Lodge. That was what is called an “experimentum crucis” in natural science. The medium and all those present could not, therefore, have received anything through thought transmission. They knew nothing about these photographs, which did not arrive until later. Nevertheless, the photographs had been accurately described through the medium’s statements. In this particular case—which was certainly close to his heart due to the death of his son—this led Sir Oliver Lodge to view such matters with a certain degree of prejudice; on the other hand, however, a telling experiment provided him, so to speak, with the decisive proof that something from the spirit world had emerged through a somnambulist without any knowledge on the earthly plane.

[ 28 ] I cite this case—which I view in the same light as the other one I intend to discuss today—because it shows how, particularly among serious, great, and distinguished natural scientists, the longing arises to understand the spiritual realm; yet even in a man such as Sir Oliver Lodge—who would be far from accepting the path just described here as the true path of spiritual research—even in such a person, the need arises to seek, in certain abnormal phenomena of human life such as somnambulism and mediumship, something that provides insight into the spiritual world.

[ 29 ] In the case of somnambulists and mediums, certain phenomena associated with them do indeed resemble dreams. But, ladies and gentlemen, what happens above all in the case of the somnambulist is that the influence I have spoken of—which extends from the interior of the body to the senses—can also extend to the musculoskeletal system. This results, in particular, in light, rhythmic movements—movements that are difficult to control and through which the medium performs all sorts of acts that seem to represent spiritual connections, such as table-turning and so on. I can only briefly outline what I intend to discuss here today.

[ 30 ] The third realm is one with which you are likely familiar—that which flows from artistic creation, the very realm we hold in such high esteem as a manifestation from another world precisely because we know that when a person devotes himself to abstract concepts and abstract ideas, he actually disrupts both his artistic creation and his artistic enjoyment. Something indefinable flows in, both into the creation and into the enjoyment of art. And for many who otherwise cannot come to terms with the spiritual, the very way in which the artist’s creative work manifests itself will at least be something that instills in them the conviction that the spiritual extends into human life. For it would take a truly stubborn, materialistic mindset to make a statement like that of Ingersoll, the famous materialist: “Hamlet—Shakespeare’s Hamlet—is actually the product of Shakespeare’s metabolism.” — This statement is, of course, well known. But it really does not take much to be able to say: That which extends into human life through art is of such a nature that it can neither be explained directly from the body nor, precisely because it is disrupted by the body, be derived from ordinary consciousness.

[ 31 ] And a fourth area, dear friends, that is particularly important for this discussion is the one I myself characterized yesterday as the path—the path that leads, in the sense of the spiritual science meant here, into the spiritual world. I already hinted at this yesterday—and you can read about it in the books I mentioned yesterday—that it is only by consciously, actively, and willfully directing their soul life in a certain direction that human beings can elevate this soul life to such a sphere that the soul life itself, as a spiritual entity, stands face to face with the spiritual phenomena of the world.

[ 32 ] Of course, I cannot repeat today what I hinted at yesterday, but I do want to say that it is particularly a matter of, on the one hand, following the course of external phenomena through the world of imagination—[through] which we are otherwise accustomed to doing so—and allowing ourselves to be guided by it, and, on the other hand, introducing the element of will into it, so that the power of thought, the inner essence of thinking, is permeated by the will. And I have described how this brings a person into a state of mind through which they rise above ordinary physical life, so that they encounter the spiritual world in the same way they otherwise encounter the physical world. I have shown that stepping out of the body is fostered by learning to cultivate self-observation—by learning not merely to develop some kind of soul activity, but at the same time to become its observer.

[ 33 ] Through all these exercises, which you can read about in my books How Does One Gain Insight into the Higher Worlds?, “Esoteric Science,” and “The Mystery of Man,” the human soul is able to elevate certain powers lying dormant within it to such an extent that the soul itself becomes something entirely different—that a spiritual world confronts it, just as the sensory world confronts the senses. As paradoxical as it may seem to many people, such powers lie within every human soul, and they can be brought forth from every human soul, even if bringing them forth requires patient, energetic work.

[ 34 ] I would like to discuss this field, which I call the field of intuitive consciousness for the following reason: if one were to call it clairvoyance—as it should in fact be called, if the term were not misused— it is, however, very easily confused with what arises from somnambulism and similar phenomena, and it is of great importance, in order to eliminate misunderstandings, that true spiritual science not be confused with it; I would therefore like to call it “contemplative consciousness” instead of “clairvoyance,” as I have done in my book The Riddle of Man, in which I also characterized the realm of this “contemplative consciousness”—where the soul has found the spirit within itself, so that the human being, as spirit-soul, stands face to face with the spiritual-soul aspect of the external world and is enabled to observe this spiritual-soul aspect.

[ 35 ] As I said, regarding the cultivation of the observing consciousness—the cultivation of what I would like to call, in a certain figurative sense using Goethe’s words, the development of “spiritual eyes” and “spiritual ears”—the specific description of how one arrives at this, I must leave that to a reading of my books; but before I characterize here somnambulism, somnambulism, artistic creation, and artistic enjoyment as unconscious manifestations of human life, I would first like to characterize this realm of true clairvoyance—this realm of the beholding consciousness—a little on its own. For, ladies and gentlemen, the phenomena we have now grouped into certain categories can truly be considered only from the perspective of spiritual research. Therefore, I must first preface this with an explanation of what constitutes the distinctive nature of the spiritual researcher’s own cognitive faculty.

[ 36 ] I said yesterday: What the spiritual researcher can investigate—as the spiritual researcher travels the path into the spiritual world—presents itself in many respects differently than one might have expected. It is precisely through this that objectivity and reality become evident—that one does not allow a fanciful prejudice to take root within oneself, but rather confronts a spiritual reality. But the fact that things turn out differently is evident not only in what one investigates in the spiritual worlds, but even in the very process of developing within one’s soul what were previously hidden powers of knowledge—the powers of the contemplative consciousness. The way in which the contemplative human soul relates to the spirit is quite different from what one might initially expect. If one were to describe the way in which the contemplative human soul relates to the spiritual world through cognition, it would resemble what the human soul already knows from the sensory world.

[ 37 ] At first, this sounds paradoxical! Above all, one thing must be said: A defining aspect of all life in the physical world is that we encounter certain events in life, experience them, take them into our souls, and later recall them in our waking consciousness. These events can be retrieved from the life of the imagination and from memory. What is peculiar, however, is this: when the soul—which has developed the beholding consciousness within itself—is able to behold a spiritual fact, a spiritual being, and observe it, it cannot simply recall this soul experience, even though it is usually perceived as an inner soul experience. It passes. It does not produce memories in the ordinary sense.

[ 38 ] This is what truly distinguishes spiritual observations—which, after all, seem to exist only in the life of the imagination—from the phenomena of ordinary imaginative life: one can normally recall the latter, but not the spiritual experience. They pass by. Now you will say: Yes, if they pass and one cannot remember them later in life, then one can’t really know anything about them at all! — If one is [not] able to take what one has experienced spiritually into one’s imagination in the same way that one has looked upon an external sensory phenomenon or a sensory being; if one is not able to transform what one has observed into an image oneself—into an ordinary image, such as one has on the physical plane— [then] one cannot remember.

[ 39 ] Therefore, one prerequisite for exploring the spiritual world is this: that one becomes able not only to experience what one encounters spiritually, but also to translate it into ordinary mental images; then one can remember that image. One can remember not the spiritual experience itself, but the mental image into which one has transformed that spiritual experience. In this respect, the spiritual experience has exactly the same characteristic as a sensory experience. One can remember the mental image one has formed from the sensory experience. But if I have walked past a tree and it is no longer in front of me, I cannot see it in reality; I must go back there to see it. In the same way, I must once again confront the spiritual experience if I wish to have it a second time. Yet it is precisely this that guarantees its reality. When one becomes a researcher of the spiritual, one becomes accustomed to confronting spiritual reality in the same way one confronts sensory reality.

[ 40 ] This is one peculiarity: the spiritual experience, as such, does not evoke a memory. It is a fleeting moment. And another peculiarity that arises in spiritual experience is that the way in which the spiritual experience affects us is different from the way in which the events and activities of ordinary life affect us. When we engage in a certain activity and repeat it over and over again, we become accustomed to it; we perform it better and better. After all, we would not be able to learn anything or acquire any skill if it were not the case that what we initially do with effort we would later do out of habit.

[ 41 ] This is not the case with spiritual experiences. Spiritual experiences occur when they are repeatedly sought. Then it happens that they occur with ever-diminishing intensity, so that one is able to summon them to the soul with ever-diminishing frequency. One does not readily acquire a habit simply by repeating an experience; rather, by repeating it, one becomes less and less capable of attaining it. Some who are seeking the path into the spiritual world must, to their surprise, come to realize this for themselves.

[ 42 ] By performing such exercises, some people come to have certain experiences—which are purely spiritual—relatively quickly. These experiences occur after a person has practiced such exercises for only a short time. But after they have occurred barely two or three times—or perhaps even just once—the person loses the ability to experience them again. He is then unhappy. The true spiritual researcher must learn—through careful practice—to create new conditions so that he can have the experience again in a new form. It cannot be achieved simply by evoking it in the old way. This, in turn, distinguishes the contemplative consciousness from the ordinary experience of ordinary consciousness: nothing is produced habitually; on the contrary, the more often we have the experience, the less accustomed we become to having it.

[ 43 ] And a third aspect that arises in this observant consciousness is that a person must acquire the ability to grasp an event—I am, of course, speaking of spiritual events—quickly. For what prevents one from looking into the spiritual world is that, in most cases, when one observes, one is so slow to react to the observation itself that the event is already over by the time one wants to observe it. I would say that the “exposure time”—the time during which the event unfolds before us—is so brief that one must possess what might be called “presence of mind” in order to observe it. One therefore prepares oneself well by striving, even in physical life, to develop presence of mind—by attempting to overcome what is so characteristic of human nature: that one fumbles around until one can make up one’s mind.

[ 44 ] If one cultivates the ability to quickly make a decision appropriate to the situation when faced with a problem; in short, to develop presence of mind—if one gradually cultivates this into an inner quality, then it leads to the ability to truly develop within the soul that presence of mind which is necessary to truly face the spiritual world in its manifestations. The spiritual researcher absolutely needs to be able to observe, with the same lightning speed, how certain phenomena—which are of secondary importance in external life—arise. If a fly tries to land on your eye, you quickly close your eye—as they say, through a reflex action—without first having to think about it. If someone had to take as long to close their eye as they normally do to think, they would have already fallen victim to the fly before the eye was even closed. The spiritual researcher must cultivate something that comes as close as possible to this involuntary, in a sense unconscious, activity. One returns to certain primitive activities of life, but in a spiritual way.

[ 45 ] Another peculiarity of this spiritual perception is that, in the kinds of mental images we are accustomed to using in the physical world, the spiritual world cannot initially appear to the inquiring soul; rather, it appears in pictorial images. And when one describes the spiritual world, the means by which it is expressed is a translation into ordinary language. When you read my book Occult Science, you must not believe that the way things are expressed is a direct rendering of the vision itself; rather, it has been translated into ordinary language and must be translated into ordinary language. For what presents itself directly to the spiritual researcher is indeed the same as what he captures in words, concepts, and ideas, but it appears in a pictorial form. Therefore, one can also say: Consciousness is not the ordinary logical, rational kind, but rather an imaginative consciousness that first comes to the fore. — I could highlight many more characteristics of the perceiving consciousness. Above all, however, I must discuss the other phenomena that I have listed in groups precisely from the standpoint of this contemplative consciousness.

[ 46 ] One can come to understand what a dream is, what somnambulism is, and what the other phenomena are; one can come to understand them from the moment one views them from the perspective of contemplative consciousness. For it is precisely when one contemplates the dream with intimate attention that one will find it becoming ever more wondrous. Above all, it becomes ever more wondrous because one is simply not in a position to compare what one encounters in a dream with any other experiences. The dream presents itself in the life of consciousness as something that falls entirely outside of that life of consciousness and everything one can understand in relation to it. Just imagine if something like a dream were to occur in waking consciousness! It would shatter one’s entire consciousness. If one had to remember the dream, one would have to feel as if one were going mad. One cannot compare the dream to anything that waking consciousness can comprehend.

[ 47 ] Contemplative consciousness is familiar, above all, with the human experience of imagery. And therefore, contemplative consciousness can compare the dream to what occurs in the soul when one encounters the spirit of the spiritual world through contemplative consciousness. One can compare the pictorial nature of the dream world with the world that can be grasped through imaginative consciousness. One will then find that, although the dream world is at first fantastical, and although imaginative consciousness leads one into spiritual reality—and thus differs, like fiction from truth, from the imaginative world—one nevertheless has a basis for comparison. Because one has this basis, one comes to understand, through the observation of the “dream,” what this dream actually is.

[ 48 ] Ladies and gentlemen, one cannot make any scientific statements about a dream unless one is able to approach it with an observant, contemplative consciousness. But if one approaches the dream with a contemplative consciousness, then one is able to describe its nature and essence precisely through that contemplative consciousness. Then, above all, one can say about the dream who the dreamer actually is—who is actually dreaming. In ordinary waking consciousness, one does not know who is actually dreaming; one merely has images before one’s eyes. But to live within these images in the same way one otherwise lives as a human being in the experiences of the day—this is something one does not know in ordinary waking consciousness. One learns to know it when one can compare the images of the dream world with what one experiences in contemplative consciousness. Then one discovers that what is actually dreaming within us is truly the spirit-filled human soul; that the body as such has no subjective connection to the dream process and plays no active role in it; that the one who dreams is not the human body, but rather the dreamer himself is truly the spiritual-soul aspect of the human being.

[ 49 ] If one learns to recognize, through the observing consciousness, what the spiritual-soul aspect is, then one can also know, by comparison, that in a dream one acts as the same person as one acts in the observing consciousness. Here again is an important distinction. With the observing consciousness, one sees into a spiritual world that has nothing to do with the ordinary physical world. With the observing consciousness, one sees, through the Eternal that is within oneself, into the Eternal of the world.

[ 50 ] The Eternal beholds the Eternal. It is different in a dream. In a dream, it is the same spiritual-soul being who is dreaming. But what he beholds—what he is able to behold—is not the spiritual world that lies beyond physical experiences, but rather fragments, parts, and elements of his own personal life course. As the Eternal within him, he looks down upon the temporal within him. He regards as his object that which he can experience inwardly in some way between birth and death. But he does not view it in the same way he is otherwise accustomed to viewing the external world with his body; rather, he looks, as it were, upon his transitory human nature from a spiritual-psychic standpoint.

[ 51 ] That is the essence of the dream; that is also what makes the dream enlightening. In a dream, one sees as the eternal human being. And it is truly the case that in the dream world, the eternal human being—who passes through births and deaths—places himself within ordinary human reality; yet the human being does not become aware of the eternal world itself, but rather looks back upon his temporal world, viewing temporal objects from the eternal perspective. The world of dreams, when viewed correctly, provides precisely the certainty that from the moment of falling asleep until waking, the human being, in his true essence, is outside his physical body—is outside his physicality altogether. Only that which takes place within the body—that which cannot be perceived at all by the ordinary senses in the ordinary physical state, that which lies deeper, that which is hidden in memory, that which manifests itself not in sensory stimuli but in the -supersensory individuality, which has drawn itself more deeply into the physical—that is what a person observes in a dream.

[ 52 ] Now the spiritual researcher—simply by being able to look into the spiritual world, through dwelling in the spiritual world, and through knowledge of the spiritual world—knows that it is completely wrong to say, for example: “Human beings are spiritual-soul beings, and earthly life is a life in a valley of tears—perhaps a life of captivity to which one is condemned—while in truth one is called to a higher spiritual life.” Certainly this is true, but within the process of the worlds, everything has its place, and it is precisely the spiritual researcher who, by becoming acquainted with the supersensory life, learns to recognize that the sensory life has its own positive significance. If human beings were to live only in the spiritual-soul world—which is not the case for other beings as it is for humans—and if human beings were not introduced into the sensory world through birth or conception, then human beings would not be able to incorporate into their being that which, as human beings, they can incorporate into this being only in the sensory world.

[ 53 ] There are, above all, two things: First, as strange as it sounds, and as much as it contradicts all manner of philosophical worldviews—these philosophical worldviews know nothing about this spiritual world—logical thinking, the ability to connect one’s thoughts in a logical, conscious manner, is attained by human beings only by learning to use their senses. In this sense, logical thinking is the least “spiritual” of all. It is what we abstract from the sensory world. The senses are the teachers of our logical thinking, and if we were not in a sensory world, we would not be able to learn logical thinking. That is the first point.

[ 54 ] The other point is that, by being active in the sensory world, by carrying out actions, and by engaging in these actions with our human nature, we acquire—through our life in the sensory world—that which belongs to the realm of morality, the realm of moral judgment of the world. Human beings must be placed within the sensory world if they are to instill in their nature a moral conception of life. Other aspects that belong to the human being are incorporated by the human being—or, if I may coin the term, “infused with a soul”—in the spiritual-soul world when they pass through the gate of death into the spiritual world. This life in the physical world, however, has its own significance. When a person stands in the physical world as a researcher of the spirit, they come to recognize precisely the great significance of the physical world; they come to understand that, so to speak, the wise order of the worlds has placed them in this world so that, in addition to the other qualities of their being, they may acquire the logical and the moral.

[ 55 ] By recognizing the nature of the dream—by knowing that it is the same being who dreams and who he is—and by looking into the spiritual world, the spiritual researcher also learns to recognize those characteristics of the dream that I have listed: that we do not think logically in dreams, and that in dreams we do all sorts of things that we ourselves morally condemn. Because we are removed in a dream from the physical-sensory world, in which we acquire logic and morality, we cannot apply logic in a dream, nor can we exercise morality.

[ 56 ] Thus, things that must become mysteries are revealed when we consider only the phenomena, when we are unable to observe these phenomena from the perspective of spiritual research, and when we fail to gain the proper insight into them. From a purely scientific perspective—by cataloging all manner of brain regions located beneath the cerebral cortex—one does not come to understand the nature of these things. Now one thing also becomes clear: Because in dreams only the soul is engaged, because the human being is detached from the body, he has no connection in dreams to the external sensory world, nor to the body’s actions. If the body were involved, this would have to be evident.

[ 57 ] But one must not formulate hypotheses. One must, so to speak, regard as a mystery why a person has no sensory perceptions of the external world and why they do not move in a dream. Through the observing consciousness, one then comes to realize that the person, as a dreamer, is truly in the spiritual world—that is to say, removed from the sensory world and even from their own physical body—and that they are in the spiritual, in the supersensible. Therefore, they cannot perceive a sensory world, nor can they carry out actions within it. Thus, when dreaming, a person is completely immersed in the soul realm and does not, through the events of the dream, touch their physical body as such. Only by coming into contact—I would say—with this physical aspect and also with that which in the physical body is higher than the physical, does resistance present itself to them; only then is their activity as spiritual-soul beings called upon; and only then do they observe, from the perspective of the eternal, that which is temporal within them.

[ 58 ] The situation is quite different with somnambulists. Spiritual research must, of course, also ask: What is actually at work within the somnambulist? What happens to this person? Thus, the spiritual researcher must also ask: Who is it that actually carries out the somnambulist’s actions? Here one must say: When one learns to recognize what it is within us, when one explores the spiritual world, one can compare this to what acts upon the somnambulist’s personality, whose ordinary consciousness has been subdued. One must say: In a certain sense, it is also the spiritual that is at work in the somnambulist. But this spiritual does not intervene directly in the soul, as is the case in a dream, but rather, just as in a hallucination or a vision, intervenes directly in the body.

[ 59 ] Now, the true, full human life consists in the fact that the spirit within a human being—even one’s own spirit—does not intervene in the physical without this intervention being mediated by the soul, that which I called yesterday the true soul. This is what is peculiar about somnambulism: that a spiritual being intervenes directly in the physical body. The soul is bypassed. The somnambulist thereby becomes a physical-soul automaton, and acts as such. In doing so, he has shut down within himself that which, while bound to the body between birth and death, is connected to the forces that draw it out of the body—the mediation with the true spiritual world from which the human being originates, in which he is rooted with his own eternal being; the human being has severed this connection when he becomes a somnambulist, and he has only a spiritual connection with what exists as spiritual in the ordinary physical world; this, too, is guided by the spirit. Human beings are indeed spiritual-psychic beings, but they are nonetheless automatons. The spiritual that can manifest within them is a limited form of the spiritual; above all, it is not the spiritual in which human beings are rooted according to their own being. His own eternal being remains—even as it acts through the somnambulist’s body—completely in the twilight of the unconscious, even when the somnambulist is active. The consequence of this, ladies and gentlemen, is that the somnambulist cannot enter into a soul-level relationship with a spiritual world.

[ 60 ] The true mediator between the human body and the spiritual world is the soul. But because the true soul is suspended and only the body’s psychological effects manifest in the spiritual-psychological automaton, the human being comes into contact with only a limited spiritual world as a personality. The consequence of this is that what the somnambulist experiences through this or that revelation—through automatic speech, automatic writing, or the like—consists only of fragments, scraps of what is spiritually swirling about in the physical world itself, of what is spiritually active there; but the somnambulist cannot convey any revelations whatsoever from the real spiritual world. Everything that comes from somnambulists in the broadest sense—including what comes from mediums—can never originate from the real spiritual world in which a human being finds themselves after passing through the gate of death, or from which they emerge when they enter physical life through the gate of birth or conception.

[ 61 ] As long as one fails to see through this, one may be the greatest naturalist, one may be the most conscientious scientist, one may have the greatest longing for the eternal, for the supernatural—yet one can still be deceived by the facts themselves. It is characteristic, after all, how the great naturalist Sir Oliver Lodge was deceived by the facts themselves. He was dealing with a medium. He wanted to obtain messages from the spiritual world through the medium. What did he obtain? He obtained a cross-experiment. This caused a great stir throughout England, especially during this time of war, when so many, driven by external events, long for insight into the spiritual world—during this time of war, when so many of our loved ones are perishing. What could be more alluring than a message coming through the medium that offers something entirely unknown to society as a whole—something that could not, therefore, be a matter of thought transmission, as one might otherwise assume?

[ 62 ] What exactly was that all about? Well, anyone familiar with the world of somnambulism knows what it was all about. And it is simply wonderful that a conscientious natural scientist is willing to engage with these matters and does not attempt to discover for himself what can be known in this field. Anyone familiar with these matters knows full well that through the “contagion” I have described—when the spirit acts directly upon the physical body in such a way as to turn a person into a spiritual-soul automaton—the person functions under the influence of the surrounding world, just as a clock functions according to spiritual laws implanted in it by the clockmaker, everyone knows that the senses are infected in such a way that one can perceive things that the external senses do not perceive; that one can perceive things in such a way that these perceptions are not bound by the ordinary laws of spatial and temporal perception; everyone knows that, even without looking into a spiritual world, one can nevertheless see to a certain degree—when the senses are stimulated by the spiritual-psychic automaton—that one can see what is not present but future.

[ 63 ] One does not “see” into a spiritual world, but rather perceives through refined senses according to laws different from those governing ordinary sensory life. And in the case of Sir Oliver Lodge, the medium acted in exactly the same way as, in another case, a somnambulist who saw how he would go riding in three weeks’ time and fall from his horse; that is, he saw a future event contrary to the ordinary laws of temporal sequence, but nothing more than that.

[ 64 ] Thus, in the case of Sir Oliver Lodge, the medium saw nothing other than what actually came to pass in the future—namely, that photography, which had not yet existed at the time but arrived later, came into view before the eyes of society and the family. And in such a case, no evidence was provided whatsoever that a message had come through the medium from the world in which the son’s soul resided. Certainly, it is extremely useful—especially from a scientific standpoint—to become acquainted with such peculiar phenomena, and it would be beneficial, precisely in order to gain insight into what is truly spiritual, if these phenomena were thoroughly investigated.

[ 65 ] But one must also be clear about this: The supersensible does not reveal itself by leaving the soul inactive and turning the human being into a physical and psychological automaton; rather, it speaks into the human soul that has awakened within itself the dormant powers through which one can enter into connection with the spiritual world. There is no other path from the so-called living to the so-called dead—those who have passed through the gate of death and live in the time spent between death and a new birth—than that of correspondence between the innermost core of the soul itself—in its silent depths, which nevertheless speak inwardly—and the soul that no longer bears a body. That which comes from the concrete spiritual world can indeed speak into the soul itself, but not indirectly through some physical-psychic automaton. This, esteemed audience, must be emphasized with regard to somnambulism and mediumship, because it is precisely through this recognition that the pure, true spiritual is placed in its proper light.

[ 66 ] And on the other hand: Somnambulism also carries out actions. It carries them out through its mental and spiritual automatism. That which would normally require logic—that which should take place through the body in which the soul dwells—is performed by the somnambulist’s body in an automatic manner. When the somnambulist is active, what happens then? Then he performs actions, whether it be speaking or something else. He performs actions that, according to the laws of worldly existence, should normally be carried out only by the human body situated in the sensory world. For we have seen that spiritual research shows us that human beings do not have their sensory existence for no reason. There they acquire a moral conscience and moral judgment. That which should be mediated through the sensory body is realized to the exclusion of the soul.

[ 67 ] Thus, the somnambulist finds himself in the same situation as someone who is given material to distribute among a crowd; he does not distribute this material, but keeps it for himself to adorn his own existence. This is how the somnambulist acts. That which should take place only in a social setting with other people, from one human body to another—that which a person should develop only within the human community, this activity here in the physical world—the somnambulist claims for himself as an activity arising solely from his own being. He, as it were, withdraws that which belongs to the commonality of human beings from that very commonality.

[ 68 ] As strange as it may sound, this is precisely what serves as the reason—because the somnambulist, in a realm where morality applies, acts automatically from the spirit and does not enter the realm where a person should adopt morality— that the somnambulist, when habitually indulging in somnambulism, can very easily stray from the moral path, and that, strictly speaking, it is quite rare for mediums not to stray into deception. It is very interesting to study the phenomena that arise from the fact that a person becomes a psychophysical automaton, but at the same time it must be clear that the spiritual can only be sought and found in a spiritual way; it cannot be found through these external, nature-like means.

[ 69 ] The third realm that accompanies human beings like a faithful companion is artistic creation, artistic sensibility, and artistic enjoyment. This artistic creation and artistic enjoyment—we know that, in a certain sense, they flow forth from the unconscious. We also know that this artistic sensibility, this artistic enjoyment and creation, certainly originates in the soul. It is also known that discerning people, following the reasoning of the great philosopher Plato, have regarded the poetic power of human beings, poetic enjoyment, and indeed the entire artistic process as akin to dreaming—and rightly so. Why? Because dreams are pictorial, because dreams originate in the spiritual-psychic realm.

[ 70 ] Now, however, the dreamer is oriented—as I said—with his entire being, even though he stands within the eternal, toward the temporal, toward his personal temporal experiences and possibilities for experience. I would say that the artist, the true artist, turns his soul toward the other side. The dreamer stands in the spiritual-soul realm but is turned toward the physical side; the artist stands in the physical realm but looks into the spiritual world. But what he now experiences in the spiritual world does not come directly into his consciousness. He cannot look into the spiritual world in such a way that he sees the process unfolding in his spiritual surroundings while his spiritual-soul realm faces this spiritual environment. The process must already be over; only then does the result of the spiritual experience enter into ordinary waking consciousness.

[ 71 ] Therefore, what the true artist presents—even the artistic enjoyment based on similar foundations—rightly gives the impression of the unconscious. It is experienced unconsciously; from the unconscious, after it has taken place, it enters into what a person can know, what a person can experience. Therefore, to those who have a sensitivity for such things, the manifestations of true art do indeed appear as manifestations from the spiritual world. Consequently, it is only right that the artist’s creative methods should seem compromised to such a person when the artist mixes ordinary imagination, ordinary conscious logic, and ordinary observation of the physical world into what is actually meant to be a message from a spiritual world. The fact that true artistry has such an origin is connected to everything one can validly judge about real, genuine art.

[ 72 ] The fact that a materialistic age has gone astray due to so-called artistic naturalism—and today tends to interpret everything else as messages from the spiritual world—will only be set right in people’s judgment when spiritual science leads them to recognize what true artistry is. True artistry, then, is the entry of a spiritual experience into consciousness—an experience that is itself experienced as a spiritual experience in the unconscious. True artistry is, in the true sense of the word, a revelation of the unconscious. Every time ordinary conscious life intrudes upon artistic creation, art is, in a certain sense, destroyed. That is why Goethe—who was a true artist in this regard—so often compared his creative work to dreaming, because he could not bring into ordinary consciousness what he had already experienced in his unconscious: the very experience of the spiritual world itself.

[ 73 ] If you take stock of what we have considered so far, you will say to yourself: True clairvoyance—true insight into the spiritual world, which I have taken the liberty of calling “the beholding consciousness”—looks toward that realm in which the human being, with his own Eternal, faces the Eternal, and with his spiritual-soul aspect faces the outer spiritual-soul aspect. And the spiritual researcher brings nothing into the conscious world from the vast realm of the unconscious other than what lives within every human being. In every human being who merely walks the earth, what takes place in the realm of the unconscious is precisely what the spiritual researcher seeks to illuminate with the light of spiritual vision. While the artist brings into consciousness—after having experienced it in the spiritual world—a relatively individual experience that not everyone can experience, the spiritual researcher brings from the spiritual world what every soul actually experiences in truth, but leaves it only in the unconscious.

[ 74 ] Therefore, true spiritual vision is a true revelation of an unconscious that truly lives and is truly active within every human soul. It must be said again and again, as I have already said here in previous years: What matters is that one does not believe that spiritual vision perceives only a generally vague spiritual realm when it looks into and listens to the spiritual world through spiritual eyes and spiritual ears—just as one looks into and listens to the physical world through physical eyes and physical ears—but rather that spiritual vision perceives a concrete spiritual world.

[ 75 ] When one says this, one encounters prejudice. In the physical world, we distinguish four kingdoms, and it would never occur to anyone in the physical world to say: “Oh, come on, quartz, amethyst, and so on—it’s all nature!” When it comes to the spirit, however, people find it more convenient to speak vaguely of pantheism, to view the universal spirit in a pantheistic way—just as if one were not looking at individual minerals, plants, and animals, but were simply saying over and over: nature, nature, nature. True spiritual research looks into the realms of the spiritual-soul, and spiritual research looks toward those beings who, just like us here as human beings, are structured into body, soul, and spirit; who do not descend into physical bodies but remain spiritual-soul beings, yet belong to higher realms, just as animals, plants, and minerals belong to lower sensory-physical realms.

[ 76 ] One can become known, esteemed audience, through genuine spiritual vision of those beings who, just as animal nature here enables us to live physically in the physical world, also convey to us the nature that we can appropriate when we pass through the gate of death into a spiritual world. Just as we must acquire animal nature here, so must we acquire an essential spiritual nature there; and just as animal beings surround us here as subordinate beings, so do entities live in the spiritual world that stand above human beings just as animals stand below them. Just as we enter the world of animals, plants, and minerals through birth, so do we enter the realm of those beings with whom we are kindred in the spiritual world when we pass through the gate of death.

[ 77 ] We enter the realm of those beings to which we belong by virtue of the vegetative nature within us; but we also possess a mineral nature within us. We enter the realms of concrete spiritual beings. And while here, between birth and death, we are together with the beings surrounding us—those of the animal kingdom, the plant kingdom, and the mineral kingdom—there we are together with the beings to whom we are related, and we experience with them life between death and a new birth in that world, through which the eternal “I” passes just as it passes through the physical world here.

[ 78 ] But then, when we come to know what the concrete, real spiritual world is—I am not afraid to say this, for I wish to present to you real results of spiritual research and not just talk idly—then external nature will also appear to us as the outer body of a spiritual reality, just as our own body appears to us as an expression of a spiritual reality. Just as we see through our body, through its lawfully occurring processes, into the spiritual-soul aspect that reveals itself through the body, so do we learn to see through natural phenomena into a spiritual world. In this way, spiritual research truly opens up the spiritual world to human beings and expands the scope of their experience. Human beings are lifted beyond the limitation that is otherwise, unfortunately, imposed upon them—namely, to regard the external world solely as something material—which then has the consequence that they must view themselves as if they were merely material beings emerging from a material world.

[ 79 ] The fact that, over the course of centuries, humanity has drawn ever closer to a state in which it no longer perceives the spirit has led, in turn, to people having a true, genuine longing for the spirit, a true, genuine thirst for knowledge of the spirit — people who also have a sense that external nature is not merely the body, but rather that it is the body of a spiritual world — and that such people could not find satisfaction in what has increasingly emerged in recent centuries as seemingly true science.

[ 80 ] How, then, did this science develop? It is well known—I have emphasized this here on several occasions in previous years as well—it is well known what is called the Kant-Laplace theory: Our entire earthly universe is said to have developed out of a purely material nebula, which then condensed into everything that is characteristic of us as human beings, of animals, and of plants; the material is said to have arisen from the material alone. It would be as if we believed that we, as material human beings, had developed from our material surroundings, and that nothing spiritual from the spiritual world had played a part in this process.

[ 81 ] Just as our being descends from a spiritual world, so does the entire universe descend from the Spirit. How does something like the Kant-Laplace theory come about? People have calculated how earthly beings have changed over time. In this way, one can calculate what the beings of the Earth were like 1,000, 2,000, or millions of years ago. This yields a calculated conception—a truly accurate calculation—of what the Earth was like millions of years ago. It is as if, based on changes in the heart or the stomach, we were to calculate what the condition of these organs was two, six, or ten years ago, and then draw a conclusion about what state these changes would have caused 200 years ago. This is just as scientific as the Kant-Laplace theory. Or the so-called geological changes of the Earth can be calculated in this way. One can determine what the human body was like 300 years ago based on observed changes, only the person in question was not yet alive at that time. The same mistake is made when developing the Kant-Laplace theory, when formulating geological hypotheses that are commonplace today. One returns to the state that can be calculated—only the Earth did not yet exist at that time, but rather passed from a spiritual state into its present state much later.

[ 82 ] Spiritual science leads us back to a spiritual perspective, even with regard to the cosmos. And people who, based on their intuitive understanding, have always sensed the inadequacy of a purely materialistic perspective could speak in the same way that an outstanding figure of the nineteenth century spoke about this Kant-Laplace theory. Hermann Grimm says of this theory:

Long ago, even in his—Goethe’s—youth, the grand Laplace-Kantian vision of the Earth’s formation and eventual demise had already taken hold. From the self-rotating cosmic nebula—children already learn this in school—the central protoplanet forms, which later becomes the Earth, and, as a solidifying sphere, undergoes all phases over inconceivable periods of time—including the episode of human habitation—only to finally plunge back into the sun as burnt-out slag: a long process, yet one entirely comprehensible to today’s audience, the continuation of which now requires no further external intervention other than the effort of some external force to maintain the Sun at a constant temperature. — No more fruitless prospect for the future can be imagined than the one that is being imposed on us today as scientifically necessary in this expectation. A carrion bone that a hungry dog took a detour to reach would be a refreshing, appetizing morsel compared to this final excrement of creation, as which our Earth would ultimately fall back to the Sun, and it is the thirst for knowledge with which our generation accepts such notions and presumes to believe them—a sign of a sick imagination—that scholars of future epochs will one day expend much ingenuity to explain as a historical phenomenon of our time. Goethe never gave such desolation a place in his work.

[ 83 ] This is how a healthy soul feels toward that which must deny the spirit. True spiritual science will lead humanity back to what it must long for at this very moment: the knowledge of the spirit. And just as what is presented as spiritual science as a whole has been intuited by people at the pinnacle of human culture—even if spiritual science can only emerge today—so, too, have its individual parts, its individual elements, and above all the spiritual-scientific mindset, always been intuited. And a spirit such as Goethe’s also recognized the mood of the human soul, which must always announce itself as a fulfillment of [longing], for Goethe said in his beautiful essay on Winkelmann:

[ 84 ] When the healthy nature of human beings functions as a whole, when they feel at home in the world as part of a great, beautiful, dignified, and valuable whole, when this harmonious contentment grants them a pure, free delight—then the universe, if it could perceive itself, would exult at having reached its goal and admire the pinnacle of its own becoming and being.

[ 85 ] Goethe, in fact, spoke with a sense of foreboding, just as the spirit of spiritual science intuits. For what Goethe intuited is a reality within every human soul. The universe rejoices in the human soul’s subconscious, for in the depths of the human soul the universe, as a spiritual entity, confronts the eternal Spirit within the human being; the universe, as Spirit, stands face to face with the human spirit, which is capable of contemplating this universe spiritually as arising from its own being and activity. What Goethe depicted as a jubilant outburst of the universe reaching its goal in the human soul—as something admirable—is what spiritual science truly recognizes as the greatest unconscious in the depths of the human soul. And spiritual science exists to bring this—which is directly connected to the human being, to the eternal in human nature—up from the realm of the unconscious into the realm of the conscious. Spiritual science aims to be the revelation of this greatest, spiritually unconscious mystery in human nature.