The Rudolf Steiner Archive

3. Man as a Being of Spirit and Soul: Research from the Perspective of Spiritual Science

[ 1 ] Ladies and gentlemen, the two lectures I shall be giving today and on Monday will, in a certain sense, form a unified whole, with one serving to elucidate the other; however, I will endeavor to structure each lecture as a self-contained whole, so that it can be heard on its own. The spiritual-scientific worldview, which I have now been privileged to present here in Munich for many years, is, as is well known to many who have come to know this worldview, subject to the most varied misunderstandings; and yet, one may say that, even if not in the consciousness of our contemporaries, this worldview is—one might say—proving to be very strong in their general emotional life, in the life of their feelings.

[ 2 ] However, both sides fail to recognize its source and its true nature. Therefore, whenever it is discussed, it is always necessary—at least by way of introduction—to point out in a few words how precisely that mode of thinking in our time and in the recent past—which, quite justifiably, has taken particularly deep root in the consciousness of our contemporaries, namely the scientific mode of thinking—constitutes the source of spiritual science as well; a spiritual science of which a large portion of our educated contemporaries today rightly hold the view that it is grounded in well-disciplined scientific research. And precisely because the spiritual science advocated here is denied its scientific character from the most diverse quarters, it must be emphasized time and again that this spiritual science is not merely free from contradiction—which would not mean much — with the scientific way of thinking of our time, but that it has its source in it, that it is confirmed and supported in all its propositions by this scientific way of thinking, if the latter is understood in the proper sense.

[ 3 ] Now, however, there are a wide variety of reasons for misunderstandings, and if I may preface this with a personally colored remark, let it be this: wherever the issue is determining the relationship between all manner of amateurish representations of this or that intellectual school and natural science, I myself will always stand on the ground of natural science and, together with natural science, oppose dilettantism in the humanities. But it is precisely the way in which natural science has developed in recent times, and the way it has found its way into the minds of our contemporaries, that makes it necessary to emphasize with all our strength the very possibility of a special investigation of spiritual life.

[ 4 ] The best way to describe what defines natural science in this regard is to say: Anyone familiar with the development of the natural sciences over the past few centuries—and especially in the recent past—cannot help but be an admirer of the natural sciences and acknowledge the fact that these sciences have developed the most rigorously structured concepts for understanding and mastering, as best as possible, the vast realm of natural phenomena. No school of thought within the humanities should wish to deny the great achievements of scientific research and the scientific way of thinking; yet, on the other hand, there is the following significant fact: namely, that precisely when one strives to conduct scientific research and think in the proper sense—when one develops concepts, terms, and ideas that are particularly suited to grasping nature in its outward, sensory manifestations—these concepts and ideas prove inadequate, indeed, prove entirely unsuitable for penetrating the realm of the spirit.

[ 5 ] Anyone familiar with the development of human spiritual life knows that the situation was different in this regard centuries ago. Indeed, one of the greatest rifts in human cultural life occurred three or four centuries ago with the emergence of the scientific way of thinking, and it is only because people are unaware of the way nature was conceived of previously that they fail to recognize this immensely significant turning point in human intellectual culture. But anyone who understands the nature of thinking—as it existed more than three or four centuries ago and throughout the ages—with regard to the observation of nature knows that in earlier times, concepts of nature always included the idea that spiritual forces govern natural processes and phenomena; at the same time as observing natural phenomena, people gained, along with the knowledge of this or that natural phenomenon, conceptions of the spiritual that permeates nature.

[ 6 ] Scientific inquiry has rightly excluded everything that in any way relates to the spiritual, in order to ensure the purity of its findings regarding nature. And so it is no wonder that, over the course of the last three or four centuries, ideas have emerged that are particularly suited to understanding nature but prove unsuitable for approaching the spirit in any way. And in our time, after this process has persisted for a long time and taken root in people’s minds and souls, the human soul—even if it does not yet fully understand this longing itself—demands a path toward the spiritual realm that is just as rigorous as the scientific approach, toward the spiritual realm—but one that stands alongside the scientific approach to the world, since the latter itself cannot find access to the spirit.

[ 7 ] What I have just said is evident not only when one considers the general course of scientific development over the past few centuries, but also when one examines the distinctive approach of the most outstanding scientific researchers of our time—and I must emphasize that, particularly with regard to the exemplary nature of the scientific mindset of today’s outstanding researchers, for whom, as a scholar of the humanities, I have the utmost respect—I would like to begin by emphasizing that scientific development in recent years has reached a level-headed, well-founded position on the much-debated question of Darwinism, and truly significant achievements have been made in this field.

[ 8 ] One of the many, many examples of this is Oscar Hertwig’s seminal book The Development of Organisms, a refutation of the Darwinian theory of chance. Here, a natural scientist has himself—using all the tools that natural science can provide—demonstrated how one-sided the approach was in the last third of the nineteenth century with regard to important questions. If one [then] takes the time to recognize the mindset of such figures, one discovers the peculiar fact that they limit themselves to their own field—rightly so—to investigating what is given externally through the senses, and that they say—this is particularly evident in Oscar Hertwig: Everything that lies beyond observation and beyond the methodical understanding of what is perceptible to the senses, Hertwig says, must be left to metaphysics, epistemology, and so on.

[ 9 ] That would all be well and good. One might say: Such a researcher is thus himself pointing to the humanities; but the matter is not quite that simple. Wherever such things occur today—especially among the most prominent natural scientists—they are at the same time linked, I would say, to an unspoken yet effective opposition to any exploration of spiritual life in our time, in that it is repeatedly pointed out—even while claiming that natural science itself has no access to the spiritual, which it must leave to another branch of science—when it is repeatedly emphasized that true scientific rigor can only be achieved by sticking to sensory observation and the methods that extend sensory observation somewhat further. Thus, while the necessity of a special spiritual science that transcends the sensory world is emphasized, this spiritual science is, I would say, unconsciously discredited at the same time by denying its scientific validity.

[ 10 ] As a result, it is not only among those who are scientists in our modern sense not only among those who inform themselves about scientific findings in a popular way, but also among those who learn something from their little newspapers or Sunday supplements about how the world is being explored today—that the opinion is taking hold everywhere that anything not discovered through the scientific way of thinking is simply unscientific; one is considered an enlightened person only if one no longer speaks of the spirit at all, if one does not fall into the outdated superstition of speaking of the spirit in any way. It has become second nature to our contemporaries—as I said, right down to those who derive their worldview from the Sunday supplements of their newspapers— it has become second nature—as the great naturalist du Bois-Reymond said in the 1870s at a leading gathering of naturalists (though this is almost forgotten today)—that science comes to an end when supernaturalism begins, that is, when life begins in relation to the spirit. As a result, the prejudice has taken hold that anyone who speaks in any way of the spiritual life cannot be a scientist.

[ 11 ] But because the natural sciences have developed so strictly that they are applicable only to the sensory realm, a very special kind of spiritual science must stand alongside them—one that can lead people to the spiritual realm today, whereas in earlier centuries and millennia, the observation of nature itself led them to the spiritual realm.

[ 12 ] Even today, a significant prejudice still prevails—a prejudice that is widespread among the general public but is also found among philosophy professors, particularly those who deal with spiritual life—a prejudice that prevents us from viewing the human being in a truly scientific manner, a prejudice about whose historical origins much could be said. This prejudice consists in the refusal to acknowledge—as soon as one begins to speak of the essence of the human being from a purely physical standpoint—[that] one must distinguish between the soul and the spirit within the supersensible nature of the human being.

[ 13 ] Anyone who speaks today about this relationship—as I said, within the broad limits I have indicated—speaks of the human being as consisting of body and soul. But when one speaks of the human being in this way, it is impossible to gain a scientific understanding of this human being; it is—if I may use a comparison—as if someone had a chemically composed substance containing three components and wanted to deny outright that a third component exists, insisting that there are only two. He designs the entire investigation solely to find only two components; when he breaks it down into two components, he will repeatedly encounter confusion—either between the third and the first, or between the second and the first, or between the third and the second. This is roughly how today’s scientific approach to the nature of the human being operates. In the realm of the supersensible, people lump the spirit and the soul together. That is why I once chose the topic “Human Beings as Spiritual and Soul Beings” for today’s discussion—to point out what kind of prejudice, among many others, must be dispelled in order to arrive at an appropriate scientific understanding of the human being.

[ 14 ] Well, what is the situation, actually, regarding this distinction between the human supersensible being—namely, the soul being and the spirit being? One can form a preliminary idea of this by taking into account that human beings, just as they are, between birth and death—or, let’s say, from conception onward—experience the physical realm through their souls as well. We must be clear about the fact that hunger, thirst, and the need to breathe, for example, are fundamentally soul experiences. We experience hunger and thirst internally through sensation and feeling; we perceive a certain mood arising from this or that need to breathe.

[ 15 ] If a person wishes to investigate the physical basis of hunger, thirst, and the need to breathe, they must not stop at inner perception; for example, they must not deny themselves food in order to experience intense hunger, or overload their stomach to see what it feels like to be overeaten. One would never, in this field, succumb to the delusion that through mere inner observation—by tracking how it feels when one is more or less hungry or thirsty—one can learn anything about what in the body corresponds to hunger, thirst, and the need to breathe.

[ 16 ] The science of physical life has its own specific methods and types of research to determine what is happening in the body when we are hungry or when we experience the pleasant feeling of satiety. Whether it is right or wrong is not our concern; but physical research moves from what is merely experienced emotionally within the soul to the bodily processes, investigating the chemical changes in the blood associated with hunger and so on. In order to recognize what underlies physically this kind of soul life that I have just described, physical research must proceed from the soul toward the physical, and one must admit that for a person who lives solely in ordinary consciousness—in everyday consciousness—all these processes taking place chemically and physically in the body while they experience something like hunger or the general pleasant mood of their state of being remain unconscious.

[ 17 ] What does a person in ordinary consciousness actually know about his or her own body? In addition to the little that a person perceives and recognizes through external observation with the senses, there is the knowledge provided by what we call physical science; but what physical science provides does not enter into consciousness in ordinary mental life.

[ 18 ] Spiritual research, for its part, shows that what underlies the human soul as spirit relates to the other side in exactly the same way as what underlies the human soul as body. Just as one cannot deduce anything about the body from the sensations of hunger, thirst, and the need to breathe without some scientific analysis of the body, so too can one not deduce anything about the spirit of the human being through the mere inner experience of thinking, feeling, and willing, as they unfold in the ebb and flow of everyday soul life; for it is indeed the case that the human spirit—which, unlike the body, determines the life of the soul from the other side—protrudes into everyday life only to a limited extent, just as the body does.

[ 19 ] Just as one can perceive the body through one’s eyes, so one cannot know anything about it that only physical research can reveal. The ability that extends into the soul from the spirit enables us to summarize our mental activities, which we describe by saying: I think, I feel, I will. This focusing of the life of the soul on an “I”—which otherwise remains an indeterminate concept—is what the spirit brings into ordinary soul life, just as what pertains to bodily life lies before our eyes without our having to investigate it.

[ 20 ] But just as one must transition from this to physical research, so too must one transition from what is experienced in the soul through imagination, feeling, and will, and from what emanates from the spirit, by synthesizing imagination, feeling, and will in the “I,” which is, as it were, as inclined toward the life of the soul as, from the other side, the physical form is inclined toward the eye, ... [gap] one must move from everything that can be experienced in this way in the soul to a science of the spirit—to that which, emanating from the spirit, determines this thinking, feeling, and willing just as hunger and thirst determine the bodily processes that can only be discovered through physical research.

[ 21 ] However, the study of the spirit requires research methods different from those of the physical sciences; yet it must be emphasized with the utmost clarity that no matter how deeply one delves, for example, into mere inner life, this can never lead to true spiritual science. Just as an intensification of hunger, thirst, the need to breathe, or satiety cannot lead to ordinary science—that is, to the teaching of anatomy and physiology—so too can mere mystical immersion—no matter how profound—or merely living within ideas and feelings, never lead to a knowledge of the spiritual-real. The only way to achieve this in earnest is through a genuine expansion of the field of observation from the inner life of the soul out to the spirit that exists outside and with us just as nature exists outside and with us; for this nature, existing outside and with us, organizes our body, and this spirit, existing outside and with us, organizes our own spirit. The life of the soul then develops between the body and the spirit through the interrelationships between spirit and body.

[ 22 ] However, the methods that lead to the knowledge of the spirit must be understood in a purely spiritual sense. One can never reach the spirit through external manipulations, no matter how spiritual they may be; for the spirit is found only in the supersensible realm. Thus, if one even attempts to learn something about the spirit through external manipulation, one demonstrates that one actually has no understanding of how to reach the spirit at all. The point at issue is this: While one must move from the living aspects of the soul—hunger and thirst—to the dead aspects of the soul in bodily life for the sake of physical science, physiology, and biology, one must move on to a contemplation of the spirit through a strengthening of the soul life and by introducing entirely new elements of the soul life.

[ 23 ] Now I must emphatically stress that what I have stated here on numerous occasions—and am stating again today—as a fundamental path of research into the spiritual world is not presented in the sense that it is recommended to every person to immediately set out on this path into the spiritual world. And anyone who, in order to discredit spiritual science, repeatedly insists that only those who have personally experienced the spiritual world should be allowed to speak about spiritual science, falls into the same contradiction as someone who claims that only those who conduct research in chemistry and physics themselves should be allowed to speak about those subjects.

[ 24 ] No, just as it is not an unwarranted belief in authority to include in general human education what chemistry, physics, and so on investigate, neither is it an unwarranted belief in authority to include in general human education what the spiritual sciences are capable of investigating; but certainly, the methods of the spiritual sciences must become generally known today, and one can find more detailed information—covering everything I am now only hinting at in principle—in my books: How Does One Gain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?, Theosophy, Esoteric Science, The Riddle of Man, The Riddles of the Soul, and so on. There one will find these matters presented in detail, with the path leading into the spiritual world clearly laid out.

[ 25 ] Today, however, it is necessary to speak about this matter because, given the overall spiritual constitution of our time, it is desirable that as many people as possible follow the path that leads at least to the point from which one can bear witness to the fact that spiritual life is a reality. And, in essence, anyone who takes the guidance in the aforementioned books into account in some way can reach this point.

[ 26 ] But even if one did not wish to do so—if one did not wish to embark on the path into the spiritual world—it would still be valuable to understand how someone who presents themselves as a spiritual researcher presents findings from the spiritual world and how they arrived at these research results; for one must actually know what the spiritual researcher’s claims are based on. Once one becomes familiar with a method, one will be able to see for oneself that even with ordinary common sense, one can readily judge whether the spiritual researcher is saying something absurd, foolish, silly, fanciful, or dreamy, or whether he is able to point out a path that gives common sense the impression that one is truly finding something spiritual there.

[ 27 ] Well, if I am to characterize, in principle, the path taken by the spiritual researcher, I must say: The spiritual researcher must transform ordinary feeling, ordinary imagination, and ordinary impulses of the will; he must shape them in a different way—in such a way that he truly transcends, consciously transcends, mere thinking, feeling, and willing, so that he arrives at a true perception of spiritual life, just as one arrives at a true perception of physical life by transcending the life of hunger and thirst.

[ 28 ] Well, ladies and gentlemen, people very often have the impression that the physical sciences are difficult, and that it takes some effort to embrace the rigorous scientific methods of the physical sciences. That is one reason why people commit themselves to the physical sciences—one reason among many—even though the physical sciences are officially recognized, and one can make a career out of them and so on; yet people have this idea that spiritual research must be something easy, otherwise they would rather leave it alone entirely. People have the idea that they can enter the spiritual realm simply by slightly adjusting their ordinary concepts.

[ 29 ] Now it must be emphasized that, compared to what I am about to describe—what the path of spiritual research actually is—the use of chemical, physical, and biological methods is a mere trifle, and that progress on the path of spiritual research requires patience and perseverance; depending on the various human talents available for this purpose, it may take a shorter or longer time, but in any case—even when there is a strong aptitude for exploring spiritual life—often takes many years to make even a little progress in one direction or another, even when there is the seriousness of purpose required for such exploration, which is absolutely necessary. Thus, what can be given as a description of the paths of spiritual research appears relatively simple; but to actually put it into practice requires patience and perseverance and, above all, a strong inner energy and a certain courage of thought.

[ 30 ] I would like to begin with an analogy in which I aim to show what one must acquire in order to enter the spiritual world from the physical or psychological world. Each of you knows: When you have memorized something and are reciting it, it is best not to observe yourself while reciting. If one tries to listen to oneself while reciting memorized material, one stutters, one gets stuck; the spiritual activity that unfolds in the recitation of a poem cannot fully manifest itself if one tries to stand by as a self-observer at the same time.

[ 31 ] We know, then, that self-observation is difficult. Nevertheless, it is not merely the act of observing oneself—as when reciting a poem—but rather, in order to enter the spiritual world, it is necessary to observe oneself while thinking, feeling, and willing. There are philosophers who describe the very fact that one cannot observe oneself in this way as a hallmark of human soul life. For these philosophers, of course, the path of spiritual science is impossible from the outset, because they regard what one is already capable of as a peculiarity of the soul, and what one must first learn as an impossibility. If one wishes to become a researcher of the soul, one must learn not only to observe oneself—for example, when reciting a poem—but also to be able to stand, as it were, beside oneself; one must not only achieve this through continuous practice, but it is also necessary and indispensable to reach the point where one can evoke the flow of thoughts and feelings within the soul while, at the same time, standing by oneself, as it were.

[ 32 ] You see, in the West, we do not have the ability—nor should we even attempt—to penetrate the spiritual world in the same way as the spirits of the East do—the methods of the West must be different from those of the East; yet one can sometimes listen when the Easterners, who by their very nature are much more inclined toward self-observation than Westerners, have something to say.

[ 33 ] In an excellent essay recently published by Rabindranath Tagore—who, as is well known, [has] become well-known for having received the Nobel Prize for his poetry, there is a brief remark on self-observation that is highly significant, precisely because it comes from the soul of a man who is more familiar with the self-observation of the soul than most Western thinkers are. He—Tagore—points to the necessity of self-observation even in relation to public culture; but he says: I know how difficult it is to observe oneself, and I know that the one who is drunk stubbornly denies his drunkenness; if he were capable of self-observation, he could hardly deny it. Of course, this is not only true of the alcoholic; it is true of human beings in general, in that self-observation—penetrating into what is within oneself—presents them with immense difficulties. Yet it must happen if one truly wishes to attain knowledge of the spiritual world.

[ 34 ] And so, anyone who wishes to enter the spiritual world must, to an ever-greater extent, learn to separate from himself, as it were, the processes taking place in his thoughts, feelings, and will; he must learn to live in a different realm by setting aside and observing what is otherwise within him. Through this, they must come to move from ordinary soul life into the experience of the spiritual. One must, as it were, cast out—just as one casts out the recitation of a poem when observing oneself—one must cast out thinking, feeling, and willing; and through this one does in fact reach the point—as strange and paradoxical as it may sound at first—that if one persists in this again and again with the same energy one would otherwise apply to the chemical methods used to handle things in the external world, one comes to develop, in a completely healthy way, what one might call “having self-awareness”—not in one’s thinking, feeling, and willing, but outside of them.

[ 35 ] And when one applies such methods of the spiritual sciences, it becomes a reality—it becomes a reality that a person can say to themselves: “I am outside my body.” — This awareness, which is then an experience, which is then a perception, this awareness makes it clear that a person no longer feels connected to their “I” in their thinking, feeling, and willing, as is usually the case, but that they stand outside of it and now know: I am still a being, even when I have left behind thinking, feeling, and willing, which are initially dependent on my body!

[ 36 ] What still seems grotesque to so many people today—what they describe by making fun of the idea that one can shed one’s physical body and stand beside it—is a fact for those who advance in spiritual research in the appropriate manner. It is a fact—though not, I would say, in the sense that one stands outside the physical body as a duplicate of it, but rather in a spiritual sense. This can be achieved through a life that flows solely in the spirit. Just as the procedures of chemical methods take place in space, so what the spiritual researcher must undertake is something that takes place in the spirit.

[ 37 ] Ladies and gentlemen, if one brings what I have just described to a certain degree of perfection, only then does one actually begin to gain a proper understanding of what is encompassed by the little word “I.” One pronounces this “I” and may even believe that, by uttering the “I,” one possesses the spiritual aspect of the human being. Yet one has no more of this spiritual aspect than one has of the physical and chemical processes in the body when one looks at that body from the outside through one’s eyes. It is even curious that researchers of the soul, such as the very distinguished Theodor Ziehen, speak of the “I.”

[ 38 ] One can see from the way even psychologists speak about the “I” that this “I” reveals only its outer aspect to them. After Ziehen had delivered some very beautiful and meaningful lectures on physiological psychology—lectures that were significant even from a purely scientific standpoint—he said to his audience: “Gentlemen, the ‘I’ is by no means a simple thing; but if you stop to think about what the ‘I’ actually is, what comes to mind?” First, your body comes to mind, then your relationships with the outside world, then your property and possessions, then perhaps your names and titles—he leaves out the medals—then all the experiences of your past come to mind, and so on; in short, Theodor Ziehen mentions all the things that can actually tell us very little about the “I.” Then he adds: “Admittedly, metaphysicians often say that the ‘I’ is something special beyond what comes to mind—such as names, titles, and so on—but that is, after all, merely a fiction.” This is yet another example where a researcher who must be taken very seriously—and for whom I have the utmost respect and admiration—exemplarily sets forth what can be investigated through the natural sciences, but points out that the spiritual cannot be found in this realm; and then, at the same time, he discredits this spiritual aspect as a fiction.

[ 39 ] Summarizing this spiritual aspect, this “I,” in a single word does not in any way prove—even if one can summarize it in a single word—that one also knows anything about the nature of the “I.” After all, everyone knows how to say the word “sleep”; but the nature of the soul between falling asleep and waking up is not revealed simply by uttering the word “sleep.” One is merely expressing something that appears as a gap, something that actually stands as a void within life.

[ 40 ] The same is true when one speaks of the “I”: one is referring to something of which one has no perception. If one sees a colored surface and the color stops in the middle of the surface, one sees a black dot. You don’t actually see anything; it is that nothingness that you refer to. So when you utter the little word “I” from the perspective of ordinary consciousness, you don’t have anything specific in mind—you have almost nothing, really just a mental point. But if you expand your consciousness by becoming your own observer in the way I have indicated, then you come to recognize something very significant about this “I”; you come to realize that the essence of the “I” is, in fact, always misinterpreted by ordinary consciousness.

[ 41 ] I will use an analogy to suggest in what sense this “I”—along with everything that belongs to it—is misinterpreted in ordinary consciousness. Imagine that someone were to examine the human physical constitution and find that the lungs and air belong together, and that, because in a certain sense the lungs and air belong together, he would explain that the air inhaled and exhaled in the lungs actually originated in the lungs; that the lungs gradually develop in the human body in such a way that they produce air. Of course, one cannot arrive at this error, because physical science reveals that we do not merely exhale air that is produced in the lungs, but that we must first inhale it in order to be able to exhale it. One can arrive at this understanding only through direct observation.

[ 42 ] This is how one gains an insight into how one should relate to one’s “I.” Just as the air does not develop within the lungs—as becomes immediately apparent when one arrives at what I have described—so, too, the “I” cannot develop out of the human body. Just as one inhales air into the lungs and then exhales it, so the “I” is present in objective spiritual life. Just as the lungs are not the source of air, so the body is not the source of the “I.” The “I” is taken up into the body and, in a sense, exhaled from the body when a person passes through the gate of death. But in order to recognize this, one must first gain a true insight into the “I.”

[ 43 ] Through the true self-observation described here—not through the self-observation of which the mystics speak—one must come to develop self-awareness in the spiritual realm outside the physical; then one knows that one has grasped that which is indeed received by the body but is not produced by it. Only when one has grasped this does one have a conception of what the human being actually receives through the body; only then does one arrive at valid conceptions of what can be summarized by the term “heredity” and so on; only then can one speak biologically, knowing that: What one inherits from one’s ancestors does not develop an “I”; it does not develop an “I” in the course of life, but rather exists to receive an “I” that must descend from the spiritual world.

[ 44 ] The “I” must be absorbed by the physical body; just as air enters the lungs from the external space, so the “I” comes from the spirit. The “I” and what is accomplished through the “I” can never be inherited in any way, even if it is absorbed into and thereby becomes dependent on the physical body. After all, air is also drawn into the lungs and, dependent on the functioning of the lungs and their constitution, the lungs experience life in the way that they are capable of experiencing it. In the same way, what we have inherited from our parents as formative forces is lived out through the “I”; through this, the “I” manifests itself in such a way that, in its activities, it clothes itself in what we have inherited from our ancestors; but one can only arrive at a conception of what the true relationship between the physical and the spiritual “I” is by acquiring the corresponding direct insight.

[ 45 ] Spiritual research is a progression from ordinary judgment to a judgment that is acquired—acquired through intuitive consciousness, if I may use that term, even though it is often misunderstood— Spiritual research can only be attained by progressing from ordinary judgment to visionary judgment, before which the spiritual is spread out in a spiritual outer world just as the physical is spread out before human physical senses. If one applies what I have described—self-observation—one already reaches the point where, through direct knowledge, one knows: That which lives within the human being enters the physical body from a spiritual world and leaves it again through death. One comes to the realization of that which in the body is not body but spirit, which, in connection with the physical, brings about the human-soul aspects—feeling and willing.

[ 46 ] But one must go further if one wishes to arrive at a true understanding of spiritual life. One arrives, so to speak, at a clear distinction between the physical-psychic and the spiritual, but one does not arrive at a concrete perception of the spiritual; one arrives at self-awareness, at what the spiritual “I” is, but one does not arrive at a perception of the world in which this spiritual “I” lives, just as the physical human being lives in the physical environment. For this to happen, it is necessary not only for self-observation to be present, but also for the entire life of the human imagination to be transformed in a different direction.

[ 47 ] In everyday life, our imaginative life unfolds in such a way that we orient ourselves toward the events taking place outside in space and time. We structure our thoughts—and rightly so—so that they follow the spatial and temporal course of beings and events. Above all, anyone who wishes to observe the spiritual must free themselves from this guidance by external spatial and temporal events. And they can do so by introducing the will into human thought life to an ever-greater degree. This is achieved by breaking away from the unquestioned imaginative life of everyday existence. This, too, often requires years of patient and persistent exercises of the soul in order to break away from the ordinary course of imagination. It is achieved by systematically forming in the soul such images that enter the soul solely through one’s own will.

[ 48 ] Let’s give an extreme example of this: In everyday life, we are accustomed to imagining the earlier part first, then the later part. If you get into the habit, even just once, of spending at least one or two minutes each day visualizing an event in reverse—so that you imagine the end first, then what came before it, and so on backward—whether it be a melody, a drama, or something else—then you must exert a completely different kind of volitional energy than the one you are accustomed to using according to the principles of the physical world. In short, one must introduce energetic will into the world of imagination. I have described how to do this in detail in the aforementioned books. One must practice what can be called, in the true and genuine sense, a meditative life—a life of imagination that is entirely permeated by the will and is not subject to the tyranny of the external world.

[ 49 ] Take, for example, Theodor Zichen, who says: The life of the soul proceeds in such a way that it is actually entirely dominated by associations of ideas—by what a person either pieces together from the inner connections between ideas, or by what he arranges in memory, either side by side in space or one after another in time, and so on. — In this way, Zichen describes precisely what is not spiritual in the soul. Everything that is subject to association in this way is non-spiritual. Whenever one overcomes this association—whenever one does not allow ideas to group together of their own accord, but instead actively intervenes against what occurs spontaneously—one surrenders to the spirit; one introduces the will into the life of ideas, and then one notices that one is gradually moving away from that which, in the life of the imagination, is connected only to the physical; then one notices that one is moving away from it, but also that something entirely new is gradually entering the life of the imagination.

[ 50 ] One realizes that one does not end up immersing oneself in a fantastical world—a world that, having detached itself from the external world, links one idea to another at random—but rather comes to truly experience that, through something that arises from a completely different perspective, —namely, from the spiritual side—links one image to the next with equal necessity—not by imagining a table when the chair is not there, as one necessarily does in the sensory world under the influence of the external sensory world— but one gradually becomes aware—once one has, through the introduction of the will, brought the process of imagination to the point of freeing itself from physical compulsion—that something takes root within the inner life of the imagination, which, as a purely spiritual impulse, lifts one above arbitrariness. Arbitrariness is merely the path. One detaches oneself by introducing the will into the world of imagination.

[ 51 ] But as one goes through this exercise, one moves from the mere formation of meditative mental complexes to a point where a spiritual necessity creeps in, linking one mental image to the next just as, in the sensory world, only the external spatial sequence links one mental image to the next. Ladies and gentlemen, one then finds oneself—and I may use this expression, even though it can very easily be misunderstood; however, it means only what I have explained—not merely taking in something into one’s mental images through external sensory perception, but experiencing the spiritual flowing into one’s mental images through inspiration. One need not take this expression superstitiously, but rather in the sense of inner, spiritual experience. Only then does one stand within the concrete spiritual world; whereas before one had only imaginations—only that which can depend on one’s own will—now spiritual experience flows into the life of the soul, because the life of the imagination has become something entirely different, because one has been freed from merely psychological experience, and now spiritual experience flows in.

[ 52 ] I know very well that the objections to such a thing are obvious. I am well aware of all the arguments that can be raised against it; but anyone who, over the course of decades, has come to know this outpouring of the spiritual world into the world of the imagination also knows how to associate a real concept with the word “inspiration”—knows that what is referred to here as inspiration may, in the true sense of the word, stand alongside external perception from the spiritual side. Above all, such a person knows one thing: One might come and say to him: “If you believe that something is being inspired into your imagination, then you are succumbing to delusion; it is merely your familiar ideas—which you have absorbed here and there—that return to you as reminiscences, and because you do not know how these things have flowed into your imaginative life, you believe they come to you from a spiritual world.”

[ 53 ] I know how much weight such an objection carries; but anyone who understands the underlying reality, and knows it from years of experience—such a person knows one thing above all else: that no prejudice, no bias can ever again take hold of him in this realm, for the simple reason that, when he is truly surrendered to inspiration, he has experienced all too often that the things one comes to know in the spiritual realm always turn out differently than prejudice would have us expect.

[ 54 ] These are precisely the most meaningful experiences and the most important spiritual experiences: One embarks on one’s spiritual path toward some spiritual being or phenomenon, and lo and behold, one may have formed certain ideas—based on the ordinary sensory world, on what one can perceive externally through the senses and comprehend with ordinary reason—about what the spiritual world should look like; it will always turn out differently, and every prejudice will be put to shame.

[ 55 ] And when one truly experiences what flows into the world of imagination from the spiritual realm, then—precisely after observing the most striking cases—one knows that what one receives quite unexpectedly from the spiritual realm into one’s imagination cannot be grasped at all through the senses, then one knows that, with regard to everything one has not only experienced but also could have experienced, one is just as surprised when entering the spiritual world as one is in the sensory world itself when having a new experience that one has not yet encountered.

[ 56 ] Thus, through spiritual experience, one can very well distinguish these spiritual experiences from everything else that can be experienced in the sensory world. This is what matters for correctly understanding what I mean by the phrase that every spiritual researcher knows well: Things always turn out differently than one expects, and they turn out differently in countless cases. Thus, one can enter the spiritual world by approaching what I have described as self-observation from this perspective. Then one enters a concrete world; one does not merely speak of a spiritual world in general, but knows that the pantheistic view of the spirit is no more valuable than if someone were to spurn the study of individual plants, animals, and minerals and were to say only: “Nature, nature, nature,” instead of studying them in detail. One would not consider oneself enlightened in such a case, but would simply say to the person in question: “You simply know nothing about individual plants and beings of the various kingdoms of nature.” — Yet one is considered to be particularly spiritually advanced if one does not distinguish between individual spirits and spiritual processes, but speaks generally and pantheistically of “spirit, spirit, spirit.”

[ 57 ] Now, in addition to what is achieved through this second aspect, which I have characterized in principle, there is yet another achievement that pertains to the “I.” Through true self-observation, one comes to recognize the “I” as a spiritual being distinct from physical beings. Now, by adding true spiritual insight to self-observation, one comes to recognize that everything experienced by the “I”—between birth, or let us say conception, and death—is not merely governed by the forces and impulses that lie within the life span between birth and death; through insight, one comes to look beyond birth and death. One now knows that just as, when water begins to ripple, the wind has struck it from without, so too one knows that in the human life of feeling and imagination between birth and death, the forces with which the soul was connected in the time before it united with the physical body are at work.

[ 58 ] One comes to know prenatal life through direct observation; one comes to know the life that follows death through observation, one comes to recognize that, while this “I” in the body expresses itself to the external sensory world through the familiar manifestations of the soul, what is eternal in human nature continues to develop in the subconscious; that these impulses toward the eternal are already present in the physical body, but are veiled by the physical body; that through death, enriched by the experience of physical life, the soul passes through the gate of death. For in this way one learns not only to speculate about the eternal in human nature, but—by becoming free—to recognize that which passes through births and deaths.

[ 59 ] Thus, spiritual science is the field of research that cultivates not a speculation about spiritual life, nor a mere philosophy of spiritual life, but rather the spiritual vision itself. The one who possesses this spiritual vision and has thereby become a spiritual researcher knows how to speak about that spiritual world—the spiritual world in which the soul exists between death and a new birth—just as one is able to speak through physical consciousness about the sensory world in which the human being exists between birth and death.

[ 60 ] And this spiritual insight—even if the individual does not initially acquire it—enables the spiritual researcher to describe the phenomena of human soul life in such a way that they become understandable. And building directly on this, one can say that one need not merely be a spiritual researcher or a seer to find the results of spiritual research plausible — anyone who picks up a watch, having been told how a watchmaker made it, will also recognize in the watch the product of human intelligence and human skill, even if they have not spent time in the watchmaker’s shop watching how the watchmaker crafted it —, one does not have to be a seer to acknowledge the results of clairvoyance out of an honest sense of truth; but one must develop clairvoyant consciousness. Just as one must develop the skill to make a watch in order for a watch to come into being, [so] one must develop clairvoyant abilities in order to be able to say things about the spiritual world that others can then judge using common sense when the clairvoyant speaks.

[ 61 ] However, this common sense must not be clouded by all manner of prejudices that claim to stand on the solid ground of natural science, yet have gained nothing more than what can be gained when natural science points to a supernatural realm, only to discredit that realm in turn by stating: True science consists in the study of the physical world.

[ 62 ] What is important to emphasize is that spiritual research leads us into a real world that surrounds us just as much as the physical world does. Spiritual science reveals a world in the same way that the physical world of the eye is revealed to the physical human being when, having been blind until then, he undergoes an operation; in the same way, the spiritual world is revealed to the spiritual human being. Through self-observation, the human being learns to recognize what is eternal within them. Through spiritual vision—which is the second fundamental principle—they learn to see how this eternal aspect relates to the eternal in the external world. The eternal learns to recognize the eternal. This reveals to us that, drawing from spiritual science, we must add the spiritual to what the human being experiences as merely the soul, just as, through physiological science, we must add the physical to what the human being, in turn, experiences as soul from the physical side. The soul, so to speak, stands between the spiritual and the physical, so that on the one hand it experiences the transitory and temporal, and on the other hand it experiences the eternal.

[ 63 ] However, ladies and gentlemen, through spiritual science, what might be called the “mystery of immortality” truly enters the realm of strict science. Today, many people still regard this as impossible; yet just as there was a time when people refused to proceed from the soul to the body—to the actual practice of anatomy—so today people still refuse to proceed from the soul to the spirit. What Galileo and others accomplished—advancing from the soul to the body—spiritual science must accomplish in the opposite direction: advancing from the soul to the spirit, not merely in an abstract sense, but in such a way that one truly recognizes that the human being, as soon as he frees himself in his imagination from the physical — through clairvoyance or by becoming free as he passes through the gate of death, he enters a real spiritual world — that he is then among concrete spiritual beings and spiritual processes, just as here he is among concrete sensory beings and sensory processes.

[ 64 ] The next lecture will deal with the details; for now, it remains only for me to say that what is revealed through this path of spiritual insight can truly stand alongside the conventional scientific approach—which is followed today for the understanding of external nature—without any hindrance from anxiety. Precisely when one truly learns to understand natural science, one finds that, bit by bit, what spiritual insight offers is confirmed by natural science, and one comes to recognize the fact that can become so significant for the soul. If one stands solely on the ground of natural science and is captivated by its successful methods, one may understandably come to the prejudice that, since these methods have become so reliable—so reliable in leading us into nature—the exploration of the spirit is impossible. But if one becomes acquainted with spiritual science in its details and does not remain stuck with mere schoolbook knowledge, then as a spiritual researcher one also learns to recognize natural science; one comes to know something entirely different from what the natural scientist can come to know compared to the spiritual researcher.

[ 65 ] The natural scientist very easily comes to reject spiritual research, but the spiritual researcher never comes to reject natural science; he will be able to see the scientific facts in their proper light and recognize their significance precisely when he knows that these scientific facts are correctly understood—it is just that, viewed from higher perspectives, they appear as manifestations of spiritual life. Anyone who approaches spiritual science in this way will also be freed from the prejudice that spiritual science could in any way compromise a religious creed.

[ 66 ] Religious circles, in particular, are very quick to take a stand against what is seeking to establish itself as a new element of spiritual science in our cultural life. If one were to recognize the necessity of the humanities standing alongside the natural sciences, one would recognize the fundamental character of humanities research; one would recognize that the aim is to understand human beings as spiritual beings, just as biology physiology seeks to understand human beings as physical beings—going beyond the merely psychological—then one would not believe that this spiritual science could undermine a religious creed. One would find, in fact, that while the materialistic creed—which has become widespread in recent times—can very easily become a result of the external, natural-scientific approach, though it need not necessarily do so, spiritual science, on the other hand, leads the human being back to the spirit [and he], will turn once more toward religious life, toward which the longing of far more people today is directed than people are actually aware of.

[ 67 ] However, even today there are still many misunderstandings in this area, and as Dr. Rittelmeyer recently pointed out in an excellent essay in Christliche Welt, regarding what I understand to be spiritual science—how it can provide a solid foundation for religious faith, how it can open a path even for those who, through misleading natural science, have been led away from religious faith, back to it— all sorts of objections were raised by a party that also enjoys great prestige; objections were raised—I don’t even want to mention everything that was objected to. Above all, however—and because this is important today—I would like to mention one point very briefly; it was objected: Yes, this spiritual research requires that a person engage in arbitrary soul exercises in order to find the way into the spiritual world through arbitrary development of the soul. This, it was even pointed out, is a false—a dangerous, a tempting—path; for one actually enters spiritual life only involuntarily, when it presents itself of its own accord. Yes, it was mentioned that the predisposition to enter the spiritual realm is as specific a predisposition as a musical or mathematical one.

[ 68 ] One should understand that human beings can discover themselves as spiritual researchers; that attaining the spiritual realm cannot be a special talent, but must be a universal human predisposition. But if someone then objects that spiritual research, like a grace, must come from above, that person fails to grasp the very essence of the spiritual. Because they cannot find the spirit within the soul, today’s researchers of the soul describe the life of the soul as if ideas were to organize themselves into communities simply because the body compels us toward such organization. They do this also because we are dependent on the physical. One attains the spirit by becoming independent of what the body accomplishes. One attains the spirit by freely detaching oneself from mere physical life. No matter how much mysticism one may muster, or how much one may speak about the soul: if it is not gained through free spiritual exercises and an active life of the soul, then it has been experienced or acquired only in a physical or lower spiritual way.

[ 69 ] The truly spiritual begins where one frees oneself from the body; it can only be explored by adopting a method rooted in freedom, in the exercise of the will—that is, in the activity that springs from freedom. Only by freeing oneself from the body can one attain the consciousness that otherwise remains in the depths of human soul life.

[ 70 ] However, it is possible to explore that aspect of consciousness which, in the depths of soul life, remains within ordinary experience—and which is set free when a person passes through the gate of death—an aspect that is otherwise obscured by the soul experiences dominated by the body. Thus, one can say that such an objection actually proves that even a perspective that is widely accepted has absolutely no concept, no idea at all of what is truly spiritual—just as the soul life dominated by the body is mistakenly designated as the spiritual.

[ 71 ] Well, my esteemed audience, it is often such aspects, such currents, that take a completely misguided stand against spiritual science, which I have once again attempted to characterize from a wide variety of perspectives. Spiritual science itself cannot adopt such an attitude toward other schools of thought; it knows that it need not exclude anything else, that it need not take a stand against others in order to maintain itself. This spiritual science, which seeks out the spirit within the soul in the manner described—through genuine science, just as physical science investigates the processes of the body in relation to soul experience—this spiritual science can say: Do not be misled; delve into the natural sciences, and understand everything the natural scientist has to say! You will not understand it any less well than he does. You will understand it better than he does; you will do him full justice when you engage with what he says.

[ 72 ] Spiritual science does not share the judgment one repeatedly finds among the so-called monists or others who, despite their position being a very shaky one, always seek to stand on the solid ground of natural science and avoid the spiritual on the grounds that they believe one cannot engage with spiritual science because there are no valid concepts for it, or something to that effect. No, the scientific way of thinking—which at the same time aspires to be a worldview—provides narrow concepts that do not lead into the spiritual realm; spiritual science provides concepts that not only lead into the spiritual realm but also into the natural sciences. Therefore, it urges people to master as much of the natural sciences as possible. Spiritual science has nothing to fear from this; on the contrary, spiritual science will no more describe a religious path to anyone as something to be avoided.

[ 73 ] Spiritual science will tell everyone: If you are equipped with the concepts of the spirit that true spiritual science can provide, then your soul—through the strength and power of these concepts—is also capable of walking the religious path with the utmost intensity, of receiving what your religion seeks to give you in its revelations, in the genuine, true sense of the word. Spiritual science need not accept the religious prejudice—which is not truly a religious prejudice but rather a prejudice held by the representatives of religion—that deters one from engaging with something else, that even regards the other path as tempting; rather, it says: Go to church and to religion; they will be able to give you, by virtue of your spiritual science, what they would otherwise be unable to give you—if you truly understand spiritual science. Go out into life. — What one acquires through spiritual science provides concepts and ideas that do not allow the ideas of practical life to become what they often are today, where people consider themselves practical while they are, in fact, mere dreamers.

[ 74 ] Even if one is not a seer, spiritual science will give the concepts of practical life flexibility, direction, and energy, so that one becomes more practical in ordinary external life. It does not turn one away from external life. It provides moral direction and stability; it even imparts skills for external techniques. Go out into life, not into asceticism! Life will not destroy spiritual science; on the contrary, this life will confirm spiritual science everywhere, and I might even add: Go to Johannes Müller yourself, for all I care. I will not run the risk of saying: Johannes Müller’s path is a dangerous one, a tempting one—as Johannes Müller recently wrote, that one should avoid the path of spiritual science because it represents a temptation. I will not tell anyone: Avoid the path of Johannes Müller! — Go to him! You will find the correct standpoint precisely when you approach him with spiritual science. No one who approaches spiritual science with true understanding will be deterred from anything; for spiritual science is meant to lead into spiritual life in such a way that the rest of life—which is, after all, nothing other than the manifestation of the spiritual—can thereby be understood more deeply, lived with greater insight, and felt and experienced more intensely.

[ 75 ] That which spiritual science can instill in the human spirit—and which must become useful for the longings of humanity, which today can be perceived as the most significant longings, though they often lie only in the subconscious—if one possesses true insight into human nature, this attitude, which can be instilled in the human heart to satisfy these longings—I would like to further describe this attitude as follows: I have said: In the broadest circles, people are dominated by the prejudice that du Bois-Reymond once expressed in the 1870s, but which still haunts people’s souls today; that science can extend only to the sensory realm, that while it cannot investigate the supersensible, science nevertheless ends where the supersensible life, the spiritual life, the eternal actually begins. Spiritual science is meant to show humanity that the opposite attitude corresponds to a true understanding of world conditions, that one must rather say: Even the natural sciences do not penetrate the true, deeper life of nature unless these natural sciences are imbued with the spirit.

[ 76 ] But if one recognizes in natural science itself the necessity of being permeated by the spirit, then one will no longer say that science ends where the supersensible—where the spirit—begins, but rather the opposite: even the science of nature dies out, comes to an end, when one steps outside the spirit with one’s concepts. Even in the natural sciences themselves, one needs the spirit for true understanding. Unfortunately, for the sake of intellectual convenience, a peculiar process has taken place in recent decades; people have told themselves something that I could compare to someone saying: “There is a tree in front of me; it is growing and thriving.” It draws certain forces from the earth; but the forces it draws are hidden from me by the earth. I will pull the tree out of the earth so that I have it fully before me, and then I will be able to grasp it completely.

[ 77 ] This is how people with a natural-scientific mindset have approached it. They have said: If we try to grasp nature as a whole, we cannot do so; it is rooted in something. We uproot it; we pull it out of its soil, and then we can grasp it. — But that natural science which uproots itself in this way is like a tree torn up by its roots from the ground; it is killed; it withers away. And knowledge that is uprooted from spiritual insight withers away. Once the prejudice linked to a statement such as that of du Bois-Reymond—‘Where the supersensible begins, science ends’—has passed, we will arrive at true understanding and a genuine attitude toward the spirit and its relationship to humanity, when we replace du Bois-Reymond’s statement with the following: “Where knowledge seeks to deny the spirit, where knowledge seeks to step outside the supernatural and comprehend nature in a rootless state—there knowledge dies.” It is not that science ends where the supernatural begins, but rather where the supernatural ends and knowledge is still sought—there this knowledge itself is killed, and every striving for science dies.