The Rudolf Steiner Archive

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

[ 1 ] Ladies and gentlemen, in recent times—and, in fact, for quite some time now—it has become customary in certain circles to speak of the unconscious in relation to human soul life. What I described as the spiritual, as the supersensible, in the lecture I took the liberty of giving the day before yesterday is, as I have shown, currently sensed and longed for by very, very many souls. And since the very prejudices against the exploration of the supersensible that I spoke of do indeed exist, yet people still have a vague sense that there is something that goes beyond the sensory, people today tend to speak of this “beyond” in a negative sense and refer to what consciously enters human soul life in everyday existence as that which remains hidden—perhaps even the unconscious or the like.

[ 2 ] Now, if one were to examine the history of the development of ideas about the unconscious over the past few decades, it would be possible to spend many hours discussing this topic alone. But that is not my task today. By way of introduction, I will merely mention that, even so, the unconscious was already discussed at length in the past by individual thinkers, and the term “the unconscious” was used in a broader sense to refer to that which is connected to human existence but hidden from the senses and the immediate life of the soul; it was used by Eduard von Hartmann, who is therefore very often referred to as the philosopher of the unconscious. And perhaps I may point out, by way of introduction and only in passing, that it was precisely during that time—in the 1880s and early 1890s—that I personally attempted to grapple with Eduard von Hartmann’s views on the unconscious in human psychological life and on the unconscious in the world in general.

[ 3 ] I have reported on those debates—which [I] also experienced firsthand in my personal acquaintance with Eduard von Hartmann—in the second book of the second volume of the journal Das Reich, published here in Munich. Perhaps the easiest way for me to begin is to explain the position of the school of thought represented here regarding the concept of the unconscious in general by referring specifically to the ideas that Eduard von Hartmann developed about the unconscious in human psychological life, in nature, and in existence in general, for I must first diverge in two respects—and have always had to diverge—from Eduard von Hartmann’s views on this point.

[ 4 ] One point is that Eduard von Hartmann points from the sensory and the psychological to an unconscious, to a supersensory and supra-psychological realm; however, he held the view that this unconscious could only be attained by human cognition through the logical analysis of what is perceived in nature and in human psychological life, that there is no other way to approach this unconscious except hypothetically—by drawing conclusions from what one sees, hears, and can deduce intellectually, thereby inferring the existence of an unconscious in the world that, in contrast to what a human being can perceive here in the physical body, must always remain unconscious and purely hypothetical.

[ 5 ] In contrast to this view of Eduard von Hartmann, I have always had to take the spiritual-scientific position, which holds that such a hypothetical assertion—such a mere logical inference regarding the unconscious—is completely worthless; for, after all, it leads to nothing other than the assumption that what one deduces logically in this way could also be otherwise. I have always had to draw upon the experiences I took the liberty of describing here the day before yesterday—and upon which today’s discussion is to be based—I have always had to draw upon these truly spiritual experiences of the human soul to maintain that one cannot arrive at the supersensible merely through logical thinking or through the hypothetical dissection of the world, but rather through direct experience, by transforming the powers slumbering in the soul into perceptual abilities so vividly that one can not only infer the unconscious but can grasp it as such, just as one grasps the sensory realm and ordinary consciousness.

[ 6 ] In this way, spiritual science moves beyond mere logic to a true perception of the unconscious and the supersensible, which are hidden from ordinary consciousness. The methods to which the human soul must submit in order to develop, as it were, from its depths—which are themselves unconscious—what one might call, in a modification of Goethe’s terms “spiritual eyes” and “spiritual ears,” “spiritual organs”—I outlined these methods in principle the day before yesterday. This is one aspect in which spiritual science, as understood here, must relate to the unconscious in a completely different way than any contemporary philosophical school of thought—including, in particular, those that are based specifically, even hypothetically, on the unconscious.

[ 7 ] The second point at issue is that Eduard von Hartmann ultimately regards the spiritual realm that is actually under consideration as something unconscious of itself; that is to say, he believes that, although one must arrive at the conclusion through certain logical inferences and conditions, to assume a spiritual realm behind sensory existence, but that one cannot help but assert that this realm itself is not conscious—that it is an unconscious spirit—and that consciousness arises from it only when this unconscious spirit incarnates in the human body and creates consciousness there, which is then would be [the only] consciousness worth considering; consequently, that which lies higher in reality than this consciousness—for example—would be, in fact, an unconscious entity. One would then come to the conclusion that what human beings must regard as their true essence of consciousness rises like a wave from an unconscious spiritual life. I believe, distinguished audience, that from the very outset—though this is of no particular significance—it must seem quite unsatisfactory to assume the existence of the spirit only to find it endowed solely with the unconscious; and such a spirit is, after all, not worth much more than matter, which is also unconscious. It amounts to the same thing whether one allows the spirit to arise from unconscious matter or allows the conscious life of the soul to arise from the unconscious spirit; one is always, in fact, dealing with what I would call merely a natural spirit, with no anchoring of the human spiritual-soul life in a spiritual-soul life that is related to or superior to it.

[ 8 ] But the very experience I spoke of here the day before yesterday—the experience based on soul life transformed into spiritual perception—shows that when one penetrates, truly penetrates, into the world of the spirit, one does not arrive at unconsciousness, but at something truly essential that is—quite independently of human consciousness—just as conscious as human consciousness itself; indeed, that there are levels of consciousness in the universe that are superior to the human level.

[ 9 ] Ladies and gentlemen, today I shall undertake the task of presenting to you a reflection on that aspect of ordinary human soul life which borders on the realm that spiritual science, as represented here, designates in the strictest sense as the spiritual, as the supersensible; for such a reflection then yields various insights that, I would say, provides a clear introduction to a proper assessment of what spiritual science itself has to say about the truly supersensible, and, moreover, it is particularly relevant today, when so much is spoken of the unconscious—when people seek to recognize the spiritual precisely in the form of the unconscious—that this spiritual science also addresses those realms which some would so readily confuse with the actual realm of spiritual science itself.

[ 10 ] It happens again and again—even though for many years I have taken every opportunity here to emphasize the difference between the field studied by spiritual science and these borderline areas—that people confuse spiritual science with these borderline areas. That is why spiritual science must address these borderline areas. Furthermore, there is another factor at play. The realm of spiritual life—viewed as I described it the day before yesterday—is precisely what so many people today avoid; it is regarded as a figment of the imagination, as fantasy, and people much prefer to cling to that which is not attained through free spiritual cognition, as spiritual science requires, but rather to that which reveals itself more spontaneously. Now, the supersensible does indeed flow into the sensory realm as revelation; yet these revelations of the unconscious supersensible in the sensory realm can only be properly assessed if one is able to view them from the perspective of true spiritual knowledge.

[ 11 ] Today I will speak about the relevant phenomena solely from a spiritual-scientific perspective, and I hope that people will understand that it is not always possible to say everything in every single lecture. I would like to point out that, even though I am discussing these phenomena today more or less from the perspective of spiritual science, it should be understood—as I emphasized the day before yesterday—that what spiritual science seeks to understand is not only in no way contradictory to a truly understood scientific finding, but that these insights of spiritual science, including those concerning the unconscious realm, are confirmed by genuine, genuine scientific knowledge.

[ 12 ] The areas that come into consideration when we speak of the revelations of the unconscious are very broad, and I will only, I would like to say, be able to examine a limited area today—the area that encompasses the fascinating, well-known, yet—despite many efforts—actually little-researched and neglected realm of human dreaming, the world of dreams; and I will have to examine the field that some consider related to the realm of dreams, but which is not related to it—the field that is of particular interest to many people today who are seeking the path to the spirit: the field of somnambulism and all related phenomena.

[ 13 ] I will then have to point to another realm of the subconscious or superconscious that also extends into ordinary human life: it is the realm of imaginative creations, of literature, of artistic creation. And I will then have to point to a vast realm—even if it can only be briefly considered today—a vast realm that approaches human beings as half-conscious and half-unconscious, yet no less significant for human life: the realm we call “human destiny,” in which one might not even believe that so much of the unconscious resides. And I will then have to point to the realm that is that of spiritual science proper, which remains unconscious to ordinary consciousness, but whose revelations shed light on all other realms of the unconscious; I will have to speak of the realm of intuitive consciousness, which I prefer not to call—although it would be correct to do so—the realm of truly developed clairvoyance.

[ 14 ] I will first attempt to briefly characterize—without going into any explanations—how these individual realms, through which the unconscious reveals itself, approach ordinary human consciousness. The vast realm of the fascinating life of dreams—though no one should hope that spiritual science is willing to peer into the life of dreams in the same way that certain dilettantish or superstitious sources do; rather, spiritual science seeks to look into this very realm in such a way that it itself can become explanatory and revelatory of certain mysterious aspects of human soul life. Everyone is familiar with this realm of dreams—the ebbing and flowing dreams that a person recalls in waking daily life, of which they have a sense that they reveal themselves from a realm of the unconscious, and which enter the mind like images from memory, so that they can be grasped to a certain degree.

[ 15 ] Everyone also suspects, however, that people dream much more than they can recall, that dream life permeates a much larger portion of sleep than is generally believed—because a large portion of the dreams experienced is actually forgotten. Even the external characteristics of the dream life are extraordinarily interesting. At first glance, it seems as though dreams ebb and flow without any internal regularity. However, one need only consider a few categories of the dream life to see that a certain regularity—though at first glance it is usually viewed only superficially—prevails throughout this dream life.

[ 16 ] First, there are what some philosophers have called “sensory-stimulus dreams.” In these dreams, one becomes aware that a person’s psychological and spiritual life stands in a different relationship to the external world than it does in ordinary consciousness when one is dreaming. In them, one becomes aware that, in a certain sense—speaking superficially for now—normal sensory life is suspended, but not every form of communication through which the senses speak inwardly to the soul is thereby eliminated. One need only consider an example from the realm of sensory-stimulus dreams to see that, while the senses’ receptivity to the external world need not cease, the way in which a person normally communicates with the world through their senses is already absent in these dreams.

[ 17 ] You have your watch lying next to you, and you dream that you hear, for example, a rider trotting by. While awake, you would … [gap] — As you wake up, you realize that it was the ticking of the watch that had found its way into the dream as a symbol. In waking consciousness, one would normally relate to the environment through the sense of hearing; in a dream, what is ordinary sensory perception is transformed into a symbolic process. Thus, in essence, every sense can perceive; a highly dramatic event can be linked to a sensory perception. However, one will always notice that sensory perception in dreams is, in a certain way, reinterpreted symbolically and figuratively. Ordinary sensory perception does not exist in the dream world.

[ 18 ] Likewise, bodily processes can be symbolized in dreams. We dream of a burning stove, wake up, and realize that this dream was triggered by a particularly rapid heartbeat. We experience how moods of the soul, memories of life, and things that may lie far in the past play out in our dreams. We also find that we dream of things that may come as a great surprise to us. Everyone is familiar with these various categories of dream life. If one wishes to undertake a characterization of dream life—as we intend to do later—one thing must be kept particularly clearly in mind: It is evident that dreams lack two aspects of ordinary human experience.

[ 19 ] Anyone who studies the life of dreams will find that dreams lack what we call, in ordinary conscious daily life, the logical flow of our thoughts. Dreams exclude logic. Sometimes one might be tempted to contradict this observation; yet such a contradiction would not hold up to close scrutiny. A dream may proceed logically; but in that case, the logical progression is not brought about by the application of logical faculty during the act of dreaming, but rather we are dreaming of some event that we once logically followed through in our waking life. We dream along with the logic, but we do not reason. This creates the illusion that one can dream logically. One can dream of the logical as a reminiscence; but one cannot actualize the logical as the power of reasoning.

[ 20 ] Another characteristic feature is that moral standards and moral judgments are absent in our relationship to dream images and also in the formation of those images. Everyone knows that in dreams they do things about which their conscience remains silent—things they would condemn and would never do if they actually happened in waking life. This is significant for our understanding of the world of dreams: logic and moral judgment are, in fact, excluded from dream life. The other point of real significance is that, while we dream, our relationship to our environment is the same as it is during dreamless sleep.

[ 21 ] This is very important. During dreamless sleep, we perceive nothing of what is happening in our surroundings through our senses, nor do we perceive anything of what is taking place within our own bodies or of what might otherwise flow from the body into the life of the soul. In dreamless sleep, we are, so to speak, withdrawn into the life of the soul, which initially remains unconscious. If dream images flow into this dreamless sleep, our relationship to the external world does not change. This is essential. Although one can speak of “sensory-stimulus dreams,” what acts upon us through the senses does not do so through the process taking place in the senses themselves, but rather acts much more deeply on the human soul life; it acts in such a way that the sensory experience is already symbolized, already transformed in a certain way into a soul experience. Through dreaming, we do not enter into a relationship with our environment in the manner controlled by rational sensory perception, nor do we do so with regard to our own body. We do not experience the states in our body in the same way we do when awake; rather, we experience them transformed, in a spiritual form, symbolized, or the like—and this is the essence of dream life: that it conjures all manner of things into consciousness, yet that the human being always enters into a relationship with their environment that is just as closed off, despite dreaming, as it is in dreamless sleep.

[ 22 ] From an external perspective, this is the reason why we are always able to place the dream, as it unfolds, in the proper context relative to our waking daily life [and] why we cannot, at first, be misled by the dream into thinking that it has any significance within waking daily life itself or that it establishes anything unjustified in practical life. From this perspective, the very hallmark of a healthy psychological life is that we do not find ourselves placing the dream in a false context with our waking daily life. While the dream itself does not reason or moralize, we are always able to fully ascertain the logical and moral relationship of the dream’s course to our waking daily life.

[ 23 ] This is what distinguishes the dream—in terms of its relationship to waking life—from all the personal experiences one can have with the second type of unconscious: somnambulistic phenomena and everything associated with them, hypnotic phenomena, mediumistic phenomena, and so on and so forth. This field is one that is of particular interest today, because people believe that in the abnormal phenomena that come to light there, they can find a gateway out of ordinary sensory life—a place where the unknown peeks in and reveals itself within ordinary spiritual life.

[ 24 ] And so it happens that people—who themselves should not be taken seriously as scientists or researchers in other fields—believe that one can gain access to the true spiritual realm through research in this area, or even that true researchers—sometimes great researchers in their own fields — because they, too, share the general longing—misjudge what can be summarized under the broad category of somnambulistic phenomena, and believe that by observing these somnambulistic phenomena they can truly draw near to a spiritual life beyond this world.

[ 25 ] Now we must distinguish, in the realm of somnambulism and related phenomena—and I am referring to everything related to it here—we must distinguish everything that arises from the inner life of the soul in such a visionary, hallucinatory manner that one can judge: It arises from the inner life of the soul. Even Eduard von Hartmann could not distinguish the image that appears before the soul in a dream from what, for example, is a hallucination. And so he says that every dream image has something of a hallucination about it. — Yet there is precisely this fundamental difference between the dream image and the hallucination: that the person, through their waking consciousness, has complete control over the dream image, and is at all times able to correctly place the dream image within the ordinary course of waking daily life, whereas the hallucination robs one of the ability to view it objectively. It takes control of a person’s consciousness. A vision does the same. And the very fact that they occur means that a person is deprived of some of the power that makes it possible to properly integrate what arises into waking daily life. ... [gap] The illusory nature of the dream.

[ 26 ] But this is the essence of hallucination: that logic falls silent to such an extent that the person hallucinating blends the experience with waking daily life and, while succumbing to the hallucination, is unable to properly integrate what occurs in the hallucination into the course of waking daily life. We speak of another form of somnambulism when a person finds themselves not only experiencing hallucinations and visions arising from within, but also when they alter their sensory life in such a way that, by analogy with this sensory life, things become perceptible to them that would otherwise be imperceptible.

[ 27 ] One may think what one will about these phenomena—I do not wish to enter into a discussion of principle regarding these phenomena, nor of whether one is justified in more or less attributing a truly scientific character to what is widely accepted in this field. What matters to me is to explain to you how—regardless of the objective validity of the matter—respected researchers seek to gain insight into the supernatural aspects of the world through this field! It is fair to say: Whatever one’s own stance on these matters may be, there are people who must be taken seriously—people who are well aware that, in certain individuals with particular constitutions, the ability arises to perceive things in their surroundings that go beyond what is perceived through ordinary, normal sensory activity, within the broad realm of “remote viewing” and thought transmission.

[ 28 ] All of this is well known today. It belongs here, and I want to use a specific example to show how a researcher who must be taken seriously in the highest sense believed that it was precisely through the development of human personalities—I would say, through a refined sensibility, an heightened sensibility—that one could approach the beyond, the unconscious, and the supersensible. Rarely has anything in this field caused such a widespread sensation as the fact, quite recently, that Sir Oliver Lodge—who is, after all, regarded throughout the world as a natural scientist to be taken very seriously—wrote a thick book on a subject that, from the perspective of the spiritual science represented here, must certainly be classified among somnambulistic phenomena, yet which he regarded as a path into the supersensible world. For now, without delving into an explanation, I would simply like to describe what Sir Oliver Lodge encountered.

[ 29 ] Oliver Lodge’s son was killed on the French front during the course of this war. The remarkable thing was—and Sir Oliver Lodge describes all of this and everything related to it in his book in such a way that every page gives the impression: Here is a man writing with the meticulousness of the scientific method. He applies scientific caution to everything that in any way calls for it. What was peculiar was that, even before Lodge’s son was killed, Sir Oliver Lodge received a message from the American side stating that a medium had said a long-deceased friend of Sir Oliver Lodge would take care of him during an event that was about to befall Sir Oliver Lodge’s son. At first, this was a very vague message, for it could, of course, be interpreted in any number of ways. One might have thought: Sir Oliver Lodge’s son had gone off to war. Anyone could be killed there, and some well-meaning but superstitious acquaintance might have relayed this as vague a message as possible to Sir Oliver Lodge. Sir Oliver Lodge might initially have interpreted this to mean that his son’s life was in danger and that a deceased friend from the supernatural world would extend a protective hand over his son.

[ 30 ] The interpretation could also have been the opposite—that the son would die and that his friend, who had preceded him in death years earlier, would take care of him in the spiritual world. It happens all too often, after all, that such preliminary messages in this realm are kept as vague as possible. People are, after all, gullible; they are very inclined not to consider whether what is said in this way is accurate, regardless of whether the event turns out one way or the other. But the son did fall. The only possible interpretation was that it meant Sir Oliver Lodge’s friend in the spirit world would take care of the son.

[ 31 ] Now, all sorts of things were brought before Sir Oliver Lodge—but he proves this in a truly scientific sense—all sorts of so-called trustworthy somnambulistic mediums were brought before him, and various things emerged from this, from which Sir Oliver Lodge, despite his scientific mind and his conscientiousness, believed he could discern that his deceased son—and, through him, the friend who was protecting him—were speaking through the mediums’ revelations. I do not wish to present what Sir Oliver Lodge describes in that thick book, except for one thing, which can be understood, so to speak, as what is otherwise referred to as a cross-experiment—one that truly made such an impression on people that it caused a tremendous sensation, so much so that skeptical people were, one might say, actually led by these events to believe: Something from the beyond—from a soul that has passed through death—must be trying to reach out[d] to the father, to the entire family, and speak through the mediums.

[ 32 ] This experiment involved a medium describing a photograph that had been taken of Sir Oliver Lodge’s son before he was killed in action. He had his picture taken with a number of comrades. The medium commented on it by stating—this photograph was taken. The medium described the seating arrangement of the individual comrades and stated: “Several photographs were taken of this group.” There were minor changes to the seating arrangement; however, regarding one photograph, the medium noted: “The way the son places his hand on his neighbor’s shoulder is different from the hand position in the other photograph.” The remarkable thing was that it was precisely this photograph that was described by the medium. The other remarkable thing was that, as scientifically verifiable, no one—neither the medium nor any of the participants—knew anything about this photograph; for the photograph had not yet been sent from France to England; it did not arrive in England itself until at least fourteen days later. No one could have known anything about it; nevertheless, in the most striking manner, it turned out that the medium’s description was absolutely accurate.

[ 33 ] Such a thing is perhaps especially alluring to someone with a scientific mindset, and—as mentioned—it caused an enormous sensation, giving even the most skeptical people pause for thought. For people told themselves: No one could have known anything. There could be no question of thought transmission. It could only have come from the soul of Sir Oliver Lodge’s own son. This was an experience that happened not to a gullible spiritualist, but to a conscientious natural scientist—and it led him to fully acknowledge that the experiment had provided proof that his son’s soul had revealed itself from the unconscious to the conscious. We will discuss Sir Oliver Lodge’s error later.

[ 34 ] I cite this example because it is one of those experiences in which something that cannot otherwise be perceived from the external world is in fact perceived through a modification of sensory life. This realm encompasses everything that consists precisely in the fact that human beings come to know, in space and time, that which cannot otherwise be known through the senses and the processing of sensory impressions; it includes that which involves seeing into such distances as cannot be seen with ordinary eyes, as well as the prediction of future events and the like.

[ 35 ] The third area that comes to mind when speaking of the manifestations of the unconscious is, of course, the realm of artistic creation, and everyone is quite rightly convinced that, whenever genuine poetic or artistic creation takes place, certain impulses from the unconscious or subconscious reveal themselves to the conscious mind—and that what the true artist brings into being cannot be fully explained by considering only what takes place in ordinary consciousness. That is why all those who have given this matter serious thought have come to the conviction that, in artistic creation, another world—one that is unconscious to the ordinary world of consciousness—flows into the world of consciousness. I do not need to characterize this realm in great detail, not because it is unknown or rarely observed, but because it is so familiar to everyone and so easily understood that the unconscious reveals itself in this realm.

[ 36 ] The realm of human destiny can be understood as yet another special realm where, as already mentioned, one might deny the nature of the unconscious—a realm where the conscious and the unconscious intertwine. We approach the course of our destiny in such a way that, for most people, the individual events of this human life of destiny occur in such a way that they say: Well, one thing or another just happens to us. Most people are convinced that what appears as fate in their lives is more or less due to chance, that one chance event follows another, and that there is no inner, lawful sequence in the course of this fate.

[ 37 ] However, this is contradicted by something else that may emerge into our consciousness—perhaps only dimly and vaguely, yet all too clearly. Let us consider the relationship between our fate and what we actually are in concrete human life. If we ever search within ourselves with even a modicum of clear self-observation—if we do not get completely bogged down in abstractions but instead look concretely at what we actually are, at what we are capable of conceiving as ideas and imbuing these ideas with emotional hues, and at the energies of the will we can muster—we will find that this actually arises from our destiny. We first look at the course of our destiny, and through clear self-observation we know: We are the result of this destiny, and we would have to deny ourselves if we were to deny the identity between the course of our destiny and our inner life. We are nothing other than what destiny has made of us, and if we refuse to acknowledge that we are nothing more than a play of forces, then the question of human destiny becomes an enigma.

[ 38 ] The answer to the question: Is fate really just a series of coincidences? — determines how we are able to situate ourselves within the greater context of the world. From this, however, arises at least a vague sense in every reasonably perceptive soul that in what we consciously experience—and in what appears to have befallen us more or less by chance in our fate—there is something at work that, while remaining unconscious to ordinary experience, can be brought into consciousness and proves to be something entirely different from what appears in ordinary consciousness.

[ 39 ] And finally: The last realm is the realm of spiritual science, as it is understood here, itself—the realm of true contemplative consciousness, of which I said the day before yesterday that it can be viewed in such a way that within it the human being feels himself as spirit within spirit, just as he feels here in the sensory world as a body within sensory beings and their phenomena—the realm of which I have said that a human being enters when, through the development of the otherwise hidden powers of his soul, he truly comes to know: I stand with my “I” in the spirit, whereas otherwise I stand only in the body; I experience the soul by separating myself from my physical life and unfolding a self-conscious soul life outside the body.

[ 40 ] I must characterize in somewhat greater detail the phenomena and experiences that occur within this form of clairvoyance—which can truly and justifiably be called such—and before characterizing the other borderline areas, I would like to first characterize this realm of true clairvoyance to some extent, because this is necessary for a better understanding of the other areas. What a person experiences as a spiritual experience—as I already said the day before yesterday—differs from experiences within the sensory world in that it actually surprises one in every detail. One cannot form any judgment about what one experiences clairvoyantly based on what one has experienced in the sensory world. It always turns out differently than one might expect based on what one is able to observe in the sensory world.

[ 41 ] But even the very way in which the spiritual world presents itself to clairvoyant perception differs from the soul’s behavior in ordinary consciousness. To begin with, in ordinary consciousness, we are, after all, dealing with our ideas and concepts. Anyone who speaks about the spiritual world must also clothe what can be observed in concepts and ideas, and so it can easily happen that one confuses these ideas and concepts with the actual spiritual experiences one encounters through clairvoyant consciousness.

[ 42 ] Nevertheless, there is a fundamental difference. One can remember ordinary perceptions—that which one experiences psychologically in and through the external sensory world—in the ordinary sense of the word; but it is precisely a fundamental characteristic of the truly experienced spiritual that, just as it presents itself to us as spiritual, it cannot be remembered in the ordinary way. One could therefore only believe that one had succumbed to a fanciful imagination, that one had experienced something as a reminiscence of life, if one did not know the difference between ideas that can be remembered and the unrememberable, beheld, truly spiritual events. A truly spiritual event cannot be remembered.

[ 43 ] One must not misunderstand such a thing. Of course, one might object: Then no one could speak of such an event; if they did not remember it, they would not be able to tell anyone about it. Yes, just as we can transform an external sensory experience into a concept that can then be recalled, so too can someone who has trained themselves in this matter bring a spiritual experience into ordinary consciousness and transform it into a concept. The concept can then be recalled. But what is recalled is a concept. I merely wish to refute the objection that what is described in terms of spiritual events is merely something imagined. It is not, because if it were imagined, it would have to be recallable as such without first having to be transformed; but just as the sensory objectivity itself does not remain with us, neither does the spiritual experience remain with us.

[ 44 ] When I have seen a tree and walk away, I can bring the image of the tree back to mind; I can remember it by awakening that image within myself, provided I had already awakened it while looking at the tree. If I want to experience the tree again, I must go back to it. The same is true of spiritual experience. It does not accompany me either; it does not follow the path of my inner life. Rather, I can only recall as an image that which I have imagined. Only when one knows this can one distinguish between what one has experienced and [what] one has merely formed as an image.

[ 45 ] Another significant difference between the life of a seer and ordinary life is this: in ordinary life, we acquire habits through what we do. What we have done often becomes a habit. If humans were not endowed with this ability—to master certain tasks and become more skilled by repeating things over and over—what would human life actually be without this ability?

[ 46 ] The situation is strangely different when, through the exercises I described the day before yesterday, one comes to have spiritual experiences. It turns out that the more often one tries to bring about this spiritual experience, the less capable one is of having it. I emphasize that this is important. The seer cannot evoke the spiritual experience within himself again merely by recalling it; he can only evoke the mental image. If he wishes to encounter the spiritual experience a second time, he must create the same conditions through the same exercises, so that the spiritual appears before him as a spiritual perception. But if one does this over and over again, one finds that the experience becomes weaker and weaker.

[ 47 ] Many who truly set out on the path to the spiritual world come to realize that one cannot simply acquire a habitual practice, but that something entirely different is necessary to bring about the recurrence of the spiritual experience. It is relatively easy to take a few steps into the spiritual world if one has patience and perseverance; however, taking further steps is as difficult as I described the day before yesterday. But the first steps are not at all difficult for people with a particular predisposition, and one can have initial experiences if one takes into account some of what I have described in How to Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds or in my Occult Science.

[ 48 ] However, once such people have taken their first steps, they realize that they once had those experiences; and because they do not then exert that much stronger will, they are no longer able to attain these spiritual experiences, and are then very unhappy and disappointed. This is an experience that many people go through. It is absolutely necessary not only to acquire the ability to have such experiences once, but also the refined ability—after the experience has occurred once—to attain it again and again. Each time one seeks to attain it, new difficulties arise; each time, one must make more intensive and different preparations if one wishes to face the spiritual with the same vitality as the first time.

[ 49 ] A third characteristic of the spiritual experience is that it requires the soul to bring to bear a quality that, while it can be developed in ordinary life, very often has not been developed in people. A spiritual experience, strange as it may sound, does not actually last very long in ordinary terms; it flits by so quickly that, in most cases, the experience is over before a person has even managed to bring themselves to observe it. What one must muster in order to have spiritual experiences is presence of mind. This can be cultivated in everyday life; but very few people develop it to the degree necessary to have experiences in the spiritual world. Those who are accustomed to dithering in everyday life when they want to do something, who consider every possible aspect when faced with such decisions—in other words, those who are accustomed to not instinctively making the right choice and exercising the will to stick to it, those who do not cultivate this presence of mind —the ability to make a decision in the presence of a situation—is not well prepared for genuine experiences in the spiritual world.

[ 50 ] In contrast, one brings into the spiritual world what one has already developed in the ordinary world as presence of mind. One could say: Developing presence of mind in the face of sensory events prepares one well to observe as quickly as is necessary in the spiritual realm, and it is correct to say: The ordinary reasoning of everyday consciousness is, in fact, of little use for perceiving the spiritual world, even through the power inherent in it. This ordinary reasoning, which interposes itself between perception and action, is more harmful than helpful to the perception of the spiritual.

[ 51 ] It is the perception of the spiritual in the spiritual realm, similar to what is called a reflex phenomenon in the natural sciences. When a fly flies toward my eye, I close my eyelid. In this instinctive manner—in this suspension of ordinary conscious thought, this return to reflex actions—lies much of what we need in order to look around the spiritual world in the right way. This does not, of course, mean that rational consciousness should be shut out in any way; but it is only after spiritual perception has taken place that what has been experienced can be brought into consciousness.

[ 52 ] I could point out many more such peculiarities of the perception of the spiritual world. In such perceptions—perceptions that, by their very nature, are entirely different from those of ordinary sensory consciousness—lives the one who knows himself to be a spirit within the spiritual world surrounding him, who knows that, as a spirit, he possesses self-consciousness and that the world surrounding him is the spiritual world, which he could never have perceived while within the body. These things are so.

[ 53 ] Only those who have truly come to know the spiritual world through such developed clairvoyance are able to compare what they are able to observe in the spiritual world with what occurs in the described border regions. By merely philosophizing about dreams—no matter how well-developed one’s powers of judgment may be when applied to them—one can never truly know how a dream manifests itself in ordinary, personal life. One is unable to compare the dream that intrudes into ordinary consciousness with anything else; one can only describe it, and everything that the natural sciences have to say about it is very useful, very valuable; but the true significance of the dream in life can only be grasped by those who are able to compare the dream with what they come to know in clairvoyance as the character of the spiritual world. And there, with regard to the dream, he comes to understand that the dreamer—that is, the actual dreaming being within the human being—is none other than that in which the dreamer is consciously aware of himself when he is within the spiritual world.

[ 54 ] With ordinary consciousness, one cannot determine whether it is the body or the soul that is actually dreaming. Only when one knows how one stands within the spiritual world, when one consciously grasps the “I” in spirituality—only then can one compare what one observes in oneself and in one’s existence in the spiritual world with what occurs in a dream. And then, through direct observation, through direct spiritual perception, one can know: There is nothing else within us that dreams other than exactly the same thing that is present when one has developed full conscious clairvoyance. Thus, through direct observation, one arrives at—if I may now express myself pedantically—the actual subject of the dream.

[ 55 ] There is more to learn. Those who gradually enter the spiritual world find that their dream life gradually changes, so that they no longer need to passively endure their dreams in such a helpless way, but can instead intervene in the course of the dream with their will, guiding and directing the dream imagery. It thus becomes evident once again through direct observation that what is gradually attained as the spiritual “I”—that very “I” itself—is what intervenes in the dream, directing and guiding it. It is precisely through this transformation of dream life—through observing that one is becoming, as a spiritual being, the one who intervenes in the dream—that one can see how the actual dreaming is nothing other than what one perceives while truly standing within the spiritual world.

[ 56 ] And yet another one emerges. As you know, among the many endeavors currently unfolding in relation to the unconscious—those that seek to approach the human spiritual world—there is also the one known as analytical psychology. This psychoanalysis, which is certainly an exploration of a definite realm of the soul—albeit with inadequate means—does not lead to an understanding of the true nature of the realms in question. This psychoanalysis also works with human dream imagery. As psychoanalysts, one seeks to unravel the dreams and what they reveal about certain hidden aspects of the life of the soul.

[ 57 ] Now, it is very strange that when I recently discussed the relationship between the humanities and this approach, I was accused by several psychoanalysts of claiming that, indeed, psychoanalysis is a true science that considers the dream only insofar as it is symbolic; I, on the other hand, maintain that one ascends to the realm of imagination and intuition, and I treat the dream in such a way that I grasp it according to its reality. I make the mistake of “taking the dream seriously, taking its sequence of images seriously,” whereas psychoanalysis recognizes the symbolic nature of dreams.

[ 58 ] Well, it’s surprising how easily one can be misunderstood. What I advocate as spiritual science is not concerned with the actual course of dreams, nor with what psychoanalysis focuses on—symbolism. In fact, it is not concerned with content at all. Anyone who, as a spiritual scientist, investigates the world of dreams comes to the following conclusion: You see, it can happen that ten people each recount a certain dream sequence, and if one is familiar with such matters, one can be certain that, in terms of content, these ten have dreamed completely different things according to the course of their dreams; yet exactly the same thing—as a spiritual reality—underlies the dream sequence for all ten. It is neither the symbols nor the reality of what takes place in the dream that matters; rather, it is clear to the spiritual researcher that what matters is the inner drama of the dream.

[ 59 ] It may be that someone has unconsciously experienced an event in the spiritual realm. This event remains unconscious to the person as well as to the dream. The event took place within the relationship of the human being, as a spiritual being, to the spiritual world. But what now appears as a dream is an external transformation in which what remains entirely in the subconscious is clothed in what the person experiences as sensory stimuli and so on. This is the garment that is draped over the drama of the dream. This is the imagery. One can experience something that creates such a tension, and this tension is resolved by encountering a spiritual event. One person may experience this by climbing a mountain and encountering an obstacle; another by being led to a door or into a labyrinth; a third may experience the same event in a different way. What matters is not what the dream images convey one after another, but the inner drama—that which lives formlessly behind the dream. This is a spiritual reality, and the spiritual researcher explores what lies behind it by looking into the truly spiritual realm.

[ 60 ] The dream itself arises when what a person experiences in the purely spiritual realm is brought about by the somewhat irregular union of their eternal, spiritual nature with the physical. I must assume here that true spiritual insight—that is, the ability to observe human self-consciousness as a spiritual reality—shows a person through direct observation that during sleep and dreamless sleep, not merely when falling asleep or waking up, but that there—albeit with a subdued consciousness—we are outside our bodies during this sleep; that we truly step out of our bodies as we fall asleep and draw back into them as we wake; and that what steps out and draws back in is a spiritual essence. Clairvoyance consists of nothing other than the fact that what otherwise remains unconscious during sleep is now raised to consciousness in the spiritual world. A dream arises when that which is otherwise completely separate in the spirit enters into a partially irregular connection with the physical body—by coming into relation with the physical, by sinking into the physical, but not in such a way as to fill the entire body, by sinking into it only partially, a compulsion arises to clothe what remains of the awareness of processes in the spiritual world in what one of the corners of physicality provides, without having yet been drawn into the entirety of physicality.

[ 61 ] And so, in a dream, there is always a kind of obscuring of the truly eternal within the human being—that which passes through birth and death, that which, free from the body and preparing for what follows death, also develops between birth and death as a seed for the next spiritual life. It is an obscuring of this soul life; it is a clouding of the soul life brought about by the incomplete attachment to the body. Only if human beings were incapable of accomplishing what they must always accomplish in the healthy development of their being—namely, to fully immerse themselves and thereby appropriate what is attained through the body for ordinary sensory life, namely, control over their immersion in sensory life—only if that were not to occur would the life of dreams intrude into human life as something pathological!

[ 62 ] Now something else becomes apparent when one considers the boundary of the dream life in relation to the world of clairvoyance. The one who develops clairvoyance—who learns to understand through the nature of the experiences he has in the spiritual world, such that he experiences them separately from the body—learns to understand [that] this life between birth and death, this life in the sensory world, life in the physical body, must not be regarded as a life of captivity. It is never a form of false asceticism to which spiritual science can lead. One learns to recognize that, within the wise guidance of the world, dwelling in the physical body has its own positive significance. The totality of human life, which flows between forms of existence within and outside the body, between deaths and new births—this totality of human life takes on various aspects.

[ 63 ] The power to develop within oneself those impulses that contain logic and morality—this power, in addition to everything else a person receives from the universe, must be acquired here in the physical body if one is to acquire it at all. The ability to think logically could not be acquired in the spiritual world; for that, we must incarnate. Then, through the gate of death, we carry those impulses—which can only be developed on Earth—up into the realm of the supersensible.

[ 64 ] Since the dream consists in the fact that one actually brings in an experience from the spiritual world through an incomplete interaction with the body—I cannot go into the details here— but as the human being as a personality emerges from the spiritual world, he brings with him from that spiritual world into physical existence something devoid of logic and morality, which can enter solely into the content of the dream. Therefore, the dream manifests itself without logic or moralization. It is precisely this peculiarity of the dream—how it relates to morality and logic—that only the seer can describe. Thus, I have indicated the possibility of comparing dream life with what a human being can come to know as the content of the spiritual world. Through this, however, it is revealed that the dream is … (gap); the peculiarity lies only in the fact that in the dream, the human being does not stand before the eternal. The Eternal within them is active, but what fills this Eternal is that which comes from the body. In dreams, the Eternal within human beings is directed toward the temporal. Yet it is precisely a truly spiritual-scientific examination of dreams that shows us that the Eternal is present in these events.

[ 65 ] The situation is different when it comes to the hallucinatory, somnambulistic life. Here we are dealing with the fact that, although the human being does indeed enter into their physical body from the spiritual realm—and the spiritual does indeed influence the physical—this influence of the spiritual upon the physical occurs either because the inner physical life is pathological in some way, meaning that the spiritual enters into a pathological physical body. Now, what happens is that a person can develop a proper relationship only by immersing themselves in the physical world as it functions in a completely unified manner. If they immerse themselves in such a way that a part of their physical being cannot fully participate in the formation of sensory perception, then a spiritual element emerges partially, through the exclusion of a physical component.

[ 66 ] We would not see this spiritual reality, nor would we perceive it, if our body were not in some way diseased. It is precisely because it is diseased that the spiritual makes itself known. The spiritual researcher perceives the spiritual by standing within it; the person experiencing hallucinations perceives the spiritual in a pathological, impossible way—in effect, by having partially shut down their normal physical faculties for sensory perception. Consequently, the occurrence of a spiritual perception over which we have no control is always a sign of some form of physical illness. One might say: It is understandable that people believe—and that even researchers believe—that a truly spiritual reality confronts us in the presence of such pathological physical conditions; but we must reject any action that induces physical illness as a means to achieve spiritual perception. The path that leads to involuntary visions must be rejected from the standpoint of spiritual science, because it would contribute to the deterioration of the human organism. And anyone who misinterprets the spiritual scientific methods—as described in my book How to Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds—as if these methods could somehow lead one to cultivate precisely what they condemn, is slandering these spiritual scientific methods. They are, in fact, being slandered in the broadest sense.

[ 67 ] But it can also happen that, in a sense, the diseased physicality infects the senses, causing the senses to enter into a different relationship—I can only mention this in general terms—causing the senses to enter into a different relationship with the ordinary surroundings. In ordinary life, one perceives one’s surroundings as you know them. It can happen that, through a change in sensory life, one perceives in one’s surroundings what would otherwise elude the senses. This will be that which is not accessible to human beings through higher spiritual life. But I would like to use the example from earlier—perhaps more effectively than through a general explanation—to illustrate what I mean by a somnambulistic life, by a refined sensory life. What is otherwise understood as “second sight” falls into this category; I must say: It is indeed astonishing that, although Sir Oliver Lodge’s book has a thoroughly scientific character, a certain hidden dilettantism is generally to be found precisely in this book. The phenomenon cited as a control experiment is, in fact, nothing other than what those familiar with this field recognize as a refinement of sensory life, such that this sensory life is capable of perceiving things other than those normally associated with it. If anyone’s sensory life—and the sensory life permeated by intellectual activity—proceeds in such a way that the intellectual apparatus extends all the way down into the senses, and if someone has developed such a sensory life, it may happen that today they have the thought: “In fourteen days, I will go riding and have an accident.” This can happen. These things are well known.

[ 68 ] Something that cannot be perceived through ordinary temporal connections is perceptible to human beings simply through a particularly abnormal sensory life that originates from within. There are cases in which what is seen or sensed occurs with such inevitable necessity that one takes precautions, and yet it happens anyway. Now, for those familiar with such things, even in cases of somnambulism and the like, there is nothing more at work than such a remote vision. What, in fact, did the medium communicate in the case of Sir Oliver Lodge? Well, about fourteen days after the séance, the photograph arrived in the same room. Fourteen days later, one could describe this photograph with normal consciousness. Through a remote vision, the medium described what arrived later. The somnambulist medium perceived nothing from the beyond, saw nothing other than what later became an event, and the entire cross-experiment is objectively, in terms of the facts, correct; the explanation is completely incorrect.

[ 69 ] The point at issue is this: while it is true that a somnambulistic human life allows one to view events differently than in normal sensory and intellectual life, it is also true that, in this way, a person becomes, so to speak, more intimately united with the external world; yet a true insight into the supersensible world, which a person enters after death and in which they always stand in union with the eternal, is not possible through such abnormal states of consciousness, but only when a person truly enters this spiritual world with full consciousness, so that they stand as a spirit within the spiritual world and can distinguish themselves from everything they can perceive through their physical body. Nowhere does a true insight occur where the spiritual is mingled with the physical.

[ 70 ] Even the somnambulistic life has its dangers, if only because, by shutting out the soul—for in this way the soul is activated and remains activated during the dream—and by the fact that the human being immerses his or her spiritual-soul aspect entirely into the body, a part is shut out, and the human being then becomes an automaton. This can be interesting, but it must not be cultivated, because only by regularly establishing the proper connections between the spiritual and the physical can a person relate correctly to the logical and moral world; for when the spiritual world influences a person in an abnormal way—an influence in which a part of the body is always shut off— can lead to an improper relationship developing between the medium’s personality and the moral and logical realms, causing them to degenerate morally and become permeated by all manner of web of lies in their cognitive life, and so on and so forth. From the fact that a person essentially turns themselves into an automaton in an artificially induced somnambulistic state, we can conclude that it must not be artificially induced.

[ 71 ] In this particular area, spiritual science shows just how important it is for human beings to recognize that, while these borderline areas can indeed be illuminated by spiritual science, they cannot, conversely, be used to shed light on spiritual life. Spiritual science further shows that what flows from the unconscious or subconscious into the human life of the imagination actually has, in turn, the eternal in human nature as its true subject; it is just that, in both the life of dreams and in somnambulism, the spiritual is inclined toward the physical.

[ 72 ] In the artist, the spiritual-soul aspect is inclined toward the spiritual. As long as it is inclined toward the spiritual, it remains in the unconscious. Then it enters in a proper manner, so that the entire physical being is engaged. While in sober consciousness such things are forgotten by the spiritual, the spiritual is brought into the artist’s consciousness—but not in such a way that it is absorbed by a part of the physical being, as in somnambulism, and thereby weakened, but rather brought into the right relationship with the ordinary course of life. Thus, in artistic creation, the eternal is initially unconsciously drawn toward the spiritual—the eternal toward the eternal; but because the human being is not consciously aware of what he experiences in the eternal, he brings it into ordinary consciousness and reinterprets it, and thus it takes on an individual character.

[ 73 ] This is what is peculiar about the distinction between what is created artistically and what the seer, standing within the spiritual world, actually sees before him. The seer has the impersonal before him; he has something around him that has just as little to do with his individuality as it does with it—namely, seeing from a standpoint similar to that of the external sensory world. The one who takes what the seer sees in the spiritual world with a direct element of consciousness—which the seer still perceives unconsciously and brings into the ordinary world—becomes an artist, a poet. Hence, people have the well-founded opinion that true artists bring messages of the eternal into the sensory world, that the supersensible reveals itself from the unconscious through true art into the sensory realm, into the life of ordinary consciousness.

[ 74 ] Then, as I have suggested, a person experiences his or her destiny in a peculiar way—both consciously and unconsciously. Through what the joker experiences, something is now brought up from the unconscious into the conscious—something that would otherwise always remain unconscious. In ordinary life, we are actually fully conscious of only one part of our being—namely, our perceptions and ideas. You can see this for yourself in a scientific account such as that of Theodor Zichen. In contrast, what is called the life of feeling and will remains down in the semi-unconscious or fully unconscious. What does a person know in their ordinary consciousness about what is taking place merely when they move their hand? Theodor Ziehen characterizes this correctly when he says: We have only the ideas of what is taking place. That which mysteriously vibrates into the hand as we raise it is as unconscious to us as the events of sleep are in ordinary waking daily life. — The entire true nature of the life of the will—which, though it reigns within us and permeates our eternal being—remains unconscious; it becomes conscious only through the perceptions of ordinary consciousness as it emerges, just as a dream becomes conscious upon waking; but what we know about the will is not what actually takes place within the will itself. What we know is no more than what we know about a dream when we are awake.

[ 75 ] The emotional life, in which we are equally immersed, is not as unconscious as the dream. It is partly conscious, partly unconscious. Even the great aesthetician Vischer had a hunch that the emotional life relates to the soul in the same way as the dream life. While the life of dreams unfolds in images, the emotional life unfolds in feelings, but these well up from the subconscious. We form our own ideas about them, but we cannot grasp the reality of these feelings any more than we can grasp the reality of a dream, which has its subjective origin in the eternal nature of the human self.

[ 76 ] Thus, a person is truly awake to only half of their waking daily life; the other half remains in the subconscious. The seer brings it to the surface. He not only perceives, through ordinary images, what lives essentially in feeling and will, but also gives sensory form to what he sees within them. But this experience is a very peculiar one—one that does not arise as it does, for example, in a dream or in the recollection of ordinary life when the seer traces his feelings—it is a human life or several human lives that arise before his soul; yet it is not the life he can trace when he looks back to his birth; it becomes clear to him that past earthly lives are influencing this earthly life.

[ 77 ] At the very moment when the light of insight flashes through the will and feeling, impulses of feeling and will from earlier earthly lives come into play, and that which is developing within us as a seed for future earthly lives flashes up once more in our life of the will. As paradoxical as it sounds, it is true that if one does not merely speak hypothetically about the will, as Schopenhauer does, but rises to an intuition of the essential nature of the will and feeling, then repeated earthly lives become a fact within human consciousness; but then we learn to recognize how, through past earthly lives, we ourselves, in a sense, bring about what befalls us from without. What we have experienced in the past shapes within us the paths that lead us to our destiny. The individual earthly lives shed light on one another. What we half-dream of as destiny—and therefore experience half-consciously as a dream, like something that happens to us by chance—is revealed to us when what is unconscious is brought to light.

[ 78 ] Speaking about the re-enactment of past earthly lives and the lives we experience in the spiritual world between death and a new birth—talking about these things still seems as paradoxical to people today as it did in the days when people believed that the Earth stood still and the Sun and the planets revolved around it—a complete reversal of that entire worldview. For a long time, people refused to believe it. For centuries, there were people who regarded it as impossible; naturally, there will also be people today who meet such things, when they arise in this way, with derision.

[ 79 ] That may be so. It is as self-evident as can be; but these things lie, so to speak, at the very gates of our cultural development. They are what can truly shed light on the much-sought-after realm of the revelations of the unconscious. The unconscious is a vast realm. It also resides within the sensory world itself. By believing that it does not exist within this sensory world, one falls into all sorts of methods of explaining this sensory world in terms of something other than the spiritual.

[ 80 ] Here we see how something like the Kant-Laplace theory comes into play. I have mentioned this many times before and wish to cite it today simply because it sheds light on the subject we are discussing. Whether an astronomer or a geologist, humans attempt to deduce—based on what is currently unfolding before their senses—what took place millions of years ago through calculation. One can do this without the slightest violation of any scientific laws; one can calculate the state of the Earth that will exist millions of years from now. Unfortunately, however, we find ourselves in the following situation. For example, one might calculate—based on heredity—what the human stomach undergoes over the course of one, two, or seven years, and what changes it undergoes over three hundred years; one proceeds exactly as the geologist or astronomer does, just as the proponent of the Kant-Laplace hypothesis proceeds. One can calculate using the same method as one does for the small changes that take place in the constitution of the stomach—how the stomach must have been 300 years ago; only, at that time, the person had not yet been born. Similarly, one can calculate what this stomach will be like in 300 years. The calculation may be correct, but the result is untenable. The calculation based on changes in rock formations may be correct, and it can be scientifically established that the Earth was in this or that state millions of years ago; yet at that time the Earth did not yet exist, and it will no longer exist in the millions of years that can be calculated using the same method, because it has inner laws of life through which it has developed out of the spiritual realm and will develop back into it again, just as human beings do.

[ 81 ] We are already today on the very threshold of an inkling of those spirits that are sound, on the threshold of an inkling of a science that is precisely meant to be spiritual science. While, therefore, those who follow conventional opinions in this field are far removed from a sound view of these matters—a view that would naturally lead to spiritual science—we also find others. Let me give an example. The thoroughly sound-minded Eckermann, who emerged from Goethe’s perspective and who, referring to Goethe, spoke the following words: ... [gap]

[ 82 ] This is how a healthy person thinks; this is how someone thinks who is not completely numbed by what is officially recognized. But the person who, compelled by what his unbiased sense of truth dictates, points to spiritual science in our time—he also knows in what way his views align with what the finest minds of humanity developed, intuited, and conceived even before science existed. In our time, we can point out again and again—and the spiritual scientist will not let this opportunity pass—the prophetic way in which Goethe foresaw spiritual science. By explaining how, through the development of the human soul, a person comes to contrast the spiritual “I” as spirit with the spiritual realm—by linking what is spiritual in the universe, through a bridge, with what is spiritual within the human being—we are reminded of what Goethe wrote from deep insight in his book on Winckelmann:

[ 83 ] To those who perceive the healthy nature of humankind as a whole, who perceive their surroundings as a great, valuable, and dignified whole—to such people, if the universe could perceive itself, it would rejoice at having reached its goal and admire the pinnacle of its own becoming and being.

[ 84 ] Goethe, then, was looking at something that can take place within the human soul—where the spirit of the universe gazes directly upon the spirit of the universe, where spirit faces spirit.

[ 85 ] Well, I can also summarize what I said—albeit in a rather sketchy way—about the border regions by stating that spiritual science seeks, in a truly rigorous and methodical manner, to show that even when a person lives solely in the unconscious, there is something that actually exists, which is only brought up into consciousness through spiritual research; that only what is always present and taking place as the greatest mystery in the depths of the human being is revealed consciously; that the spiritual stands opposite the spiritual, that the spiritual works with the spiritual, that the spiritual recognizes the spiritual, and that spirit creates and perceives spirit.