The Rudolf Steiner Archive

5. Human Beings as Beings of Spirit and Soul

Research from the Perspective of the Humanities

[ 1 ] Ladies and gentlemen! The two lectures I will be giving will address related topics, so that today’s and tomorrow’s lectures will, in a certain sense, explain and complement one another. However, I will endeavor to structure each individual lecture so that it forms a complete whole in itself and can be heard and understood on its own.

[ 2 ] Well, ladies and gentlemen, what I have had the honor of presenting here in Stuttgart for a number of years now—as spiritual science, as anthroposophically oriented spiritual science—is, I believe, rooted in a necessity of contemporary spiritual life. It does not spring from any personal whim. To understand that it must, so to speak, take its starting point precisely at this time, it may be necessary to look into human spiritual life in such a way that one notices how certain spiritual impulses have their own time in which they emerge within the entire development of human spiritual life. One might believe that the spiritual science referred to here finds its place in our present time in much the same way as the Copernican worldview found its place several centuries ago. Just as the Copernican worldview was unable to become integrated into human spiritual life in an earlier era, so too will it be with what is meant here by spiritual science.

[ 3 ] One need only make a brief comparison—but a comparison based on genuine insight—between the way in which the scientific worldview has arrived at its conclusions in the present day and for quite some time now, and the way it has taken root in the broadest circles of humanity, thereby forming the foundation even for questions of the soul and the spirit. One need only consider this method of research and this mode of dissemination and compare them with the scientific worldview that prevailed centuries ago and, one might say, throughout the millennia of human development. In those earlier times, people truly viewed nature and its phenomena quite differently than is the case today and has been for the past two, three, or four centuries. In those earlier times, while observing natural beings and natural processes, people simultaneously took something spiritual, something soulful, into their minds and into their spiritual lives through this observation. People did not seek to investigate natural phenomena—as is done today—as mere natural phenomena, excluding as much as possible everything that is in any way spiritual or soulful.

[ 4 ] This is not meant to be a rebuke or a criticism of the modern scientific worldview—quite the contrary. This scientific worldview, which has such significant meaning for the present and for the future, owes its successes—and has grown great—precisely because it has strived to exclude from its observation of natural processes everything that is in any way spiritual or psychological. It considers purely the essence and the processes of nature, without introducing anything of a spiritual or psychological nature into this essence or these processes.

[ 5 ] But on the other hand, this has made it necessary to satisfy, in a different scientific way, the indelible needs of the human soul—the needs to grapple with the great mysteries of existence. Precisely because the natural sciences must exclude the spiritual and psychological aspects according to their pure, serious, and conscientious method—precisely for this reason—a spiritual science must stand alongside the natural sciences, modeled on the natural sciences and guided by their ideal, one that proceeds in the same way as the natural sciences but draws from different sources.

[ 6 ] It cannot be said that modern times, that the present, have already come to terms with any view of the relationship between the natural sciences and any endeavor in the humanities. Precisely the most weighty, the most serious questions of human soul and spiritual life—the question of the eternity of the human being, the question of human freedom, and everything connected with it—have, in essence, been excluded and, since the mid-nineteenth century, have been completely banished from any worldview based on the natural sciences. And one might say that the outstanding, great natural scientists of our time find themselves in a peculiar situation.

[ 7 ] We have seen, after all, how in more recent times it was only outstanding natural scientists who overcame the scientific romanticism of Darwinism from the second half of the nineteenth century. We have seen how—well, hundreds of researchers and thinkers could be cited in this vein; Oscar Hertwig, for example, deserves special mention— we have seen how researchers such as Oscar Hertwig have steered the extravagant, fanciful direction of naturalism back onto a more solid course. And a book like Oscar Hertwig’s The Development of Organisms: A Darwinian Theory of Chance—a book by an outstanding, direct student of Haeckel—such a book carries great significance on purely scientific grounds.

[ 8 ] Much more could be added along these lines that is equally significant or nearly as significant. But it is precisely in such achievements—which cannot be sufficiently recognized within their own fields—that the peculiar situation of serious scientific researchers with regard to questions of the soul and the spirit becomes apparent. Anyone who reads this seminal book by Oscar Hertwig, The Development of Organisms: A Darwinian Theory of Chance, will be able to discern a certain attitude toward questions of spiritual life. They will find that a researcher such as Oscar Hertwig asserts that, with the means at his disposal—the methods of his rigorous research—he cannot approach questions of the soul and the spirit. He states this clearly and unequivocally: on the one hand, natural science can, in reality, deal only with the transitory and the sensory; natural science cannot approach the eternal in human nature.

[ 9 ] That would be quite good, because it would clear the way for the humanities; it would mean that the natural scientist himself would be pointing out that there must be a humanities discipline alongside the rigorous natural sciences. But unfortunately, all those who work in this direction add something quite different to this; something that is not explicitly stated, but which can nevertheless be clearly read between the lines and in the different ways of looking at things. Namely, the opinion is spread—one might say, the opinion is spread unconsciously—that the only truly exact scientific method is the one employed by the natural scientist; that one stands on scientific ground only as long as one observes the external, sensually real; the belief is fostered that any departure from the physical-sensory realm must inevitably lead into the realm of fantasy or daydreaming.

[ 10 ] The danger lies precisely in the fact that these things are not clearly stated, but that a certain mood emerges from such works, and that this mood spreads to the widest, widest circles of people—from those who believe they understand a great deal about the scientific worldview, and who wish to draw all sorts of conclusions about spiritual life from the scientific worldview, all the way to those who consider themselves very enlightened because they read the supplement to their local tabloid every Sunday—a supplement that embodies precisely the kind of mood I have just described, which is spreading in the widest circles.

[ 11 ] So one might say: While, on the one hand, the scientific worldview points with all its might to the necessity of the emergence of a science of the spirit, on the other hand, it is nevertheless the case that it undermines the very foundation of this science of the spirit. What I mean here is encapsulated in the famous speech that I have mentioned here in Stuttgart on several occasions—the speech that de Bois-Reymond, the great physiologist, delivered before a distinguished assembly of natural scientists in Leipzig in the 1870s; it is encapsulated in the speech “On the Limits of Natural Knowledge,” which states that natural knowledge cannot in any way provide insight even into the simplest phenomena of human soul life; and that science ends where the supersensible begins.

[ 12 ] Thus, ladies and gentlemen, on the one hand it is acknowledged that the natural sciences have nothing to say about the supersensible, but at the same time the very foundation for all supersensible research is vigorously undermined. Spiritual science must still struggle against such goals and such endeavors today. For its ultimate aim is precisely to address those questions—and to treat them from a scientific standpoint—that are the focus of the human soul’s deepest longings: the question of the eternity of the human soul, the question of the freedom of human action, and the countless other questions connected to these two main questions.

[ 13 ] On the one hand, one could also say: If a person today who seeks insight into such matters turns not to the natural sciences but rather to philosophical endeavors, he will find very little satisfaction there either. These philosophical endeavors generally offer the general consciousness little more than what one sees—when one truly seeks spiritual nourishment in spiritual realms—as a collection of abstract concepts, of more or less empty concepts, which provide nothing truly substantial in response to the profound questions of human soul and spiritual life. But perhaps it is precisely in this field that one will be able to find the reason why, in our present time, nothing truly substantial can be found regarding these questions outside the actual realm of spiritual science. It is precisely these philosophical endeavors that reveal something very peculiar: the very reason why I have titled today’s lecture “A Reflection on the Human Being as a Spiritual and Soul Being.”

[ 14 ] Anyone today who picks up a handbook on the study of the soul—or any philosophical work—in order to gain insight into the questions at hand will find everywhere a perspective that is, so to speak, entirely bound up in the notion—even when one goes beyond mere materialistic thinking—that: Human beings are beings of body and soul. Even the most enlightened and incisive philosophers today are dominated by the notion that human beings are beings of body and soul. What is needed today is precisely to show that this way of thinking is misleading when it comes to exploring the full essence of the human being. If one starts out from the premise that one can investigate the essence of the human being by examining the human being with all that manifests in him or her, both soulfully and physically—that is, by dividing this human being into body and soul— it is just as if a chemist were faced with a certain substance and, from the outset, were to assume that this substance could consist of only two components; and then, when he performs his chemical analysis, nothing meaningful comes of it. Another person concludes that nothing meaningful can come of it because the substance the chemist was examining consists of three components, whereas the chemist had imagined there must be only two—that he would find only two.

[ 15 ] This is how the view of the human being has persisted to this day. People imagine that they must identify two components: body and soul. In truth, one can only make sense of it by dividing this human being into body, soul, and spirit. Otherwise, one will always end up with an impossible mixture of spirit and soul, which can provide no more real insight into the human being than mixing together bodily life and soul life without distinguishing between them appropriately could.

[ 16 ] What is actually meant when the human being is divided not only into a soul-being and a physical being on the one hand, but also into a soul-being and a spiritual being on the other, will become clear when we take a look at the way in which the physical sciences of the human being—biology, physiology, anatomy, and so on—emerge from mere human experience, from the experience of human bodily life.

[ 17 ] Let us consider a specific case, distinguished guests. In everyday life, human beings experience hunger, satiety, the need to breathe, and similar sensations. These are immediate—I would say—inner experiences. Although they are initially dependent on the material world, hunger, satiety, and the need to breathe are, in fact, experiences of the soul. The physical researcher investigates the bodily foundations of hunger, satiety, the need to breathe, and the like. One cannot simply stop at the fact that hunger is experienced in various ways in order to establish a physical science—a science of the human body. Anyone who merely wanted to experience intense and mild hunger, intense and mild thirst, or various kinds of hunger or thirst would not be able to establish a science of the physical body. One must go beyond mere inner experience; one must investigate the body using scientific methods. One then comes to realize that hunger, thirst, and the need to breathe give rise to certain chemical and physical processes in the physical human body; through this, one arrives at the physiological and biological science of the human being. One must go beyond mere inner experience to the body itself; one must subject this body to the methods of research.

[ 18 ] Exactly the same thing, ladies and gentlemen, that one must do to establish a physical science on the one hand, starting from immediate experiences, one must, on the other hand, proceed from psychological experiences to that which underlies these psychological experiences as the spiritual, just as the physical underlies psychological experiences as the physical.

[ 19 ] When we look at the physical body, we can say: The physicist, the researcher of the physical, finds certain metabolic processes in the body that correspond to the inner experiences of hunger, thirst, and the need to breathe. The question must arise: Is there also—if I may use this initially quite paradoxical expression—is there also something that corresponds to the psychological experience on the other side, so that one could call it “spiritual metabolism,” as opposed to “metabolism”? It certainly sounds paradoxical at first when, on the one hand, one speaks of metabolism—which is something so self-evident because it belongs to a recognized science—and, on the other hand, one speaks of “spiritual metabolism.” Nevertheless, we will attempt to show today that this paradoxical expression does indeed correspond to reality.

[ 20 ] Just as one is unable to establish a physical science based solely on the internal observation of hunger, thirst, or the need to breathe—one is equally incapable of establishing a spiritual science merely by examining the inner workings of the soul—which ebbs and flows in thinking, feeling, and willing—and by investigating these solely as inner experiences. One must realize that, for ordinary consciousness and everyday life, the physical actually presents only its outer aspect to human beings. What does a person in ordinary life actually know, when they enter the realm of physical science, about all the complex bodily processes—the physical and chemical processes that physical science brings to light as the very foundations of physical hunger, thirst, the need to breathe, and the like? Just compare what is revealed to ordinary, everyday life regarding the body—for example, its external form, its ability to move, its physiognomy—compare this, what is present in ordinary life, what anyone can know without delving into the physical science of the human being; compare that with what anatomy, physiology, and biology—and you will understand the relationship between ordinary experience of the physical body and scientific research.

[ 21 ] Now, looking at it from the other side, one could say that the spirit is just as little or just as much revealed to human beings as the outer form is from the physical side, and that just as little or just as much is hidden from human beings on this spiritual side as is hidden from ordinary life by the processes that physical science is only now beginning to investigate.

[ 22 ] What, then, is actually directed toward the human being from the spirit within human inner experience? Well, we shall see today that what is directed toward the human being from his spiritual life—though in ordinary consciousness he does not always recognize it as such at first—is nothing other than that which he sums up in the simple, unambiguous, yet highly significant word “I.” We will recognize this “I” as spiritual, but it relates to the totality of the spirit just as that which is directed toward the ordinary body—in the form of external appearance, physiognomy, and limb movement—relates to physiology, biology, and the science of the body. And just as one cannot arrive at the science of the body by being a little or very hungry, by comparing one’s state of hunger with others, or by immersing oneself in hunger—just as one can never arrive at the science of the body through these means—so, too, one cannot arrive at a science of the human spirit by immersing oneself in the initially perceptible processes of imagination, feeling, and thinking.

[ 23 ] It must first be understood that so-called mysticism—this so-called immersion in one’s own inner self, [which] is a somewhat different way of seeking to experience this inner self than what one goes through in ordinary life—that this mysticism, this inner immersion, can no more lead to a science of the spirit than a different kind of experience of hunger, thirst, and the need to breathe—cannot lead to a science of the body. Just as one must move outward from the mere inner experience of hunger and thirst to the things that the scientific method provides, so too must one move outward from the mere mystical life of the soul to that which is, spiritually speaking, outside of this life of the soul. And this spiritual realm must indeed now be investigated with spiritual methods—investigated scientifically in the strictest sense—just as human physical life is truly investigated.

[ 24 ] However, the methods for researching spiritual life are, by their very nature, spiritual and therefore quite different from those used in the natural sciences. And my task now will be, first of all, to point out the meaning and significance of the spiritual scientific method. One cannot believe, ladies and gentlemen, that anyone can come to the study of spiritual life unless they encounter certain things in their ordinary, everyday inner life. Without encountering certain things in one’s ordinary, everyday inner life—in which one observes one’s own inner world—one will not be able to train oneself to become a researcher of the spiritual. As long as one is quite content with this ordinary, everyday life of the soul, as long as one finds mystical satisfaction in indulging in the mystical pleasure of simply immersing oneself in this life of the soul as it is, one will not be able to train oneself to become a true spiritual researcher. The very first prerequisite for spiritual research is that one senses, in a certain sense, the inadequacy of ordinary spiritual life from within that life itself. I have pointed out in earlier lectures that engaging with the so-called “borderline questions” of science can, in particular, lead one into the state of mind I have just described. I always take great pleasure in pointing out a truly significant frontier question that arose for the eminent researcher Friedrich Theodor Vischer in his struggle to formulate a worldview. He came—you can read about this in his fine treatise on “The Dream Fantasy”—he came to ponder: What is the actual relationship between the soul and the body? And in doing so, he truly arrived at a boundary question of human cognition. He—the so-called V. Vischer—says: It is certain that the soul cannot be within the body; but it is equally certain that it cannot be sought outside the body. — Thus, he arrives at a complete contradiction. Such a contradiction arises in many places when one does not merely treat cognition as an externally grasped fact, but when one must truly grapple with the insight from within.

[ 25 ] It is precisely those who know something of this struggle for knowledge who speak of hundreds and hundreds of such limits to knowledge. Only superficial minds find peace in the face of such questions of limits by saying: This is simply as far as human knowledge extends; it cannot go beyond this. If one contented oneself with such an explanation, one would, however, be unable to enter into true spiritual research. For the point, dear audience, is not to develop all sorts of logical arguments in the face of such boundary questions, but to enter into them with one’s entire struggling inner life, to live through them, to [in a sense] abandon logic where it is no longer applicable, and that one can allow the living essence of the opposition, of the contradiction in such a frontier region of ordinary human knowledge, to settle upon one’s soul. If one regards such frontier questions not merely as cushions on which to rest, on which one wishes to remain lying down so as not to go any further, but if one experiences them, then one finds, precisely through that which surges and lives there as a living contradiction, that one’s inner spiritual life is kindled at a certain point in a way it is not kindled in ordinary experience: that it is precisely at these boundary points that it can transcend ordinary experience.

[ 26 ] However, in order to properly navigate such points, one must be able to mentally grasp how, at certain moments in life, a person cannot transcend themselves and yet, at the same time, points beyond themselves. It involves developing a certain inner disposition that can result from living at such thresholds of knowledge. This disposition can be described with the following words. The description itself seems quite simple; yet the experience one can have through such a disposition is something that cuts deeply, deeply into the soul. If one experiences such threshold questions correctly, one does not say to oneself: “There are limits to human knowledge,” but rather: “With all that you have acquired through thinking and research into the outer, sensory-physical world, you cannot transcend such limits. You can impose a certain resignation, a certain renunciation upon yourself; you can learn not to attempt to make judgments about the supersensible at such points based on what you have learned and experienced in the sensory realm.”

[ 27 ] You see, these are the main obstacles preventing most people from entering the realm of spiritual science. They perceive such limits to knowledge, but then they lack the courage to let go, the courage to accept these limitations. They do not say to themselves: “With what you have learned and experienced from the sensory world, you cannot even begin to attempt to enter the spiritual, supersensory world”; rather, they try to penetrate beyond these limits—even if only in a negative way—using the concepts and ideas they have acquired from the sensory world. One does so by constructing all manner of hypotheses about what might exist in the supersensible; the other by completely rejecting the supersensible on the basis of the sensible, thus presuming to be able to pass judgment on the supersensible using concepts derived from the sensible realm. Nor have those understood the experience at the limits of knowledge who—such as materialists, monists, or the like—begin, on the basis of the ideas and concepts derived from sensory life, to conclude that there is nothing at all beyond the sensory realm.

[ 28 ] This is the point where something quite special must occur in the life of the human soul—where what I have just described—the renunciation of concepts derived from the sensory world—is not merely a commitment, not merely to express some intellectual-logical concept, but that this renunciation becomes an inner intellectual virtue, something that—if I may use the expression—takes root in the life of the human soul, so that one truly has a subtle sense at certain points: You must not go beyond what you have experienced in the sensory world. Then, when this renunciation is not merely a logical confession or some intellectual conclusion, but when it is an inner virtue, then—I would say—this virtuous renunciation radiates into the inner life of the soul, and then that which one has renounced outwardly passes into the inner life of the soul. And through such renunciation, one becomes capable, over time, of truly performing those two spiritual tasks that are necessary to penetrate from the soul world of human experience into the spiritual world.

[ 29 ] For this requires two inner practices; however, as you can see from the book How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?, these entail many, many individual practices—I would say that they are merely summarized under these two main goals. To this end, two main practices are necessary: One is to attain true self-observation; the other consists in achieving a soul-spiritual experience that is no longer dependent on the physical, but which takes place in the purely spiritual realm. As paradoxical as it may still sound to humanity today, it must nevertheless be said: This second task consists in the human being shaping his spiritual-soul life in such a way that, as a spiritual researcher, he is no longer in the body with this spiritual-soul experience, but rather exists outside the body.

[ 30 ] This is certainly something that appears to be utter folly to those who believe they are firmly grounded in the scientific worldview. But this is precisely what spiritual science will make clear to humanity—even though it stands in contrast to many ideas in a way that is the opposite of what we have been accustomed to, just as the Copernican worldview once stood in contrast to what people had previously been accustomed to thinking about the relationship of the planets to the Sun.

[ 31 ] Ladies and gentlemen, what is commonly referred to as self-observation—this brooding over one’s soul—is not what is meant by true self-observation in the spiritual-scientific sense. One can, of course, start from this kind of self-absorption, so to speak, in order to find the path toward true self-observation, but true self-observation must be undertaken in a much, much more serious way, in a much, much more energetic way. For this self-observation involves something that even serious researchers of the soul have declared impossible. I have already mentioned here in earlier lectures that serious philosophers, when speaking of the human soul, cite as a characteristic feature that the life of the soul, in a certain sense, cannot observe itself. They point out: If one has memorized a poem and wants to recite it, and at the same time wants to observe oneself while reciting, one begins to stutter; one interrupts oneself. One cannot simultaneously perform such an act, stand by, and observe oneself. This is cited precisely as a characteristic feature of the human soul—that it is incapable of doing so.

[ 32 ] It must be said, however: For those who cite the ultimate characteristic as something entirely impossible, engaging with spiritual science is a hopeless endeavor, for what is cited as an impossibility is precisely what the spiritual scientist must attain. That very ability—the process of which one can become aware in everyday life by observing oneself while reciting and deliberately causing oneself to stutter—is precisely the ability one must acquire as a researcher of the spirit. One must, in a sense, succeed in splitting one’s inner soul life so thoroughly that one can stand as a scientific observer facing what one is doing on one side. It is not so important to learn this for the purpose of reciting a poem, although one can achieve that as well if one applies the necessary practice to it; and it will serve as good preparation for the actual practice of self-observation if one undertakes it. If one truly manages to reach the point where reciting the poem—with all its emotional nuances, of course—becomes, so to speak, automatic—if I may use that crude expression—so that one does not interrupt oneself while simultaneously observing oneself in the act of reciting; this can serve as preparation.

[ 33 ] But the important thing is not to apply this to such external matters; rather, the important thing is to apply it to one’s own inner spiritual experience; that one brings oneself to, so to speak, observe oneself in the succession of thoughts, in thinking, and in imagining, so that one can allow this thought process to unfold and, at the same time, observe this unfolding with full consciousness.

[ 34 ] Explaining exactly how to go about describing this would take us too far afield here. You can read about it in my books How Does One Gain Insight into the Higher Worlds?, Esoteric Science, as well as in The Mystery of Man and similar works. It is entirely possible to arrive at true self-observation in this way. This self-observation is then not merely an intellectual or mystical process, but rather something real, for it is the very first step toward the emergence of the spiritual from the merely soul-based. The spiritual experience is observed by the spirit that has truly attempted to step out of the soul. But that is only one side of what is to be observed.

[ 35 ] Now it must be said that what I referred to earlier as renunciation—the resignation from attempting to penetrate the supersensible realm using concepts and laws borrowed from the sensory world—that this, when it has become a virtue, when it extends throughout one’s entire spiritual life, truly brings about more than what is commonly called modesty in everyday life; it brings about an inner, intellectual modesty and humility that alone makes one capable of practicing the kind of self-observation I have just spoken of. Before one has radiated this intellectual virtue throughout one’s soul—I might say—one’s soul is not organized intimately enough to be able to carry out such self-observation.

[ 36 ] On the other hand, however, something else is necessary. What, then, is achieved when one attains such self-observation? Well, ladies and gentlemen, when one practices such self-observation, what is achieved is that, in a certain sense, the human being gains voluntary control over that which otherwise constantly disrupts the workings of the soul; that, in a certain sense, the will is strengthened, invigorated, and driven out of the soul into the spiritual realm. But something else must also be strived for: the will—the will itself—must take on a different direction, a different mode of activity within the soul. It can achieve this only if a person does not apply this will to external activities, as is customary in mere external life, but rather applies it to inner activities. After all, human beings are accustomed—as they live within their sensory perceptions and in the ideas derived from these sensory perceptions—to allowing the sensory world to instruct them through the sequence in which they form their thoughts. People let one thought follow another because they are confronted first with one event in the sensory world, then with a second, and so on.

[ 37 ] People allow their thoughts to follow the sequence of external experiences, and in everyday life they are not accustomed to directing their will into this life of thought—into the inner processes of the soul that are precisely what should be observed through true self-observation. But this is precisely what they must do if they are to become spiritual researchers; they must try—and try for a long time, energetically, and patiently—to direct their will, so to speak, into their thinking and their imagination. They must try again and again to carry out that soul process which, in an objective, genuine sense, can be called meditation or inner contemplation—not a dreamy, mystical contemplation, but one that represents a real inner process, so that through it the will is truly directed into thinking. Whereas one is otherwise accustomed to structuring one image after another according to external images, in special moments of life one strives to form images that are now arranged in a clear and orderly manner solely through inner will; one guides the will into the life of the imagination. Through this, one learns to recognize the relationship that can exist between a person’s inner will and their life of imagination. This is something one never comes to know in ordinary consciousness.

[ 38 ] To make my point particularly clear on this matter, I would like to offer the following explanation: Just imagine—I will speak about this in even greater detail tomorrow—just imagine that a person lives half-asleep in dreams. He knows full well that these dreams are images that flit past his soul according to certain laws. These images ebb and flow. A person cannot control them through his will, since they initially appear as dream images in ordinary life. If a person could manage to rouse himself in this half-sleep to such an extent that he could string the dream images together at will, then he would be in roughly the state I am actually referring to now—the state of self-created mental images in which one’s own will reigns.

[ 39 ] That’s not the point. Everything that has been discussed so far is merely an exercise; it is only there to prepare us. For, of course, one achieves nothing real by merely behaving in such a way that, through inner will, one strings together such images—knowing full well that they are not memories but arise from within the body.

[ 40 ] Simply stringing together such self-made, limited ideas does not lead to anything special. But one does arrive at something special when one approaches such inner exercises with the mindset that makes self-denial an inner intellectual virtue. Then, little by little, one begins to notice something quite special in the life of the soul. And it may well be said here: What I am saying here about spiritual research—through which one truly penetrates into spiritual realms—no one should imagine—if it is to be presented as having been developed to a certain degree that empowers one to speak about the spiritual world—no one should imagine it in such a way as to say that natural science has its own rigorous method that must be learned, and that this takes years; and then spiritual research comes along and wants to speak of such inner concepts. — No, that is not how it is. Precisely the person who has familiarized themselves with the methods of the natural sciences, who has scientifically studied the methods of biology and physiology, and who has then entered into what is called spiritual research, knows: No matter how difficult it may be and how much patience it requires over the years to master the scientific method—one can only achieve a significant result in the field of spiritual research by applying even more patience and even more work, even if this work is purely spiritual.

[ 41 ] To truly attain something substantial that can penetrate the spiritual world—even in the direction just described in the introduction of the will into the world of thought, through the inner practices or exercises you can find in the books mentioned—years of inner work are necessary. One need only be familiar with both to realize that the seriousness of one is in no way inferior to that of the other.

[ 42 ] But what is important is not the practice itself, but rather that one arrives at what can be attained precisely through the spirit of renunciation; that is, that one gradually realizes: It is not your will alone—not the will you have introduced into your thinking and imagining—that now lives in what is taking place in your soul, but something else lives there. Just as we previously had the external world, where one event followed another and one object stood opposite another, we used to direct the consequences of our ideas along the thread of external events. Now we have discovered something that, as an inner spiritual reality, causes one idea to emerge from another—something that makes it necessary not to string together just any idea after another, or just any inner soul experience after another, but to link one soul experience to another, and a third to the second, which corresponds to an inner process, a continuous flow that has now been discovered in the life of the soul. Just as the outer sensory world is an inner physical reality, so is the spiritual in the life of the soul.

[ 43 ] Anyone who believes that arbitrariness or prejudice still remains there does not understand this inner necessity, which is just as real as the outer necessity—both of which constitute an inner experience, a spiritual experience, just as the outer experience is acquired through the thread of the physical world in accordance with a necessity. Anyone who has been engaged in spiritual research for decades is certainly entitled to speak from their own experience and to say: Whatever this experience itself may be, it already shows—through its very nature, through its own character—that arbitrariness ceases, that the spirit links one soul experience to another. This becomes evident when one makes an assumption—for instance, when seeking to penetrate a certain realm of the spiritual—and bases that assumption on the concepts of the sensory world, believing that this or that spiritual entity or spiritual process must manifest in a particular way — in how many countless cases does what is so significant, what is so profoundly decisive for the true spiritual researcher, become evident? It becomes evident that things turn out differently than one had expected when forming a judgment based on the external sensory world. It becomes evident that, once one has grasped the inner spiritual necessity, one arrives at results that are such that one could not have formed any conception of them at all based on the external sensory world, because they are entirely at odds with it. Anyone who has experienced this—which is incomparable to the external sensory world—knows what it means: Our inner soul experiences are strung together by the spirit that has been discovered there, just as the ideas we form about the external sensory world are otherwise strung together by the physical sequence of events.

[ 44 ] And these two things come together: the inner strength one has gained through true self-observation, and what one has thus attained as the objective course of the spirit, which is just like the course of the external sensory world. These two things come together, and this leads the human soul into a spiritual realm to which it belongs through its spiritual organs, just as it leads the physical researcher into the organization of the body when he proceeds from hunger and so on to non-physical processes within the body. One can explore the spiritual realm starting from the soul. Then, dear friends, certain phenomena in human soul life become, I would say, something entirely new.

[ 45 ] When the spiritual researcher has been touched in this way by the true form and character of the spirit, certain phenomena of human soul life take on a completely different meaning, especially when the human being has thus reached the point where, through self-observation, he is able to recognize the spiritual aspect that exerts a guiding influence on the life of the soul. Only then does he begin to form a true conception, a true understanding of what we call the human “I,” which, in a sense, turns only as much of the spirit of the human soul toward ordinary human consciousness as, on the other hand, the body turns toward it through its external form, physiognomy, and so on.

[ 46 ] One cannot explore the self by philosophizing about it, but only by making the will think and bringing thought to the will. Through self-observation, the will becomes thinking, and thought becomes willing. But this is just as much a “change of mind” as metabolism is sought and found in the physical realm. Then one does not approach the “I” through philosophizing, speculation, or hypotheses, but rather by first truly observing the “I” spiritually; only then can one form a correct view of the “I.” This correct view then testifies to the fact that it is not at all possible, in ordinary life and ordinary consciousness, to have a correct view of the “I.” In this ordinary consciousness—which, after all, also prevails in the natural sciences—it becomes apparent that the “I” develops gradually, in step with the development of the body.

[ 47 ] The child does not yet seem to possess this “I.” As the body becomes more fully formed, as it increasingly takes on its definitive shape, the “I” seems to emerge from the body. This is a completely self-evident view for ordinary consciousness. Ordinary consciousness cannot hold any other view. And this is precisely what one must achieve as a researcher of the spirit: to acknowledge the validity of ordinary consciousness within its own realm, and not to become intolerant, because one comes to understand that, within the realm in which materialism operates, no other view is possible.

[ 48 ] But when one proceeds to the observation of the spirit, and thereby to the observation of the “I,” one realizes where the error of ordinary consciousness lies. This error of ordinary consciousness can be characterized as follows: The person who reflects on the relationship between the lungs and air knows that the lungs and air belong together. But because external observation is sufficient here to grasp the true relationship, no one who knows things only superficially will come to any other conclusion than that air comes from outside, enters the lungs, and is then exhaled from the lungs and passes into the external atmosphere. Since external observation is sufficient here, no one can arrive at the view that the lungs themselves produce air, that the air coming out of the lungs somehow originates within the lungs themselves, or that the lungs generate air.

[ 49 ] What one gains through ordinary sensory observation regarding the relationship between the lungs and air, one gains through higher spiritual observation regarding this human “I.” By conducting the observation in the way I have described, one comes to know that this true human “I” has just as little to do with human physicality—with everything we inherit from our father and mother—as the air that comes from outside has anything to do, in its very essence, with the lungs. One comes to know the “I” in its true essence and realizes that the body, in a sense, “inhales” this “I” by taking on what is inherited through birth or conception—inhaling it from the spiritual world. Just as the volume of air that is in our lungs at a given moment has flowed in from the outside air, so too does the “I”—which existed in the spiritual world before it could even be conceived that the physical body would come into being through birth or conception—flow from the spiritual into this physicality; and when the human being passes through the gate of death, it flows out again, just as the air, after being consumed by the body from the lungs, flows out again. One learns to recognize the relationship of the “I” to a spiritual world that is independent of the human physical world, just as one learns through physics the relationships of the air to an external world of air that is independent of the human lungs.

[ 50 ] This is the ascent toward true knowledge of the “I.” This is the first thing one recognizes, so to speak, about the spiritual nature of the “I”; and starting from there, one learns more and more as spiritual observation deepens through the methods described—which you can find in the books mentioned—and as spiritual observation deepens, one comes to know more and more about this “I,” about the “I” that is independent of bodily life—just as one comes to know more and more about the body when one uses physical methods to delve down from hunger and thirst to the chemical and physical processes taking place within the body. However, as one learns to perceive this spiritual aspect—which represents the first glimpse of the “I”—one comes to recognize that the “I,” so to speak, is embedded in spiritual entities. Just as one dissects the body into its individual parts in order to understand its physical nature, so must one connect the “I” to other spiritual entities that can be observed through spiritual observation using the methods I have described. One connects the “I” and finds a complete “I”-organism that, however, extends beyond the individual physical life.

[ 51 ] Starting from the “I”—specifically, the aspect of the “I” that is turned toward the life of the soul—one finds it embedded in a spiritual life that exists before birth and remains beyond the threshold of death. In the spiritual world, one finds a spiritual-soul world that is, at first, independent of the physical world. The “I” belongs to this spiritual-soul world. The first things one finds there are spiritual-soul beings with whom the human “I” is connected; those spiritual-soul beings that are human souls before or after death, with whom the human being himself is connected; and spiritual-soul beings of a different kind. Just as one finds the animal kingdom beneath the human realm here by observing the sensory world, one first encounters a spiritual-soul realm to which the human “I” belongs, into which it is organically integrated, and within which the “I” undergoes its “spiritual transformation”; a spiritual-soul realm that is, at first, purely spiritual-soul in nature.

[ 52 ] Then one finds a realm that is superior to this one, just as the plant kingdom is superior to the animal kingdom; superior because this higher kingdom now contains those spiritual essences that are connected to us not only spiritually and soulfully, not only to our inner life, but which are more powerful because they can establish harmony between the spiritual-soul and the physical-bodily. For our spiritual-soul aspect must be brought into connection with the physical-bodily aspect. This relationship is guided by higher spiritual beings than those one first encounters.

[ 53 ] When venturing into the field of spiritual research, one must not hesitate to speak of these concrete spiritual and soul entities that are actually discovered. Just as one discovers, when one turns one’s gaze downward to animals, plants, and minerals—the physical realms—so too are the spiritual realms discovered, within which the “I” undergoes its spiritual transformation. And one goes on to discover what the secret actually is: that this “I” enters the body and, in turn, leaves the body. One learns, in fact, to recognize how this “I” relates to the human body.

[ 54 ] Here, distinguished guests, we are indeed entering a realm that is still quite distant from today’s worldview, but one that will increasingly become integrated into that worldview as we look toward the future. If one considers the “I” in this way, one will find that this “I” has a relationship—connections—with the spiritual-soul beings of the higher spiritual realms, which, so to speak, tower above the mere natural realms; but in the “spiritual metabolism”—the analogue of physical metabolism—this “I” undergoes a certain process. At first, it can integrate only with spiritual-soul beings. It is there before birth; it is there after death. It is there when it bears its purely spiritual essence as its own organization and is integrated into the rest of the spiritual world. As the “I” traverses this spiritual world—I would say, as it undergoes its development within this spiritual world—it increasingly finds its own orientation and increasingly separates itself from the spiritual world. Through spiritual research, we arrive at conceptions that depict the “I” as standing in a special spiritual relationship with many, many spiritual beings long before birth or after death. Then, as its development progresses, it separates itself, as it were, and becomes, so to speak, self-reliant. As it separates and limits itself in this way, it develops a force of attraction toward the physical. This force of attraction drives it to unite—just as air unites with the lungs—with what appears as the physical through the mere flow of heredity in the course of the human generation, into which the “I” enters when it comes from the spiritual world.

[ 55 ] In this way, one gains a true insight into the eternal aspect of human physicality—of human beinghood itself—not through philosophical speculation, but by laying this eternal aspect bare, by truly entering into it with one’s soul. This is how spiritual observation begins. One must simply be cautious; one must simply be clear that what I have described—the striving for self-observation, the striving to introduce the will into the human world of imagination, this striving for a transformation of the spirit—that all of this is, in essence, merely preparation, and that one must wait for everything else to unfold. Just as one must wait to see what the sensory world communicates when it penetrates the soul from the outside, so must one wait to see what the spiritual world communicates. Striving for self-observation, striving to introduce the will into the world of imagination—this is what one must do to prepare the soul to experience the spirit. Then spiritual life begins. But this spiritual life must reach into the spiritual-soul realm.

[ 56 ] Ladies and gentlemen, these are, in a few strokes, the paths that lead to viewing true psychological life—in thinking, feeling, and willing—as merely an expression of the spiritual, just as hunger, thirst, and the need to breathe must be regarded as psychological expressions of the physical. This leads to truly distinguishing the eternal-spiritual from the psychological as well.

[ 57 ] Tomorrow we will describe how that which constitutes the eternal aspect of the human being already extends into ordinary consciousness as a revelation from the unconscious. Today I wanted to describe, in principle, how one ascends from the soul to the spirit. This description, which is a description of the [method of knowledge] in spiritual research, does indeed still seem quite paradoxical in light of what are today’s common concepts. But perhaps you have come to see that spiritual science, with its scientific approach, takes its subject as seriously and rigorously as natural science can take its own method of research. And just as natural science leads to the transitory, to the fleeting, so spiritual science leads to the eternal, to the imperishable, from which the transitory itself first presents itself as something that can be explained.

[ 58 ] One could say: If one stands on the ground of spiritual science, then one also gains an overview of what is presented in natural science. Only then does one truly recognize the value of natural science. One can then evaluate it from the perspective of spiritual science. If one remains confined to natural science, one will arrive at the judgment and belief that rigorous science is possible only on the basis of the sensory world and cannot rise to the eternal. If one stands on the foundation of spiritual science, one understands why the natural scientist must say such things when he remains confined to the realm of natural science. But through the development of this ordinary consciousness, through the unveiling of the powers slumbering in the soul—which are spiritual powers—one recognizes that human beings can penetrate into the eternal aspect of their being, into what is truly immortal within them, for this immortality reveals itself through its own nature. Just as the redness of a rose does not need to be proven, so too does that which appears as spirit prove itself to pass through birth and death when one is able to observe it.

[ 59 ] However, those who stand on the ground of spiritual science also have a broad view of the natural sciences; they allow them their due place. They do not act like those who think purely in terms of the natural sciences, who—consciously or unconsciously—seek to undermine spiritual research and pull the rug out from under it. Therefore, it can safely be said: The spiritual researcher has nothing to fear. He need not fear the objections raised from this or that quarter, for he can recognize the value of these objections and can also see why they must be raised. Therefore, he may say: We have no need to dissuade anyone from acknowledging the advances and methods of the natural sciences. On the contrary. The researcher of the spiritual sciences can say, especially to those who wish to delve into the natural sciences: Turn to the natural sciences; if you do not merely view them through the eyes of the scientific worldview, but rather through the eyes of spiritual scientific research, you will not only find no contradictions between the natural sciences and the spiritual sciences, but you will find confirmation everywhere in the natural sciences—revelations of what is stated on the basis of spiritual science.

[ 60 ] Nor should one believe that the spiritual researcher is afraid to dissuade those to whom he wishes to speak from holding any religious beliefs. The most misleading notion is the idea that one seeks to create some kind of religious divide between a religious belief and spiritual research. In a fine essay in Christliche Welt, Dr. Rittelmeyer has made clear how spiritual research, in particular, can serve as a foundation for religious life in an objective sense—that this spiritual science does not deter one from a truly religious life, but rather leads one toward it. Spiritual science has no need to deter people from religious life. Just as it can say, “Turn to the natural sciences to come to know spiritual science,” so too can it say, “Turn to religion, get to know religion, learn to experience religion, and you will find that what spiritual science is able to give to the soul actually strengthens and grounds religious life.” Go into life itself, and you will find that the concepts provided by spiritual science do not dull one’s sensitivity to life, that they do not render one unsuited for life, but rather that they make the spirit agile and skillful, and thereby also make a person’s physical life agile and skillful, placing them actively within existence. Practical life, too, will serve as a confirmation, an outward proof of what spiritual research is able to offer human beings.

[ 61 ] This spiritual research must—because natural science must remain pure, must keep its focus solely on what is nature, and must not mix this nature with anything spiritual or psychological—stand alongside natural science as an equal. Spiritual research must penetrate from the soul to the spirit, just as natural science penetrates from the soul to the outer body. Then the time will come when people truly grasp the very essence, the fundamental concepts of spiritual science; the time will come when they will also see in the proper light what natural scientists seek to do—to undermine the foundations of spiritual science. If de Bois-Reymond could still say four or five decades ago, “Where the supersensible begins, science ends,” then in the future this statement will be countered by another, based on a genuine spiritual-scientific insight. For people will come to recognize the following: What, in fact, lay at the foundation when modern natural science, limiting itself solely to nature, sought to develop a system of thought, a worldview, that was clear and well-organized? One saw, as it were, that which surrounds human beings in existence, in which human beings are rooted; one saw it emerging from a certain fundamental ground. One saw it rooted in the spirit, but one could not enter into this spirit.

[ 62 ] Spiritual science shows how to enter into spiritual life. With modern natural science, one was, so to speak, in the same position with regard to the spirit—if I may use this comparison—as one would be if one saw a tree with its roots embedded in the ground. You cannot see the whole tree; the roots go down into the ground. You cannot take in the entire tree. So you dig up the tree so that you can see it all; you do not want anything about the tree to remain hidden. The tree will wither; it will no longer be able to thrive. This is what has been done with the scientific worldview. It has essentially uprooted the human being in order to gain a clearer overview. As a result, this worldview has become like the tree that has been torn from the ground. The tree must wither, and the life that springs from this worldview must also wither. Once one recognizes this, one will find the path to spiritual science. For the sake of clarity, the essence of the human being has been uprooted; for the sake of life, for the sake of true life, the human being must once again be immersed in that which is so readily called the unconscious—but which, when it reveals itself, can also be raised into the sphere of consciousness, into the sphere of true knowledge of the supersensible. Then the time will come when the insight will take firm root in the human mind that the human being is rooted in the spirit with its eternal core, and that one must penetrate to the spirit in order to truly recognize the human being in its entirety.

[ 63 ] Then people will no longer say, as you, de Bois-Reymond, do, that while science cannot discover the supernatural—not even in its simplest form—that is where science ends; rather, they will say—and the science of the future will say: Any science that is not rooted in the supernatural cannot explain existence, cannot lead into the life of existence, but can only destroy that existence. People will not say: “Where supernaturalism, the supernatural, begins, science ends,” but rather they will say: “Where humanity’s standing in the supernatural ends, there the life of science ends; there, with the abandonment of the supernatural, the death of science sets in.”