The Rudolf Steiner Archive

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

[ 1 ] Ladies and gentlemen! I took the liberty of pointing out yesterday that, from the perspective of the natural-scientific worldview—which the spiritual-scientific worldview referred to here can and must stand alongside—there is a prevailing antipathy toward the nature and the entire research method of this spiritual science, that, in a sense, a certain subjective prejudice still exists today, which makes it difficult to truly engage with and understand this spiritual science, particularly among those who believe they stand on the firm ground of natural science—on which, of course, spiritual science also stands—but who are of the opinion that no bridge to a genuine spiritual science can be built from this ground.

[ 2 ] Nevertheless, a fact regarding the inner life of contemporary humanity certainly emerged from my discussions yesterday. That is the fact that, from the perspective of the present, a deeper engagement with scientific knowledge must—and indeed does—evoke a longing to truly gain insight into that aspect of the human being which transcends the everyday, ordinary life of the soul—a life that is, after all, bound to the observation and experience of the physical-sensory world.

[ 3 ] Now, however, one might say: What has become the general worldview under the influence of scientific concepts and ideas is, in essence, proving increasingly incapable of engaging with any forms of inquiry other than those that point to what is externally perceptible, to the physical. And so, from a certain perspective, people want to investigate what lies beyond ordinary consciousness in the same sensory manner—if they want to investigate it at all, if they are not willing to do without it—as they investigate external natural phenomena.

[ 4 ] For this reason, ladies and gentlemen, it has come to pass that in recent times a certain frontier area of human experience has been taken into account by those who wish to remain firmly grounded in the natural sciences and who nevertheless yearn, in a certain way, to penetrate the mysteries of human soul life, within the realm of consciousness, which, as I have already said, is more or less bound to the sensory world. People have gradually come to realize that the mysteries of the soul’s life cannot be explored there, that manifold elements surge and well up into the human soul from unknown depths—or, one might also say, from unknown heights—which is capable of shedding far more light on what is actually the core of the human being than on what lies within ordinary consciousness. But since spiritual science—in the sense intended here—is generally regarded as something too intangible, as many say, or as something that leads one too far away from external reality, people seek to explore a kind of borderland—to explore it, I would say, in a scientific, sensory manner.

[ 5 ] Therefore, spiritual science, as understood here, has every reason to draw attention to this borderland from its own perspective and to address it from that perspective. It is the realm that, in recent times and in the present, we have become accustomed to calling the realm of the unconscious. This realm of the unconscious—it is, after all, spoken of time and again. It is also particularly important for spiritual science, as represented here, to reflect on this realm of the unconscious, because some of what comes to light in this field is interpreted in a certain way, and because, on the other hand, spiritual science is often misunderstood and conflated with what is put forward—more or less justifiably—by one side or the other regarding this borderland.

[ 6 ] The unconscious is generally understood to be that which surges and flows into conscious life from unknown realms. It would, of course, take a very long time if I were to even briefly outline everything that has been extensively presented in recent times in the scientific community across the entire globe regarding this realm of the unconscious. Within our Central European cultural life, the term “the unconscious” has, in fact, been familiar since the 1860s through the more or less popular philosophy of Eduard von Hartmann, who seeks the roots of everything a person consciously experiences in a spiritual unconscious—be it subconscious or superconscious.

[ 7 ] If I may make a personal remark by way of introduction, esteemed audience, it is this: that in contrast to the way Eduard von Hartmann approaches spiritual life—which is meant to remain unconscious to ordinary consciousness—that this approach of Eduard von Hartmann, even though it pertains to the spiritual, and yet sees in the physical-sensory world a revelation of the unconscious, of the spiritually unconscious—that Eduard von Hartmann’s worldview is, in a certain sense, diametrically opposed to the worldview I am advocating here. And as early as the 1880s, through my personal acquaintance with Eduard von Hartmann, I attempted to discuss these matters with him in great detail, even in correspondence; [I] tried to show the difference between this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science and the worldview based on the unconscious, such as that of Eduard von Hartmann. I recently discussed this difference—I would say, with a personal touch—in the February issue of the second volume of the journal Das Reich. Since that is sufficient here, I would like to summarize in a few words what is discussed there in detail. Eduard von Hartmann points out that everything a human being can manifest through their ordinary life is grounded in a spiritual unconscious. But he holds the view that this unconscious can only be accessed through logical reasoning, which deduces from the conscious—that which is perceptible through the senses—to something that remains unknown, accessible only conceptually and graspable only through hypotheses. And he points out that this unconscious is not conscious of itself in the same sense that a human being, for example, is conscious.

[ 8 ] In these two respects, spiritual science differs diametrically from Eduard von Hartmann’s view: First, spiritual science is based on the premise that human beings not only—as I explained in greater detail yesterday and pointed out in books, which provide evidence for this—that this spiritual science does not merely seek to penetrate the spiritual realm through hypotheses and logical inferences, but rather by bringing forth from the soul certain dormant forces lying within the soul—forces that, admittedly, remain subconscious to ordinary consciousness; forces that are brought up into consciousness through the strengthening and invigoration of the soul life; that these subconscious powers of the soul can enter human consciousness, so that the human being can, fully consciously—not through hypotheses, not merely through logical conclusions, but through spiritual observation—fully consciously traverse the path from the sensory to the supersensory world, so that he can observe this supersensory world just as the sensory world is observed, albeit spiritually.

[ 9 ] Spiritual science, then, represents not a hypothetical path but a path that can truly be experienced—a path leading from the sensory realm into the supersensory realm. On the other hand, spiritual science must emphasize that an unconscious spiritual realm, in which no consciousness can be found, is essentially no more valuable than the vast unconscious realm of purely material atoms and their processes—the purely physical foundation of existence. After all, what would a spiritual reality—supposed to truly underlie the sensory world—be if human beings, as individual conscious beings, were to stand out from a world that, in terms of consciousness, would be no more advanced than the unconscious world of purely physical phenomena? — Thus, spiritual science does not point to such an unconscious realm that in itself embodies unconsciouslyness, but rather to spiritual beings who stand behind the physical world, who are just as conscious as human beings themselves, and in many respects even possess a higher consciousness than human beings themselves.

[ 10 ] This is precisely what radically distinguishes the view of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science—with regard to the unconscious—from a perspective such as that of Eduard von Hartmann, which is, after all, shared by many today; which is nevertheless held by many in the same way, even if they wish to remain within the framework of natural science. Today, in particular, we will have the opportunity—by examining those unconscious phenomena in human soul life that penetrate into consciousness in a more imperfect way than spiritual research itself—to demonstrate, precisely by observing these unconscious phenomena as they manifest, the manner in which spiritual research can truly penetrate the realm of spiritual life.

[ 11 ] However, I must assume today, esteemed audience, that through certain inner soul processes—described in principle yesterday—which, if one wishes to be pedantic, one might call exercises—that through such soul processes, both what constitutes ordinary soul life and what constitutes purely mystical soul life can be approached in such a way that the human being ascends from this soul life to the spiritual—just as, on the other hand, through scientific observation, one descends from the soul to the physical—and rises to the contemplation of the spiritual. If one has then cultivated this perception of the spiritual—I would say, to use Goethe’s expression again—if one has then trained the “eyes of the spirit” and “spiritual ears” in one’s soul life, then one is able to survey in an entirely different way—from the perspective thus gained—that which otherwise flows into conscious human soul life from unknown depths or even from unknown heights.

[ 12 ] Well, the borderlands in question cover a vast field. Today I want to highlight just a few of these borderlands, which can, however, shed some light on the rest of the unconscious in human soul life and its manifestations. I want to highlight that which is initially familiar to every human being—very familiar, in fact—but which nonetheless enters human existence in a mysterious way; I want to discuss the human world of dreams. And I would then like to go on to discuss the realm that in recent times has, one might say, become the darling of all those who wish to penetrate the spiritual, the supersensible world, yet shy away from practicing true spiritual science—the vast realm of what is called somnambulism and the related phenomena of mediumship and the like. I will then point to another field, about which it is well known that it springs from the unconscious depths of the soul’s life when it manifests in its true form; I will briefly address the field of artistic appreciation and artistic creation. And I would then like to point to a realm that perhaps some do not attribute to the unconscious and its manifestations, but which—at least for anyone who considers it rationally—extends into human life as something semi-conscious: the realm of human destiny, and I would like to address this realm from the perspective of spiritual science, from the perspective of genuine and true clairvoyance.

[ 13 ] I am reluctant to use the term “clairvoyance” because it tends to be conflated with all sorts of amateurish and other nonsense; but in the context in which I intend to use it today, it may be justified by the subject matter itself. I wish to point out what the field of spiritual research itself is, since it is precisely this field that aims to bring the spiritual unconscious into consciousness. And because I want to address the other phenomena of the unconscious—which I have so far only mentioned and intend to characterize clearly from a spiritual-scientific perspective later on—I must refrain today, due to time constraints, from characterizing these phenomena from a natural-scientific perspective as well— since these phenomena can be characterized from a spiritual scientific perspective—precisely by means of the spiritual scientific method itself—I would like to begin by outlining a few characteristic features of the spiritual scientist’s actual experience of the supersensible spiritual world.

[ 14 ] This is what happens when the human soul has truly progressed to the point, through spiritual research, where it can face the spiritual world in the same way that one faces the physical-sensory world with physical-sensory eyes, ears, and the other sense organs—that is, when a person can perceive the spiritual world and, in a certain way, discern its relationships to the physical-sensory world.

[ 15 ] Yesterday I pointed out that it is truly unfounded when objections are raised from this or that quarter against spiritual science, claiming that what it presents is in fact something gathered from the sensory-physical world and projected into the spiritual world. And I pointed out that anyone who has conscientiously applied the methods of spiritual science over the years knows how often they find themselves in a situation where what they experience in the spiritual world presents itself as something entirely different from anything that can be experienced in the physical-sensory world, in the realm of transience. They know that it is clear to them that all the concepts and ideas they have acquired in the physical-sensory world are of no use to them in the spiritual world. But the very experience of the spiritual world itself—the entire mood and state of the soul—is such that it differs radically from the rest of the soul’s life. And today I would like to begin by outlining some characteristic features of this experience in the spirit.

[ 16 ] Of course, if one only takes a superficial look at what is meant here by “spiritual science,” one might say: Well, the spiritual researcher lives in a kind of self-deception; he combines something he has formed within himself as an idea, and—perhaps because he has overlooked or forgotten how he derived these ideas from the sensory world—he combines something and sees in it revelations of a spiritual world. — Yes, ladies and gentlemen, if what the spiritual researcher experiences as a spiritual experience were, in fact, the same as concepts and ideas derived from the sensory world, then he and others might naturally become suspicious of this spiritual science. But that is not the case.

[ 17 ] A fundamental characteristic of everything we can observe—everything in our thoughts concerning the sensory world—manifests itself quite differently when compared to truly spiritual experiences. The images we form of the physical, sensory world are imprinted on the soul, and after some time we can recall these images; they can be retrieved from the treasure trove of our memory. The spiritual experiences that the spiritual researcher has, however, exhibit a completely different quality. They cannot be recalled directly as spiritual experiences.

[ 18 ] What truly presents itself to the soul as spiritual experiences after the soul has been trained in spiritual vision is not a mere idea. For a mere idea can be incorporated into memory, but this spiritual experience, as such, cannot be incorporated directly into the soul as a memory; rather, the spiritual experience itself has passed, just as the direct perception of a tree that we have been looking at for a certain time—and from which we have walked away—has passed; we must return to it in order to see it in its reality. We retain the mere idea in memory, but as for the actual tree, we must go back to it if we wish to have it before us. Just as when we have walked away from the tree, the tree no longer lives before the soul, so too does the spiritual experience no longer live before the soul once we have concluded it. From this it follows, ladies and gentlemen, that spiritual experience is not merely a combination of representations, ideas, and thoughts, for these can be recalled. Now one might say: Well, what is it then, if one could never describe such a spiritual experience if it were to be forgotten; one could never say anything about it, for once it has been experienced, it would have vanished from the life of the human soul. — But that is not the case. Just as we can form concepts of a sensory reality, a sensory entity, or a sensory process and then retain that concept, so too can the spiritual researcher form concepts of what he has experienced spiritually; and this concept can then be recalled. And what matters is that, in truly inner experience, the spiritual researcher can distinguish his experiences from the ideas he has formed about them, just as one can distinguish, in outer experience, sensory perception from the idea one carries away from it.

[ 19 ] This point is evident in yet another way: If one wishes to have a spiritual experience a second or third time in the same way, it is not enough simply to remember it—that is, to recall the image of it. For one is then clearly aware that one does not have the experience in its full richness, but only a pale image of it. If one wishes to stand once more before the spiritual experience, one must once again awaken the hidden, slumbering powers of the soul; one must once again place oneself before this experience. And with certain particularly characteristic phenomena of the spiritual world, one can only recall the manner in which one arrived at the experience; one can then evoke that manner again; one can have it a second, a third, or a fourth time, but there can be no question of the experience being subject to the same laws as those governing mere imagination. — That is one point. You can see from this that the spiritual researcher is neither a dreamer nor a fantasist, but is fully aware, through inner self-observation, of what actually leads him to his true insights.

[ 20 ] A second point is that an experience in the humanities relates to our inner life in a completely different way than any other experience that ordinary consciousness undergoes here in the physical-sensory world. What would our entire physical life be if we could not acquire certain skills, certain habits; if, after doing something, we were not able to do it better the second time we tried; if the repetition of any activity were of no use to us? The repetition of an action is incorporated into our ordinary experience as a habit. Spiritual experiences cannot be incorporated into the life of the soul in the same habitual way.

[ 21 ] To their surprise, many who are beginners in spiritual experience have this experience. It is relatively easy—I say relatively easy—if one undergoes the spiritual exercises described in more detail yesterday in my book How Does One Gain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds? —one can reach certain initial experiences of the spiritual world relatively quickly; and beginners are overjoyed when they truly have their first spiritual experiences. But they are all the more surprised when these spiritual experiences cannot be easily repeated—or not at all. And in fact, when one has such spiritual experiences so easily, one can try again and again, one can be distressed that one once experienced this or that, but one cannot simply evoke the experience again; one does not become more skilled at it. What one experiences through the spirit cannot be turned into a habit. On the contrary. With each repetition, it becomes increasingly difficult to achieve that repetition. And this is precisely part of what one must practice: that if one wishes to repeat certain experiences, one must make efforts of a completely different nature the second and third time around. Spiritual experience stands in direct contrast to physical experience, dulling the senses and driving out habit.

[ 22 ] And a third characteristic of spiritual experience is that, strange as it may sound, true spiritual experience—which has nothing to do with any activity involving the body—actually flashes by in the blink of an eye. Yes, that is one reason why so few people still have spiritual experiences today. People are accustomed, from their external lives, to needing a certain amount of time to take in anything that enters their field of vision. According to this ordinary external experience, the situation usually presents itself in such a way that, before a person becomes aware of the experience, it is already over—if it is a spiritual experience.

[ 23 ] What is therefore necessary above all else in order to have truly spiritual experiences is what one might call presence of mind. Ladies and gentlemen, anyone who wishes to have spiritual experiences must practice—even in ordinary physical life—making quick decisions in certain situations that life presents, that impose themselves upon them; they must be able to grasp the situation swiftly, without hesitation, without wasting time, and without constantly turning everything over and over again. People who are unwilling to engage in such self-discipline—to make quick decisions in certain situations and to see immediately what must be done—are also not suited to taking control of their own souls in such a way that they can easily have spiritual experiences. The person who, even in the outer physical world, finds their way into situations not by turning the matter every which way and dithering, but who, when faced with a situation, tries to act out of swift resolve and then stands firm in that decision—such a person is well prepared to have spiritual experiences. For, dear friends, spiritual experiences must be achieved inwardly just as quickly as one must swiftly grasp certain life situations and make decisions which, if not made quickly, might lead to misfortune or even ruin. — I am not saying that a spiritual experience can lead to ruin; it simply will not take place in that case. This attitude toward it is necessary.

[ 24 ] I would like to mention a fourth characteristic of spiritual experience, which is this: Spiritual experiences, my dear friends, are always individual. In the outer physical world, people are accustomed to categorizing everything into certain classes—to categorizing their entire lives into certain classes. People speak, of course, of the famous—or one might even say infamous—“Formula F.” Everything must fall into some category; everything must be classified in some way. It is only through this that people believe order can be brought into the world of phenomena—that everything belongs in certain categories. Just imagine for a moment how one would cope with nature—which is rightly divided into certain categories—if everything were individual: just one lion, not an entire class of lions. And just imagine what human life would be like if, in every single case, a person could not, for example, open a law book! If they could not neatly slot the individual case into a specific category, but instead had to face it with individual judgment.

[ 25 ] In the physical world, people are quite accustomed to reducing everything to patterns and schematics. One must thoroughly break this habit—not in relation to the external physical world, for then one would become ill-suited to it, but in the realm of spiritual experiences—one must break the habit of categorizing things, of organizing them into classes, orders, and laws. What is experienced in the spiritual world always presents itself as something individual.

[ 26 ] That is why the findings of spiritual science are so controversial. When we speak of a finding of spiritual science—for example, I have no qualms, after having lectured here for so many years, about applying the very essence of this spiritual science to concrete situations— let’s say I explain that the sudden death of a human being has such an effect in the spiritual world that, at the very moment when the sudden destruction of their physical body occurs—when misfortune has struck them—the person spiritually experiences as much as they could have experienced over twenty or thirty years of life; if one describes it this way, it should refer only to the individual case. Then, of course, someone else comes along and says: Sudden deaths bring about this and that. He would like to formulate a law out of it.

[ 27 ] Such laws, I would say, are the enemy of true spiritual scientific knowledge, because in spiritual scientific experience every single case represents something individual, something unique; because one must be surprised, because something new can always present itself—and yet human beings would so much like to go through life clinging to the old. One can write down the subtlest experiences of the external physical world in little booklets and then slip these little booklets into one’s vest pocket. It is impossible to do the same with regard to spiritual scientific insights. Hence the varied presentations that the spiritual scientist must offer. Those among my esteemed audience who have attended my lectures frequently over the many years I have now been speaking here will have heard me address similar topics time and again, yet never in exactly the same way—but always varied and individualized in one way or another. For example, last winter I spoke on the same topic in a wide variety of German cities, sometimes speaking on the same topic day after day, but each time addressing it in a different way, presenting the same ideas in various ways. Insights from the spiritual sciences place demands on the spirit that can be described as the flexibility of that spirit, so that one can say: What matters is not so much the content of the words—the immediate content of the words—but rather that this content of the words is drawn from the spirit itself and spoken.

[ 28 ] You can see from this, esteemed audience, that when we ascend from the transitory to the imperishable, when we draw near to that to which human beings also belong with their imperishable, eternal core of being, it is always necessary to adopt a completely different state of mind and spiritual disposition. It is therefore entirely understandable, indeed self-evident, that spiritual science is not only perceived as difficult to understand, but that it is also met with hostility, misunderstood, and confused with all manner of things. Indeed, as some have said—just recently, in fact—those who prefer to hear only what they have always heard find it provocative. Of course, it seems provocative to those who merely wish to have their old, familiar dogmas rehashed. So it is not merely that what spiritual science has to say about the eternal and the spiritual differs from what exists in sensory-physical reality; rather, the state of the soul in relation to the spirit itself differs from the state of the soul in relation to sensory-physical reality. With such a state of mind—as I have now described in terms of its individual characteristic features—one approaches that which passes through the human being through births and deaths, that which is the eternal core of the human being, and that which, as the spiritual, belongs to the spiritual world just as the human being, as a physical-bodily creature, belongs to physical nature with its realms.

[ 29 ] What spiritual science discovers in this way is something that is initially unconscious to ordinary consciousness, but it can be brought into that ordinary consciousness. This is the essence of the spiritual scientific method: it seeks to reveal what initially lies hidden as an unconscious aspect of the human soul in ordinary life. For spiritual science brings nothing new to light, nothing it has invented, but rather that which, as the eternal spiritual core of the human being—to use yesterday’s expression—undergoes a “spiritual transformation” just as the physical body undergoes metabolism; this is present in every human being. The spiritual researcher brings to light nothing other than what is active and present in every human being. It is his task to bring into consciousness only that which otherwise remains unconscious. The spiritual researcher speaks of nothing other than that which is the foundation for everything from which every human being speaks, thinks, and acts. It is just that the spiritual realm is, for ordinary consciousness, either subconscious or superconscious—in short, unconscious.

[ 30 ] Yet there are various things that intrude into the realm of ordinary mental life which, when judged from the perspective of that ordinary mental life, have something dazzling and something fluctuating about them. What is meant here belongs precisely to those borderlands of which I have just spoken. And as such a borderland, everyone is familiar, first and foremost, with the seemingly so ordinary and yet so enigmatic, strange realm of dream life. This dream life, which intrudes with its images into ordinary psychological life, presents the researcher with entirely different puzzles than it does to those who merely—I might say—let it flit past them and, at most, seek to embellish it with a few superstitious notions.

[ 31 ] Much could be said about the external characteristics of this dream life, but in order to characterize it from a spiritual scientific perspective, I wish only to highlight a few characteristic features—those features that will serve specifically to help us understand the very nature of this dream life.

[ 32 ] Perhaps everyone knows that a large number of dreams occur in such a way that they can be called “sensory-stimulus dreams,” as some philosophical reflections on the world of dreams have already done. The dream world we experience shares a fundamental similarity with the unconscious world of sleep. When a person is in unconscious sleep, they are cut off from their environment both through their senses and through their limbs. In the room where we lie sleeping, nothing in our surroundings—if we are truly in dreamless sleep—has any effect on our senses. We do not think about anything in our surroundings; nor do we act in this truly dreamless sleep. We do not relate to our surroundings; in a certain sense, we are isolated from what surrounds us.

[ 33 ] This is precisely what characterizes the world of dreams: that while dreaming, a person actually remains in this state of isolation; even if it appears to be broken in the case of sensory-stimulus dreams, this break is only apparent. What are sensory-stimulus dreams? Well, everyone is familiar with [them]. Let’s say a person dreams of horses trotting by; they wake up and can immediately recognize that it is the pocket watch they set aside—the pocket watch with its ticking. Through some particular sensitivity of the ear occurring at that moment, they have perceived this ticking. But this does not occur in the same way that perception takes place in the external world through the normal senses; rather, what acts through the senses is dramatized. Thus, the person does not establish a relationship with the environment through their senses; they remain in the isolation that sleep has given them. Whatever acts upon their senses is transformed psychologically; they thus remain isolated within their inner psychological life. Such stimulus-induced dreams can, of course, also be triggered from within. It is always evident that even a stimulus emanating from one’s own physicality is transformed psychologically. For example, one dreams of a boiling stove and hears the bubbling—our heartbeat has grown stronger; this is symbolized to us by the boiling stove. Even our own physicality thus remains in the same relationship to us as it does during dreamless sleep; even what originates as a stimulus from our own physicality is transformed psychologically. Thus, even in a dream, we remain in the same relationship to our own physicality as we are during dreamless sleep—isolated even from our own physicality. Everyone knows that in dreams they undertake entire journeys—even journeys they cannot undertake in waking life—journeys in the blink of an eye. But at the same time, one knows that none of this leads to a change in one’s relationship to the external world, as is evident in truly waking action. Even with regard to what a person experiences as the relationship of their being to some dreamed-up environment, even there the person’s relationship to the external world does not change.

[ 34 ] Thus we can say: What is characteristic of the dream is that, precisely with regard to one important feature, it does not remove the person from the situation in which he or she, with his or her psychological, spiritual, and physical constitution, relates to the environment and to himself or herself through his or her senses, movements, and own body. But this also sets the dream apart from all the other unconscious realms, which I will still have to characterize today. This sets the dream apart from everything that is truly based on some kind of change in the human being’s relationship to the external world. This demonstrates that, even from an external perspective, the dream—this demonstrates that the dream must not be confused with any kind of pathological psychological experience; it testifies that the dream does not alter a person’s relationship to the external world and to their own body; that, therefore, even when viewed purely superficially, it must be regarded as something healthy, not as something pathological in human psychological life, as it appears in normal human psychological life.

[ 35 ] A characteristic feature of the dream experience—one that is particularly important for the following considerations—is that, as the dream unfolds, it shows that the person ceases to logically organize the dream phenomena, the successive dream images. The person steps outside of ordinary logic. People do not reason logically in dreams. — There is, however, an objection to this. — The researcher of the spiritual realm is always aware of the objections that can be raised. Certainly, the course of some dreams is such that one can say: The images are logically strung together. But the fact remains: If one observes closely, one sees that whenever one applies logic during a dream, one dreams nothing other than reminiscences from life; these were already logically strung together beforehand. What was logically sequenced in life is what one dreams again, but in the dream itself one does not reason logically. Thus, what appears as logic in human psychological life is absent from the dream’s plot. Likewise absent are what one might call moral dispositions and moral views of human action. Everyone knows what they are capable of in a dream. Everyone knows that in a dream they accomplish things—and attribute them to themselves as the dreamer—that they would harshly condemn in waking life. In a dream, not only does logic cease, but so does the moral outlook on life. — These are two important characteristics that we must bear in mind if we wish to explore the nature of the dream.

[ 36 ] Now, one thing is certain: a great deal can be said about dream life from an external, physical standpoint. We will not address that today. What is at issue here is that, from a purely external, scientific perspective, the nature of the dream—the true nature of the dream—cannot be understood, for the simple reason that, for ordinary consciousness, dream life cannot be compared to anything else. The dream enters into the rest of conscious experience as a phenomenon that cannot be compared to anything else. And something that cannot be compared to anything else, that cannot be fitted into a certain pattern, that represents something individual through its uniqueness—to such a thing, a purely external, scientific approach is not applicable.

[ 37 ] It is only possible to gain an understanding of the dream and its nature from the perspective of spiritual science. For the simple reason that the spiritual scientist, through the kind of psychological development I have described today, arrives at something—a pictorial or other spiritual experience—that, in a certain respect, though radically different from the dream, is nonetheless similar to the dream in form, in the nature of the experience, and at least in the intensity of the experience. For the time being, we can leave entirely open the question of how the dream relates to reality. We do not wish to go into that now.

[ 38 ] But the scholar of the spiritual sciences knows that through his experience—which is also, at first, pictorial—he is facing a truly spiritual world, that he is experiencing a spiritual world. He can thus observe the world of dreams and characterize it from the perspective of the world he is experiencing. That is one thing. Through this, he gains an initial insight that, through the act of observation itself, reveals to him what a dream actually is within the human soul. From the standpoint of outer consciousness, ladies and gentlemen, one cannot possibly know what a dream is. The dream rises up in the life of the soul, surging like an unknown wave from the depths, but one does not know what is actually at work in the soul as the dreaming entity.

[ 39 ] Now, as the spiritual researcher enters into his spiritual research work, as I described it yesterday, he experiences a different self—the same self, but in a different form—the true “I”; he experiences the spiritual-soul aspect of the human being independently of the physical body. It must be said that this is such a horror for many people: spiritual experiences take place outside the body. Through this, the spiritual researcher knows what it means to be outside the body. He can now compare this to the world of dreams. By seeing the world of dreams on the one hand and knowing spiritual experiences on the other, he knows that what normally dreams in the soul is the same as what is spiritually experienced in the soul through spiritual research. It is one and the same thing that dreams and that is active in spiritual research; it is just that in spiritual research one faces spiritual reality, whereas in a dream—yes, that is precisely the point—whom does one face in a dream?

[ 40 ] The difference between encountering spiritual reality with one’s own self in spiritual research and in a dream is that the spiritual researcher has first prepared the soul to truly enter the spiritual world, where one now perceives just as one otherwise perceives with the eyes and ears in the physical world; through spiritual research, he learns to recognize that the human being leaves the body during sleep. But because he lacks the organs to perceive there, his consciousness remains dull and unconscious—as they say—from the moment he falls asleep until he wakes up.

[ 41 ] Now, when a person has fallen asleep, their spiritual-soul aspect remains active. The spiritual researcher can compare what he observes in the spiritual world with what the unconscious spiritual-soul aspect experiences from the moment of falling asleep until waking up. The spiritual-soul aspect experiences this unconsciously in the spiritual world; upon waking, it re-enters the physical body and then uses the physical body to interact with the external world. Now, it is not enough merely to describe what the body goes through from falling asleep to waking up—that is, the organic-physical processes taking place within it. Significant events also occur in the soul-spiritual realm from falling asleep to waking up. The soul is different when it wakes up and returns to the body than when it has left the body. And as it re-enters the body, it may be the case that—just as in ordinary life—the spiritual-soul aspect simply submerges into the body and makes use of it, penetrating the body with lightning speed and now acting through the body, perceiving through the body.

[ 42 ] However, it can also happen that the forces and contents that the spiritual-soul aspect has acquired from the moment of falling asleep until waking up—if I may use that expression—are, for a moment, too intense to immediately sink into the body. What the soul has acquired from the moment of falling asleep until waking up does not correspond, upon waking, to the configuration of the image of the soul within the body; and so there occurs what appears to be a reflection of what the soul has unconsciously experienced from the moment of falling asleep until waking up; which is reflected back to it as if in a mirror when it awakens, because it cannot immediately adapt to the body upon waking. Through this process, the soul clothes the entirely different experiences of the spiritual world—which it undergoes from falling asleep to waking up—in what is drawn from the storehouse of memory, from external life, or in the form of transformed sensory stimuli and transformed bodily stimuli.

[ 43 ] That which dreams within a person is the Eternal, just as that which explores the spirit within a person is the Eternal; but the form it takes is such that the events of everyday life and the memories of ordinary life serve merely as a garment, so that one can say: In a dream, the eternal within a person beholds the temporal. But it is the eternal that beholds the temporal within a person. And in this respect, even though the content of its images—borrowed from temporal life—is nothing special, the dream, if it is a normal dream, is also for the spiritual researcher a true revelation of the eternal-spiritual, the supersensible, that lives unconsciously within the human being. The spiritual researcher is able to separate what the dream represents in images from what actually underlies the dream.

[ 44 ] You see, I recently spoke from a different perspective about the various manifestations of human soul life in a city—a city in which there is a particularly high concentration of that so-called science which is today called psychoanalysis. This psychoanalysis, among other things, also deals with the world of dreams. There were a few gentlemen who listened to what I said, and—as is very often the case with spiritual science—they thoroughly misunderstood what I had said. They felt infinitely clever in light of what I had said about dreams. They said: “That guy with his spiritual science—he’s talking about dreams.” “We—as psychoanalysts—know that dreams have only symbolic meaning. We know that dreams must be treated solely as symbolic phenomena, but he takes the dream at face value!” That is a distortion.

[ 45 ] As I said, they thought they were very clever. But what made them think they were clever stemmed solely from their own lack of understanding. For the spiritual researcher does not interpret the content of a dream—neither symbolically nor in any other way. The spiritual researcher, who is accustomed to observing such things, knows the following: What actually takes place in the soul between falling asleep and waking up can be one and the same for ten people; and these ten people all recount the dream experience, yet for ten people there are then ten different dreams. The spiritual researcher then knows that, even though the ten people describe ten different dreams in terms of content, these ten different dreams are based on one and the same—or at least a very similar—spiritual, unconscious experience.

[ 46 ] Incidentally, the researcher of the spiritual realm will never—neither in terms of content nor symbolically—take the content of the dream as such; he knows that one and the same dream can be clothed in ten, a hundred, or a thousand different ways, because the experience perceives the temporal in such a way that it clothes itself with it. Therefore, the spiritual researcher looks at the course of the dream, at the manner in which a resolution follows the tension, or whether an ascent and a descent follow; the inner drama, the nature of the rhythmic progression—I would say, the musical quality—which expresses itself in the most varied ways through the dream images—that is what he looks at; neither the symbol nor the content is decisive. The experience is the inner drama. The dream is the testimony to a truly spiritual experience; the dream content is a garment draped over this dream experience. But through this dream content, if one is experienced in such matters, one can see through to what can be experienced. This is the means by which spiritual science points to the essence of the dream.

[ 47 ] The other point is this: As the student of spiritual science gradually progresses and begins to have experiences in the spiritual world, he notices that his dream world, in particular, is undergoing a transformation. Among those who are now already quite numerous in their practical engagement with the paths of spiritual science—and who are already frequently experiencing how, through this very process, they gain a defining understanding of spiritual science that is particularly significant to them— how this spiritual science becomes particularly valuable to them as they see their dream life transforming; how they can experience that, in ordinary experience, a dream is something that arbitrarily strings one mental image after another; how they then come to realize that the dream becomes more and more meaningful; and how they reach the point where they can, in a certain inner way, direct their dreams. In short, the transformation of dream life—its alignment with the first stage of genuine spiritual scientific knowledge—is something that a wide variety of people notice as they gradually become practically acquainted with spiritual science. Thus, through this transformation of the dream world, the spiritual scientist does indeed approach the essence of the dream. Through what he becomes as a spiritual scientist, he lifts the dream itself out of its temporality; the dream no longer tends to take on only temporal elements as its garment.

[ 48 ] It is a great moment when the spiritual researcher has reached the point where he no longer merely dreams of external, pictorial images that have symbolic value, but rather enters in his dreams into that which he otherwise enters arbitrarily; a great moment when he comes to know—when the spiritual world sends him, through the dream, experiences that penetrate, as if by grace, into ordinary experience, and which are no longer dreams, even though in one way or another they still appear very much like a dream. Thus one can say: It is precisely the spiritual-scientific perspective that shows that the dream springs forth from the eternal spiritual-psychic realm, but that the human being who has not yet brought this eternal spiritual-psychic realm into consciousness clothes the events he experiences between falling asleep and waking up in the reminiscences and impressions of everyday life.

[ 49 ] While, on the one hand, dreams—as manifestations of subconscious or unconscious events—are something that, even when examined from a spiritual-scientific perspective, can certainly be regarded as healthy, the same cannot be said to nearly the same extent with regard to the other borderline areas. It is curious that there are even philosophers—Eduard von Hartmann was one of them—who compare dream images, whose origin we have now come to understand to some extent, with hallucinations and visions. But while the dream image is something that arises from the spiritual-soul realm itself—something that comes into being only through its interaction with physicality—the vision and the hallucination are phenomena in which physicality plays a very, very strong role. While the dream, in its experience, wells up from the soul-spiritual realm and physicality merely provides the occasion for the dream to occur, the constitution—the state—of physicality is the occasion for everything that abnormally intrudes into human soul life in the realm of hallucination, vision, somnambulism, mediumship, and the like.

[ 50 ] You can see a characteristic feature of human experience from a purely spiritual-scientific point of view—to which the natural-scientific perspective could easily be added—if you understand that what matters is that human beings, who, as I said yesterday, can be characterized solely by his nature when considered in terms of body, soul, and spirit—that human beings have a relationship between spirit and body only indirectly, through the soul. The soul stands in the middle. Human beings themselves, as dreamers, do not simply live in such a way that they bring the spirit into a relationship with the body, but rather in such a way that they bring the spirit into a relationship with the body via the soul. The soul is the intermediary link between the spirit and the body in normal life. Now, what can occur in the human organism and what can give rise to certain abnormal phenomena in spiritual-soul life, is this: in human beings, due to pathological conditions—whether permanent or temporary—in the organism, this regular connection is, so to speak, disrupted. This connection is established by the fact that the spirit is linked to the body only through the soul; that everywhere the spiritual first acts upon the soul and only then upon the body; and that this connection is broken because, in a sense, the pathological condition of the organism shuts out the soul in a certain way. This exclusion does not occur through the external sense organs, but through organs located more internally. When certain organs are diseased, the spiritual-soul aspect cannot encompass the entire body by entering into a relationship with the external world through that body; rather, it must often make use of the body while excluding the diseased parts.

[ 51 ] Then, because of the sick body, the spirit enters into a direct relationship with the body, rather than taking the detour through the soul. The soul is, in a certain sense, bypassed. This introduces irregularity into consciousness and causes a disruption of consciousness. If, for example, a spiritual experience is had without being mediated by the soul—because a certain organ of the brain, the nervous system, or the blood circulation is healthy—then a particular spiritual experience is not received in such a way that the soul of the body can make proper use of it to process the spiritual experience psychologically, the body comes directly under the influence of the spirit, bypassing the soul. Then the direct experience of the spirit—which is indeed an experience of the spirit, but one that pathologically permeates the human constitution—becomes a hallucination, a vision.

[ 52 ] What spiritual scientific research is has nothing to do with these. For research in the humanities aims not to have the human being disrupt the relationship between body, soul, and spirit that exists in ordinary life, but rather to enrich the soul even further, so that the relationship of the spirit to the body is brought about through a rich inner life. However, an impoverished life of the soul can arise when, due to a physical illness, a person is unable to make full use of their body to relate to the environment. Therefore, for the spiritual researcher, what is experienced as a vision or a hallucination—which does not relate to spiritual life in the same way as a dream—is something that, from his point of view, must be regarded as a spiritual experience, but not as one that is, say, more valuable than ordinary sensory perception; rather, it is less valuable than ordinary sensory perception.

[ 53 ] In such irregular mental experiences as hallucinations, visions, somnambulistic speech and behavior, and mediumship—which is a form of artificial somnambulism—a person’s relationship to the environment is less direct than it is in sensory perception. That is the important point. This is what one must particularly understand. And so it can happen that a person—because he requires what is called judgment about the environment not only for observing it but also for rational, logical comprehension of it—needs to use his entire body for this purpose. If, however, the body is abnormally formed, he cannot form a rational judgment about what presents itself to him mentally. While, on the one hand, a person can rationally comprehend what they experience in a dream while awake, they are unable to transfer what they experience in a vision or hallucination into the experiences of the ordinary waking state, nor can they comprehend it.

[ 54 ] Now, the significant point here is that, admittedly, when the body exhibits such abnormalities as seen from the outside, they appear to be mental experiences—as the researcher of the spirit admits—but they should not be induced; if they arise naturally, they are signs of illness; if they are artificially induced, they cause illness. But because people want to examine these things externally, as if in a laboratory—even though they are phenomena of life itself—and because they want to explain them according to the framework of the scientific worldview, one can observe that even those who are good, outstanding, and significant natural scientists completely falter in this area.

[ 55 ] I would like to cite a case here that I have already alluded to, for the reason that it is a characteristic example—it shows how, especially among natural scientists today, there is a longing to penetrate what they call the supersensible realm, yet how they do not wish to engage with spiritual science, but instead prefer to remain within the framework of conventional scientific methods. I am discussing this case not because I wish to take a position myself on whether it is true or false, but because I want to use it to show how a contemporary scholar—one who is scientifically impeccable—relates to the spiritual and supersensible.

[ 56 ] This is the case that Sir Oliver Lodge describes at length in a thick book and that caused such a tremendous stir; however, one hears less about such things from behind the front lines than usual. The events are as follows: The son of the famous naturalist Oliver Lodge was on the French front. The father received a letter in London from America in which he was informed that a medium had said something important—something decisive—was about to happen to his son, but that the soul of a deceased friend of Oliver Lodge’s would, at that decisive moment, take care of the son from the supernatural realm. That was certainly a message that could be interpreted in this way or that, of course. All sorts of things could have happened, and the message could still have been true, at least on the surface. The son could have been in mortal danger and been saved; in that case, the writer would have said: “Well, Myers—the friend’s soul—stood by the son, which is why he did not fall.” But the son did fall. So the same source interpreted the matter to mean that the son’s soul had indeed passed on and that, in the afterlife, it is being helped by the friend who had been in the afterlife for many years. If a third or fourth possibility had been conceivable, it could have been accommodated by the broad scope of such a prediction.

[ 57 ] Sir Oliver Lodge is a man who describes things from the standpoint of strict scientific rigor; therefore, the case can be assessed by someone who is, on the one hand, versed in scientific rigor and, on the other hand, in what can be said about such matters; one can therefore gain insight from the book into what is actually at stake here.

[ 58 ] Well, Sir Oliver Lodge, after he had lost his son, was presented with—there are always ways and means, especially when it comes to a famous man, of foisting mediums and somnambulists on people—he was presented with various mediums. Sir Oliver Lodge wanted to engage only through the most rigorous and conscientious observation, exercising every possible precaution. He now describes how the mediums convey messages—whether as speaking mediums or writing mediums—messages that were supposedly from his son. Much of this, of course, makes no deeper impression on the reader than much of what is otherwise found among spiritualists; but one thing made a deep impression on Sir Oliver Lodge. And it even made an impression on skeptical journalists in the broadest circles. This is what Sir Oliver Lodge cites as an “experimentum crucis,” a cross-experiment.

[ 59 ] Here is what happened. The medium said: “Yes, now a message is coming from the deceased son; Myers’s soul is also present. Both are announcing their presence.” But the son points out that there is a photograph taken on the French front shortly before he was killed. In the photograph, he is with a whole group of comrades. The picture was taken several times. In one shot, the son has his hand on the shoulder of a comrade in a certain way; in the next shot, the son’s entire posture is slightly different, and so on. Fine. The photographs were described in detail. One could get a clear picture of what the photographs looked like. But they weren’t there. No one knew anything about them; no one could have known anything about them—neither the medium nor the others. At first, one might have regarded the whole thing as a hoax. But the essential point is this: After two weeks, I believe, the letter arrived with the photographs—which, at the time the medium was speaking about them, were still over in France; the letter arrived in London after two weeks; one could see for oneself that the description matched the images exactly. The photographs were there—an experimentum crucis, a decisive test. Indeed, it was something that satisfied Sir Oliver Lodge’s scientific rigor and convinced countless people.

[ 60 ] One can understand it. But as a researcher of the spiritual realm, one approaches the matter from a different perspective. One might say: Precisely because Sir Oliver Lodge described the matter so precisely, it is possible to discern immediately from this description how the case stands. Then, if one is even slightly familiar with the relevant literature, one is simply surprised that a man like Sir Oliver Lodge—even though the case is so peculiar that one can be convinced if one does not always reject what is not immediately obvious—one is still surprised that he does not compare the case with the countless cases known among somnambulists as, I would say, the “contagion” of the sense organs with intellectual judgments. Who, if familiar with the literature, is not acquainted with the case in which someone has a vision, an impression: “In three weeks, when I am riding, I will fall from my horse.” He has the image before him with perfect clarity. He even tries to prevent it, but that is precisely what brings it about. Such things are, after all, frequently found in the literature.

[ 61 ] There is such a summoning brought about by pathological disturbances—specifically, by an inability to fully control one’s body—a refinement of that which, in a normal constitution, must remain subconscious, bringing it up into consciousness, so that one can perceive, in particular, those things that belong to human culture, which can be viewed through spatial or temporal remote vision. — Now, for anyone who reads through Sir Oliver Lodge’s book, what the somnambulist medium saw is, in fact, nothing other than a vision of the distant past. The photographs arrived two weeks later. The medium foresaw—just as the other person foresaw his fall from the horse—the photographs. This has nothing to do with what one might call a revelation from the supersensible world; rather, it is merely a refined perception of what already exists within the sensory world. It is precisely this that must be kept in mind when dealing with such matters: one must make a clear distinction between those instances where the spirit intervenes directly in the physical realm. This is not something that leads us into the supersensible. Precisely because spiritual science seeks to introduce people to the true supersensible world, it must emphasize understanding what the abnormal cases are in which, through a refined sensory life, a person experiences something that is, in fact, nothing other than a manifestation from the ordinary physical world—only that it is experienced in an abnormal way.

[ 62 ] I could cite many more examples of such phenomena, which come to light through a heightening of the senses—precisely because of a pathological condition present in the individual. In particular, it is a predominance of animal functions over mental functions that characterizes this second realm of the unconscious. There is, admittedly, an influence of the spiritual, but what Sir Oliver Lodge sought—an insight into the supersensible world—will never come about in this way. Anyone who wishes to build a bridge between the one who is here and the one who is in the supersensible world as a so-called dead person must do so through spiritual scientific methods; they must develop their own soul so that it may find the way—not through a dead person speaking through a somnambulistic medium. It is precisely these things that must be clearly understood. Precisely because spiritual science is firmly grounded—it is possible to penetrate the spiritual world not only in general but also in concrete terms—it must therefore reject anything acquired by means of hallucination, vision, or the refinement of sensory life that does not lead beyond the sensory realm and says nothing about the eternal, all while excluding the development of the soul. Although the spiritual influences the human body, nothing can be ascertained about the supersensible through this means; rather, it can be ascertained only by placing the human spiritual-soul aspect into the supersensible world. For those who stand on the ground of spiritual science, the visionary world, the somnambulistic world, the world of artificial somnambulism, and the world of mediumship are therefore a sub-sensory world, not a supersensory world.

[ 63 ] Time is running out; I cannot elaborate further, for I must now turn to another topic that can be discussed briefly: the influence of the supersensible world, as it appears to us in human life when we consider true art and artistic enjoyment. Here, too, spiritual science can trace the soul of the true artist or the soul of a person receptive to true art. What the soul experiences and subsequently transforms into poetry or another work of art is experienced just as fully in the spiritual world as is that which always remains unconscious and becomes conscious to ordinary consciousness—at most—through dreams in temporal images, that which is experienced between falling asleep and waking up.

[ 64 ] But the poet is capable of bringing into the sensory-physical world—while remaining unconscious of it—that which he experiences in its immediate form, or, in the case of the artist in general, that which does not come to his consciousness while he dwells in the spiritual world, and then of clothing it in images. It is rightly pointed out that true, genuine art is rooted—not in its content, but in its motivation, its origin, and its sources—in what the artist’s soul experiences in the supersensible realm. Thus, true, genuine art—not naturalism—has rightly been regarded by humanity throughout the ages as messages brought from the supersensible world into the sensory world.

[ 65 ] The difference between the poet and the seer—the one who consciously perceives the supersensible—is simply that the seer, while having experiences in the supersensible world, has carried his consciousness into that world and, from within it and with full presence of mind, transforms these experiences into mental images, so that the whole process is a conscious one. For the poet, the artist, the process remains unconscious; although he lives in the supersensible realm, because this does not come to his consciousness, he cannot compare it with the spiritual world. After he has experienced it, he carries it into his consciousness, clothes it in images, which then become messages from the supersensible realm. The entire process, which becomes conscious in the seer, is in part, in terms of its origin, unconscious in the poet and the artist. What comes into play there as revelations of the unconscious is that which imbues human life with beauty; that which one will only appreciate according to its true value once one accepts as a conviction that true art is a message from the world of the eternal, and that genuine artistic enjoyment brings people closer to this supernatural world, even if unconsciously.

[ 66 ] What we experience as our destiny is only half-conscious. How does a person in ordinary consciousness perceive this destiny—this destiny that, so to speak, accompanies their life from birth to death? Most people—and rightly so, from the perspective of ordinary consciousness—view this destiny in such a way that they regard its individual events as things that simply happen; one after another, they just happen. But that may well be true; it is certainly true for the ordinary view of life. Yet there is another side to these matters to consider.

[ 67 ] Just suppose, as a forty-year-old or younger—if one is inclined to reflect—one were to ponder what one actually is deep down in one’s soul, and compare who one is with one’s fate. And then ask yourself what you would be if you’d had a different fate, if something else had happened to you. You’ll then make a remarkable discovery. You will discover that, if you are not speaking of an abstract self—if you are speaking of what you actually carry within yourself and are—you are, in fact, nothing other than the result of your fate. If fate were merely what happens to you one thing after another—a sum of coincidences—then you yourself would be nothing other than a sum of coincidences. What one has suffered, what has brought one joy, what life has presented to one in such a way that one could accept it, that one could turn it into life skill, life wisdom, and a way of life—that is who one is, but it stems from fate; one is that fate itself.

[ 68 ] Spiritual science now also attempts to contemplate this destiny, attempting to view it in such a way that this contemplation unfolds just as ordinary imaginative life unfolds, without the human being doing anything to influence it. I say this to make clear the significance of what is being expressed here: Just imagine—you recall an experience from long ago that you had when you were ten or seventeen years old. This memory has a peculiarity: when you had that experience, your whole being was fully engaged in it; you did not merely experience what you now bring to mind, but you were completely immersed in it. Just think about how different it is to recall a state of mind as opposed to what remains as a mental image of the experience.

[ 69 ] A state of mind cannot be recalled. The memory itself may evoke a kind of state of mind, but you cannot recall a pain you experienced twenty years ago—that pain—exactly as you experienced it back then. You can recall the mental image, but not the state of mind, not the pain. And it is the same with joy. In ordinary memory, as experiences are incorporated into memory, the emotional impulse is stripped away, and the mental image remains as such. This allows what was experienced in the past to be relived later in the imagination. What a person does spontaneously in the details of life—stripping away the emotional aspect from what is incorporated into memory—can now be applied very strictly to what constitutes experiences of destiny. But as I describe it, it seems easy; it seems, I might say, almost mundane. If it is to be carried out, it requires precisely the kind of preparation of the soul that I have described today and yesterday; for what is to be carried out is the stripping away of all emotional elements from what befalls us as experiences of fate.

[ 70 ] Do you think one can succeed in doing that? That is precisely what characterizes ordinary life: that one finds some aspects of fate appealing and others repulsive; that one wants to draw some closer and push others away. To shed that, so that one regards what one experiences in fate as if it had not befallen oneself, as if one were describing the fate of another—indeed, even less so, since one naturally empathizes with every other human being. Away with all of that for the sake of observation—but only for this purpose, otherwise one would become incapable of living—away with everything for the moments of observing fate! One must view fate in such a way that emotional attachment falls away; one must view it as if standing outside of fate. The spiritual researcher learns this by learning to stand outside his own body. Then, just as a thought that arises is a thought that reflects a past experience in one’s individual, personal life, so too does fate—when it is truly viewed correctly, when it is stripped of the character of personal emotional experience— fate becomes, by necessity and with compelling force, the expression of earlier earthly experiences that have been lived through and that interweave with the entirety of a person’s life in such a way that the person lives through repeated earthly lives, as well as the lives that unfold between death and rebirth.

[ 71 ] Through many other things, but also through a genuine contemplation of destiny, one can perceive how—just as what one has gone through over the years influences individual life—what flows in from earlier earthly lives and what, in turn, flows out into later earthly lives influences our actual, personal experience of destiny. What spiritual research reveals about repeated earthly lives is not some fantastical invention, but rather the results of a conscientious contemplation of life itself—a transformed view of life itself—in which that which intervenes in our lives semi-unconsciously and reveals itself as destiny is brought to the surface. Thus, it is also a revelation of the unconscious; the unconscious is raised up into consciousness.

[ 72 ] Unfortunately, I was able to describe to you only a few aspects of that world which remain unconscious to ordinary consciousness, and to show you how spiritual science relates to these things. I could only sketch it out briefly. But it is precisely this examination of the borderlands that demonstrates how spiritual science is capable of pointing toward the eternal by showing how, in dreams or in other ways, the spiritual reveals itself in both normal and abnormal ways in everyday life—and by demonstrating, from its own perspective, how the unconscious becomes manifest in human experience. Through this, it becomes clear—especially in these borderlands and precisely for spiritual science—that by transcending the ordinary limits of the senses, human beings can already reach the supersensible-spiritual realm; that human beings can penetrate beyond the transitory into the imperishable, that human beings can connect, through their spiritual being, with the eternal spiritual world, so that their spiritual-soul aspect, their spiritual-eternal aspect, is experienced in harmony with the spirit of the whole world.

[ 73 ] It is precisely when one presents something like this that one realizes this spiritual science can only be viewed as I said yesterday: that while this spiritual science can emerge through the specific development of contemporary spiritual cultural life, its content is true for all times—just as the Copernican worldview had to emerge from the historical development of a particular epoch. But what appears as a spiritual science is different from the empirical sciences. It is only in the present that this spiritual science truly comes into being in clear, well-defined concepts and ideas. Yet it has been foreseen and longed for—not merely in a general sense, but in a specific form—by those who have truly been serious, at all times, about exploring the great mysteries of existence.

[ 74 ] That is why, especially as a researcher of the spiritual realm, one feels in harmony with those very people who were able to—and wanted to—contribute something to humanity from the history of humankind. From the vast number of personalities who—not to cite them as examples—could be named here, let one be singled out. Not to cite them as examples; for I know full well that the objection is valid when Goethe is cited: that one can always find the opposite in his writings, passages that confirm the opposing view; that is not the point. But someone who, like me, has devoted more than thirty years to a thorough examination not only of the content of Goethe’s worldview but also of the entire way in which Goethe related to the world, can ultimately summarize what he intended to say—through a reflection such as today’s—with a single word that expresses a certain intellectual joy: the joy of rediscovering, through conscientious research, that which must have once truly come to his mind when he uttered the words:

[ 75 ] [When the healthy nature of man functions as a whole, when he feels himself to be part of the world as a great, beautiful, dignified, and valuable whole, when this harmonious contentment grants him pure, free delight: then the universe, if it could perceive itself, would exult at having reached its goal and marvel at the pinnacle of its own becoming and being.] I believe that when Goethe expressed the harmonious resonance between the human inner world and the universe in such a beautiful sentence, he intended to express precisely what spiritual science seeks to articulate in clear, well-defined scientific terms: that human beings can experience within themselves—whether in this or that way—how their spiritual-eternal nature stands in relation to the spiritual-eternal nature of the external world, and that the great harmony between human individuality and the universe is then immediately present within the human soul itself. For what makes spiritual science a certainty? What makes spiritual science a certainty is that human beings can grasp their own eternal nature by standing, in a true and real sense, as spiritual beings before the spirit of the world—and by grasping, as the eternal spirit of humanity, the eternal spirit of the world.