The Rudolf Steiner Archive

15. How Can One Recognize the Supernatural Life and Nature of the Human Soul?

[ 1 ] Ladies and gentlemen! I am well aware that there are many individuals who, by virtue of their education, are qualified to pass judgment and who will not consider what I shall take the liberty of presenting this evening to be scientific; and the various reasons and objections against the spiritual science referred to here must actually have been overcome by those who advocate it—I would say, by virtue of its very nature. Due to time constraints, I cannot address these objections today; indeed, if I am not to become too detailed—I would actually need to give an entire series, a cycle of lectures—I can offer no more than a brief, cursory outline of the essential aim of the spiritual science referred to here.

[ 2 ] There is just one point I would like to bring to your attention from the outset: that what is probably the most unusual aspect—the very thing that gives the greatest cause for raising objections to what is presented here— is that this is not a matter of expanding some kind of scientific or other form of knowledge in any particular direction—in the manner in which such knowledge already exists—but rather, esteemed audience, it is a matter of developing a completely different kind of knowledge to replace or build upon that which, according to our contemporary consciousness, is familiar to human beings. This spiritual science aims to show that ordinary, familiar knowledge is indeed unsuitable for penetrating that reality of the world in which the most fundamental and significant questions about the human being are rooted—the questions concerning human immortality and human freedom.

[ 3 ] But there is another factor that must absolutely be taken into account if one wishes to approach in the right way what is treated here as spiritual science. This factor is that, in order to arrive at a different kind of insight—one that can truly penetrate questions such as those mentioned—in order to advance toward this insight, one must first, with one’s whole soul, with one’s entire knowledge, and with all other aspects of human striving, have had experiences in two directions—not merely experiences of the kind ordinarily recognized as experiences of knowledge, but those that are truly connected to human development in its deepest, most meaningful sense. Experiences that, in a sense, bring the human being together with all that leads him, in moments of intellectual solitude, to the limits of reality, and so on, and so on.

[ 4 ] These experiences, ladies and gentlemen, lie two pages ahead. Anyone who wishes to make progress in the spiritual sciences must first have experienced what can take place in our soul in response to the thirst for knowledge when it appropriates, in one way or another, the knowledge of nature—which in our time has reached such a high level of flourishing and such immense perfection—or at least in such a way that the soul can have an experience of what this knowledge of nature reveals to it, what it gives it. Knowledge of nature—I can, of course, only point it out and characterize it. I am not inclined to belittle scientific knowledge of nature in any way. Anyone who delves into spiritual science will see that it acknowledges scientific knowledge of nature, particularly in the form that corresponds to the new era.

[ 5 ] The study of nature is capable of penetrating reality to a certain degree. But this knowledge of nature encounters certain areas where it must develop concepts, and it is precisely what the soul, in its deepest depths, holds as the goal of knowledge that usually fails in the face of these concepts. Such concepts are already the concepts of matter as the vehicle of material existence, as they are handed down to us through sensory observation.

[ 6 ] You may be aware of how much intellectual effort—honest, conscientious, serious intellectual effort—has been devoted to such concepts in order to grasp their meaning, such as the concept of matter or force and the like. But the person who does not merely attempt to speculate or philosophize about such concepts, but who, with his soul, pursues everything the soul brings forth in order to form such concepts out of experience and thought, comes to say to himself: It is, after all, in the nature of human organization to form such concepts—to form these changing concepts in response to the changing world—and then to leave them at that, without delving any deeper; for—as I said, I can only cite results; you will find the rest in my books—for human beings are compelled to set these concepts aside in order, so to speak, to have a foundation upon which to develop the other life, namely, the life of knowledge.

[ 7 ] What are these ideas really like? They’re like a mirror. You stand in front of a mirror, ladies and gentlemen, and see yourself in it. The mirror is necessary so that you can see yourself in it. In the same way, certain concepts in our organization are necessary so that we can arrive at other concepts. They serve as a mirror for the soul and spirit. If we were to try to penetrate these concepts in the same way we usually penetrate our external reality, it would be like trying to break the mirror in order to fathom what we see in it. This is actually true of all the boundary concepts in the understanding of nature.

[ 8 ] If one were to continue in the same vein, one would find oneself in the same situation as if one were to break a mirror in order to discover what lies behind it and what causes one to see oneself in it. This is also the experience one ultimately has when reflecting on what is taken for granted in philosophy. If one wants to penetrate beyond the surface of things through philosophy and speculation, it is like trying to break a mirror to discover what one will not find behind it.

[ 9 ] Now, for those who perceive such things in their immediate spiritual experience, a meaningful and important question arises: What aspect of human nature is actually responsible for the fact that we inevitably encounter such limits—that we must, in fact, set before us something essential against which we have a counterpoint, something we do not shatter, to put it figuratively, but must simply allow to remain in our everyday consciousness? Where does this come from? When one explores this question, one arrives at a profound human soul experience, a mystery of the soul; one comes to recognize how something in human life, in the entire human organism, is connected to this reflective nature of our knowledge of nature. Questions about the life of the soul that have been explored through spiritual science can be answered to a certain extent.

[ 10 ] What would human spiritual life be like if it were not so, if one did not have this mirror before one? One would have to miss an element in this human spiritual life that is absolutely necessary for human life, for human existence between birth or conception and death. If human cognition were of such a nature that it could submerge itself in this concept of a boundary, the human soul would have to do without love—the possibility of grasping, through the life of feeling and emotion, that which it can currently see only in the mirror. The mirror-like nature, which is connected to our external sensibility, is at the same time what ensures within the soul that we do not face external reality in a crude and impersonal way, but rather in such a way that our thoughts fail at the very moment they dryly and soberly kill love. We must be organized in such a way that, through ordinary sensory perception or its analysis, we do not go further than we are capable of, so that we do not lose our capacity for love.

[ 11 ] Let me state this explicitly: It is precisely because we are limited by these two aspects that we are capable of love, and thus the spiritual researcher, through direct soul experience, comes to recognize that knowledge of nature cannot, in fact, lead into true reality, because immersing oneself in ordinary knowledge—in this true reality—causes the capacity for love to wither away in human beings. This is the first experience one has when walking the path of spiritual science.

[ 12 ] What I have just told you is explained in greater detail in my book The Mystery of Man. It is presented as an immediate, real experience; that is one thing. There are very many people who have not quite clearly—or who have only more or less intuitively—come to the realization that knowledge of nature does not lead into the depths of human soul life, let alone spiritual existence. Such people have begun to doubt the value of knowledge of nature and have therefore turned to another form of knowledge. This other form of knowledge provides the second experience I wish to discuss, which must serve as a preparation for the spiritual researcher. The first is the failure of the study of nature; the second is the failure of another form of knowledge that very many people seek at the very moment when they often doubt the study of nature merely instinctively. This is mysticism. By mysticism, we are to understand only what I myself will characterize.

[ 13 ] In the ordinary sense, mysticism is understood as immersing oneself in one’s own inner life using the means available within everyday consciousness. One seeks to remain there, but in doing so, one tries to turn one’s attention away from the sensory external world; one tries, as it were, to become blind and deaf to it, to sink down into what one can experience in one’s own inner life. Many describe this mystical insight as deeply satisfying, since the path of the external world does not lead to the mysteries of existence, nor does it lead to the core. What is called philosophy is a hybrid. Many aspects of philosophical insight tend toward what I here call the mystical, while others tend toward an understanding of nature. Anyone who allows Meister Eckhart or other mystics to take hold of them can gain insight through this immersion.

[ 14 ] This experience shows that, by following this path—in which one delves into the depths of the soul’s life with ordinary consciousness, whether that consciousness is more or less scientific, mystical, or religious in nature—one does not arrive at more satisfying results than one does through the external path of the study of nature. If one is honest, if one possesses full self-control, if one is neither a dreamer nor a fantasist, then with greater self-knowledge on the mystical path one will always be able to say to oneself: Something intermingles with what one experiences inwardly in contemplation—something connected to subjective experience, something that does not penetrate to the very foundations of the subjective human will, something colored by what the will shapes—and one ultimately concludes: Even on this path, one does not penetrate any further than to images—perhaps very meaningful, often inwardly stirring images that arise from an intimate communion with the core of the world, but which are, in truth, nothing more than images. One learns to recognize the nature of these images as mystical experience precisely when, with complete real-world prudence, one seeks to advance mystically within human experience.

[ 15 ] And so one finds oneself confronted with a certain limit even there. What is it in human organization that makes it necessary to reach a limit even with mystical insight? What would be lacking in a person if, following the ideal of certain mystics, they could immerse themselves so deeply into the innermost recesses of their soul that they would come into contact with the essential core of existence—where the core of our soul life also lies? Just as we previously lacked the capacity for love, so too would we now be unable to possess another capacity of the soul if we could penetrate, through mystical contemplation, to the core of our own existence and that of the world; a significant, indispensable capacity of the soul would be missing—namely, the capacity for memory. On the path we take with all that we experience from the world—as we penetrate to the core of existence—we would not be able to encounter within our soul the very force that enables us, as human beings, to remember. Through our inner organization, we must have distinguished our imagination and our perception from our feeling and will, for the capacity for memory is situated right in the midst of them. As we immerse ourselves within ourselves, we must be able to remember.

[ 16 ] We see that there are two already deeply unsettling experiences from which the spiritual researcher must begin, and the spiritual researcher must have the courage to say to himself: These are essentially also the two paths along which one can somehow make progress with ordinary consciousness. He must also have the courage to transform this ordinary consciousness, to give it a different character—in a sense, to awaken from within this ordinary consciousness a different, higher consciousness, which relates to ordinary consciousness just as ordinary consciousness relates to the consciousness of sleep. We know how poignantly the soul struggles to distinguish between what is real and what is a dream. It is necessary to awaken from ordinary consciousness—which we need for our knowledge from morning to night—to a higher consciousness, and only in this higher consciousness can one experience that which is connected with the true mysteries of the human soul.

[ 17 ] Just consider the question of immortality, distinguished guests. Today, it has once again become a central part of humanity’s quest for knowledge, and since people today have become accustomed to applying scientific standards to such questions—and are no longer content with traditional approaches—it is the task of science to address questions such as that of immortality. A great many people are mistaken. Some often attempt to present some sort of proof—more or less philosophical or more or less amateurish in nature—that something within the human being lives on beyond death, but that is not enough, ladies and gentlemen.

[ 18 ] One must realize: Anyone who can merely provide evidence that something survives death has not actually done anything particularly significant regarding the question of immortality. For what is at stake here, the crux of the matter, is whether, once a person has shed their physical body, a higher consciousness remains connected to their soul-being even though they are no longer physically alive. Everything else are secondary questions. For example, whether some kind of ethereal fluid or a nebulous entity lives on as a soul cannot be of interest to a person unless they can advance to the realization that this continued existence is conscious, that consciousness is possible without the organization of the body; for it is clear to spiritual science and natural science that our ordinary, everyday consciousness is so intimately linked to the physical life organization that one can speak of the functioning or activity of this ordinary consciousness only when it is supported by the bodily organization.

[ 19 ] It is therefore up to the spiritual researcher to demonstrate that consciousness is possible without physical life. Now, ladies and gentlemen, I would like, so to speak, to draw your attention to a few things that can help us understand what I am about to demonstrate: namely, that scientific knowledge—even when it makes a sincere effort—can only go so far when it comes to the human soul and cannot go beyond that point. I could cite hundreds upon hundreds of examples that would point in the same direction. I would like to cite an example from literature so that it can be verified—an example you will find listed under the title On the Subconscious Self by Waldstein, published in Wiesbaden. Waldstein describes an experience through which a kind of limit to scientific observation was revealed to him, but which reveals much more to the researcher of the spiritual realm.

[ 20 ] Once, as a naturalist, he was standing in front of a bookstore window. His gaze fell on a book with the title “Mollusks.” As he looks at the title page, the naturalist can’t help but smile, though he is unaware of any reason why he should be smiling upon reading the book’s title, “Mollusks.” So he resorts to the following method to get to the bottom of the matter. He closes his eyes and pays close attention to what he can now hear, and in the distance he hears a barrel organ playing a barely audible melody—one to which the observer, who cannot help but smile, learned to dance in his very early years; he is aware that at the time he did not pay attention to the melody, only to the steps he had to learn and to what he experienced with his partner; but decades later, as he stands before the mollusk book, the memory surfaces from the depths of his soul. That sound, which wasn’t fully registered back then, rises up in his soul and brings a smile to his face.

[ 21 ] The spiritual researcher must pay particular attention to such things, for they show just how cautious one must be. Some people believe they are mystics and that, precisely through contemplation of the soul, they experience this or that. What emerges is often merely the long-vanished organ tone, which one mistakes for a deeply mystical experience simply because such things also undergo transformation.

[ 22 ] One could cite many examples of mystics who consider themselves quite profound, yet tell you all sorts of things about inner experiences that take them to the limits of the spirit—and which are nothing more than an old barrel organ. But it is precisely in such experiences, my esteemed audience, that one finds the full significance of what human memory is. You may well be aware that we cannot develop our self-awareness without memory. Self-awareness is very closely linked to the continuous capacity for memory. But this capacity for memory is, at the same time, one that is very often connected to the subconscious—to the so-called unconscious soul forces—of our soul life. It is therefore particularly important to ensure that spiritual science, which seeks to penetrate spiritual reality, is clear from the outset that everything connected with ordinary memory does not lead to an understanding of the spiritual world at all. The fact that we recognize we are led to a certain boundary—one we must cross if we wish to enter the spiritual world—gives rise to very specific difficulties, such that many people say: “What such a spiritual researcher says is not to be believed.” This is said because what he says lies very far removed from the conventional, well-established way of thinking to which people have already become accustomed.

[ 23 ] People are accustomed to thinking in such a way that what is carried by memory permeates their entire thought life. I said that the spiritual researcher must have the courage to develop a different kind of insight. He achieves this in two ways. By enabling oneself to lead a spiritual life that, while connected to memory for a time—one cannot be a spiritual researcher all day long—develops within the soul a force that shapes that soul and sets it in motion, yet without drawing upon the faculty of memory. How is this achieved? It is achieved through a very specific kind of meditative life. This is already a kind of inner contemplation, but under very specific conditions. In ordinary everyday consciousness, the soul’s power is at work as we make external perceptions and form our ideas about what comes within our field of vision. In sensory perception and the life of the imagination, that which connects us to reality on one side is revealed.

[ 24 ] Anyone who performs certain spiritual exercises—which, in a certain sense, are designed to synthesize into a single whole what is otherwise combined in perception and imagination—attains a completely different kind of imagination and capacity for insight. To perform these exercises, one must attempt to actively engage such mental images in consciousness—to bring them into consciousness in a way that allows one to survey them as fully as possible. For this, it is necessary to be absolutely certain that these mental images cannot be derived from ordinary memory, nor from the subconscious. Anyone who wishes to do these exercises would do well to seek advice or look them up in the literature of the spiritual sciences. One can approach it in an approximate way, and that will lead to the goal, but one must ensure that one has a complete grasp of what is present in consciousness. However, these need not be abstract thoughts symbolically connected to external reality; [they] should not represent anything external, for what is an external representation is linked to memory. For example, we must allow the image of flowing light to be present in our consciousness. And if one returns to such exercises again and again, if one brings it to the point where the entire power of the soul can concentrate meditatively on such images that one fully comprehends, where one is completely clear about them: Then only that which has been assembled in the present moment—and in which there is no memory—will affect consciousness; immediately a kind of thinking will arise that simultaneously encompasses what the soul must erect against external perceptions. One becomes blind and deaf to them, yet one performs the same activity that is otherwise performed in relation to external perceptions.

[ 25 ] This leads to a way of imagining that works through the faculties of perception—a kind of union of perceptive power and thinking power. And as one develops this more and more, one notices that something arises within the soul that was not there before. One comes to know new aspects of the human being that have lain dormant in the depths of the soul; one perceives, within the nature of the human soul, the fading away of the ordinary mindset, but also the realization that “time becomes space”—and the remarkable phenomenon occurs that one can look back, as it were, on what one has experienced. Ordinary memory, which is bound to ordinary daily consciousness, shows that the experience has passed; we recreate the experience by recalling it in memory, but we cannot look back upon the experience.

[ 26 ] When one has engaged in such exercises, the past is present; one looks into time, and a new capacity of the soul emerges—a new reality. If one succeeds in perceiving the spiritual within the sensory realm—before discovering that what appears to be past only in the capacity for memory, yet can always be perceived spiritually, is actually present—then, esteemed audience, having advanced in this way toward this new kind of cognitive capacity, one comes to feel, more and more, what can be described as a new sense of self-awareness.

[ 27 ] One must have experienced this new self-awareness if one is to have even a rough idea of it. Some people rightly find lectures on spiritual science more difficult than others, because our words are coined only for the sensory realm and are therefore ill-suited to the supersensory. But the spiritual researcher is compelled to use words in a sense other than the ordinary one. He must use words as gestures, must point to what is taking place in the soul. Words are gestures of the soul. He must count on the receptivity of every human soul, which lies dormant in the unconscious. In this way, one arrives at a new kind of self-awareness. Only now does one gain a vivid conception of what it means to experience oneself in one’s soul and spiritual life independently of the physical body. Why? Just as one has the table outside of oneself, so in this experience one has one’s own physical body outside of oneself. One certainly experiences oneself in a self-awareness that is independent of the physical body.

[ 28 ] Now, however, a second exercise is necessary. At first, when one does such exercises, one attains only this self-awareness, and within it one feels confined, constrained within a psychological existence. It is as if one knew one had eyes, but they lacked the transparent, glass-like fluid. One then feels the eyes within oneself, but does not feel connected to the objective world through the eyes. This is how self-awareness first awakens; one feels as if in a state of mental cloudiness, yet one does not feel connected to the outer world of the soul. One stands within it—one knows this—but self-awareness must first become transparent. This is achieved through further exercises. One realizes very soon, when one develops such thinking—which is at the same time a form of perception—that one is plunged into a world of images; one does not merely have this new self-awareness as a foundation for experience, but lives within a world of images. It simply flows toward one, yet one becomes opaque in one’s self-awareness.

[ 29 ] One must now, through further exercises, acquire the ability to suppress the images that surge forth. This is achieved by steadily strengthening one’s will. By strengthening the will—which is otherwise directed only toward the external world—so that it is now directed toward one’s own development, toward, for example, practicing strict self-discipline, ensuring that one clearly sees what one has experienced, directing the will inward, being able to suppress ideas and images, and becoming master of them through a new sense of self-awareness; through this, it becomes transparent and reaches the point where—though this is only possible through the experience — to perceive the truly spiritual world, which is just as real to the human soul as the world of colors is to the eye and the world of sound is to the ear: a world of spiritual beings and spiritual processes to which we belong with our soul just as we belong with our physical being to the external world perceived through the senses.

[ 30 ] This is the path by which one enters the spiritual world. It must be an experience grounded in the futility of mere natural science and mere mysticism. There one comes to perceive the world as pure spirituality, so that one then retains a vivid perception of what I have called the past—that which lives in time. Expanding this perception follows quite naturally, extending beyond the boundaries of birth or conception. Just as a person traces their lineage back to their ancestors, looking upward, so too do they look through their inner soul toward spiritual research—toward what lived and flourished in the spiritual world before humanity became conscious of the world. The spiritual researcher proceeds differently than the natural scientist; the spiritual researcher must show a path, not present results like the natural scientist.

[ 31 ] I have described to you the path that the human soul must follow in a strictly regulated manner in order to recognize within itself the prenatal, spiritual, and soul aspects. All speculation about immortality must ultimately lead to unsatisfactory results if one seeks the immortal as a goal to strive for. This is impossible; all speculation fails. On this path, one discovers the pre-birth soul-being that lives within us and truly comes from the spiritual world, just as that which lives physically within us comes from our parents. This significant experience becomes particularly shattering for the soul once that soul comes to truly understand how this prenatal life—this spiritual, soulful existence—is connected to the things we otherwise perceive around us in ordinary consciousness.

[ 32 ] I don’t like to talk about spiritual research or personal experiences. But all these things are personal experiences that have been refined to the point of objectivity. I must confess that one of the most profoundly moving experiences of my inner soul life in this realm occurred when, I would say, a revelation from the spiritual world unfolded before me through human thought and imagination—as I had trained myself to do, as described—revealing our pre-birth human soul existence, spent entirely in the spiritual world. The pre-birth soul experience reveals itself through this experience. If one manages to shape one’s exercises more and more so that, if possible, there is nothing abstract in them at all, but instead one lives oneself entirely into the image; if one manages to awaken one’s way of living to such vividness as is otherwise found only in sensory perception; if one lives so vividly in the soul as is otherwise possible only in sensory perception—then, as strange as it may seem to modern thinking, intuitive knowledge arises; then one experiences the previous earthly life, the pre-birth, purely spiritual life that penetrates through the very last of one’s thoughts—the spiritual reality that was once one’s physical reality. When a person manages, through the strengthening of their soul life, to think so powerfully that their thinking—even though they perceive nothing external—vividly beholds the truth of their previous life, just as they otherwise look with vividness at flowers and plants, their colors and their growth—that is deeply moving.

[ 33 ] One characteristic of this clairvoyant insight, this intuitive insight, is precisely the following. As you have seen, a type of insight must be developed that does not rely on the faculty of memory at all. Once the spiritual researcher has such an experience, he cannot remember it in the ordinary sense. It is a present experience; memory ceases. The exercises lead the spiritual researcher to a point where, even as his perceptions arise, memory is not called upon; nor can he ever rely on ordinary memory to look into the spiritual world. If we wish to have the corresponding insight in the spiritual world a second time, we must not recall the insight itself, but rather the path we took to reach it. This is what is terribly disappointing for beginners. Through exercises such as those described in my book How to Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, they first arrive at spiritual experiences. They then believe they have attained this as a lasting possession; however, one cannot recall it, and repetition is always difficult because one must exert greater effort to regain the spiritual vision.

[ 34 ] I have described to you certain exercises through which the soul enters a completely different state, through which a different kind of insight is developed, and through which one becomes capable of looking into the eternal nature of the human soul. Something else is connected to these exercises. When one has truly gone through the preparatory stages, has experienced the limitations of natural science and mysticism, and has truly lived through all of this in one’s soul, one gradually comes to say to oneself: You must make ever greater efforts to arrive at an entirely different kind of soul organization. One must then proceed further by developing the exercises into something that, in a certain sense, brings enlightenment regarding certain matters—an inner experience connected to other experiences one has in the study of nature and mysticism. One feels separated from what, in a purely physical sense—in mysticism—underlies thinking, feeling, willing, and imagining. That is what is peculiar about it. When one performs such exercises, one also draws closer to material life, and through this insight, one’s spiritual life becomes clearer.

[ 35 ] We have certain notions of what it means to have concepts and ideas. Yet how much conscientious research has been conducted to uncover how this thinking—which involves concepts and perceptions—is connected to the physical body? Through the exercises I have described, one comes to feel, as it were, a closer connection to one’s soul, spirit, and even the physical body.

[ 36 ] One experiences imagination in a different way, ladies and gentlemen. As one develops ideas and thoughts, the brain becomes hungry; in the act of thinking, one experiences the brain’s hunger, and one then realizes that the way conventional Darwinism conceives of human organization was truly too simplistic. That is not the case; human beings are complex beings, and there are certain states of balance and imbalance between the individual components of their organization. If they are capable of thought, our brain will, of course, enter a state in which it is in a state of decline, in which it is starving; and unless the brain—even while the rest of the body is receiving normal nourishment—is nourished to a lesser extent and thus experiences greater hunger, no alert mental life can develop.

[ 37 ] This is also related to something that can always be verified. Certain people who seek mystical experiences through the wrong path begin to starve themselves. They want to starve the entire body and also starve the brain, which is already hungrier than the other parts of the body. Through purely spiritual exercises, one already comes to the realization that the feeling of hunger is necessary in the organization of the human brain. This leads one to recognize that spiritual life can truly exist in its independence through our brain nerves, because we do not develop the organ life for thinking and imagining; rather, we tone it down and interrupt the organ life. We must tone down—not develop—that which constitutes animal physical life so that we may have thoughts and ideas. Space must be made within the nervous system for an independent, spiritual, and psychological life. Natural science will very soon arrive at this conclusion. The first signs are already evident: the physical organization of the human being is such that one must acknowledge the existence of an independent spiritual and psychological life. The brain undermines the sprouting, burgeoning life, making room for the development of the spiritual.

[ 38 ] The other aspect is getting to know the opposite pole of human organization. Just as brain activity is one pole—see the last chapter on the “mysteries of the soul”—the other pole is the life that, through its capacity for movement as physical life, is connected to the will. Human beings are not organized as simply as conventional natural science believes. While the brain is underdeveloped in waking life, another pole of their organization is overdeveloped. This life that sprouts and shoots beyond the normal limits is the one connected to the extremities of the body—the arms, hands, feet, and legs. But not only with the external feet and legs, but also with the continuation inward.

[ 39 ] What is connected with this other pole of human organization is not something one experiences as one does a feeling of hunger, but rather as a state of oversaturation, of survival; one experiences it in such a way that, while the human being, in terms of his physical and nervous life, regresses, so to speak, to a state below the normal organization of his trunk life, [he] thereby has waking visions and makes perceptions. The external organs are overdeveloped. One need only consider, from an anatomical and physiological perspective, how the extremities are connected to the other human organs to recognize the physical connection to human reproductive capacity. This corresponds to a spiritual-psychic aspect. The nervous system is experienced as being in a state of normal malnutrition.

[ 40 ] What lives within the organ of the will as a spiritual-soul element is that which, if it is to be developed, must be developed in such a way that one engages in yet other exercises. These consist in subjecting the life of feeling and the life of the will to rules, just as was done earlier with regard to the life of imagination and perception. When one focuses on something that is not usually noticed in everyday life, the goal is achieved. A person can recall with complete clarity what they have experienced; in their memory, they perceive what they have experienced as they did in the moment, as well as other thoughts they had; moods and states of mind, however, are not recalled in the same way.

[ 41 ] But this must be cultivated. A person must cultivate not only those soul abilities that otherwise lead to memory, but also the ability to gain an overview of such things—for example, telling oneself: “I was once 17 years old,” and being able to bring to mind the states of mind I had at that time. These soul moods resurface; one discovers how to trace such moods from birth to the present life, and one gains an overview of one’s moods. Something develops there—one can compare it to inner soul music. Just as in music the preceding note resonates with the following one, so too do earlier states of mind resonate in a unique way with later ones, and later ones resonate back into the earlier ones. One recognizes how one develops, how the earlier aspects of one’s inner life bear fruit later on. One must look at oneself in this way—in what one does not otherwise observe—at what lives within the human being like the seed that lives in this year’s plant and will live on in future years. Within the human being lives that which transcends one’s individuality—the other aspect of immortality that extends beyond death. One must recognize immortality just as one recognizes the second aspect. Just as one recognizes the first aspect through imagination and perception, so too must one recognize what one will become in the life after death: this can only be perceived by cultivating one’s emotional and volitional life. Through this, one develops other volitional capacities.

[ 42 ] While one is engaged in spiritual research, the capacity for memory must be suppressed. While we must suppress it in spiritual science—looking only at the present and pushing memory aside—the capacity for love, as well as our emotional and volitional life, will simply increase inwardly; in the moments when a person seeks to penetrate the spiritual world beyond death, their capacity for love is also developed—and it must be developed; otherwise, the person would gaze into the spiritual world as a mere guest, and that would be harmful. The capacity for love is heightened, while the capacity for memory recedes.

[ 43 ] Twenty-five years ago, I began to explore, from a philosophical perspective, the human capacity for love in relation to the problem of human freedom. At that time—[in] The Philosophy of Freedom—I had to, in a sense, break with the conventional sayings about love. People always say, “Love makes people blind”; I believe I am justified in asserting that true capacity for love makes people clairvoyant, leading them straight into the depths of the beloved. However, ordinary love is very often associated with a certain degree of selfishness. We love another, foreign being, but we often want them to be different; we nitpick at them, and we want to mold that being into what we wish to see. That is not yet the love that is truly worthy of the name in the highest sense. It truly exists only when one forgets oneself.

[ 44 ] The spiritual researcher must take self-forgetfulness so far that self-awareness is developed outside the body. This is precisely what increases our capacity for love, and we come to not only truly see through other human beings with clairvoyance in selfless love, but also to perform actions that do not arise from our drives or instincts, nor from what we desire; rather, we act out of pure love, out of the understanding love that an action must take place, so that we completely set aside our own will. When we act solely out of love for the action itself, we draw closer to a capacity for love that must still be heightened through practice—[see my] “Insights into Higher Worlds.” One comes to develop a capacity of the soul that becomes capable of truly seeing. Human beings also have something within them—spiritually and psychically—that transcends the physical, that which endures beyond human death.

[ 45 ] The only way to understand human immortality is to truly understand this other state of consciousness—to experience it, in a certain sense, on a daily basis—and to derive from it a consciousness that does not depend on the physical body and becomes independent of bodily experience. It looks upon states before birth and after death because it knows itself to be in a heightened state of self-awareness outside the body. In this way, the eternal core of the human being is viewed in conjunction with insight into what precedes birth and what follows death.

[ 46 ] The soul must be explored in two directions if a person wishes to perceive immortality. Scientifically speaking, immortality cannot be perceived through the expansion or broadening of knowledge, but rather through the acquisition of a new kind of knowledge. It should be noted, however, that this applies only to those times when a person wishes to engage in spiritual research. One cannot be a spiritual researcher from the moment of waking until falling asleep; rather, one devotes oneself to it intermittently, for moments that one creates in full consciousness. Then one finds those moments in which one stands in the spiritual world in such contrast to ordinary consciousness as one finds waking consciousness in contrast to the consciousness of sleep.

[ 47 ] It must be emphasized that it is never the right path in spiritual research for a person to attempt, in a self-satisfied, selfish manner, to bring into their ordinary life—into the life of their duties, of sound thinking, and of healthy coexistence with others—what is meant to apply only in moments when the person devotes themselves to spiritual research. Just as we must sleep soundly so that we can live during the day and develop a healthy, conscious life, so too must we live healthily—responsibly, fully consciously, and mindful of the obligations imposed on us in ordinary life—not in a false detachment from life, not in daydreams or frivolities with which one might adorn oneself. A healthy life in the sensory world is just as necessary for a healthy perception of the spiritual world as healthy sleep is necessary for a healthy daily life.

[ 48 ] It is not necessary for everyone to become a spiritual researcher, although the books mentioned show that anyone can convince themselves of the truth of what I have explained today, and that anyone can quickly acquire the skills of a spiritual researcher. One can, but one does not have to. If one sets aside all prejudices and is willing to go through the same process for this cause that humanity had to go through in order to accept the Copernican revolution, one will also develop patterns of thought that come quite naturally to people—and through which common sense can grasp what the spiritual researcher has to say—even though, after all, one cannot prove whether an astronomer is right either. The same is true here.

[ 49 ] This spiritual research, as described here, is something that must truly become an integral part of the present and carry over into the near future. This spiritual development could learn from the unspeakably harsh experiences of the last three or four years where old, familiar ideas lead us. Today, far too many people are still too complacent to ask themselves how much of our catastrophic times can be attributed to ideas that are no longer suited to contemporary life. Just as in the study of nature, human beings hold such ideas—intellectual, ethical, social, and political ideas. If, in the past centuries and decades, we sought to apply the model of the study of nature to social, ethical, and political life—and if humanity is to master these realms—it can do so only by elevating its spirit to an understanding of the laws that govern the spiritual world. For the most important questions of life—for what the harshest, most profoundly impactful events demand—thoughts are necessary that plunge into reality, but not merely into sensory reality; rather, into a reality that is permeated everywhere by the spirit. Anyone who denies that, within our world as we perceive it, another spiritual world still exists commits the same error as someone who says that a horseshoe is a horseshoe, when in reality it is a magnet.

[ 50 ] In this way, spiritual research discovers the spiritual reality within the world as it appears to us, and through this we learn to engage with reality in its fullness. This, however, has become the most urgent need of our time. We must consciously experience—and help others experience—that the impulses of our ethical and social history are also actions that shape reality. Therefore, spiritual science may emphasize that humanity has struggled to attain what it calls logical thinking. Many people today are capable of thinking logically. But thinking in accordance with reality—that is what will influence human spiritual development just as Copernicanism once did. Even though what the spiritual sciences have to say has, in a certain sense, enduring significance, the spiritual researcher may, especially in our time, also present what he must draw forth from deeper reality as a product of the times—something that has always been there, lying between the lines. Let us look to the past, especially the recent past. It stands before us posing questions; it presents us with concepts, thoughts, ideas, and impulses of the will; it shows us through events that it has outlived its usefulness. We must look to the future, which we can master only in the place where fate has placed us, in a different way than we have until now. We must look to the future by perceiving reality in its fullness, so that, by grasping it, we may seek to penetrate the historical and ethical life of humanity in the way it must be penetrated, in the way that humanity must intervene. The spiritual researcher may say that he wishes to serve human knowledge and human life in a time when such grave trials are being experienced as now, and he adds the hope that he believes he can be of service precisely to our difficult times and to the equally difficult future of humanity.