The Rudolf Steiner Archive

1. Findings from the Humanities on Questions Concerning the Human Soul

[ 1 ] What is meant by “anthroposophy” in this lecture is not something that arises from a sectarian movement, a spiritual current, or the like, but rather something much more universal and human: a spiritual current that has arisen with inner necessity in our epoch from the emergence of the scientific worldview over the course of the last few centuries, in the form that this scientific worldview has taken on, particularly in our time.

[ 2 ] However, one must not think that what is meant by anthroposophy is supposed to arise as a logical consequence, as some kind of inferential result, from scientific premises; rather, the idea is that this anthroposophy must develop on its own as a living entity, as an experience, in an age that must think scientifically about many questions concerning life and the world. This anthroposophy is conceived more as a living child—if I may put it that way—of the scientific way of thinking than as a mere logical consequence.

[ 3 ] Now, however, I must endeavor, distinguished audience, to weave these four lectures—which are intended to cover a wide variety of fields in contemporary science—into a coherent whole. Therefore, each individual lecture will not be a self-contained whole, and I must ask you to bear this in mind.

[ 4 ] If I open this lecture series with a discussion of the relationship between anthroposophy and the science of the soul, this seems natural insofar as indeed self-evident, in that anthroposophy—which seeks to be guided by the spiritual world and to derive its research findings from that world—must first and foremost concern itself with the inner affairs of the human being, with the human soul life. That is one side of the matter. On the other hand, however, it must be considered that over the course of the last few centuries—especially during the 19th century—what is called the science of the soul, or psychology, has essentially taken on a completely different character than it had until recently. Precisely because of the expansion of scientific thinking into many areas of life, the science of the soul has perhaps become more enigmatic, more filled with all manner of life’s mysteries than any other scientific endeavor of modern times. Given the great and formidable achievements of scientific research, it was only natural that scientific-methodological thinking and the scientific worldview would, so to speak, take hold of everything that lies within the realm of human knowledge. And so it has come to pass that this scientific worldview has, one might say, extended its influence in recent times to the realm of the life of the soul.

[ 5 ] I would like to correct, right from the start, the prejudice and misunderstanding that so easily arise, particularly in relation to anthroposophical research—namely, the notion that anthroposophically oriented spiritual science refuses to take into account what the modern scientific worldview has to offer humanity. On the contrary, the subsequent lectures I will be giving here will show precisely how the natural sciences only come into their own when they receive the strong foundation that they can gain through anthroposophy or spiritual science. And in a certain sense, this will already become apparent when considering the relationship between anthroposophy and the science of the human soul. It is a legitimate ideal of modern natural science to separate what it regards as natural phenomena—the content of natural processes and natural facts—from anything psychological, and to refrain from introducing into scientific observation or scientific experimentation anything that originates from the “subjective”—as it is called—or from psychological experience. Only in this way can this scientific way of thinking hope that human beings will not cloud the objective picture of natural facts with what they bring into nature through their psychological tendencies and experiences.

[ 6 ] It is only natural that, under such an ideal, the science of the soul in particular had to take on a certain form. For just as the soul must relate to the external world in the scientific understanding of nature, so too did this soul not relate to the external world in earlier times. Anyone who truly has a knack for delving into scientific thought and the worldviews of past centuries will notice that in those earlier times, whenever people everywhere attempted to explain and understand natural phenomena, they did not strictly separate these facts of nature from what the soul perceived in them—from what the soul sought to form as, let us say, symbolic or other conceptions of these facts of nature. It was, so to speak, what people experienced in nature, mingled with what was the objective fact of nature itself. But because the natural sciences themselves were not entirely free from certain elements contributed by the soul, this meant that, with regard to the science of the soul, people did not find themselves in such a perplexing situation as they do today. Anyone who had already perceived the spiritual in nature and, along with the purely material facts, had drawn the spiritual out of nature as well, was much more likely to believe that, with regard to the structure of the spiritual within the essence of the spiritual world, they could gain some insight in harmony with their view of nature and the world — far more so than seems possible today, when people seek to view nature in such a way that precisely everything “subjective,” everything spiritual, is excluded from this perspective. How, then, with a scientific outlook that sees its highest ideal precisely in the exclusion of the spiritual—and which must therefore develop concepts, ideas, and methods based on the exclusion of the spiritual—how, then, can one possibly use these methods to cross over into the spiritual realm and gain any insight into it? How is one supposed to apply what one has learned from the natural sciences—which exclude the psychological—to the study of psychological life?

[ 7 ] Nevertheless, in the third lecture we shall see how physiology in particular—as well as a very promising science that is only now beginning to establish itself in university departments—namely, experimental psychology—will find its sound foundations if we can once again discover a way to arrive at a science of the soul despite the ideal of the natural-scientific approach. For what is to be advocated here is in no way opposed to what the natural sciences have contributed to the study of the soul as an auxiliary science. On the contrary! It is precisely what modern psychological laboratories are striving for that will, from a certain anthroposophical perspective, gain its true fruitfulness and its true significance.

[ 8 ] One might now ask: What does humanity actually seek when it approaches nature scientifically, in the way that the natural sciences rightly do today? What does humanity actually seek to understand about nature? One could discuss this question for hours; however, I will only briefly suggest how it might be answered.

[ 9 ] In the course of spiritual life, human beings develop certain needs that arise simply from the fact that they experience the inner workings of their own souls while, outside themselves, they observe the unfolding of natural phenomena. It is out of these needs that the science of nature develops. One seeks to come to terms within the soul itself with what the soul can ask, with what the soul can raise as a mystery or a doubt when contemplating nature. And one seeks to view nature in such a way that what is experienced within us as the inner course of psychological experiences is given its due. It is actually the observer who sets the guidelines and directions for natural science. One need only recall, for example, a statement such as that made by Daubois-Reymond on the occasion of his famous lecture “On the Limits of Knowledge of Nature”: Knowledge of nature exists when our need for causality—that is, something subjective, rooted in human experience—is satisfied. But this presupposes that this subjective, personal psychological experience, with its questions and doubts, stands—like a sphinx—opposite the external course of natural phenomena; that these phenomena do not, at first glance, reveal what the inner life forms into an image of them. We can transform the initial image that arises from our preliminary observation through what takes place within our soul, and in doing so, we arrive precisely at the natural sciences.

[ 10 ] Can we do the same with the life of the soul? We do not always answer this question clearly and precisely enough. We cannot approach the life of the soul with ordinary consciousness in the same inquiring way as we do nature. This life of the soul takes place within us. We can only experience it, only live through it. But we will gain nothing if we then classify what is already known to us in the same systematic way we classify nature in order to arrive at a natural science. This psychological experience, as it occurs in ordinary everyday life, can be experienced; but in fact, by experiencing it in this way, there is no reason to treat it in the same manner as facts of nature. The latter lead us, so to speak, into the unknown at every turn, whereas we stand right in the midst of psychological experience. One must first accustom oneself to certain lines of inquiry within the natural sciences themselves if one wishes to apply a method to psychological experience similar to that commonly used in the natural sciences.

[ 11 ] One might say: In relation to nature, the observer is given as a self-evident external entity; in contrast, there is no observer in relation to psychological experience. Consequently, some people despaired entirely of any possibility of observing inner life, because they could not imagine how this separation could take place: that one could simultaneously experience the unfolding of inner life and yet still be an observer.

[ 12 ] But that is precisely it—this strange paradox—which must occur in order to revive a science of the soul that can stand alongside the natural sciences, I would say, in the spirit of the demands of the natural sciences. The question of the observer of mental life must be taken seriously, in all its significance and depth. That which lives within us cannot directly observe this mental life. If the natural scientist, who wishes to fulfill the ideal of the natural scientific worldview in the present, separates everything that is soul from his mode of thinking—if, so to speak, he allows the psychological to recede entirely—then the researcher of the soul today must take the exact opposite path: He must not set anything apart from the soul experiences, but rather he must bring something into these soul experiences; he must permeate these soul experiences with something that is not present in ordinary consciousness. The researcher of the soul must take precisely the opposite path! Precisely because natural science has grown so powerful on its own path, the researcher of the soul must take this opposite path. The great, significant question arises: How can this path be found?

[ 13 ] I will now have a number of paradoxes to discuss. But I ask that you bear in mind that whatever has emerged in the course of the development of the human spirit has always had a paradoxical character in the early stages of its emergence. Just think of the great, revolutionary achievements of the natural sciences themselves—how they affected people, what doubts, what trials, what struggles they gave rise to! Human beings are still much closer to the spiritual realm than to nature. It is no wonder, then, that even with regard to the newer science of the soul, much of what has emerged in the course of scientific research may also come to light.

[ 14 ] It is clear that, from the outset, in the anthroposophically oriented science of the soul, one cannot make do with the consciousness that permeates our everyday life—the same consciousness that is also common in conventional scientific research, as I have already pointed out. The science of the soul will become a question of consciousness. And as such a question of consciousness, I addressed this science of the soul in my book The Riddle of Man, published a year ago: If the soul, as it confronts its own experiences in ordinary life, can essentially know nothing of these experiences—if it can only experience them as one experiences the external natural world before having a scientific picture of it—then this already suggests that this soul must undergo changes within itself if it wishes to observe its own realities. This will present some difficulties in relation to the prevailing way of thinking today. This approach holds that one must not interfere with the soul, but leave it as it has been received, so to speak, “from the hands of nature itself,” and in science, one must build upon what lives within it. Psychology, however, will have to draw upon forces from the deeper sources hidden from ordinary experience, forces through which methods of observation and modes of perception different from those found in ordinary life will arise.

[ 15 ] Now I will briefly and simply describe what must happen to the human soul if it is to become a true observer of its own inner experiences—or, to put it better, if it is to awaken the inner observer hidden within it, so that it can explore its own experiences. Thinking—and all the forms of imagination one acquires through the observation of external nature—is insufficient when dealing with the soul. As one soon realizes, especially when wrestling inwardly with this insight, all these concepts do not take one beyond the realm of facts that can be grasped through the natural sciences; they do not bring one anywhere near the soul.

[ 16 ] The situation changes the moment one reaches those points—I call them the limits of knowledge—at which a person initially stands in doubt and often says to himself: This is as far as we can go with what is granted to us as human beings in terms of our drive for knowledge; but here lie insurmountable limits; one cannot go beyond them. — One need only observe how people who, imbued with the scientific worldview of recent times, attempt with their thoughts to delve ever deeper and deeper into existence, arrive at such limits of knowledge. I will cite a few examples that will show us how those striving for knowledge truly arrive at very special points in their spiritual experience.

[ 17 ] As a first example, I would like to cite one I found in a seeker of knowledge who may be less highly regarded as a philosopher but all the more highly valued as a person: the famous aesthetician Friedrich Theodor Vischer. When Vischer reviewed Volkelts’s interesting little book on “The Dream Imagination,” he posed the question to himself with all the energy of his inner insight: What could be the relationship between the human soul and the human body?

[ 18 ] It is one thing to approach this problem from philosophical premises or academic concepts, or to engage with it purely intellectually; it is quite another when it arises before the soul out of a profound experience of thought, so that it truly stands before that soul like a sphinx. It was out of such an anxious experience—as can be seen from the entire context—that the so-called V-Vischer, Friedrich Theodor Vischer, posed the question. He says: The human soul cannot be in the body; but neither can it be anywhere other than in the body. — A complete contradiction! But a contradiction that does not arise from a forced logical deduction, but rather emerges from full inner thinking—a contradiction with which one wrestles, a contradiction that can be the beginning of an inner drama of insight. And one must not shy away from such inner dramas of insight—because they lead to experience—if a true science of the soul is to emerge.

[ 19 ] I have thus alluded to one of the most significant questions that arise at the frontiers of knowledge. There are many. Du Bois-Reymond spoke of seven world mysteries. One could cite hundreds and hundreds of such questions, both minor and major. One might pause at these questions and say: “Human knowledge extends only this far; one cannot go any further!” — But if one makes this admission, then what is lacking is simply the courage of knowledge. What is at stake is this: to be able to stand with such questions while fully engaged in one’s inner spiritual life; not to approach these questions intellectually with all the soul’s powers, but to live through them and have patience, to wait and see if something like a revelation from outside emerges. And that is what happens.

[ 20 ] Anyone who does not seek to answer such questions using the preconceived concepts they already possess, but rather, as it were, immerses themselves in the waves of emotion that such questions stir up within the human soul, will arrive at a completely new experience that they cannot have in ordinary consciousness. I can express this experience through a comparison. It is an elemental experience of the soul’s existence and an elemental experience for the emergence of an anthroposophically oriented science of the soul or psychology. One must simply take it in its full reality, not in its abstract folly. We imagine—whether the analogy is more or less valid or not is not the point here; whatever it is meant to tell us, it will tell us—we imagine a very primitive animal that has not yet developed a sense of touch differentiated from the outside world, one that, so to speak, merely probes inwardly within itself with its experience and bumps into the physical objects around it. In the spirit of evolutionary theory, we imagine such a life perfecting itself. What can emerge from this? That which, in the lower being, is merely a bumping into external things and an internally undifferentiated experience of these bumps—this differentiates itself in the course of development in such a way that the sense of touch arises. The scientific theory of evolution depicts the differentiation of sensory life in general—I would say—as arising from being jostled by things, from becoming differentiated through this jostling. What happens there externally, physiologically, and physically—the development of a differentiated sense of touch from the mere contact with external objects—is repeated in the purely spiritual realm when one approaches things with vitality, when one arrives at such frontiers of knowledge with one’s whole inner being. At these thresholds, one initially feels as if one were inside the darkness of the spiritual world, bumping into everything. The fact that questions such as those raised by Vischer arise is proof: one lives in a dark psychological existence, grounded in the spiritual world, bumping against the spiritual world. But that which thus bumps against the spiritual world must now differentiate itself!

[ 21 ] In the actual experience of such boundary questions, something enters and reveals itself in the soul that is not otherwise present—something that is just as absent from the soul beforehand as the perception of external objects through a differentiated sense of touch is for a being that has not yet developed this differentiated sense of touch but merely bumps into things. One must come to experience these boundary questions—these countless, agonizing, sphinx-like boundary questions—in order to know: the methods we can derive from nature, the methods that precisely fulfill the ideal of the scientific approach, lead, when it comes to the soul and spirit, only to a point where we strike the boundaries; there, life must move forward!

[ 22 ] And it can move forward. This can only be a fact of experience. What I mean here presents itself all too clearly, all too significantly, to the mind of the thinker of recent decades, whose thinking is rooted in the natural sciences. For only gradually can the time come when, through patiently finding one’s way into these frontier questions of knowledge, the soul truly expands the realm of its life. I have cited examples of such frontier questions in the short chapter I have just written on these very issues in my book, On the Mysteries of the Soul, which will be published in the coming days.

[ 23 ] I would like to cite yet another such fundamental question—as it arises in the work of Friedrich Theodor Vischer—as an example of how someone who truly begins to experience the drama of knowledge within himself approaches what I have just described — although, when Friedrich Theodor Vischer was striving for this, the time had not yet come when the soul could break through the boundaries at which it stands — groping inwardly, not yet externally differentiated in its spiritual groping. Vischer says there: “No mind where there is no nerve center, where there is no brain, say the opponents. ‘No nerve center, no brain,’ we say, if it were not prepared from below through countless stages; it is easy to speak mockingly of a stirring of the spirit within granite and limestone—no harder than it would be for us to ask mockingly how the protein in the brain soars into ideas. Human understanding loses the ability to measure these gradual differences. It will remain a mystery how it comes to be that nature—under which the spirit must surely slumber—stands as such a perfect counterpoint to the spirit that we “—I ask you to take note of the turn of phrase! — “bump up against it; it is a distinction of such an appearance of absoluteness that with Hegel’s ‘otherness’ and ‘being outside of oneself’—however ingenious the formula—virtually nothing is said, and the harshness of the apparent dividing wall is simply concealed. The correct recognition of the edge and the impact in this counter-strike is found in Fichte, but no explanation for it.”

[ 24 ] One cannot have a more precise description of this inner life of the soul: how it initially feels itself drawn to the spiritual world where it experiences these boundary questions; how it longs to differentiate itself from this initial contact with the spiritual world toward a genuine sensing of the spiritual world, toward the unfolding of—to use Goethe’s expression—a spiritual organ. Just as Goethe speaks of spiritual eyes and spiritual ears, one could say that, at the most elementary level, spiritual organs of perception blossom forth through immersing oneself in these things. This is a genuine life process, a genuine process of growth; it is not merely an application of what one has already learned in the other sciences; rather, it is something as real as a child’s growth, yet it leads the soul into regions it has not previously experienced.

[ 25 ] Many people today are mistaken about these things. The now-famous philosopher Bergson, for example, succumbs to a fundamental misconception in this area. Bergson argues that one cannot comprehend the world with the analytical mind, and that, in particular, one cannot grasp the life of the soul with the analytical mind, because in the soul—indeed, in existence as a whole—there is “becoming” everywhere, “flow” everywhere, “life” everywhere. What does Bergson believe? That what really matters is already there, that one can seek it with the powers one already possesses. But that is the great error. One will not find there what can truly explain the soul; rather, the soul must transcend itself; the soul must develop something it does not yet possess. It must not believe that the life it is to explore is already there, but rather that this life must first be attained.

[ 26 ] Many people—if I may use the expression—actually have a great fear of delving into the drama of inner knowledge. They believe they are stepping into the abyss of subjectivity, into the abyss of individuality. If they were truly to venture into this abyss in the manner just described, they would find that, in doing so, they discover within themselves something as objective as what one finds externally when facing nature. It is merely an illusion to believe that one person finds this and another finds that while living through the drama of self-discovery. In a certain sense, individual experiences must differ, because they are different aspects, different views of the same thing from different sides. But the fact that one takes photographs of a thing from different angles—and these photographs differ—does not mean that the thing itself does not present its objectivity to these aspects. One must not take what the knower brings forth in this way from his soul in such a way that one accepts it purely dogmatically—that is, that one now believes in the specific formulation he provides as if it were a dogma or a law of nature. Rather, one must be clear about this: No matter how subjective what appears through the spiritual organs of perception may be due to the particular aspect—and when the methods I have now outlined only in principle are further developed, true spiritual-soul organs will indeed arise that can be compared to spiritual eyes and spiritual ears—if the spiritual world is characterized on the basis of the contemplative consciousness, as I call it in my book The Riddle of Man, then what the observer describes may be a subjective aspect; but by accepting it, one stands face to face with spiritual reality, just as one has a true image of a tree, even if one sees it only from one side. This is precisely what must be understood in this field.

[ 27 ] When a person transcends themselves in this spiritual and soul life of theirs, the result is what I describe in my book How Does One Gain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?, in which you will find a detailed account of what the soul must do in order to transcend itself in this way. Of course, I could only outline the basic principles today. If you follow what is presented in this book to a certain extent, you will discover why I initially called these experiences—which are entirely new compared to ordinary consciousness—“imaginations,” and why I referred to the level of consciousness that develops there as “imaginative consciousness.”

[ 28 ] This imaginative consciousness is not something fantastical. It has a content that is new compared to what one has experienced before. “Imaginative consciousness” is just a term like so many others. What matters is that the imaginations one acquires as an enrichment of one’s inner life clearly express that they are—let us say—reflections of a spiritual reality, just as our ordinary perceptions are reflections of external physical reality.

[ 29 ] I have described to you the process through which the soul, in the first stage, rises above itself to what is called imaginative cognition. With this imaginative cognition, one actually lives in a state that must be described with a paradoxical term—one that, of course, can only be treated with derision given contemporary habits of thought: One lives by uniting one’s soul with what one experiences in this way; one lives outside the body. That is what matters! And above all, one learns to distinguish what one experiences in this way—without the aid of the body—first, from ordinary sensory perceptions gained from the external sensory world; but also from everything that constitutes visions, hallucinations, and illusions.

[ 30 ] For this must always be kept in mind: The path indicated here leads in the exact opposite direction from the path that can be described as pathological—the one that leads to an illusory, visionary life. It is precisely those who find their way into the imaginative life who know that what we perceive sensually—what we perceive in nature with our healthy senses—stands spiritually higher than anything that can appear before our soul through visions or hallucinations. By indulging in visions, we plunge deeper into our mere physicality; we connect more intimately with it; we permeate physicality with our soul, rather than freeing ourselves from it.

[ 31 ] When we speak of human beings as natural beings in the third lecture, it will become clear to us why the contents of visions can be confused with spiritual perceptions. Today, as we speak of soul experience, the point is to sharply emphasize the difference: that the visionary descends into his physical life, whereas the one who strives for imaginative insight immerses himself in a purely soul-based realm, through which he arrives at an experience independent of the body.

[ 32 ] As I said, this is a paradoxical concept for contemporary ways of thinking. Anyone today who wishes to approach the spiritual world from a layman’s perspective, based on amateurish notions, would so dearly like to imagine this spiritual world according to the model of external perceptions; they would so dearly like—as can be seen in the disastrous practice of spiritualism—for spiritual facts to present themselves to them just as a natural fact does through a physical experiment in a laboratory. They wish to grasp the spirit. But what confronts us in imaginative perception cannot be compared to anything tangible. I have compared it in the book On the Riddles of the Soul—though it is not the same; it can only be compared—to the memories of past experiences that we believe we are bringing up from the depths of our soul life. The ethereal, purely soul-spiritual nature of such memory experiences is the only way in which the spirit—in which the soul is rooted—can be experienced at all. Except that the imaginative images that arise in the soul, just like memory images, do not tie in with experiences in the physical world; rather, through their very content, they announce: one has entered a new, spiritual world—a world previously unknown. One must first gradually familiarize oneself with this entirely different kind of soul experience, since one’s “I” no longer has the support of the physical organs through which one obtains external perceptions; one must gradually accustom oneself to this life.

[ 33 ] Above all: even though I have compared these concepts of imaginative cognition with those of memory, everything that appears as imagination—that is, the reproduction of a spiritual reality—has a peculiarity to which we find it very difficult to become accustomed, namely, the peculiarity that the more perfect such a spiritual perception is in the imagination, the less we are able to remember it once we have experienced it. We are accustomed to remembering what has passed through our soul. Just as we have the spiritual experience, it does not immediately give rise to a memory; rather, the process is quite different. I have described it in my book On the Riddles of the Soul. The process is as follows: If one wishes to have a particular imagination, one must prepare oneself for it; one must train the soul to develop, within itself, the powers through which the imagination can reveal itself to it. One can remember what the soul does, what the soul undertakes in order to arrive at the imagination—that is what one can recall. Through this, one can evoke the imagination anew. Thus, once one has had a spiritual experience through imaginative insight, one cannot simply recall it; rather, one must once again undergo all the inner preparations of the soul—and it is these that one can recall. One can say to oneself: You did this, you did that; do it again, and you will have the experience once more. — And only when we succeed, so to speak, in bringing images of the imaginations into ordinary consciousness—into ordinary thinking—as mental representations—can we remember these images. But what is truly imagination must always arise anew; otherwise, it is not true imagination.

[ 34 ] Another peculiarity is this: the more often we form mental images derived from external life, the more easily we form them. While we gain a certain practice in this and things become second nature to us, this is not the case with the experience of imagination—with the experience of genuine spiritual realities. The opposite is true: the more often we try to conjure up an imagination under the same conditions, the more indistinct it becomes. This explains the strange circumstance—the rather paradoxical circumstance—that students of spiritual life who strive to arrive at certain imaginations, and who do indeed have such imaginations, are then surprised that they do not recur. Even the ability to recall the experience is often lost as early as the second or third attempt, and it then becomes necessary to undertake new and ever-renewed efforts to summon back what, in a sense, eludes us after having once approached us from the spiritual world.

[ 35 ] You will find all such inner spiritual exercises, which help overcome these difficulties, described in detail in my book, How Does One Gain Insight into the Higher Worlds?, even though that itself is only a brief outline of what I have said about these matters later on.

[ 36 ] Another peculiarity is that one can only cope with such imaginative visions if one finds points of reference—in the life of thought, imagination, feeling, and will that one has acquired as a human being up to this point of spiritual training—to infuse the imaginations with concepts. If one does not pay careful attention to this, one may not become pathologically ill, but one’s soul may become confused and clouded. One always finds oneself saying: “Now you are experiencing something spiritual that you cannot yet understand; you have not developed concepts deep enough for it.”—Then one must stop; then one must change course so that one tries to continue developing one’s ordinary conceptualization—formed within the sensory world—in order to understand at a later opportunity what one did not understand before.

[ 37 ] In short, I could cite many more such characteristics; one encounters all sorts of things that are striking and paradoxical in relation to the psychological experience that belongs to ordinary consciousness. But only then—when one has, so to speak, torn the soul away from the physical in this way—only then does one stand within the spiritual, within the spiritual world. No one can dispute this spiritual experience.

[ 38 ] What I have described to you so far leads to certain insights. One comes to the realization that, apart from the physical body that one carries within oneself—and which is the object of anatomy, physiology, and the external natural sciences in general—what is truly our own is what I call, in my more recent books (to avoid any misunderstanding), the “body of formative forces,” whereas I previously called it the “etheric body.” It is truly a second element that exists within us and that can never reveal itself to ordinary perception or ordinary psychological experience, but can only reveal itself when this psychological experience progresses to the level of imagination. For this body of formative forces is not something spatial; this body of formative forces is something that lives only in time, but lives in time in such a way that everything that takes effect in our physical body—let us say, from our birth or conception until our death—wells up from this body of formative forces. We carry within us a second body, a body of formative forces. It becomes a reality, a fact, for the imaginative consciousness.

[ 39 ] But we cannot go further with this imaginative consciousness than to what accompanies us from birth to death as the “body of formative forces”—the expression is paradoxical, but that does not matter. One can go further if, building on what has just been indicated, one progressively strengthens the soul—now set free—in other ways, making it inwardly stronger, and if, through ever-renewed and patient practice, one develops an entirely new relationship to what is called the life of imagination and the life of concepts.

[ 40 ] In everyday life, a “representation” is, after all, something through which we bring external objects to mind. When we have a representation, we believe that whatever we can possess internally of an external object, we actually possess! We must free ourselves from this notion when it comes to the realm of spiritual experience. We must, so to speak, be able to place ourselves in a position where our ideas can play out within us as forces and powers struggling against one another in an inner drama of cognition. We must gain the ability to let one idea enter into conflict with another. We must cultivate the desire, once we have characterized a thing from one side, to also characterize it from the opposite side. At this stage, terms such as materialism, idealism, spiritualism, sensualism, and so on all become mere figures of speech, because all these concepts—which are merely spun from conceptual webs—turn out to be like photographic images taken from different angles.

[ 41 ] We come to realize that, in the realm of the mind, we must relate to our concepts in the same way that we relate to the sensory realm through our sense organs. We approach objects from various angles. We do not regard concepts as images, but merely as what characterizes things from one particular aspect or another.

[ 42 ] The spiritual researcher will therefore cultivate within himself the impulse to characterize things from one perspective and also to characterize them from the other, the opposite perspective. In particular, he will feel a longing to form certain ideas and then to refute them himself—to truly go through this inner struggle. I am merely pointing out a few fundamental inner perspectives here that one must progressively realize once one has reached a certain point at the frontier of knowledge.

[ 43 ] Then the soul continues to develop. It comes to develop within itself—and I ask that you set aside all superstition or prejudiced notions—what I have called in my books “inspired insight.” To a greater degree, the soul thereby detaches itself from the body, and after attaining this level of insight, one is now not only able to perceive what, as a body of formative forces, accompanies our existence from birth to death through the course of time, but one is now also able to perceive spiritual realities that exist outside our body—spiritual reality, just as the physical eyes perceive physical reality. In the next lecture, I will speak of external spiritual reality and wish to point out, first of all, what the human being now perceives through this inspired insight as spiritual reality contained within himself.

[ 44 ] What emerges before inspired insight does not live within our existence from birth to death; it lived before us, before we entered the earthly body through birth—or, shall we say, conception—and after we enter the spiritual world through death, it will live on with us. This has united with the hereditary material inherited physically from our parents and ancestors; it has permeated this physical body. One truly gains insight into what, in the soul, preceded our physical existence and what follows our physical death through inspired insight, because one arrives at a spiritual perception of that which is completely independent of this physical body. The form-body is still bound to this physical existence; it dissolves when separated from this physical existence. What inspired insight can perceive does not dissolve; it remains within itself; it is that which passes through births and deaths. In the realm of inspired insight, a person can now truly and appropriately investigate what connects them to purely spiritual worlds—what works powerfully so that they become this kind of person when their physical genetic heritage unites with their spiritual part. _

[ 45 ] And the third stage one reaches is intuition. This does not refer to the vague notion usually associated with the term “intuition,” but rather to what I am about to describe. What one can attain as the third stage of spiritual knowledge is achieved when one becomes fully aware—and this will occur at a certain point in one’s spiritual development—that one is someone else, that one has truly found an inner observer within oneself through the efforts one has made through imagination and inspiration.

[ 46 ] Here something significant occurs within what I have called the “drama of knowledge.” Here something occurs where one can say: One sees that not only is our physical body co-shaped by the spiritual, but one also comes to see that our soul itself—as it lives within us with its feelings, its tendencies, its ambitions, its emotions, and its volitional character—has itself come into being through spiritual processes. The drama of knowledge becomes an inner blow of fate.

[ 47 ] One may have experiences of fate in life that leave one elated to the heavens or grief-stricken to the point of death; one may experience the worst and the most joyful: what one experiences when one witnesses not only the becoming of the physical but also the becoming of the soul—that is a stroke of fate, an inner stroke of fate, which, for those who fully experience it in the drama of insight, means more than the highest and deepest, the most joyful and most painful experiences of fate in external existence.

[ 48 ] If this can be the case—if this inner power within the soul can truly bring about a transformation such that not only does the physical appear to the soul as emerging from the spiritual, but the soul itself is experienced within the spiritual process of becoming—then intuitive knowledge arises. And then one has entered the realm that encompasses repeated earthly lives, looking back on past earthly lives, and the certainty that this earthly life will be repeated. The realization sets in that the entire life of a human being consists of successive earthly lives, with intervening lives in the spiritual world between death and a new birth.

[ 49 ] All of this must be accompanied by our inner, spiritual gaze being directed toward something for which it has not actually been trained through its relationship to the external natural world.

[ 50 ] When it comes to the external world, we are always asking about origins and causes. But these questions about origins and causes do not help us understand the spirit. To those who approach the spiritual realm in the way I have described, it becomes evident that within everything that grows and flourishes, within everything that progresses and develops, there is a regressive development, a continuous crumbling of existence, a continuous destructive force. That is why those who perhaps did not perceive this in this modern form, but in the forms in which such things were known in the past, have said: Spiritual knowledge leads to the gates of death. — One comes to recognize that consciousness, spiritual experience, and conscious spiritual experience can arise only when that which causes this existence to crumble is introduced into the growing, flourishing, and progressive aspects of development; and one comes to realize that death is merely the single, great event that one can conceive of as being divided—as it were, broken down into its atoms—as that which continually happens within us while we become conscious in physical life. Knowledge in this world is a small-scale entry into that which overwhelms us in a single stroke when we pass through the gate of death.

[ 51 ] One comes to recognize the connection between consciousness and dying. And precisely by learning to recognize this connection between consciousness and dying, one also learns to recognize how this consciousness passes through the gate of death, how death is precisely an awakener of a different consciousness into which we enter when we shed the physical body—which, in a sense, we shed solely for the sake of knowledge—when we acquire such imaginative, inspired, intuitive knowledge.

[ 52 ] One must learn to think about one’s relationship to the world in a completely different way than one was accustomed to before, if one wants to gain a true understanding of spiritual knowledge. Above all, one must completely abandon the belief that one can somehow find the spirit by interpreting the material world, by criticizing the material world in any way, or by discovering laws within the material world. The laws one discovers in the material world apply only to the material world. One does not find the spirit by interpreting the sensory world; one finds the spirit in the physical body as it relates to the sensory world; but one finds it in the free experience of the spiritual realm.

[ 53 ] I can explain this with an analogy: When we read sequences of words or sequences of letters, we do not perceive them in such a way that we say, “Here is a vertical line, here is a horizontal line”; we do not interpret the letters; we look beyond the rows of letters and words, and an inner meaning develops. This meaning has nothing to do with an interpretation of the letters. One must have learned to read. What develops in the reader is something entirely different from what lies in the letters. One cannot extract from the typesetting case the spirit that one discovers in the letters while reading. Nor can one find spiritual life in nature by interpreting nature. One can find spiritual life only by lifting the soul above itself and thereby discovering that which now extends from the Spirit itself into this physical life, insofar as the soul experiences itself in the physical realm between birth and death.

[ 54 ] You see, a science of the soul is emerging here that can stand alongside the natural sciences, because it does not simply transfer the methods developed for studying nature to the realm of the soul; nor does it remain confined to the soul as it is experienced in ordinary life, but rather introduces into this realm of the soul an objective element from which the soul experiences itself, and from which the physical is also born, as we shall see in the third of these lectures.

[ 55 ] These are just a few hints—only the very first, most basic ones—; for everything else, I must refer you to my books— hints as to how a person can discover what lies within them and what is their eternal essence, and how this anthroposophically oriented theory of the soul can truly lead people to avoid what happened to a very significant contemporary researcher whose thinking bore tragic consequences—the great psychologist Franz Brentano, who passed away here in Zurich in March of this year. Franz Brentano immersed himself in psychological research during an era when the external, scientific mode of thinking was on the rise. He wanted to apply the scientific method, as it is, to the life of the soul. However, this scientific method gets us no further than comparing concepts: how feelings arise from the soul, what attention is, and so on in external physical life. But Franz Brentano laments this in his book Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, in the first volume he wrote—and which remained the only one—by stating what the science of the soul cannot achieve there: What can help us—even if we proceed in a strictly scientific manner—the comparison of ideas, the association of ideas, the arising of pleasure and displeasure, and so on, if the great hopes of Plato and Aristotle cannot be fulfilled: that we might gain insight through the science of the soul into the continued existence of the better part of our being after passing through the gate of death. — Franz Brentano laments that, with the means at his disposal, he cannot tackle these problems. It is remarkable how he wrestled with these problems until the end of his life. The sincerity and honesty of his struggle stem precisely from the tragic circumstance that I described in the third chapter of my book On the Riddles of the Soul in a eulogy to Franz Brentano. Time and again, he promised to continue his Psychology after the first volume had been published. It was intended to span four or five volumes; the first volume appeared in the spring of 1874, and he promised the second for the fall, followed by the subsequent volumes in quick succession: Nothing else ever appeared! He wanted to master the life of the soul using the scientific method; he wanted to set to work honestly and sincerely. Had he been able to do so—had the scientific method not weighed down his powers of inquiry like a lead weight, precisely because he misunderstood it—he would have been capable of passing through the gate into the spiritual experience that draws forth from the soul something that cannot be present if one relies solely on scientific methods. The tragic life of Franz Brentano as a researcher—as is evident in many other figures of the present day, but particularly poignantly in his case because he was a personality of such significance and, at the same time, of such profound inner honesty—shows how it is precisely the scientific achievements that necessitate a science of the soul, one that can only be attained through spiritual experiences liberated from the physical. Then, once again, the great problems will be able to step forward before the soul—problems that must above all occupy human beings as they turn their gaze toward their own inner life: the great problem of immortal life—as we grasp the truly immortal part through methods such as those we have described—and also the problem of free will, which we will discuss further in these lectures; both are problems that are precisely the most important and the most pressing. But if one looks at the works of psychology from the last few decades, these problems have been completely banished—indeed, they have vanished from psychological research—simply for the reasons stated in today’s discussion.

[ 56 ] But it is not just a matter of approaching these great questions of the soul! But also what the psychologist is seeking—what he specifically aims to investigate using the methods he has developed through immersion in the scientific way of thinking—that, too, becomes fully clear only when one can examine it from the perspective suggested here. The fact is this: the natural sciences will be regarded as one thing, and the humanities and spiritual research as another. But just as when digging a tunnel—after everything has been properly considered—one meets in the middle by digging from both sides, so too do spiritual research and natural research come together and only then form the whole of the knowledge to which humanity aspires.

[ 57 ] I will cite just one example of how even conventional psychology can be transformed by venturing into these lofty realms, which have so far been only briefly touched upon. When conducting psychological research, one is confronted with questions such as those concerning memory and recollection. One might despair when dealing with the problem of memory in conventional psychology. There, it becomes perfectly clear where the limits of cognition lie: A person imagines something, forms a mental image based on an external perception; well, this mental image “descends” into the psychological realm, “disappears,” as they say, but the person can later recall the mental image. Where was it?

[ 58 ] I don’t want to go into detail right now about everything that has been said over the centuries regarding these questions. On the one hand, it is said: Such ideas descend into the unconscious, then rise again above the threshold of consciousness. — I would like to meet someone who, when uttering these words, is capable of attaching any substantive meaning to them! One immediately loses all sense of meaning when speaking of this “descending” and “ascending” of ideas. One can speak of anything; but one cannot imagine it, for it corresponds to no reality of any kind. The more physiologically oriented psychologists speak of “traces” that “carve themselves” into the nervous system, into the brain; these traces then “recall” these ideas “once more.” One then struggles to explain how the idea that has “descended” is “dug out” from these traces. As I said, one can despair at what constitutes the content of conventional psychology. How much serious, noble, genuine research is devoted to these problems! This honest, genuine research should by no means be overlooked.

[ 59 ] The truth, however, is that even this simple fact of soul life only reveals itself in its proper light when one considers it with that power of the soul which now possesses the spiritual organs—the power that, from the perspective adopted in the spiritual world, also observes ordinary soul life. Then one realizes: There is absolutely no question of an idea that I now have “sinking down” somewhere and “rising up” again somewhere else. Memory is understood entirely incorrectly. An idea that I now gain through external perception and now possess does not live within me at all as something real, but as a reflection that the soul forms through the mirroring of the body. We will discuss this in more detail in the third lecture. And this image lives only in the present moment! Once I have lost it from my inner life, it is no longer there. There is no such thing as images sinking down and resurfacing—and thus forming memories. The common notion of memory is already mistaken.

[ 60 ] What matters is this: once one has sharpened the power of the soul for spiritual vision, one sees—just as one observes in the external world, so one can observe in the spirit—that while we form a mental image through a perception, yet another process is taking place. And it is not the process of forming a concept, but this other, subconscious process—which takes place in parallel with the formation of the concept—that creates something within us which, even though I have the concept, does not immediately enter consciousness, but which lives on. When I have a concept, a subconscious process arises that is now purely bound to the physical. If this process is later recalled by some stimulus, then—as the soul now turns its attention to this process, which is a purely physical one—the concept is formed anew. A remembered idea is a new idea formed from the depths of bodily life, which resembles the old one because it is evoked by the subconscious process that took shape in bodily life. In a sense, the soul reads the engram engraved in the body when it recalls an idea.

[ 61 ] In this way, even psychologists’ common assumptions are corrected. One arrives at the truth instead of what is completely misrepresented in ordinary experience. And so, throughout the entire field of psychology, I could show you on many points how, in the face of true insight, what the soul actually believes to be its experience proves to be an illusion; how we have entirely false conceptions about this inner life of the soul; and how these can only be corrected when the soul frees itself from the body and is then able to observe its experience from a truly spiritual perspective.

[ 62 ] It is precisely through such ideas—which, on the one hand, truly open up the spirit to science and reveal the spiritual world—that, on the other hand, the findings obtained through faithful and diligent research using the scientific method, including in experimental psychology and physiological psychology, are placed in their proper context. And anthroposophically oriented spiritual science is certainly not hostile or unsympathetic toward these fields. Rather, because it knows that the ordinary methods derived from external nature cannot lead to solutions in spiritual experience—but only to questions, to the right questions—it is precisely through its own light that it will be able to make truly fruitful what can be gained through the external scientific approach.

[ 63 ] Another example illustrates how the work of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science truly approaches natural science from the other side of the mountain, much like digging a tunnel from both sides. Recently, Darwinian-oriented natural scientists have arrived at something very interesting, which I will mention in a moment. Before that, I would like to note that the subconscious activity underlying memory—which develops subconsciously in parallel with imagination—is indeed different from, yet related to, what lies in the forces of heredity and the forces of growth. The forces that grow within us are related to those forces that are active in the subconscious when we form a mental image from a sensory perception and evoke dispositions in the physical body that are later “read” and lead to memory. Through genuine psychological observation, one gains a clear understanding of the relationship between the forces of memory and the forces of heredity and growth. A bridge is created—and we will speak even more clearly about such bridges in the coming days—between the soul-spiritual and the physical.

[ 64 ] And now let us see how Richard Semon, the Darwinian-oriented naturalist, in a very interesting book takes as his starting point the laws of heredity and the manifestation of hereditary traits, and arrives at the conclusion that these hereditary forces are linked to the forces of memory! The naturalist thus comes to find that the forces of heredity are related to the forces of memory. The researcher of the soul comes to find that the subconscious forces underlying memory are related to those of heredity!

[ 65 ] These things occur entirely independently of one another. What Richard Semon described as “mneme” in his very interesting book intersects with soul research that is anthroposophically oriented and extends to the study of those areas that are also investigated in humans using scientific methods. But more on that in the third lecture.

[ 66 ] Certainly, even the most basic points I took the liberty of presenting today regarding the results of a genuine spiritual experience of the soul—and thereby regarding the foundation of a new science of the soul—must appear paradoxical in many ways to contemporary ways of thinking. But even if this is most understandable precisely to those who are deeply immersed in these matters, it may well be said that one should not merely be inspired by a lecture, but should delve deeply into the serious pursuit of spiritual scientific research. One will see that, although the forces are employed in a different way than in the field of natural science, the path of research in anthroposophy is no less serious, no less arduous than that pursued in natural scientific research—even if precisely what constitutes a result or conclusion in natural science must serve as the starting point in spiritual research: We arrive at concepts, ideas, and natural laws when we seek to investigate nature. We assume that what natural scientists experience takes us to the very limits when we wish to enter the realm of spiritual research and anthroposophical soul research.

[ 67 ] Thus, I believe that psychology—the study of the soul—based on anthroposophy should not be characterized as opposed to the legitimate demands of today’s scientific way of thinking. On the contrary: it rejects nothing that arises from the legitimate research of the natural sciences; it is in no way opposed to these legitimate natural sciences! But it cannot, for example, limit itself to drawing mere logical conclusions from what the natural sciences themselves already provide. Such a philosophy is not what spiritual science means—one that merely seeks to draw further logical conclusions from natural science. No! Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science must make a higher commitment: the commitment that this spiritual research must emerge from natural science not as an abstract logical consequence, but as a living child.

[ 68 ] And the spiritual researcher has a faith—a faith stronger than that of many natural scientists who reject spiritual research—a stronger faith in natural science, namely that this natural science is strong enough not only to lead to its logical consequences but also strong enough to give birth, as it were, to something entirely alive from within itself, something that arises with its own life force and must flourish through its own free life, and which must be: the spiritual science demanded by natural science itself.

Q&A

[ 69 ] Several questions were asked about the topic of reincarnation.

[ 70 ] Ladies and gentlemen! The questions raised here are such that a brief answer leaves much to be desired, or, conversely, that answering them in a truly satisfactory manner would require entire books. First, there is the question:

[ 71 ] What is the purpose of reincarnation?

[ 72 ] Yes, distinguished guests, fundamentally speaking, the question of purpose—I must give the answer a scientific character, otherwise it is merely beating around the bush—is just like the question of cause—whether teleology is justified or not, I cannot get into that—a question that arises in the physical world and has its significance within the physical world. Reincarnation—if one wishes to call repeated earthly lives that; I prefer to avoid buzzwords, which is why I spoke today of repeated earthly lives—but reincarnation is governed by laws that belong to the spiritual world and have their significance within the spiritual world. And this is what is most difficult to get used to: that upon the transition from the physical world to the spiritual world, one must also transform and metamorphose one’s concepts; that the concepts applicable to the physical world lose their meaning and their scope when one enters the spiritual world. Anyone who has begun to understand the true nature of the spiritual world does not actually ask—as one might ask about the purpose of a machine—about the “purpose of human beings,” much less about the “purpose of reincarnation.”

[ 73 ] As I said during the lecture: the way of thinking derived from the natural sciences—which is, in essence, also the way of thinking derived from the physical external world—leads, at most, to the right questions; but one must then try to draw the answers from the spiritual world.

[ 74 ] Well, of course, anyone who asks a question like this: “What is the purpose of reincarnation?”—is thinking about something in particular. It corresponds to a certain need to know something, even though the question of purpose is not really applicable in the sphere we are dealing with here. But now I ask you to consider the following. I would like to say that I must gather the building blocks to answer the question. Spiritual science is simply not something one can master quickly like a little handbook; rather, it is a truly very comprehensive field.

[ 75 ] When we ask questions in life, we can proceed in such a way that, so to speak, we always take the questions all the way to the end. But perhaps that won’t apply in every case. You see, a question like this one is asked a hundred and a hundred times. I have often said the following about it: There may be people who want to travel from Zurich to Rome, and they want to know the route. Yes, if no one here in Zurich can give them the exact route with all the details, then they won’t want to go to Rome at all. But there may also be people who are satisfied just knowing the way from Zurich to Lugano, and who are then content once they arrive in Lugano to find out how to proceed from there, and then how to continue on from there. That is a comparison. It means the following: When we are living an earthly life, it is oriented toward subsequent earthly lives. This reflects a process of development. In other earthly lives, we will gain things that we do not gain in this one. We go through experiences that bring us different trials and different lessons. If we were able to answer all questions in this earthly life, this earthly life would not give rise to subsequent ones!

[ 76 ] Thus, for spiritual science, the task is to present the fact of reincarnation—if I must use that term. Just as a person assigns a purpose to a single earthly life based on his or her own free impulses, so too does he or she assign successive purposes—each arising from the one before it—to repeated earthly lives. And one will not presume to define, within a single earthly life, the entire scope of human existence as it unfolds through repeated earthly lives. One generally outgrows the habit of relying on definitions that seek to encompass everything once one enters into the truly spiritual experience of the soul. Definitions are quite adequate in ordinary physical life; in spiritual life, where everything boils down to aspects, one is truly reminded—when someone insists on definitions—of the example given in Greek literature, which explains what a definition is. When asked how one should define a human being—since one can only ever define based on individual characteristics—it is said: A human being is a being that has two legs and no feathers. — The next time, someone brought a rooster that he had plucked—as a “human being.”

[ 77 ] Well, I know, of course, what logic demands of a proper definition. Nevertheless, in the mind’s eye, definitions still appear one-sided. The same goes for all purpose-based and causal frameworks, and so on. Reality is something one finds one’s way into, in which one lives and weaves one’s life, but which cannot be encompassed by one-sided concepts. One will find the purposes in the successive earthly lives. Thus, there is no true substance to the question of the “purpose of reincarnation.”

[ 78 ] Question: Is reincarnation a product of the imagination in the spiritual realm?

[ 79 ] Yes, ladies and gentlemen, one can certainly say that, but one must also take into account what I have shown in my book On the Riddles of the Soul: Images, as they are experienced in ordinary consciousness, are not actually real images to spiritual vision; rather, they are numbed images—they are like the corpses of images. That is what is remarkable. What lives in the soul is far more than what comes to consciousness in ordinary life. What lives in the soul is rendered lifeless because ordinary consciousness could not bear it, and then lives on as a corpse of an idea. Hence the abstract concepts in the soul. What one has there is actually only a reflection; it is something that appears and passes away, something that is not remembered at all, as I explained in the lecture. But what lies behind it, what enters the imagination—this living spiritual reality—is that which passes through death and which indeed lives on in the forces of reincarnation. Perhaps that will be the answer to the question.

[ 80 ] Question: Is reincarnation an absolute, lawful institution, rather than a result of formative forces?

[ 81 ] Life between birth and death—or, more precisely, between conception and death—is merely a result of the formative forces. But what is called reincarnation here is governed by far higher spiritual laws. Whether it is a “lawful arrangement” is difficult to answer; it is simply a fact. Repeated earthly lives are a fact—“A result of the formative forces?” Human beings acquire the body of formative forces only when they approach conception as souls; they also shed it again after death; the body of formative forces is—as I explained in the lecture—not eternal. The forces, however, that come into play when speaking of the laws of reincarnation are those that do not enter at all—not only not into the “I”-consciousness, but not even into the realm of the ordinary physical world.

[ 82 ] You see, the path could open up for many people in this very area if only they would seek in the right way. The point is—as I have already indicated in connection with specific matters—that experiences in the spiritual world seem paradoxical compared to those of ordinary life; that in many respects, the things one experiences upon entering the spiritual world appear quite different from those of the physical world. And here one must say: because human beings orient their imagination toward the experiences of natural life and natural events, their concepts scarcely extend beyond spatial concepts. A more precise, truly honest self-knowledge reveals how little human beings go beyond spatial concepts. For you see: where do our concepts of time come from? Actually, from spatial concepts! The changes in space—the changes in the positions of the sun, the moon, and even the hands of the clock here on earth—from these we derive our concepts of time. But what we actually have there are concepts of space. The spiritual, however, in its lowest form as the body of formative forces, already lives in time. This requires us to have a true concept of time!

[ 83 ] But very few people today have a true sense of time. And even fewer have a true sense of the different speeds—not times, but speeds—that prevail in the soul-spiritual realm. Our soul life is based on the fact that, for example, thinking and imagining proceed at a completely different speed than feeling, and feeling, in turn, at a completely different speed than willing. These things—the fact that there are various speeds layered within one another in the inner life of the soul—are precisely what bring about the inner emergence of consciousness. Consciousness arises only where something is disrupted. Therefore, consciousness is even related to death: because death disrupts life. But in general: something is being disrupted! That is why, for example, Bergson’s conception is so mistaken—that one must look everywhere at life and at movement—whereas one arrives at the very essence of movement precisely by hindering it, and at the essence of life by seeing how life is overtaken by death. To grasp something other than life is to penetrate the essence of life.

[ 84 ] These things lead one to realize that the concept of law itself takes on a different meaning when one enters spiritual life—something that is extremely uncomfortable for many people. They therefore do not have the courage to venture into the spiritual world with their concepts and ideas—because those concepts and ideas would have to change! When one truly engages in spiritual research, one comes to understand this very, very thoroughly. I am very reluctant to speak of personal matters, because the personal has little to do with the objective. But many years ago, I was confronted with an important question that has proved fruitful for me in a certain specialized field: Herbart and other psychologists applied arithmetic and mathematics to the study of the soul; they attempted to calculate psychological facts. Eduard von Hartmann even attempted to calculate morally significant facts by undertaking to provide a mathematical justification for pessimism; on one side—the “debit” side of life—he recorded all pleasurable experiences, and on the “credit” side, all unpleasant experiences, and then said: “The balance shows a surplus of displeasure—therefore, life is bad.”

[ 85 ] I have shown that the entire calculation is nonsensical. You can find this proof in the relevant chapter of my Philosophy of Freedom, written in 1894. If one wishes to speak of a calculation here, the starting point of the calculation must be approached quite differently. It must be done in such a way that one does not perform a subtraction—a subtraction leading to a balance—but rather writes down a division, a fraction, in which the numerator consists of everything one experiences in terms of pleasure, joy, and elation throughout one’s life, and the denominator consists of all pain and suffering. Let us consider this fraction. When would life no longer seem worth living? If the denominator were zero—if there were no pain at all—the value would be infinitely large. But the denominator must become infinitely large if the fraction is to have a value of zero. That is to say: life would only cease to seem worth living if the pain were infinitely great. The decision on this is not made by an abstract calculation, but by life itself. That is how life calculates!

[ 86 ] When considering psychological events, one cannot view the relationship between the calculation and the psychological event in the same way as Herbart or Hartmann do in this case. Rather, life provides the result, and when one then ascends into the spiritual worlds, the result breaks down—a sum into its addends, a fraction into its numerator and denominator. One enters precisely the opposite situation. Whereas here in physical life we have the individual addends, numerators, and denominators and then arrive at the result, it is the other way around: in spiritual experience, the result is already there; it is experienced, and the individual elements that lead to the result flow into the spiritual world. So you see: one must thoroughly rethink many concepts if one wishes to cross the threshold between the physical and the spiritual world.

[ 87 ] Perhaps these remarks, which I have linked to this question, may nevertheless give you the impression that this spiritual science is not something conjured up out of thin air or born of the imagination, but rather something that is truly—as I said in the lecture—developed with no less effort than is applied in any other scientific work. It is simply situated in a different field. So one must say: there is a regularity in that process expressed through repeated earthly lives. But one must actually first grasp the nature of this regularity. That is why I said that it is not a matter of interpreting natural phenomena, but of truly rising above natural phenomena and freely experiencing the spiritual within oneself. With that, I have answered the question.

[ 88 ] Now, a curious question—curious in light of this lecture: What are the spiritual sense organs?

[ 89 ] Yes, one must not imagine anything sensual by this. I have strongly emphasized that this is something psychological-spiritual that can only be compared to what comes to life in memory. So if one wants to answer this by seeking a superordinate concept—one that is already familiar—for the subordinate concept “spiritual sense organs,” then one will not be able to make sense of this matter. Instead, one must simply work one’s way through what has been shown: The soul encounters limits, differentiates itself, and develops “spiritual sense organs” that, in the soul-spiritual realm, can be compared to the sense organs in the physical realm, just as “spiritual eyes” and “spiritual ears” can be compared to physical eyes and physical ears.

[ 90 ] Question: Are there clear definitions of what is meant by “faith”?

[ 91 ] Of course, if I wanted to be thorough, I would have to provide you with a historical account of the word “faith” and, building on that, then explore the various forms of faith. However, I would like to say the following: In modern times, the word “faith” has taken on the narrow meaning of holding something to be true for subjective reasons—that is, a form of knowledge that is not actually knowledge at all, but merely a subjective substitute for knowledge. This has not always been the understanding of “faith.” If one wishes to understand where the concept of faith actually originated, one must bear the following in mind.

[ 92 ] As I briefly mentioned in today’s lecture, the soul used to be connected to reality in a different way. It is only in more recent times that the soul has become so separated from natural reality. In those earlier times, when the soul was still more closely linked to spiritual reality and had developed an inner awareness of spiritual content in a different way than the current modern anthroposophical approach must, people knew that when one holds something to be true, this is not merely a theoretical attitude; rather, there is a force of being inherent in this very act of holding it to be true. If I have an ideal and believe in my ideal, this belief in the ideal is not merely the act of bringing the idea of the ideal into consciousness, but a spiritual force is connected to the ideal. And this connection of a spiritual force with the ideal belongs, on the part of the human being, to reality. One actively participates in shaping reality. It is therefore a positive unfolding of power that lies in “belief.”

[ 93 ] In a similar vein, the concept of faith emerges in Ricarda Huch’s interesting book, Luther’s Faith. There, too, the concept of faith is found not merely as a holding to be true, but as a connecting oneself with what is becoming real; so that, I would say, by standing within the power of faith, one has within oneself something like the seed that a plant has within itself—which is not yet a real plant, but has the power to become a real plant.

[ 94 ] It is not a mental image of knowledge that one seeks to possess through faith, but rather an element of imagination that is connected to a real power, so that through faith one stands in reality. And even if someone were to claim that faith brings him no knowledge, he would still have to admit—if he applies the concept of faith in this way—that what this concept of faith contains as reality places him within reality. — These are just small hints, sketches.