The Rudolf Steiner Archive

6. The Spiritual-Scientific Structure of Soul Research: From Its Foundations to the Vital Boundary Questions of Human Existence

[ 1 ] It is understandable that, in our scientific age, people would want to turn to scientific psychology precisely when it comes to the most important mysteries of life and the world—the mysteries of the soul. However, if one is in a position to summarize the current state of scientific psychology, one must say that there is something akin to a decline in scientific psychology—a field that has traditions dating back to very ancient times and which, despite its frequent claims to be an unbiased science, operates precisely within the framework of these traditions.

[ 2 ] The day before yesterday, when I was speaking here about the scientific basis of supersensory knowledge, I mentioned the name of a contemporary philosopher, Richard Wähle. He has, of course, become less well-known in wider circles. Nevertheless, what he has set forth as his view—particularly regarding contemporary scientific psychology—in his books The Whole of Philosophy and Its End and The Mechanism of Human Mental Life is extraordinarily significant. I would say that, especially for those who are capable of thinking in scientific terms today, this philosopher’s perspective is symptomatically significant. I do not mean to say that he is capable of exerting a particular influence, much less that he has exerted such an influence; but his perspective is symptomatically significant. In many respects, it could express the very way in which one must think today in accordance with current scientific standards. And therefore, on the one hand, I can say that the spiritual science referred to here can agree with what such a philosopher says regarding the science of the soul, although, on the other hand—as we shall see today—it must stand in the sharpest possible contrast to such ideas. For this philosopher is thoroughly steeped in the way of thinking and the research mindset that a person today can have when he or she stands, so to speak, at the forefront of the contemporary scientific education taught in the natural sciences. And so, when one attempts to approach the life of the soul using the scientific concepts that are current today, one inevitably arrives at the conviction that the psychology that is generally taught is on the verge of extinction.

[ 3 ] Externally, this is reflected in the fact that this philosophical study of the soul is gradually disappearing from university departments, and there is, in fact, a growing tendency to replace philosophers with individuals who think in terms of the natural sciences—people from the fields of physiology or other natural sciences. In many circles, there is hope that what was once sought to be explored through a specialized psychology—a specialized study of the soul—regarding the mysteries of human mental life can now be answered for human beings through the physiology of the brain, the physiology of the nervous system, and similar fields.

[ 4 ] Now, if one truly engages with the validity of the natural sciences in the study of the soul, one comes to the conviction that conventional psychology speaks of many things that, in fact, can no longer be elevated to a valid concept today. It speaks of imagination, of thinking itself; it speaks of feeling, of volition, of memory, of attention, and so on. And if one now makes a completely honest attempt to engage with the needs of this human spiritual life—with what a person needs in terms of spiritual vitality—and with what this study of the soul presents regarding feeling, will, thinking, memory, and attention, then in the end one is left with nothing more than words. And one must say that anyone who surveys the historical course of human spiritual life can conclude—I can only mention this, as proof would go beyond the scope of today’s lecture—that in ancient times, when these concepts of thinking, memory, attention, and so on were first formulated, there were entirely different conceptions of natural phenomena—conceptions with which one could also grasp the life of the soul, insofar as it sufficed for the needs of that time. But what was established back then—and what still haunts the science of the soul today—becomes, in the face of scientific thinking (which, even if subconsciously, is present in all people today who are at all striving toward spiritual life), nothing more than an empty phrase, a mere word.

[ 5 ] There is also something else to consider. Namely, that—and one could say for centuries now—this science of the soul has developed within the scholarly caste, and this scholarly caste has taken on precisely the form that one finds today in the standard lectures or publications on the science of the soul.

[ 6 ] If a person, drawing on the fullness of life, seeks answers to the most important questions of existence—questions that ultimately culminate in inquiries about the divinity of the world order and about immortality—and if that person seeks such answers in this science of the soul, they will not find them. And it is true what a serious, profound scholar of the soul said—Franz Brentano, who died here in Zurich last year—who went to great lengths to shed light on the study of the soul, yet who remained bound to the old conceptions of the soul that had become fixed in language. He said: If one looks around at today’s psychology, one will notice the attempt by psychologists to believe they can formulate insights about imagination, feeling, volition, attention, love, and hate; yet if they wish to be scientific, they remain confined within this sphere. — And now Franz Brentano says: “Yes, even if so much more could be said about these elementary components of human mental life, none of it could replace the great question that we find posed so significantly already by Plato and Aristotle: Whether it is possible to investigate anything about that aspect of our mental life which remains when the mortal shell falls away in death?” — This was said by a contemporary, officially recognized scholar of the soul.

[ 7 ] Spiritual science, which is anthroposophically oriented, seeks—based on the premises I outlined here the day before yesterday—to bring about a renewal of the science of the soul. It seeks to move beyond mere empty phrases toward a genuine investigation of the reality of the soul. And the path it takes must, of course, still be such today that full account is taken of the contradictions and opposition that may arise from conventional researchers of the soul. It must be possible to grapple with what exists in established psychology. But on the other hand, from such premises for a renewal of the science of the soul—as I am advocating today—there will emerge a knowledge of the soul, a view of the soul, that can once again truly become spiritual nourishment for the widest circles of striving humanity—that can, if I may use this trivial word, become “popular” in the very best and highest sense of the term.

[ 8 ] Psychological research must be brought out of the realm of the scholarly caste, within which—if I may speak figuratively—it has burdened itself with the fault of falling into abstractions that may be very ingenious but are by no means capable of extending psychological research to those boundary questions of human existence that, above all, correspond to a legitimate, burning interest in the life of the human soul,

[ 9 ] Since human thought as a whole has changed compared to earlier times—from which the concepts of psychology that have taken on the form of words originate—the new science of the soul must also bid farewell to the starting points from which one always sought to proceed further into the realm of soul life. New starting points must emerge. And these new starting points are such that, once arrived at them, one can only stand on the premises that were asserted here the day before yesterday—namely, if one remains true to today’s way of thinking, which has been shaped by the natural sciences. One cannot simply ask: What is a representation? — One cannot simply seek to observe what representations are, what thinking or the will is, or what memory is, and so on. Just as modern natural science in the laboratory and in the clinic proceeds from entirely different premises than the natural science of earlier times, so too must the science of the soul take as its starting point the realities of life—which, however, must first, I would say, be distilled from the totality of human life.

[ 10 ] There are, first of all, two moments in human life to which modern psychology must relate; starting from these, it can in turn return to the concepts of imagination, will, and so on, in order to restore a full, substantive psychological value to these concepts. These two starting points are moments that are, however, very difficult to observe—indeed, no easier to observe than many natural phenomena that can only be understood through carefully designed methods and experiments. They are moments that flit by in human life and which, in a sense, preclude conscious grasping by virtue of their very nature and essence. And one must first learn to grasp these moments through a certain trained spiritual life. They are the most profound moments of human life: falling asleep and waking up.

[ 11 ] Falling asleep and waking up are those moments in human life when the entire state of consciousness changes, when a person transitions from one mental state to its radical opposite. It goes without saying that these brief moments are difficult to observe. For when one falls asleep, consciousness ceases, and thus one is unaware of the moment of falling asleep. When one wakes up, one may sense that one is breaking away from some course of life; but precisely the person who tries to connect, even in some way, with what they experienced in sleep through their consciousness will very soon and very easily realize the futility of such an attempt.

[ 12 ] Now, it is only through the methods that were already hinted at here the day before yesterday—and about which I now wish to offer further hints—that one can train oneself in soul observation in order to observe the moments of falling asleep and waking up. This training must take place, first, through a certain strengthening, fortification, and invigoration of the life of the imagination itself, and second, of the life of the will as well. But those inner processes—those intimate soul processes—that lead to such a strengthening, to a permeation with this power of the will, already differ significantly from what one is accustomed to in ordinary soul life.

[ 13 ] The day before yesterday, I referred to that which leads to the strengthening of the life of the imagination as “meditation.” For if one, following certain methods that I have described in my book How to Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds? as well as in my Outline of Esoteric Science and other books—if one allows imaginations and consciousness to be present in accordance with certain methods, so that one does not merely think in the ordinary sense, but rests in thought and rests more and more in thought, thereby permeating the soul with thought and thought with the soul in a way entirely different from what occurs in ordinary soul life, then one arrives at a point where one can strengthen one’s life of imagination—as I said, you will find the more precise methods in the books cited—so that one can imagine with the same vivid liveliness as one otherwise experiences in one’s consciousness when engaged in external sensory perceptions.

[ 14 ] Goethe had a hunch—even if it was initially only a hunch—about this way of imagining things—the psychologist Heinroth had prompted him to do so, as he found his thinking concrete— in that he was able to profess the belief that he was capable of thinking so vividly and gradually that this thinking was equal in inner strength and inner intensity to that mental activity which otherwise exists only when one observes external nature with one’s eyes, follows the external processes of nature with one’s ears, and so on.

[ 15 ] It is possible that imagination is intensified to such an extent that one is so deeply immersed in the act of imagining that one can say: This act of imagination becomes a perception in itself; the activity is like that of perceiving; and sensory life is drawn so deeply into the sphere of imagination that the senses do not participate, even though the vitality of sensory life remains intact.

[ 16 ] That is one aspect—the strengthening of the life of the imagination. As one proceeds further and further in this strengthening of the life of the imagination, an inner power of observation—unknown to the ordinary state of mind—does indeed arise, which is necessary to truly investigate the two moments of falling asleep and waking up in the same way that one scientifically investigates objects and processes in external life.

[ 17 ] But for this to happen, it is also necessary that the will be trained in a certain way. This will can only be trained through self-discipline, by paying attention to something in life that one rarely notices in ordinary life. In ordinary life, one simply goes through the motions, accompanying one’s external perceptions with inner experience. One must rise above this ordinary way of living to something else. One must direct one’s attention to the fact that our soul life actually changes from year to year, from month to month, from week to week, indeed from day to day, from hour to hour—it is in a state of becoming. In the ordinary course of our lives, we do not bring this becoming of the soul life—between birth and death—into our will. We let this life slip by. We pay attention to it—albeit only to a limited extent through a certain degree of self-discipline—merely to break certain bad habits, acquire certain virtues, develop certain abilities, and the like. However, if the self-discipline of the will referred to here is to take hold, then something entirely different must enter into life; Then a person must be able to arrive at the inner realization that he possesses something within himself which he can—I would say—incorporate into his will, incorporate into his will in such a way that self-cultivation and self-discipline seem to him as difficult, yet at the same time as desirable, as are otherwise only those acts of the will that correspond to the entirely unavoidable drives of human life.

[ 18 ] Let’s look at this from a different angle. Today there are a particularly large number of people who claim to have the ability—well, perhaps I’m putting it a bit radically, but you’ll find this radicalism justified nonetheless if you reflect more deeply on the present—to reform the entire world; who, so to speak, come up with ideas about what should happen so that people can live happily side by side, so that everything in social life is in proper order, and so on. The number of programs in this area is immense. And in fact, as soon as anyone begins to think about the external world, they are, to a greater or lesser extent, already something of a reformer in their own right; it’s just that the world does not give them the opportunity to truly put their reforms—or perhaps even their revolutionary ideas—into practice.

[ 19 ] Indeed, the impulse of the will, the desire, extends to the outside world. But one must know that within the human being there is something toward which one can likewise direct one’s intentions and impulses in order to guide the person from one stage of life to the next—indeed, even from one week to the next—and that what lies within the human being is by no means something that simply sets out on its own, as the person usually wishes, but rather that the human being can pursue his or her development over time through the power of will. And when the will enters this realm in such a methodical manner as is described in the aforementioned books, then that inner strengthening, that inner vision, insight into the volitional—which we can never attain in our relationship to the external world—that insight into the will arises, which must accompany the aforementioned strengthening of the life of the imagination if the moments of falling asleep and waking up are to be observed.

[ 20 ] However, before one arrives at this investigation of the moments of falling asleep and waking up, one does, in fact, if one deepens one’s inner life in the way I have just indicated, one comes to realize that with the concepts humanity possesses today—which cannot be the concepts of the ancient view of nature—one can only arrive at a conception of human imaginative life that leads the individual into unreality, the emotional life into confusion, and the life of the will into incomprehensibility.

[ 21 ] And, essentially, this is what we must acknowledge today—what the philosopher mentioned earlier also observes, the one who speaks of the end of philosophy, of the dissolution of philosophy, and of a shift toward physiology and the like. He already senses—albeit not with such clarity—that the concepts we can have today, which are so infinitely useful for fathoming external nature and for introducing into human life that which is actually the most essential content of a modern culture, that these concepts—so useful in the external realm—do not, when one seeks to explore the soul, lead to an answer to the question: What are concepts? — but rather, in the life of concepts, they lead us to the realization that we can immediately experience: “I think, therefore I am not”—the unreality of the life of the soul. One comes to realize: The more one delves into the life of ideas, the less one can say what the soul is—if one considers the life of ideas only as it appears in ordinary life, rather than as I have described it. One comes to the realization that the life of feeling, as it presents itself in ordinary psychological life, is confused, and that the life of the will is completely incomprehensible. Hence the interesting phenomenon that precisely those who think in the manner of the natural sciences—and who today write very, very significant works on the psychology of the soul—believe that, by actually discussing brain physiology, they can say something about the life of imagination. But they end up saying to themselves: Brain physiology provides no definitive answers about the life of the will. — If you look up the relevant chapters in Theodor Ziehen’s Guide to Physiological Psychology, you will see how what I have just stated is confirmed precisely in the case of a prominent contemporary scientist.

[ 22 ] Thus, it must be said that this scientific way of thinking more or less brings to light what Schopenhauer, too, did not fully recognize—or recognized only partially—but had sensed: that the will is something that cannot be approached through the conceptual framework of modern times, that the will is the incomprehensible.

[ 23 ] Recognizing this unreality of the soul in the life of the imagination, this confusion of life in the emotional realm, and this incomprehensibility of volitional action is a good foundation for the further development of a new theory of the soul. Once one has, so to speak, gained clarity in this way—though it sounds paradoxical, one has nevertheless gained clarity about a fact—then one can proceed further. Then one can apply that thinking which has been sharpened and strengthened through meditation, that life of the will which has subjected itself to self-discipline; one can apply it to truly become attentive to the moment—let’s say, initially—of waking up. Then the moment of waking will be able to enter the field of soul observation in a very special way. Then, upon waking, one will experience something that cannot be experienced through an untrained soul life. Then, immediately after waking—once one has acquired, through the training described, the calm necessary for this—one will be able to discover that, in fact, the entire life of the soul, as it was at the moment of waking, has continued in the unconscious. Except that this life of the soul lacks one characteristic during the time from falling asleep to waking: it does not evoke any memory of itself. And one notices this at a significant moment that occurs: Throughout the entire sleep, you have allowed the soul to flow in the same life in which it flows while awake; but this flow of the soul during sleep simply does not imprint itself on the power of memory. Therefore, it is forgotten upon waking. That is what matters.

[ 24 ] Just as important as memory and recollection are for our outer life—as I explained the day before yesterday—so too is forgetting, the soul’s experience in such a way that it can also forget what it has experienced, for the development of the soul, for the continuous flow of the soul between birth and death, and so on. Indeed, it is only when one can observe the moment of waking in this way that one begins to grasp the true significance of sleep in human soul life. For one gains insight into the fact that our life could not continue if it were filled solely with what is based on memory, that what is based on memory loses the power to allow our life to flow on. It is precisely for this reason that we must sink into sleep, so that we can forget what we experience during sleep. For ordinary, everyday soul life is nourishment for the soul—it is the source of soul life—when it is forgotten, not when it is remembered. Memory wears down the soul. Forgetting restores the soul’s life forces.

[ 25 ] In this way, one gains a concrete, specific insight into that life process that is expressed in the act of waking up. And through this, one glimpses, as it were—even if only in retrospect—the inner life that has unfolded between falling asleep and waking up, a life over which ordinary consciousness has not been cast. With this glimpse into the inner life, one has gained an immense amount, for through it one has acquired the foundation for a certain understanding.

[ 26 ] No one can truly comprehend what it means to “imagine”—what it means to “form a thought in the life of my soul”—unless they actually observe and grasp the moment of waking. For when we move from mere wakefulness—from merely existing in the waking state—to active thinking, to the formation of a concept or a thought, this is always, qualitatively speaking—albeit to a lesser degree—exactly the same mental process as waking up. And only those who, through the intensification of the transition from the state of sleep to the waking state, experience waking up have thereby created a foundation for what provides the answer to the question: What actually happens in my soul when I form a concept? — The force one unleashes in the soul when forming a mental image is exactly the same as the force one must unleash—albeit to a much greater degree—when waking up. When one wakes up, it is the unconscious that does this. What is conveyed into consciousness is precisely what the unconscious does upon waking, when we prepare ourselves through inner effort to think and imagine consciously and intentionally.

[ 27 ] Here one arrives at a very specific understanding of imagination. What had become a mere empty phrase in traditional psychology regains a concrete meaning. One comes to understand imagination as a weaker form of awakening that exists within wakefulness. It is a stirring, an awakening. And this is a significant insight; for by connecting this insight into the nature of imagination with the nature of awakening, the possibility arises of transforming the imagination of ordinary life—which otherwise actually leads into the unreal realm of the soul—into the real. By being able to link imagination to this awakening, one gains the possibility of connecting to a reality that does not depend on oneself. Now, if one connects to this awakening and thereby comes to know the nature of imagination, then one turns to the moment of falling asleep.

[ 28 ] Just as meditation is particularly helpful for exploring the moment of waking up, so too is the self-discipline of the will especially helpful for exploring the moment of falling asleep. And this self-discipline of the will makes it possible to truly immerse oneself in the process, to observe falling asleep—to truly observe how something similar occurs when entering sleep as it does upon waking: the forgetting, the realization that during sleep the memory of the soul’s life is erased. Otherwise, one might always argue that the body is somehow involved in what the soul experiences during sleep. If one can consciously grasp the moment of falling asleep through self-discipline of the will, then one realizes that one is immersing oneself in the very same soul life that one leaves behind upon waking—but that one is immersing oneself in this soul life in such a way that the possibility of perception involving the senses now ceases. One begins to recognize what it means to enter the supersensible realm through falling asleep. One comes to know this immersion into the supersensible because one realizes that, through this immersion, one experiences something that cannot come to consciousness through the consciousness one possesses in ordinary soul life—a consciousness that, after all, is bound to the physical body between birth and death and is dependent on it. One becomes aware of this independence from the physical body—a concept about which otherwise enlightened people can argue at length. The matter must be observed; then one realizes that, upon falling asleep, one plunges into the supersensible realm.

[ 29 ] And then one learns to recognize the difference between the life of the soul—as one leaves it upon waking—and the life of the soul—into which one plunges upon falling asleep. They are alike in that they are of a supersensible nature; but through the kind of observation I have described, one notices a very significant difference. This difference can be very easily brought before the soul’s eye through a comparison.

[ 30 ] The difference lies in the fact that they differ from one another just as a child differs from an old person. Just as both are human beings, but at different stages of existence and age, so too are both states of the soul of a supersensible being: the one from which one emerges again upon waking, and the one into which one sinks upon falling asleep. But the one into which one sinks when falling asleep is, so to speak, the childlike, the youthful one, and the one from which one awakens is the one that has grown older. One passes through a journey from falling asleep to waking up. The life of the soul undergoes a transformation, so that—though a comparison is, of course, always imperfect—what one sinks into is as similar to what one awakens into as a child, as a human being, is to an old person, as a human being. One must note this subtle difference. Then a certain foundation is laid for approaching an important component of our research into the life of the soul, namely, the life of feeling.

[ 31 ] The emotional life—which, for conventional psychology today, consists merely of a collection of words—can only be truly understood if it is explored on the basis of the principles that have just been developed, and if it is explored in such a way that, prior to this exploration, one has already understood the supersensible life of the soul from the moments of waking and falling asleep. However, with regard to falling asleep—before we turn to the emotional life—we must note another important point, gain another important insight. We must ask: What, exactly, is it that undergoes a particular transformation in the soul life as we fall asleep? What is it that, through falling asleep, causes us to withdraw from sensory reality and immerse ourselves in the supersensible reality? — It is the transformation of the will. And the same process that occurs with greater intensity when I fall asleep takes place to a lesser degree while I am awake, whenever I make a decision of the will. One cannot grasp the will unless one understands it on the basis of falling asleep.

[ 32 ] What the will actually is in the depths of our inner life is indeed beyond the reach of our imagination, just as what happens during sleep is beyond our reach. That is why you will find nothing about the will in scientific psychologies. It is incomprehensible precisely because our imagination cannot reach it. But if we understand the process of falling asleep, then we know that our ordinary inner life, when it performs an act of will, also subsides—albeit to a lesser degree—just as it does when we fall asleep. Every act of will is a less intense form of falling asleep while consciousness remains fully awake.

[ 33 ] If we distinguish between these two phenomena—waking and falling asleep—one relating to the life of the imagination, which is explained by waking, and the other relating to the life of the will, which is explained by falling asleep—then we can begin to truly grapple with the mysteries of the life of feeling. Then one gains the opportunity to bring clarity to what is otherwise confusion in the emotional life. How does one bring something to clarity? Through cognition. There is nothing else—I could prove this in detail from an epistemological standpoint, but that would take us too far afield today—in cognition, something becomes clear precisely when that difference exists, the precise, real difference between the knower, the perceiver, and the perceived object.

[ 34 ] Emotional life remains confused in ordinary psychological life because, in ordinary life, a person does not need to distinguish between two things—unless they wish to recognize ordinary emotional life—two essential elements within themselves that stand in opposition to one another, just as we stand in opposition to the external sensory world when we perceive it: the sensory world there, the human being here. Thus, two things stand opposite one another in emotional life.

[ 35 ] Which are the two? One learns to recognize them—subject and object—only when one can examine them on the basis of the concepts gained in the way I have just described. Then one learns to recognize who the actual feeler is, and what is actually to be perceived in emotional life. This reveals the highly remarkable fact that the one who feels is always—as paradoxical as it may sound at first—the one we have not yet lived through. When we feel at this very moment, it is the person within us whom we are only now beginning to live, and whom we will continue to live tomorrow and the day after, and throughout the coming year, until our death. At the moment we feel, the subject—the otherwise unknown subject—is our life, which already lies within us between the moment we feel and death. And what is perceived is the life we have lived from birth up to the moment we feel—a vast field of research, the fact that emotional life lies at this starting point.

[ 36 ] One can do all sorts of things—and I would not speak of these matters in this way if I had not conducted research in a wide variety of fields; there is a whole body of research and claims in this area— one can do many things to substantiate, entirely within a scientific framework, what I have just said. One need only take biographies that are sensibly written and apply them to the criterion I have just stated. Take a sensibly written biography of Goethe. Consider Goethe in the year 1790; study him as he was from 1790 until his death in 1832. Try to understand the changes this Goethe underwent from 1790 until his death, and take these changes as they were perceptible in Goethe’s emotional life in 1790. And now picture in your mind’s eye what Goethe lived through—what he experienced inwardly—and how he was touched by the outside world, from his birth in 1749 until 1790. And as you form a precise picture of how Goethe—from after 1790, when this was already taking shape within him, all the way to 1832—perceived inwardly, in a single moment of the year 1790, what he had experienced earlier—every single feeling. Every feeling unfolds in such a way that our future self perceives our past self.

[ 37 ] One can also make other observations. Try to develop an understanding of the people you have seen die—those with whom you had the opportunity to share perhaps a brief period of time, from a certain point in their lives until their death. Try to visualize very precisely how they lived and what their human essence was. And then try to understand—you will always arrive at a surprising result—how, for example, the fact that death was already approaching influences their emotional life, revealing their true character and true essence.

[ 38 ] These are two paths. Certain other aspects reveal themselves in a truly scientific sense—though in a sense that comes very close to the deepest inner interests of human nature—when one explores what I am alluding to here regarding the life of feeling. Then the life of feeling, the essence of feeling, ceases to be the empty phrase that it is in ordinary scientific psychology today. For if one simply wants to observe emotion in all its confusion within the soul, then one cannot observe anything at all. Just as you cannot observe water unless you break it down into water and oxygen, so too can one not scientifically observe the emotional life unless one can take it apart, break it down into what the human being was before he felt, and into what they were after they felt—if one does not know what is already there as a seed, so deep and active, just as the seed in this year’s plant is active for next year’s plant.

[ 39 ] By studying emotional life in this way, we will in turn arrive at a fulfillment of our concepts—a fulfillment imbued with lived content. And we will gain a psychology of the soul for the emotional life that exists from the very beginning, that we experience everywhere, and that we ourselves live through. And the moments of the soul’s life, too—if we realize that what we feel in a single moment does not stand alone—will be connected to our entire development between birth and death. In every single, even the slightest feeling, the future and the past of our earthly existence flow into one another.

[ 40 ] Similarly, though preferably only afterward—once one has explored the life of the emotions—can one approach the life of the imagination in accordance with the conditions I have described. However, this yields even more surprising results—surprising because people consider what emerges to be entirely paradoxical, since they are unfamiliar with it, both in terms of their conception of ordinary psychological life and the concepts of modern science.

[ 41 ] If one learns to recognize how every act of forming a mental image every act of thinking is a weaker form of awakening, and if one brings together—through inner observation—the active element in the formation of the mental image and the act of awakening, then, by linking the mental image to this real act of awakening, one enters a stream of contemplation that carries one forward and shows one that even awakening is something weaker than another, stronger force. And this other, stronger thing, which appears before one’s eyes just as when, after seeing the image of a person, one then steps into reality—this other thing is the realization that every act of forming an image, every awakening, is a repetition, weakened to the level of an image, of what one might call: the entry into earthly life through conception and birth. What one has begun to develop simply expands through the fact that one has established the inner connection, in the act of observing, between waking and forming a mental image; the power one has gained by observing both not in isolation but in context expands. It expands through the realization that, in the act of imagining itself, one does not live in reality, but rather has an image. But it is precisely from the realization that one has an image—that one has something unreal—that one draws the strength to approach something real, and one notices that every act of forming a concept, every waking up, is a gradual, image-diminishing penetration into the physical world, a passing through the donning of the physical body, a passing through conception and birth.

[ 42 ] And now we are learning to recognize the source of something that has long been a subject of serious inquiry for researchers. If one takes the trouble to examine what has preoccupied serious researchers—since Locke, since Hume, since Bacon—with regard to human cognition, one comes to the conclusion that these researchers were never able to form satisfactory ideas about the relationship between human mental life and external, sensually perceptible reality. They could not answer the question: How does the representation—which is then supposed to correspond to this external, sensually perceptible reality—enter into human beings through the observation of that reality? — One realizes, if one has the premises I have put forward before you today, that this question already suffers from a flaw as a question, which I can characterize roughly as follows. Let us suppose that someone observes: carbon dioxide is exhaled from the human body. If they then come to the conclusion that carbon dioxide comes from the lungs and is therefore produced there, they are thinking incorrectly. People think just as incorrectly when, based on a superficial observation—which is, however, quite natural in ordinary mental life—they assume that the power of imagination comes from the body. It does not come from the body at all!

[ 43 ] Whatever is also at work in the body and in the life of the soul is merely the image that has been weakened into an image upon entering the life of the senses. And the force that reigns within us when we imagine—one comes to realize—is the same force that reigned before we even came into contact with the sensory world through conception. What thinks within us is not us at the present moment; it is the force that shines through from the time before birth, indeed before conception. That is why researchers could not figure out how imagination finds its way into human beings. That is also why one finds that imagination is something unreal. Since birth or conception, imagination has transformed its reality into physical life. That which acts within us spiritually, supernaturally—that which can only manifest itself upon waking, that which manifests itself as we fall asleep when we are not in the body—that now lives powerfully in the imagination. And through the understanding of the imagination, we are led to our pre-birth life, to our life outside the body, in a thoroughly scientific manner, in a way that is in harmony with modern natural science.

[ 44 ] There is no need to slander modern spiritual science, which is anthroposophically oriented, by claiming that it merely rehashes old concepts derived from Buddhism and the like. It does not do that; rather, it draws upon an inner force of the soul life that arises entirely from scientific thinking pursued to its logical conclusion—thinking which, precisely because it is the consistent thinking of the natural sciences, goes beyond what the natural sciences themselves can provide. And as imagination is truly grasped, it is recognized as an image, as a reflection—a fainter reflection—of what we lived through before we were in a physical body, of what we experienced in the supersensible world before birth and before conception.

[ 45 ] From the realm of the imagination, a tangible bridge is built toward an understanding of the supersensible, immortal human being. The fundamental questions of existence are answered through a correct understanding of the elemental manifestations of soul life. That is what matters.

[ 46 ] And then one can also observe more closely: What is the nature of this pale, imagined prenatal life? One might ask: If that which is unreal in the imagination is merely an image, what would happen if it were to truly enter our physical life—not as an image, but as reality?

[ 47 ] Here comes something very significant. Since this point—when taken out of the context of the humanities—naturally seems quite paradoxical at first, I would like to explain it using something more familiar. When we translate the life of the imagination directly into reality, we obtain something that is actually very common in scientific research, but which is not incorporated into the overall context of knowledge within that research. For when we experiment, we are not looking at nature itself, but rather at what the human intellect has constructed. However, whenever we force nature into the experiment, we must kill the living essence within nature. We actually have “dead” nature before us when we carry out the experiment; for the experiment is entirely structured according to the unreal methods of human imagination. If one follows this line of thought further, of course, it helps one to recognize what would actually happen to us if imagination did not appear in our lives as a pictorial attenuation of prenatal life—that is, life prior to conception—but rather if it appeared as reality, as the very reality that exists in the field of the senses in life. That would kill us instantly.

[ 48 ] Such is the nature of life. That which we experience in images and in our imagination, and what, if I may say so, is the pictorial echo of our supersensible life before conception—if that were translated into the same reality that the body possesses—would kill us; it would be a poison within us, permeating us just as it would if we were to create an artificial human being and sustain it through our blood and our muscles. We see how, within the context of nature, the supersensible inserts itself into us, how it is the pictorial expression of itself. We can then move on to the examination of the will and the thoughts that are thereby stimulated from one side.

[ 49 ] We examine the will by exploring it in connection with falling asleep. We find that in waking daily life, every act of the will involves a mild form of falling asleep—that is, a descent into the supersensible world. Once this bridge has been established between the act of will and falling asleep, one has regained the power of inquiry to continue the journey one undertakes upon falling asleep through soul observation. Then what one has gained on this journey expands, as one pushes one’s observation not only as far as falling asleep, but all the way to death. And one learns to recognize what dying means for a human being.

[ 50 ] Science often takes the easy way out with such concepts today. It treats concepts such as death or dying much as if one were to say: “A knife is a knife”—and then pick up a razor to cut meat with it. Although a knife is meant for cutting, a razor must be used and handled differently than a table knife.

[ 51 ] Today, people see in death something they wish to investigate as such. Spiritual science does not take the easy way out, because it delves into reality and does not seek to shape reality based on preconceived concepts and ideas. Spiritual science must ask in particular: What is death in the plant kingdom? What is death in the animal kingdom? What is death in the human kingdom? For death is not death, just as a knife is not merely a knife! People like to slander spiritual science by claiming that it employs confused, obscure, and nebulous concepts. Yet this is precisely its hallmark: that it seeks to navigate the clearest course in every area, and that it places precisely those demands on human concepts that require clarity, conciseness, and unbiased observation! Those who claim that spiritual science works with confused ideas are merely projecting their own confused ideas onto spiritual science.

[ 52 ] Once the bridge has been built between the act of will and falling asleep, one can then cross that bridge through perception to observe what death is within the human being. And then one realizes: The very same forces that, at the moment of death, lead the human being out of the sensory world are—though still undeveloped—active, so to speak, in an embryonic form within the human act of will. Every time we will something, every time we translate our will into action, we create something that relates to death just as a child relates to an old person in terms of human existence.

[ 53 ] This, however, also builds a bridge between what enters everyday consciousness as elementary manifestations of the soul and the will, which is just as much a diminished form of dying as imagination is a diminished form of being born and received by the soul. Only, imagination is pictorial, while volition is embryonic. Volition is a reality; it is not an image, it is a reality. But it is an act that is still unfinished. If the act were to be completed, if it were to grow to full maturity—the act of volition—then it would always be a dying. What makes the will the will is that what takes shape within the act of willing remains embryonic, that it does not truly come into being. For if it were to develop further from the embryonic state of the will in its full strength, it would always be a dying. We die, by our very nature, continuously as we will. We carry the forces of death within us. And to those who can probe the soul, every act of will is a weakened form of dying—that is, a dying that has remained in an embryonic state.

[ 54 ] Thus, once again, a fundamental act of the soul—prior to the modern practice of soul observation—is connected to the great mysteries at the boundaries of human existence. Then one learns to recognize, just as one does the triad of being born, waking up, and forming thoughts, the triad of willing, falling asleep, and dying. Then one can orient oneself precisely through falling asleep by exploring the act of falling asleep—the entry into the supersensible, the withdrawal from the senses; there one encounters an embryonic form of dying. And one comes to understand dying as a transition from the sensory world into the supersensible world. One can recognize the will in its embryonic state only because one has previously recognized that, upon falling asleep, the young soul life steps forward before the soul. Otherwise, one would never be able to grasp the embryonic nature of the will with the eye of the soul at all.

[ 55 ] You see, thinking, feeling, and willing are understood on the basis of facts, and as they become facts in the anthroposophically oriented theory of the soul—which must yet come into being—they simultaneously lead to the great fundamental questions of human soul life. There is no speculating about some form of immortality; rather, the nature of imagination is investigated, which leads, on the one hand, to immortality—specifically, to life before birth. The will is investigated. It leads to immortality after birth. And from this interplay flows the full immortality—the eternity of human nature—which is rooted in the supersensible world.

[ 56 ] And as one learns more and more through the meditative life—I can only hint at this—to recognize the unreality of the ordinary “I,” which has entirely surrendered its being to the body, then one learns, precisely from this unreality, by tracing it in much the same way as the other aspects of spiritual life, to recognize even that which still seems so incomprehensible to modern human beings: repeated earthly lives, the human being’s passage through repeated earthly lives, with lives in the spiritual world lying between them.

[ 57 ] This overview, which, as I said, still sounds paradoxical today—one does not necessarily have to draw this conclusion. For those who embark on the path of true soul research—as characterized today—the realization of repeated earthly lives ultimately enters the soul through the insights that guide them via the imagination and the will, insights that the supersensible world so directly and tangibly suggests to them through the moments of falling asleep and waking up.

[ 58 ] Now, having described to you how to bridge the gap from a psychology that, in turn, is grounded in realities and facts to the great fundamental questions of human existence, I must also point out that the state of mind underlying this—and which must find its way into science if there is to be a true psychology once again—must, in fact, evoke a particular state of the soul’s life for certain moments of research, not for the entirety of external life, but for certain moments of research. For if one wishes to perceive correctly, as I have described today, one must come to the point of being able to attribute a heightened significance to waking and falling asleep. One must, so to speak, not merely experience the life of the soul as a mere accompaniment, as it is lived through in ordinary existence. Through the intensification of thought that I have described, and through the self-discipline of the will, one must experience this inner life to a greater degree than one otherwise experiences real life. A particular state of mind—one that is little known in ordinary life—is a prerequisite for this exploration of the soul. I can most easily characterize it in the following way.

[ 59 ] If one is truly active in everyday life—if one is not lazy—then after a certain number of hours spent awake, one feels the need to sleep, to sleep peacefully. Just as one lives through this external existence in ordinary waking life—in such a natural, self-evident way—one must be able to live through every aspect of the soul’s life as a researcher of the soul, which arises from intensified thinking and the self-discipline of the will.

[ 60 ] But then certain phenomena must also be able to occur. For example, one can actually continue thinking—which is commonplace in everyday life—unhindered. One might indeed sometimes feel anxious and uneasy, especially when listening to coffee-table chatter or observing how people can think incessantly about other things, allowing their thoughts to constantly accompany their external lives. This is not possible with the kind of inner life that, as I have described it, leads into the real, into the reality of the soul. When the researcher of the soul—as understood in anthroposophy—engages in this work in such a way that he truly arrives at the results I have outlined for you today, he very soon feels — in his ability to handle, for example, what he is trying to draw out from the moment of falling asleep and waking up, in order to then further develop it through intensified thinking and in support of the will — he very soon feels just as strongly as one otherwise feels when one has physically exhausted oneself with muscles, hands, and arms: One cannot continue working—that is how one feels spiritually after having researched for even a short time in the manner intended today: One cannot go on now; one needs rest. — And one finds this rest in ordinary daily life. It is already ensured that the true researcher of the soul does not become a dreamer, a lonely dreamer, or a social outcast. For if he conducts soul research correctly, as I have described it, then he will speak of mental fatigue just as the physical body becomes fatigued when one exhausts oneself in external work. And just as one needs rest and sleep in that context, so here one needs the transition back into ordinary daily life—into the absolutely joyful, busy, entirely ordinary everyday life. One needs this entirely ordinary everyday life in a healthy way, not in an eccentric way. And this is as necessary for the soul researcher, the spiritual researcher, as sleep is necessary for ordinary life.

[ 61 ] The person who does not indulge in all manner of fantasies and illusions about the life of the soul, but rather penetrates the true nature of the life of the soul in this serious manner, as I have described—where simple phenomena lead all the way to the highest questions of immortality and to the affirmation of immortality—will never become a person who is useless in life. For his entry into the supersensible world requires that he engage with waking daily life robustly and with full, healthy awareness—just as healthy, waking daily life must seek variety in healthy sleep. That is one thing. There are other aspects as well, which I must leave unmentioned today. But by pointing out these difficulties, I wanted to indicate the state of mind one must cultivate if one wishes to become a true researcher of the soul in the modern sense—in the anthroposophical sense.

[ 62 ] I would have liked to follow up on this lecture by speaking directly about the natural sciences, the social sciences, religion, and history—which, in the true sense, could serve as a supplement. However, that is not to be; but it is planned that the subsequent lectures will follow on from the one just given.

[ 63 ] You will have seen—and I would like to note this in closing— that even in the study of the soul—even when conducted on anthroposophical foundations—it is certainly not a matter of rambling on about confused ideas, but that even when it comes to the question of immortality, anthroposophically oriented soul science must involve a serious, well-trained approach. But this serious, well-trained approach will gradually come closer and closer—today it still has to contend with conventional psychology and therefore choose expressions such as those I have used—to the way people generally think. For this study of the soul will, in turn, bring matters of the soul out of the scholar’s study, and it will be able to carry the results of this research into every human heart, into every human soul. It will not be exposed to the danger of focusing solely on abstract, detached questions: What is imagination? What is will, memory, attention? What is love and hate?” — but rather it will build a bridge from the ordinary, everyday phenomena of imagination, feeling, and volition to the pre-birth, the post-death, and—if I may use the term—the supersensible life, to human immortality.

[ 64 ] Such a science of the soul will, in turn, be able to fulfill the hopes—as Brentano, the researcher of the soul, called them—though he himself did not live to see these hopes fulfilled: the hopes of Plato and Aristotle that, through the science of the soul, we might come to know something about the best part of our being, that which remains when the earthly, mortal shell decays. Brentano, that brilliant man, attempted such a psychology based on scientific thought; but he did not wish to venture into genuine supersensory research. But since he was honest enough to go only as far as he could, a curious fact arose: in 1873, this researcher wrote the first volume of his Psychology—the first volume was published in the spring—and promised to follow it with the second in the fall, then the third and fourth volumes. The subsequent volumes were never published! This is not only due—if one is familiar with Brentano’s intellectual development—which I described in my obituary, found as the third chapter in my book On the Mysteries of the Soul— it is not merely due to external reasons; it lies in the fact that Brentano felt the need to approach phenomena of the soul with concepts other than the traditional ones, but that he shrank back—for the reasons I discussed the day before yesterday, reasons that still live in the subconscious of modern people—from making the transition to research into the supersensible. But once this transition to research into the supersensible is achieved, then there will also be a science of the soul that interests not merely scholars but can encompass all of humanity—a science that can become the foundation for a truly healthy human life, because it will not stop at what certain circles seek to artificially cultivate interest in within the confines of scholarly circles, but because it will flow out into that which springs from the heart of every healthy human being, from the soul of every healthy human being, as a spiritual need for knowledge. A popular psychology for every human being, serving as the foundation for a healthy religious life, will be the psychology that reaches into the supersensible, as referred to here.

[ 65 ] Anyone familiar with the science of the soul and its current status will be able to say to themselves—and with this I would like to conclude these reflections as a conclusion that, in a sense, sheds light on the present and the future—anyone who knows where the science of the soul can lead through supersensible research will say: Such a science of the soul—which we have perhaps attempted to characterize here today, albeit very imperfectly—such a science of the soul, which truly leads to the question of the immortality of the soul and to the very highest manifestations of the soul, must be the science of the soul of the future! For either—as a consideration of the psychology commonly accepted today clearly shows us—the science of the soul will have no future at all, according to the opinion of philosophers such as Richard Wahle, who are quite right, or this future will be as it must follow from the anthroposophical view of the world.

Question and Answer

[ 66 ] Question: From a humanities perspective, what is the relationship between emotion and physical life?

[ 67 ] It is precisely this question—which is very interesting—that I have attempted to address in the appendix to my book On the Mysteries of the Soul. I also stated there that, from a spiritual scientific perspective, precisely such questions must have very significant prerequisites. One can only speak correctly about such things—spiritual science is closely connected to personal life—by, so to speak, recounting one’s own research. I can say that I have, in fact, been engaged with questions of this nature for more than thirty years, and that I approached these matters from a wide variety of perspectives before I dared to speak publicly about such things in the way that was hinted at in my book On the Mysteries of the Soul after thirty years. For such questions can only be answered by returning to them again and again in one’s research: the questions concerning the essence of the entire life of the soul, and concerning the relationships between the entire life of the soul and the physical realm.

[ 68 ] And it occurred to me—for the sake of brevity, please allow me to make no more than a brief mention—that these relationships have been studied quite inadequately by mainstream science. When people set out to investigate these relationships, they usually speak in such a way that they place the soul on one side and physical life on the other. But then everything becomes confused. One arrives at no conclusion at all. One arrives at a result—as one notices in the course of serious research—only when one places the life of the soul on one side in such a way that one truly divides it into thinking experience, feeling experience, and willing experience; only then can one properly survey the entire life of the soul—which one has now differentiated—and relate it to physical life. And it then becomes clear that every aspect of this inner life has its own specific relationships to physical life. First, one must consider the imaginative, thinking life.

[ 69 ] This imaginative, thinking life is correctly related to nervous life—as it is correctly understood by the natural sciences. And this is the mistake that is usually made: relating the entire life of the soul to nervous life. Today, however, it is still quite frowned upon in this field to hear the truth. But it will be recognized very soon. Today, people relate the entire life of the soul—including feeling and willing—to nervous activity. But one should relate only the life of thought to nervous activity.

[ 70 ] This also reveals that there is indeed a real connection—just as there is a true connection between the person standing before the mirror and the mirror itself—between thought and the life of the imagination and the nervous life. For those who base their understanding on reality rather than on preconceived notions, it becomes clear, however, that the emotional life is related to something entirely different, just as the life of thought is related to the nervous life. It has been demonstrated that the life of feeling stands in such a relationship to bodily life that everything rhythmic in bodily life corresponds to it—all rhythmic life, the rhythm of the blood, breathing, indeed everything that has a rhythmic course—and the relationship is a direct one, not one mediated by the nerves, but a direct one.

[ 71 ] One need not assume that spiritual science deals with confused concepts, but rather that it works toward much more sound ideas than conventional science, which is often confused. One need only examine something—such as a musical impression—in a thoroughly objective and realistic manner. The musical impression—one could, of course, easily object; the researcher in the humanities is familiar with all objections, raises them himself, and does not need to hear them from those who wish to raise such objections, for he is already well-practiced in raising every critical objection himself—the musical tone is, after all, heard with the ear, so the musical experience arises from the sensory impression. — No, the matter is not that simple; rather, it is quite different. The fact is that there is indeed a relationship between what the actual musical experience is—which is an emotional experience—and the entire rhythmic aspect of physicality.

[ 72 ] You need only imagine a more subtle rhythm. In fact, when we inhale, very specific movements of the diaphragm always occur; this results in a continuous up-and-down oscillation of the cerebrospinal fluid. This is a rhythmic, inner counterpart to what the musical experience is on a psychological level. Because this rhythmic quality—this rhythmic experience, which is inherent in human beings as human beings—interacts with sensory perception, the musical experience arises from the harmony between the human body’s rhythm and the auditory impression.

[ 73 ] But the essential point is that the auditory impression only becomes a musical experience when it resonates with the inner rhythm of human spiritual life. The musical experience, when examined psychologically, is an immensely interesting one. It merely confirms what I am saying: that the emotional life is related to the rhythmic movement within the human being.

[ 74 ] And the life of the will—as strange as that may sound—is related to metabolism, metabolism in the broadest sense. This appears to be the most materialistic view, even though the life of the will is in fact the most supersensible. Forces flow into the life of matter; therefore, once natural science comes to truly understand itself, it will be able to promote—not actually bring about, but promote—what I have said today regarding the life of the will. For one will find—the groundwork for this has already been laid everywhere—that with every act of will, certain toxins are produced by the human organism itself, that the process of will, when “grasped physically,” is in fact a toxic process. And through this, a bridge will be built between the act of will—which is essentially embryonic death, because it is a toxic process, a kind of poisoning—and death itself, which is merely an amplified act of will.

[ 75 ] I have thus shown how the three—will, feeling, and thought—relate to physical experience. I could only touch on this briefly, and I can now move on to the other question, which, precisely because of my last remark, is somewhat related to what I have just said.

[ 76 ] Question: How does the science of the human spirit relate to psychopathology—that is, to the study of mental illness and so on?

[ 77 ] There can be no such thing as true mental or psychological illnesses—I can only hint at this—but rather, psychological illnesses are, in fact, always in some way illnesses of the organism. The organism cannot be used properly as an instrument. And just as we cannot perform the necessary functions with a useless instrument, so too the organism, when it lives out the life of the soul, cannot carry this out properly. This does not lead to materialism, but rather to a correct understanding of the supersensible. And there is one thing in particular that is interesting. It is interesting that the kind of scientific knowledge that increasingly pushes us toward experiments detached from nature does, indeed, advance all those scientific insights that form the basis of technology. But the more we experiment, I would say, the more we arrive at the scientifically grounded conviction that Goethe intuited when he said that all experimentation carried out with tools—external tools—actually leads us away from nature.

[ 78 ] But Goethe also correctly intuited the other aspect—namely, the contrast. That is very interesting. While experimentation cannot reveal anything substantial about the deeper interrelationships of nature—only the most superficial ones—the anomalies inherent in nature itself lead us into these deeper interrelationships. Experimentation, in a sense, pushes us out of these interrelationships; the anomalies lead us deeper into nature.

[ 79 ] Curiously, for the study of the soul that seeks to be grounded in physiology, experimentation is very unproductive—not in all areas, but at least in the most important ones. But the observation of brain injuries and other disorders in the organism—which also cause mental life to appear abnormal—is extraordinarily fruitful. And we can say: While experimentation separates us from nature, the observation of the diseased organism brings us back into contact with nature. — Another paradoxical result; but one should not shy away from realities, should not harbor fear—unconscious fear—if one wishes to penetrate reality. The characteristics of the brain, including, for example, those of criminals, lead one deep into the mysteries of nature. This branch of natural science is not fruitless, but it is connected to what can be explored through the humanities: that everything connected with the will—and the will, although it is an independent entity, acts upon everything, including thought itself—is, in a certain sense and in a certain relationship, already connected with the production of toxic states and abnormalities in the human organism.

[ 80 ] And when the misfortune occurs that the human organism becomes abnormal, then precisely because the supersensible is driven out of the abnormal organism—it fits only within the normal organism—that is, when the brain is injured, the supersensible is driven out. As a result, if the person otherwise remains connected to the supersensible, he or she cannot orient himself or herself; he or she loses one’s bearings. And this is precisely what brings about, in the abnormal state, what is often understood as a pathological condition in the soul.

[ 81 ] So one can say: Only the true study of the will teaches us to recognize why the study of brain abnormalities and the like actually allows us to gain such deep insight into certain psychological connections. Just as, when we fall asleep, we send our entire supersensible being out of the body, just as we immerse ourselves in the life of the soul—but in a healthy way—so too does the organism, when it has become abnormal, force the supersensible out in its diseased state. Then we enter it disoriented, whereas when we enter in a healthy way, it carries us beyond those states as we sink into healthy sleep.