The Rudolf Steiner Archive

3. Natural Science and Anthroposophy

Jakob Hugentobler: Ladies and gentlemen! I would like to warmly welcome you to our lecture series. The intention of this lecture is once again to present something positive from the field of anthroposophical spiritual science, in contrast to the mostly negative criticism that is so widespread today.

[ 1 ] Anyone who keeps their eyes open today, anyone who approaches their surroundings with a deeper understanding, will see new developments emerging in all cultural spheres—in the realms of science, religion, and art. They will see beginnings that look like something striving to break through, something that has not yet found the proper path for this breakthrough. Anthroposophical spiritual science now seeks to reveal the roots of everything that is emerging here in its early stages as a healthy new development—to show how one can break through into a deeper spiritual realm and how, from this spiritual realm, something can grow that must once again unite all that is manifesting itself today in so many separate movements. It is due to this possibility of deeper insight that anthroposophical spiritual science makes the claim to extend to all areas of life and to penetrate into all areas of life with its new insight. It is this spirit—which seeks and must act as a source of inspiration for the entirety of today’s cultural life—that will be discussed here. Therefore, we must no longer speak—as has so often been done in the past—with indignation, astonishment, or amazement about the fact that anthroposophical spiritual science displays a sense of presumption by extending itself into all areas of life. The fact is that it seeks to lay claim to being a truly comprehensive worldview. It is from the perspective of such a genuine worldview that this lecture will address you.

[ 2 ] There is an opportunity here to participate in specialized eurythmy courses—eurythmy, this new art of movement that was founded by Dr. Rudolf Steiner. It is based on anthroposophical spiritual science, and this new art of eurythmy will therefore be taught in individual courses. There is also an opportunity to delve deeper into anthroposophical spiritual science by attending introductory courses, which are likewise held here in Zurich. If you are interested, you can write down your name and address. You can find the rest of the information in the programs that have been distributed to you.

[ 3 ] Rudolf Steiner: Ladies and gentlemen! When a distorted image of anthroposophy is so often portrayed—and this distorted image is then fought against—so that in this struggle one actually touches upon very little of what anthroposophy truly represents, it is probably because even today a great many people still view anthroposophy as something that stands, so to speak, midway between science in the strict sense of the word on the one hand and the various religious views on the other.

[ 4 ] To draw attention, in a certain way, to how inaccurate are the judgments that assign such a precarious position to anthroposophy—as it is understood here—I would like, in this introductory lecture today, to discuss above all the sources, the actual origins of anthroposophical research. And in this regard, I must first and foremost draw attention to the following. As much as it is true that what is brought to light by anthroposophy touches people’s religious feelings and sensibilities, anthroposophy itself did not, at first, arise from any religious impulse, but emerged entirely from the natural sciences of our time, from a scientific worldview. Some may even find this paradoxical at first, but precisely in order to characterize the scientific spirit of anthroposophy correctly, this origin in a scientific foundation must be emphasized very strongly.

[ 5 ] When one turns to anthroposophy, one is thoroughly imbued with the conviction that humanity’s recent development owes its greatest and strongest forces to what is today called scientific insight. And I myself would like to state quite clearly that, in my view, no spirit other than that which has been trained in modern scientific research—one that has, above all, become familiar with the conscientious, precise methods of observation, experimentation, and scientific thinking of the present day—may prevail in anthroposophy. However, when one speaks of a kind of scientific preparation for anthroposophy, less attention is paid to what has emerged as results—as triumphant results, I might say — of modern science, but rather this very spirit of training that a person acquires when they learn to work seriously in a scientific manner—that is, through experimentation and observation—and to earnestly gain a scientific understanding of the entities and facts of the world.

[ 6 ] Now it so happened that, in the course of modern scientific development, a growing emphasis has emerged within this field of research on the exclusive significance of the sensory world of facts—that is, what is based on reliable facts that can be observed through the senses and whose observation can be enhanced by instruments. Only what can be based in this way is regarded as a true foundation of modern scientific research. And the further one has advanced, the more one has moved away from the idea of rising above this world of facts in thought and in methodological reasoning. There has been an increasing tendency to view the facts, as it were, experimentally, in such a way that they reveal themselves through their mutual relationships, and in this way one arrives at what are called the laws of nature.

[ 7 ] Certainly, it was not long ago that, in analyzing the facts, people did not shy away from drawing connections between these facts and more or less bold hypotheses. In recent times, these have evolved into conceptual systems. And so we have arrived at insights, for example, about the universe. We now live, however, in an age in which some doubts have arisen regarding these hypotheses, which seem so plausible in their own right—for example, regarding the Kant-Laplace hypothesis on the origin of the universe. It is certainly regarded as somewhat uncertain, although, on the other hand, one must admit that if one wishes to arrive at a satisfactory overview of the phenomenal world at all, one cannot really do without such hypotheses. This roughly characterizes one aspect. So, I could only briefly sketch what stands in the way of anyone who today truly sets out to explore the field of natural science.

[ 8 ] The second point, however, is perhaps even more important today. It is this: given the precision that has come to be taken for granted in the natural sciences, it is no longer possible—not even in the descriptive natural sciences—to get by without a certain basic mathematical education. Indeed, a definition has emerged in the modern view of nature that, while it may seem somewhat paradoxical and extreme, reveals the very spirit that animates scientific thinking today. The definition that has emerged is: “That which exists is that which can be measured.” — Such a definition highlights just how much the scientific thinker of today feels in his element once he has mastered the art found in geometry and in the precise measurement derived from geometry, in arithmetic, and in the other branches of mathematics. This mathematical training is, so to speak, something that must be brought with one today as a fundamental prerequisite for fruitful scientific research.

[ 9 ] Now, what I wish to say today about anthroposophy is less concerned with what can be achieved as individual results of scientific research through measurement, counting, and so on, but rather with that peculiar state of mind into which the researcher enters when—equipped with the transparent fabric of arithmetic, geometric, or algebraic concepts—concepts from the world of differential or integral calculus or even synthetic geometry and so on—when, equipped with the entire fabric of these concepts—which are, after all, concepts generated entirely within the human personality itself—he approaches the external world of phenomena and then discovers: With what you have, in essence, derived from your own inner being—what you have expressed in formulas, in structures, what you have given form to from within your inner being—with that you can immerse yourself in what the senses present to you. — And he feels: With what you have, so to speak, spun out of yourself, you can encompass and interweave everything that confronts you as something entirely foreign from the external world of facts. — This confluence of the mathematical—which, in its complete clarity, with a free, all-encompassing inner exercise of will as a structure, as formulas—this convergence of the mathematical with what confronts us externally, what, so to speak, comes to us from without—this constitutes the particular state of mind of one who approaches nature in the spirit of today’s exact natural science.

[ 10 ] Now, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to draw your attention specifically to what one learns in this way through the process of “mathematizing”—that is, through the derivation of algebraic or other formulas or geometric constructs. I would like to point out that it is indeed entirely possible for a person, so to speak, to observe themselves from a backward-looking perspective—to see how they behave in this process of mathematizing, and how, in the course of this process, they arrive at what is initially, admittedly, a formal certainty regarding the inner truth of these formulas and structures. On the one hand, one can do this, and in doing so, one gains a kind of insight into the psychological process that takes place when one engages in mathematical reasoning. Certainly, with the rise of the natural sciences, one has—I would say—been content with the application of mathematics. Little attention was paid to this psychological process. But precisely when one wishes to turn to nature, when one wishes to move beyond mere scientific research, it becomes necessary to look very closely at the processes actually taking place in the soul—at what occurs as one develops mathematical thinking. Why is this so? When one considers, in turn, the process that takes place in observation or in systematic experimental observation—when one penetrates the external world through mathematics by observing this scientific research process, so to speak, within one’s own personality—one arrives at a point where one is not only able to conduct scientific research but also to consciously educate oneself to grasp to grasp the truth, just as it can be grasped through such research. Now, my dear friends here present, you see, it is from such studies—first and foremost from such a scientific method of research and from such a view of the researcher’s activity, the inner activity of the researcher—that what can truly be called anthroposophy, as it is meant here, has essentially emerged. And it is against this perspective—this inner perspective—that everything presented as anthroposophy must be measured. I confess this freely and openly, my esteemed audience: There is an innate sense of truth within human beings, so that many people, when they hear about the findings in the field of anthroposophy, become inwardly convinced to a certain degree. However, as true as it is that this happens through a certain elemental sense of truth, it is equally true that only those who have undergone the training and self-observation I just mentioned—derived from scientific research—are capable of sound judgment and—if I may coin the term—“research-oriented” in the field of anthroposophy. It is, after all, so easy to fall into a certain kind of dilettantism due to the appealing nature of anthroposophical findings, which in turn attracts other dilettantes. However, this dilettantism is by no means at the root of what anthroposophy is meant to present to the world today; rather, anthroposophy ensures that all dilettantism remains entirely at a distance from it and that, in a sense, it can account for its findings— namely the way in which it arrives at its findings, to the strictest scientific standards of our time. That is why I do not initially refer to what appears in anthroposophy as a matter of faith, but as something that can stand entirely alongside—and indeed permeate—contemporary science. The spirit that has been trained in what is demanded of science today—the spirit that underlies today’s recognized science—is the same scientific spirit that also underlies anthroposophy.

[ 11 ] But it is precisely then, my esteemed audience, when one is imbued with this scientific spirit, when one looks back from the mere mathematical indulgence in external facts toward living research—toward what comes into being when, in one’s soul, — leaving external facts behind — carries this science forward, so to speak; precisely then, when one looks back on what remains of this science for one as a human being, one is initially confronted with a problem—a great central problem—whose sheer magnitude can truly be felt only by those who have been educated in the scientific method: This is the problem of human freedom.

[ 12 ] Natural science and the philosophy that depends on it—the philosophy that is dependent today—cannot help but start from what is so interwoven into things that we must speak of necessity. It is impossible, given the spirit that prevails in natural science today, to start from anything other than necessity. And it is, in fact, the very ideal of science to penetrate to the core of what confronts us in the external world as a system of internally necessary, interrelated entities and facts. By engaging in scientific inquiry in this way, one does not approach what confronts us in the inner reality of human freedom as an immediate experience. One simply does not approach that. And so one is faced with the profound question that leads one, as it were, to the abyss of knowledge: Freedom as an immediate experience is, after all, given to you! Why, then, as you stretch your mathematizing web of knowledge over the facts of natural science and in this way construct a worldview for yourself, can you not approach that which cannot be denied as an immediate experience: freedom!

[ 13 ] If I may interject a personal note here, I would like to point out that, precisely through my research in the humanities, I encountered as early as the 1880s, on the one hand, the necessity of the natural sciences—whose significance for objective research should not be denied in the least, but rather fully acknowledged—and, on the other hand, the problem of freedom. And in my Philosophy of Freedom, published in 1893, I attempted to engage with philosophy in the way that a person with a scientific mindset of that time was compelled to do.

[ 14 ] Well, if we already had a fully developed psychology—or science of the soul—that met our scientific needs today—which, of course, we do not—it would be easier to speak about what I must discuss at this moment. The history of the science of the soul has taken a peculiar turn in recent times. Whenever I want to characterize the fate of psychology—the study of the soul—I must again and again point to an outstanding thinker of recent times, who, as you know, died here on the Zürichberg a year ago: Franz Brentano.

[ 15 ] At the beginning of the second half of the 19th century, Franz Brentano was fully immersed in scientific thinking, and when he first formulated his theses in Würzburg for his appointment as a private lecturer, his main thesis was that no method other than that used in the natural sciences should be applied in the study of the mind. In 1874, Franz Brentano published the first volume of his Psychology on an Empirical Basis, and when this volume of Psychology appeared in the spring of that year, he promised to deliver the second volume in the fall and the next four volumes in quick succession in the following years. Franz Brentano has since died—no sequel to the first volume has been published!

[ 16 ] Anyone who reads this first volume of Brentano’s theory of the soul with an open mind will understand—I would say, from the very nature of how this theory is presented—why no such sequel was ever published. After all, Franz Brentano states frankly and openly in this first volume of his that if one were to stop where he stopped, one would first have to admit to oneself that one actually knows nothing. If one considers the combination of ideas and their relationship to memory—the “socialization of ideas,” as it is commonly called—and so on, and applies the purely scientific method to this, then that is no substitute for the kind of psychology that Plato and Aristotle had hoped for. That would be no substitute for a psychology that can also address what in human beings can be described as the eternal, or—as Franz Brentano puts it—that can address what remains of a human being when temporal life, in the form of the body, falls away from them. Franz Brentano wanted to solve this problem—which, in the popular sense, might be called the problem of immortality—in terms of natural science and psychology. That is what he struggled with. He did not—and I want to make this clear—wish to enter the realm that I must here describe as anthroposophy; that did not seem scientific enough to him. Consequently, however—precisely because he was an honest researcher—he simply could not continue writing. Combining honesty in the field of the psychology of the soul with a scientific spirit of inquiry is possible only if one is able to develop, along this path, that continuation of scientific thinking which anthroposophical spiritual science demands.

[ 17 ] I would like to say that Franz Brentano’s failure to bring his psychology to a conclusion is living proof—it is living proof that we simply do not have a true psychology today. If we had a psychology—a true psychology—we would be able to view certain things differently than they are generally viewed today. And there is one point in particular I would like to emphasize. When we proceed in a scientific manner—formulating scientific facts into laws and then incorporating these laws into our intellect, so that we carry within ourselves, as it were, what has been revealed to us through external observation and experimentation—we notice: The more we distance ourselves from external facts, the more we work, so to speak, purely inwardly with the intellect—which proves so excellent when guided by experiment and observation—the more we continue to work with this intellect, the more we—in other words—enter the realm of the hypothetical, that realm where one seeks through the intellect to elaborate what lies behind these phenomena, the more clearly one feels: One is entering a realm with which, in the long run, one cannot be satisfied. The more one—I would say, freely indulging at first in the kind of thinking that can be applied quite well in scientific research—the more one indulges in this thinking, in this formation of thought hypotheses, the more one arrives at something unsatisfactory. And this unsatisfactoriness manifests itself, fundamentally speaking, throughout the entire course of scientific development.

[ 18 ] This is evident from the fact that we see how the most diverse hypotheses have been put forward—hypotheses about light, about electrical phenomena, about gravity, and so on—and we see how these hypotheses are constantly being replaced by others. And anyone who does not wish to take the position that we have “come so wonderfully far” today must, based on the feelings they may have regarding this process of constructing hypotheses, nevertheless say: The hypotheses that have been developed in recent times will in turn be superseded by others. — We are, so to speak, in the midst of replacing the old light hypothesis with another—one derived from electrical phenomena. And we must tell ourselves: We are entering a realm where we form hypotheses based on what the intellect can grasp about the laws of nature through external observation and experimentation in relation to the sensory external world. We are entering a realm where this intellect, so to speak, encounters something fluid, something that cannot in the least evoke in us the feeling that we can actually approach a being with these intellectual constructs that we are hypothetically forming—constructs which, if they are to have any value, possess that value only if they point to something real, to something that exists, cannot actually come close to anything that exists.

[ 19 ] And whoever, in true inner empiricism, that is, equipped with an unbiased observation of the inner facts of the soul—namely, the will—and who contemplates that element in the soul which encompasses the fact of freedom, will find this to be in marvelous harmony with the impossibility of arriving at hypotheses that still contain the same necessity we encounter when we use our thinking to classify and systematize natural phenomena. One then senses: If one approaches the life of the soul with this kind of thinking and seeks only to formulate hypotheses within it, one is, as it were, floating in a liquid. One encounters nothing solid in the life of the soul. And this harmonizes wonderfully with the fact that rooted in the life of the soul is that impulse which can act without any necessity governing it—which can thus move freely.

[ 20 ] I would like to say that through external scientific research we arrive at a region of our inner life that shows us: If we want to extend the realm of necessity into this region, it fails even theoretically; it does not satisfy us even theoretically. We encounter something in our inner life where freedom is rooted, where freedom can indeed be experienced. And we will only be able to properly distinguish this realm of freedom from the rest of the world that is comprehensible to us when we realize that, as long as we move within the necessity of the comprehensible world, we cannot use that necessity to approach what is experienced inwardly when we are in the realm of freedom. I believe that a psychology capable of meeting the demands of today’s scientific precision would point to the special kind of inner satisfaction one experiences in the play of hypotheses and in the harmony with what one now experiences inwardly, in the soul, by experiencing the reality of inner freedom.

[ 21 ] I would like to emphasize this point: I am not speaking here of just any methods or theories about freedom, but of the reality of freedom, which we simply discover by immersing ourselves impartially in our own inner life. And then, when we are able to do this—when, equipped with a genuine scientific spirit, we move, as it were, toward ourselves—not outward, but toward ourselves—and reach the limit where scientific thinking is no longer sufficient, and where we can transition to what can be experienced within us as freedom, then we approach the possibility of sensing the validity of anthroposophy. For anthroposophy must first, by demonstrating its scientific character, proceed from this experience of being unable to attain freedom through that which has externally led to such great theoretical and practical triumphs—namely, natural science.

[ 22 ] Now one stands within this experience of freedom. But if one does not stand within it with abstract concepts, but rather stands inwardly before it—as before an intimately experienced inner reality—then one also knows, by, so to speak, experiencing the soul inwardly, as it is permeated and pulsates with what is experienced as freedom: We cannot, admittedly, enter into it with the thoughts provided by the external laws of nature, but when we, as human beings, truly wish to place ourselves within life—when, for example, we have ideals, when we are familiar with the true demands of life, so that we may act here or there in life—we do not stand thoughtlessly within this sphere of freedom. We stand within the sphere of freedom by developing free thinking, and we can come to know the thinking that moves within the element of freedom—free thinking, which is at first merely an inner activity of the soul, guided neither by external observation nor by external experimentation. This is, in a sense, self-creative, laid down in the soul as a progressive inner impulse. I have called this thinking “pure thinking” in my Philosophy of Freedom.

[ 23 ] This way of thinking, in a sense, constitutes the content of consciousness once we have trained that consciousness as I have just indicated. But then, as we engage in this thinking, we can recall the concept of being, the concept of reality, which we have acquired from the external world—in particular, from the scientifically explored external world as presented to us by the natural sciences. Let us take, on the one hand, this concept of reality—it need not be particularly clear at first; it can simply be the idea that takes root within us through our immediate external and also scientific engagement with the external world—let us take this concept, this idea of reality, on the one hand, and let us take that which we consciously experience as we engage in free thinking; then something arises in our soul—yes, I could call it a fundamental law, I could call it an experience—something arises to which one must inwardly acknowledge before oneself by saying: I think, but I am not in thinking; that is to say, I am not as I have come to know being in the external world. And the significant sentence stands before us: I think, therefore I am not.

[ 24 ] This is something we must first bring to our consciousness, my esteemed audience. And that is why it is so difficult to explain to people today what is actually the starting point for the scientific nature of anthroposophy, because, as most of you may know, modern philosophy still, more or less consciously or unconsciously, proceeds from Descartes’s maxim: Cogito ergo sum — I think, therefore I am. One thus proceeds from the great error that, in thinking, one grasps something of a reality—a reality such as one has initially formed in one’s imagination as reality. One must first admit: What arises when I think, I think in freedom. This is the experience of non-reality; it is an experience that is at the same time an experience of thought and an experience of will—a pure experience of will, an experience of desire.

[ 25 ] Ladies and gentlemen, this experience is of immense significance for the life of the soul. The fact is that we should actually spend a long time meditating on this experience until, so to speak, we feel our “I” hollowed out, when we admit to ourselves: “I think, and my ‘I’ lives in this thinking.” It is as if I were looking at a colored wall with a black circle in the middle. There is darkness there; there is no light. Yet I still see the black circle. I see the black circle within the light. When I come to self-consciousness in ordinary life and admit to myself in that self-consciousness: “By thinking, I am not looking into a reality; I am looking, if I may put it that way, into the black circle; I am looking into the non-light, which is darkness.” I believe that I actually perceive myself because the “I” is absent from the content of my consciousness. Precisely because there is a nothingness within the content of my consciousness, and I perceive this non-being within being, I initially regard myself as an “I” in ordinary thinking. This is a fundamental fact of psychology and philosophy. However, a great deal of water will likely flow down the Rhine before philosophers engage in this analysis, which is necessary in order to—well, I can only hint at the matter here; I can only point to what is there. Much can still be discussed in very lengthy psychological and philosophical treatises until such an analysis is finally carried out.

[ 26 ] You see, ladies and gentlemen, once one has realized that in the “I think” one is actually gazing into the emptiness of the inner world, once one has realized that something of a volitional nature is at work there, then one has reached the proper starting point for what can now emerge in the form of inner, methodical anthroposophical research. And these inner, methodical, anthroposophical investigations consist in the following: Starting from what one has inwardly experienced regarding the nature of thinking in the sphere of freedom—what one has then explored in the statement “I think, therefore I am not” in the sense of the existence of beings outside oneself—by allowing this to take effect upon oneself, by, I would say, by inwardly grasping this atom of volitional being, one can then be in the soul mood from which arises the meditation needed to arrive at a true inner intuition.

[ 27 ] People may denounce what is presented as the anthroposophical method and, in a certain sense, distort it in the eyes of humanity by portraying it as if it were, in a negative sense, something inferior—as is often said “inferior” in the fields of experimentation, pragmatism, and so on—in all these realms of manifold superstition, may people, as I said, may they distort all that the spiritual researcher cultivates by proceeding from a firm philosophical foundation—what is developed there in terms of method, of meditative methods—that, my esteemed audience, is nothing other than a further development of those inner soul forces we possess when we engage in mathematical thinking, and whose application in external natural science has yielded such great, such significant results. Once one has learned what is present in the soul as an activity during mathematical reasoning, once one has immersed oneself in this unique, scientifically cultivated form of creativity, then one can further develop it by, so to speak, recreating what arises in our memory, so that we initially have in this memory a kind of guiding impulse for our lives. We have these guiding impulses for our lives precisely because what arose as external experiences from a particular point in our childhood is transformed into inner experiences. In a sense, we can always draw up from the unfathomable depths of the soul fragments of what we have experienced in the form of images. But we can also distinguish between the vivid, immersive experience of being right in the midst of an event—as we might have been, say, ten years ago—and the act of recalling what was experienced at that time. And no matter how vivid the images may be—the essential aspect of this life of memory is that we transform what we temporarily experience into something enduring within us through our imagination, though into such an enduring state that we cannot initially determine what is taking place down there in the life of the soul—or perhaps even in organic life. But we can once again determine what we have before us when we bring up from these depths, in the form of an image, what we have experienced.

[ 28 ] Let us now reflect on the way in which we possess a mental image—how vividly we hold a mental image within us when we recall, over a longer period of time, something we have experienced. Through this “possession” of a mental image, we learn what is necessary for meditation—for the fundamental meditation of the anthroposophical research method. It is necessary that we place a clearly comprehensible mental image at the center of our consciousness, and it makes no difference whether it relates to something external or whether it is formed solely internally—even, for my part, from the imagination. The truth content of the mental image is not initially important; what matters is that we can easily grasp it. I have described all of this in relation to this anthroposophical method of research in my books How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?, in Esoteric Science, and in other works; there I have described the way in which one enters into this form of meditative imagination—this kind of meditative imagination within the soul—in exactly the same way as one does when doing mathematics.

[ 29 ] You will then find it absurd if someone compares this activity of the soul—which goes beyond mere mathematization and is thoroughly permeated by the will—to anything hallucinatory or subconscious. That is precisely why so much emphasis is placed on mathematical preparation for anthroposophy—because through it one learns to recognize how one has a free hand in bringing forth ideas and holding them fast in consciousness. And anyone who says that what anthroposophy aims for in terms of inner will could be a hallucination is — either intentionally or because they are unable to — fail to grasp the entire manner in which this meditative life is actually practiced, how care is taken to ensure that, in order to avoid bringing up any reminiscences from the subconscious, one first introduces easily comprehensible ideas into one’s consciousness. Through this, however, one exercises an activity—through inner strength, with an effort of the will—that one would otherwise exercise only on the basis of external facts, for otherwise one proceeds on the basis of external facts and experiences and allows one’s imaginative life to unfold on the basis of these external facts and experiences. Now, however, one frees oneself from those external facts and experiences—I can only hint at the principle here; you will find more details in the books mentioned— now what matters is to hold onto the images through inner will and thus continually evoke a soul activity that is otherwise kindled only by external facts and unfolds within the human being, bound to external existence. But by developing such meditation further and further—by practicing for years to transform easily comprehensible images into lasting ones— and by coming to know in this way that activity of the soul which, through thinking elevated beyond ordinary existence, detaches the mind from the physical—in this way one rises to what I have described in the aforementioned books as imaginative cognition.

[ 30 ] No fanciful notions, no fantastical notions! Imaginative cognition is a filling of consciousness with images that are present in the soul in the same way as mathematical figures and formulas. And in this free handling of the supersensible reality—which one distinguishes from every [physical] reality just as one distinguishes the triangle drawn with chalk on the blackboard as a mere symbol from the full inner awareness [of the purely spiritual concept of the triangle]. By being able to dwell for a time within this imaginative life of the soul, one comes to truly know the life of the soul as something that can detach itself from the body. In ordinary life—and one only truly recognizes this when one engages in such exercises—our life is bound to the nervous system and the rest of the organism. We see that, independent of the organism, the soul-spiritual unfolds within itself, and that the soul-spiritual can fill itself with images. Only through this does one come to know the meditative life. These images are entirely like the images of memory—not like hallucinations. It is not true that one is filled with something like hallucinations or visions when engaging in anthroposophical research; rather, it is precisely through the existence of the memory faculty that one comes to know the novelty, the new kind of content in which the images of imaginative cognition or imaginative consciousness arise. But one also knows that when these images arise, one can no longer say: “I am imagining, therefore I am not”—as one might say in the case of thinking.

[ 31 ] Now, as I rise to the realm of imagination, I encounter in a strange way what I first came to know in the external world—I encounter necessity. In my imaginative life, I can form my own images, but I cannot simply shuffle them back and forth at will in relation to a new world that is now emerging. I find myself gradually compelled to relate these images, which arise within me in the life of imagination, to a new world that I am coming to know—to a spiritual world. I come to realize: I must set this image, which I have initially prepared, in relation to some fact of the spiritual world, and through this image—which I have, after all, constructed myself—I enter into a connection with that world. Through the consciously created images of imagination, I approach a spiritual world, just as I enter into interaction with the sensory external world through the images produced by my eyes or the sound images produced by my ears. These latter images, which are produced in the eye and ear, arise independently of my will. What is produced in the imagination as a world of images, however, is attained only after such thorough training as I have just described in the aforementioned books How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds? and so on. But through this, one gains the ability to hold forth something from inner activity toward the spiritual world, just as our senses—through the activity of the eyes and the ears—can hold forth something toward the external, natural world so that we may receive images from it. What is to be revealed to us through knowledge of the spiritual worlds must first be developed within us; it must first be drawn up from the depths of the soul. And this takes place in the first stage of supersensible cognition, in imaginative consciousness. But it is significant that we enter into a kind of necessity here. And it is only now that we learn all the more to recognize what freedom actually is.

[ 32 ] You see, those who hallucinate or have visions create images from within their own bodies. They are merely following an inner necessity, an inner compulsion. Those who live in the realm of fantasy create images from within their soul. They are more or less aware of how they create these images. And if they are a person of sound mind and not a madman, then they know that they are living in an unreal fantasy world. One knows about what one creates in imaginative consciousness—because ordinary, normal consciousness, the consciousness that experiences itself in freedom, remains present—that in imaginative consciousness one shapes the images oneself, just as in mathematics one shapes the formula oneself through which one comprehends reality. But one also knows that when one enters the spiritual world, one grasps a spiritual world through these images. One sees, then, that as a human being with ordinary external consciousness, one can grasp this process. In ordinary life and in ordinary science, we have the opportunity to attain freedom—and this is because, when dealing with mere pictorial imagination, which is not in reality, one must say to oneself: I think, therefore I am not—cogito ergo non sum. If one develops one’s freedom through this kind of thinking and then looks back into the spiritual world, one looks back into a world in which that very necessity prevails that one first came to know in the external world. In the external world, one proceeds from the necessity of facts. One advances to a mode of thinking in which, so to speak, freedom pushes back against the certainty of inner thought.

[ 33 ] From this free thinking, one moves on to imagination, which, however, also claims to have a being of its own, and thus returns to a world of necessity. One returns to this necessity, however, in an inner way. In this way, one learns above all to truly see through that which is so often spoken of, but which actually always confronts one in a certain nebulous, pseudo-mystical way. For if one learns to recognize this imaginative consciousness of which I have spoken, then self-observation becomes possible at all. I would say that what used to serve as a point of reference from the “I” when one looked into the “not-I” begins to become somewhat clearer. Will penetrates this and begins to grasp something. And one also feels oneself once again in a world of necessity. In this way, one attains self-consciousness.

[ 34 ] If one continues one’s exercises, one eventually arrives at a stage where one can make the images disappear just as one feels them arising. And one must do this; otherwise, one does not remain in control of them, but instead becomes a visionary rather than a researcher of the spirit. Once one reaches the point where one can erase the images from consciousness again, and achieves complete inner exercise of the will within this world of images—so that one can also erase the image whose formation one has experienced in the soul—what I have called the second stage—inspired consciousness—begins. Please do not take offense at the term—after all, one must use terms as technical aids. It was simply used in an analogous sense, drawing on old terms, but what is meant by it is an entirely new reality, a reality discovered through self-exploration; what is meant is the new, inspired consciousness. And with this, one now stands within spiritual reality. And when one stands so deeply within spiritual reality that one is surrounded by it—truly surrounded now by a world of spiritual beings—then one also beholds one’s own soul in its true essence. Then what anthroposophy describes as repeated earthly lives becomes an immediate reality. And one increasingly observes the soul as it passes from life to life, including the intervening period between death and a new birth—one sees this journey of the soul. One has, so to speak, expanded one’s imagination so that, directed inward, it can essentially move in the opposite direction to how memory-based imagination normally moves.

[ 35 ] Let us ask ourselves: How does mental imagery work? — As I said, we first have the experience: We are connected to the external world; we immerse ourselves, with our whole being, in some event of the external world. This speaks to our impulses of will—or rather, it speaks to our feeling; it also speaks to our concepts. We live within it with our whole being. We may even exert ourselves physically as we have this experience. In short, we live within it with our whole being. Through this, as we form our concepts, our soul plunges into the depths, and we can bring it back up again in the form of an image. We can say: In ordinary experience, we proceed from external experience to ordinary memory through the fact that external images undergo a certain inner metamorphosis. In meditation, as practiced in anthroposophical research, we take the reverse path. We first learn to have an image that must not be linked to an external experience or to subconscious reminiscences, and we learn to proceed—not now toward an external experience, but toward a supersensible experience, including those experiences that lie before our birth or, rather, before our conception. In this way, we come to know the pre-existence of the soul, the spiritual being of the soul—something we would otherwise only come to know through the external experiences we have had up to a certain point in our childhood. It is the reverse experience, but one that leads us to spiritual experience, where we start from the image and ascend to the experience. And if, at the same time, we practice a certain self-discipline—namely, a self-discipline that increasingly manifests itself in external action stemming from what we know in ordinary life as the feeling of love—then we learn to recognize objectively where, through the tasks the external world presents to us, we can develop our activity in love. If we come to know this life in the external world, then—after long practice—the progression from image to reality will gradually take the form of advancing from imaginative consciousness through inspired consciousness to intuitive consciousness; that is, we learn to stand within the inner objectivity and inner necessity of the spiritual world.

[ 36 ] You see, my esteemed audience, in the natural sciences one proceeds from the premise of necessity. In a sense, one approaches humanity in such a way that one can contribute something in thought only to the extent that one internally preserves what one has externally investigated through the natural sciences and can say to oneself, in order to be human in the true sense: You carry within you something that is connected to the essence of the entire world. — But in attempting to approach human beings with that kind of thinking—which is extraordinarily well-suited for application out there in the natural sciences, in external life—one enters a realm—I have characterized this; you can read about it in my Philosophy of Freedom—where one can go no further. The hypotheses become uncertain.

[ 37 ] But when one cultivates what can be experienced in the realm of freedom, one penetrates the objectivity of the spirit by a reverse path. And this can be of great help if, in the Goethean sense—as explained in his scientific writings—one uses thinking not to spin out hypotheses, but merely to compile phenomena.

[ 38 ] When one brings phenomena together, one learns to recognize how to approach this world. One does not thereby reach the realm of atoms—not atoms, not electrons, and so on, which are valid to a certain extent, insofar as external appearances are concerned. This physical-scientific approach to observation and research only allows one to approach the outer appearances. If, on the other hand, one presents these purely as phenomena, then one can penetrate to what lies behind the phenomenon—to which we ourselves belong in our eternal core of being—in such a way that one ascends into the imaginative, the inspirational, and the intuitive. And through this, ladies and gentlemen, one ultimately also comes to gain a certain self-knowledge, to realize what is required in self-observation. By developing imaginative consciousness, one learns to look within oneself. On what, then, is memory based? It is based, so to speak, on the fact that we capture what we experience in the external world in the form of an image—not in the way it happens, for example, in the early days of our childhood — where it is transferred down into the physical organization — but rather in such a way that it is reflected, that it has, so to speak, a mirror surface in our physical organization, and that we capture it by remembering it in the memory image of the experience. By developing memory in this way—the memory we need for a healthy social and scientific life—we simultaneously overcome, through anthroposophical research, our attachment to the physical organism. However, ordinary consciousness must always be present in this process; it must not be like hallucination, but whoever ascends to imaginative consciousness is always, at the same time, a rational person who also possesses ordinary consciousness. This is precisely what distinguishes imaginative perception—and inspired perception—from hallucination. Hallucinations and visions live within what the body produces, so that when we develop physical images from within the body, we are dealing with visions and hallucinations. When we compose images from the soul, we are dealing with figments of the imagination; when we compose images from the spirit—which we grasp by learning to act freely from the body, purely in a spiritual-soul manner—and imagine them, then this is a spiritual reality. Thus, it is the body that produces images by giving rise to hallucinations and visions. The soul composes images by giving rise to fantasies, not to visionary images. The spirit within us composes images by approaching spiritual realities.

[ 39 ] But when we turn our gaze inward, we now see, as it were, through the mirror—just as we would be able to see through a real mirror if we were to pierce it or remove some of its coating. And what we encounter within is not what those nebulous mystics ramble on about; something quite different confronts us there, for the soul has experienced many things before it believes itself to be united with some deity within. They speak of divine manifestations in the “I.” They speak of something they dream up there. But whoever penetrates into their inner being through genuine spiritual science arrives at something entirely different. He comes to see, in a material sense, precisely what is otherwise given to him in the soul. Ordinarily, his thinking, feeling, willing, wishing, and desires are given to him in the soul; now he sees through all of this—which he perceives, to a greater or lesser extent, in connection with memory—and he sees into the actual inner laws governing his organism. He comes to know his organism. He will not ramble and ramble on about what nebulous mystics ramble and ramble on about, but rather he speaks of the actual nature of the liver, the lungs, and the stomach, which he comes to know through inner vision. He can add his inner vision to what conscientious external physical anatomy provides. There you see the possibility of advancing to a true science of pathology. There you see how that spiritual science which does not turn to nebulous, rambling mysticism, but which proceeds from exact methods, can truly penetrate the entire realm of the sciences. Yes, one learns much more. Above all, one recognizes that even in the case of the mystics—who, of course, sound so magnificent—even in the case of Saint Teresa or Mechthild of Magdeburg, there are, in essence, physically abnormal conditions at play. One learns to recognize how abnormal—let’s say, liver or spleen functions and so on—can give rise, through imperfect, disharmonious functioning, to those images that we otherwise so admire in mysticism.

[ 40 ] My dear friends here today! Knowledge is something that cannot be approached with preconceived notions about life, no matter how beautiful they may be. I believe that for those who can open themselves to knowledge with an unbiased mind, there is a deeper insight into the foundations of existence, for they know how the human organism “brews” such beauty as we encounter in the noblest figures—namely, in a Saint Teresa or even Mechthild of Magdeburg—when, in mystical rapture, they lose themselves in the mist and dream of all manner of things that are meant to rise from within, purely in a soul-spiritual sense. This is what is remarkable: that through self-observation we advance toward an understanding of the materiality of the human organism. This is what will increasingly distinguish exact anthroposophy from all the rambling and ronsom of inner mysticism—namely, that it does not lead into nebulosity, but into realities. It teaches what cannot be developed through external anatomy, for what one can learn from external physiology and anatomy is only one side of the story; in this way, it shows that the soul is pre-existent. It shows how this soul works down from its more comprehensive being to shape, out of the spiritual, that which is formed in the womb. Thus the real arises from the spiritual world. We delve into the realm of reality as we advance through meditation.

[ 41 ] In the natural sciences, as we approach the human being from the external world, and in the spiritual-anthroposophical sciences, as our full understanding of the human being extends toward the realm of nature, we come to understand what enables human beings to experience that harmony between spirit and matter which they must experience if they are to be fully human in the proper sense. Human beings reach a point where, out of an inner impulse—actually out of inner feeling and will—they step directly into knowledge. It follows from this that without this knowledge, we are always compelled to resort to an atomistic worldview, and that in this way we cannot truly penetrate to the inner essence of the material world. As we learn to recognize the material world more and more, we also learn to recognize the nature of the spiritual world externally. We truly learn to build that bridge which, through understanding, leads us from spirit to matter, and from matter to spirit. We need not believe that this makes it possible to solve all the world’s mysteries at once. Those of a timid disposition might say: The life of modern man must be a tragic one, for he inevitably encounters limits to his understanding that make the world’s mysteries seem unsolvable. — That is not the case. When we ascend in this way and come to know spiritual life as it truly is—how it, so to speak, flashes into us like a bolt of lightning, and how, on the other hand, the material world confronts us once more—when we face the world with true cognitive capacity, then, in essence, as we ascend to such understanding, we do not experience something that lulls us into complacency from the outset with regard to knowledge; rather, we learn to recognize the struggle into which we, as human beings, are woven. Human beings see how they live out there amid the struggles of spiritual worlds and beings, how they participate in this struggle through the moral world and the religious world, and how they draw social life out of this struggle. They come to know something that does not, so to speak, trivialize the inner state of the soul in the unraveling of the world’s mysteries, but rather deepens it.

[ 42 ] And that, my esteemed audience, is essentially what anthroposophy aims to do. It is the path toward reconciling with the natural sciences. Anyone who seeks to oppose anthroposophy from the standpoint of natural science—or, building upon natural science, from a philosophical standpoint—is tilting at windmills; for anthroposophy engages with everything that natural science rightly puts forward; in this way, it can only meet what such natural science and such philosophy have achieved with full understanding. But this full understanding was not sought. Over long periods of time, modern intellectual life and modern civilization have led to what has become known in recent times as agnosticism. Time and again, those thinkers who did not wish to develop their thinking further—who did not wish to enter the world of the imaginative, the inspired, and the intuitive—have spoken of an “ignorabimus,” thereby presenting something to people—which is precisely significant—that must be regarded as unknowable and inscrutable. But because human beings always know, “I am spirit, I am soul,” they should actually be able to distinguish the spiritual origin from nebulous mysticism and the like. Of all that which is, in the truest sense of the word, superstition in the various spheres of life, the cause of all this does not lie in anthroposophy—which strives for clarity and for exact natural science—but rather its origin lies in “Ignorabimus,” in agnosticism. These gave rise to “nonsensical” mysticism. It is precisely “Ignorabimus” that leads to agnosticism, because human beings must constantly seek the spirit. All nebulous movements stem from “Ignorabimus” and agnosticism.

[ 43 ] Anthroposophy does not seek to be a fog; anthroposophy seeks to be light; anthroposophy seeks to be the continuation of that light which it itself recognizes—as a truly spiritual light that carries humanity forward—even in modern natural science. This is how it views the relationships between modern natural science, modern philosophy, and itself as anthroposophy.