The Rudolf Steiner Archive

1. Understanding Nature and Understanding the Mind

[ 1 ] Dear fellow students, distinguished guests! First, I would like to address the distinguished speakers who have so kindly welcomed me. I assume that this welcome also extends to the intellectual topic that is to be presented here during this university event.

[ 2 ] If, for my part—and I would like to emphasize this particularly in connection with these greetings—if I respond to these friendly greetings with deep satisfaction, it is because of two fundamental convictions that inspire me in all my advocacy of what I call anthroposophical spiritual science. Certainly, this anthroposophical spiritual science is still subject to much criticism today, but it will be able to follow the path it is destined to take through its inner strength, provided it is supported, among other things, by two contemporary forces in particular. And it is precisely from these two contemporary forces that your kind greeting originates. It comes, first, from those who wish to devote themselves to the cultivation of scientific life, and it comes from the youth. Now, I am deeply convinced that, among the other manifold conditions that must be in place if anthroposophical spiritual science is to follow its path, two things above all will be necessary. First, that people come to realize that this spiritual science, for its part, seeks to work in the strictest scientific spirit. And because it does so, this welcome is particularly valuable to me. And second, I am deeply convinced that—regardless of what some people living today may think about this anthroposophical spiritual science—what is even more important is how the youth think about it. For it will depend on what the youth will contribute to the development of humanity in the coming decades whether we will once again find our way out of the so many forces of decline and toward the forces of ascent. The aim of anthroposophical spiritual science is, after all, to contribute precisely to this goal. It must therefore be a source of particular satisfaction to it when it is welcomed by the youth. And believe me—believe me, my esteemed hosts, and believe it, all of you sitting here: Anthroposophical spiritual science will never shy away from what constitutes justified criticism—which is, above all, a thoroughly critical engagement with itself. On the contrary: it will find the greatest satisfaction when such criticism arises from a genuine thirst for knowledge and from the urge to contribute practically to the goals of human development. Anthroposophical spiritual science is in the early stages of its development; it needs genuine and honest criticism. It does not need blind trust—and, in fact, cannot use blind trust. It needs thoughtful evaluators. May these thoughtful evaluators emerge from among the youth themselves.

[ 3 ] Therefore, since this is my most heartfelt wish, I would like to express my sincere gratitude for the kind words that have just been addressed to me here as the representative of this anthroposophical spiritual science. Thank you very much for that, and let me express the hope that what can be presented here in a somewhat rudimentary manner over the course of this week—that is, in a relatively short time—will at least to some extent meet your expectations in a stimulating way. These expectations are certainly in line with what has just been said; otherwise, this event could not have taken place.

[ 4 ] And in particular, I must express my heartfelt thanks for the kind invitation I received from the general student body. I take this as an expression of the fact that it is increasingly recognized that anthroposophical spiritual science, as I represent it, is the opposite of any sectarian endeavor, and that it is also the opposite of everything that, in a narrow-minded sense, appeals to any kind of denominational faith or something similar. I have therefore found it deeply gratifying that the general student body here in Darmstadt has joined in the invitation extended by the specific anthroposophical groups. And for this invitation, let me express my most heartfelt thanks to all those who took part in it.

[ 5 ] Well, dear fellow students, distinguished guests, what is currently known as anthroposophical spiritual science is often judged today in wider circles from perspectives that could actually be dispelled simply by considering the starting point from which this anthroposophical spiritual science originated. This starting point was certainly not a sectarian one, nor was it a religious creed in the narrow sense of the time, or anything of the sort—although religious creeds, for their part, will certainly have very good reasons to engage with this anthroposophical spiritual science. The starting point was an engagement with the scientific thinking of our more recent past—the period encompassing roughly the last decades of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th century.

[ 6 ] The scientific way of thinking has not only taken hold within the natural sciences themselves, but has—in fact, only in recent times—conquered a broader sphere of human perception. It has rightly been emphasized by discerning observers that the luminaries of modern scientific thought—such as Newton, Copernicus, Galileo, and even Kepler—were, at the outset, still adherents of an ancient faith in revelation, as they had encountered it in their own time. The great confrontation between the scientific way of thinking and the major questions of worldview did not actually begin until the course of the 19th century. And this scientific way of thinking has also, in a certain sense, taken hold of what is initially called “spiritual science”—not on the basis of anthroposophy, but within today’s official science. It has taken hold, for example, of history.

[ 7 ] If we look, on the one hand, at developments in the natural sciences and, on the other hand, at the evolution of historical perspectives, then we must say: Anyone who, with all seriousness and drawing upon the inner experiences of the whole human being—the complete human being—witnessed the final stage of development in our spiritual life at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century encountered, so to speak, two cornerstones; two cornerstones, one of which once caused a great stir but is now almost forgotten—that is, forgotten in the sense that it is no longer recalled with full awareness. Yet it lives on in the way worldview questions are addressed today. This one cornerstone is the once-famous “Ignorabimus”—“We shall never know” — Du Bois-Reymond’s from the 1870s. Du Bois-Reymond, who was truly a representative natural scientist of his time, sought to strictly delineate the boundaries of scientific thought, and he indeed concluded those debates—which encompassed the natural scientist’s “Ignorabimus”—with the words: Natural science will never be able to fathom the very essence of the material world—that is, the essence of what underlies the external world observable through our senses and analyzable by the intellect. Faced with this world, one must declare “ignorabimus”—so Du Bois-Reymond argued—for anything that seeks to go beyond the limits indicated leads into supernaturalism. This leads to a kind of supernatural inquiry—says Du Bois-Reymond, as he makes the monumental statement that where supernaturalism begins, science ends.

[ 8 ] Thus, the great question that once stood at the starting point of anthroposophical thought and observation was: Does all science truly end where supersensible research—or, as Du Bois-Reymond suggests, supernaturalism—must begin?

[ 9 ] But that is, after all, only one cornerstone. The other cornerstone was laid not by a natural scientist, but by a historian—the famous Leopold von Ranke. And once again, it was an “ignorabimus,” a “We cannot and will not know!” — Ranke, the great historian, sought with the utmost objectivity to make sense of the course of human development as revealed by historical documents. And he stated explicitly that what we regard as the most far-reaching event in the course of Earth’s development—the founding of Christianity, the appearance of Jesus Christ in the course of human development—does indeed intervene in this historical unfolding. Ranke does not deny that this event was earth-shattering in the course of historical development; but he asserts—just as Du Bois-Reymond, on the other hand, asserted that science must stop short of the supernatural—that the historical perspective must stop short of the cause of Christianity’s origin. That which was introduced into historical development by the founder of Christianity—as Ranke puts it—belongs to the primordial elements of historical development—as he expresses it—which methodological historical research cannot reach. Of course, many more such primordial elements could be identified. I have emphasized here only what is most important for the West in the sense of Leopold von Ranke. — That is the other cornerstone. It was erected because, in the course of the 19th century, the education that the scientific community had received over the past four to five centuries also unfolded its powers in other scientific fields of inquiry. And even though Leopold von Ranke was, of course, far from seeking to reconcile his own historical perspective with the natural sciences, one must nevertheless say: scientific knowledge, with its great, its mighty triumphs, and with its rightful place in the recent intellectual development of humanity, has also asserted its influence in other fields. These fields, if I may put it that way, had to “adapt” to it. And so, in essence, Leopold von Ranke’s “Ignorabimus” is nothing other than the historical response to Du Bois-Reymond’s scientific “Ignorabimus.”

[ 10 ] An examination of what was alive in modern spiritual life—and, since spiritual life is, after all, the foundation of all human cultural and civilizational development, also of modern human life as a whole—such an examination of these two cornerstones stands at the starting point of what anthroposophical spiritual science sought to become: an examination of the scientific way of thinking. And I say explicitly: with the scientific way of thinking. For precisely when we speak of this starting point, it is not a matter of addressing individual scientific findings—which have already been addressed in such a commendable way in the lectures given so far—but rather it is a matter of examining the way in which the natural scientist in particular seeks to relate to reality, and examining in particular what we as human beings, in relation to our own human development in the present, have to do with engaging in natural scientific research or even simply with assimilating natural scientific findings.

[ 11 ] You will surely understand when I assert that the natural sciences, particularly in the course of the 19th century —though the groundwork had been laid earlier—gradually developed research methods through which, in particular, those who engage in research in any branch of this natural science acquire an inner scientific conscientiousness and an inner scientific discipline that can be acquired through nothing other than this very scientific research work. And this inner spiritual discipline, this inner spiritual conscientiousness, which one can acquire in this way—we need it throughout modern civilizational and cultural life. The only question that arises is: Can natural science itself carry to its ultimate conclusion that which is cultivated within humanity in terms of conscientiousness and inner discipline? Whether or not what scientific research has worked its way toward is justified, whether or not it may need to be modified in the future — the relative lack of justification has, after all, been properly highlighted by individual speakers at these events — what matters is that even in the most radical extreme, to which natural science has turned more through theorizing than through practice or experimentation, this conscientiousness and this inner discipline still underlie it.

[ 12 ] We have seen how scientific research has gradually been pushed to move away from the qualitative and toward the quantitative, more and more. As I said, this is debatable in terms of the results—I am not speaking of that now. But I am speaking of the education that the researcher has been able to receive precisely because of the extreme nature of this tendency, which has gone so far as to accept, in the realm of scientific understanding, only that which can be measured, counted, or weighed—that which can be expressed by a number, a measure, or a weight. In certain circles, there is a belief that one can actually achieve a certain degree of objectivity only if one regards as objective only that which is subject to number, measure, and weight. — As I said, with regard to the results, this is highly debatable.

[ 13 ] I would now like to consider the other side of the issue—the side that can culminate in the question: What does one gain as a thinker or researcher by striving to attain the objective through weight, measure, and number? The benefit is that one is compelled, more and more, to eliminate from scientific investigation—from the scientific experiment or scientific observation—everything that might flow from the subject, from the human personality itself, into the formulation of these scientific findings. Everything that comes from the human subject itself must be removed. One seeks to develop a completely objective picture of the world. But if we take this tendency to its logical conclusion, my esteemed audience, then what the researcher, so to speak, takes with him as he steps away from his research, his observation, and his experiment—what he carries with him as he sets out to formulate the laws of nature—then what he carries with him, what he then preserves within himself, have no part—not the slightest part—in what he regards as the true external world, as the truly objective. And if this line of thought is carried through to its conclusion, one is led to say to oneself: If, in accordance with the strictest scientific requirements, everything subjective is to be eliminated, then even what we ultimately carry within our minds—which has, after all, emerged from combinations of natural phenomena—must not in any way be part of this external world. But what, then, of this external world may remain within us—that which we carry within as we conduct research—when we are no longer in living interaction with this objectivity through our mental faculties, but rather when we merely look back on what has worked subjectively within us while we were devoted to our research? The subjective must not be part of it; it must be recognized as lying entirely within the human being alone. But insofar as the human being must nevertheless also belong to objectivity, it must not remain within the objectivity of the human being himself either. We must therefore carry within us something of our research findings—insofar as they are part of our inner life—which has nothing to do—even though it strives to represent a true image of the external world—which must have nothing to do with our own objectivity. Thus, when we think about nature, no form of being—such as that which we attribute to our own objectivity—may be present in this thinking about nature. Therefore, the starting point of an epistemological consideration must be the statement: “I think, therefore I am not.” — Only when we dare to set this statement against the great Cartesian error “I think, therefore I am” do we truly stand on the ground of scientific thought.

[ 14 ] Today it is necessary to make this shift—to move from what one might call the universally revered starting point of modern thought, the “cogito, ergo sum,” to the “cogito, ergo non sum,” “I think, therefore I am not”! For it is only by recognizing the non-being of what we gain from objectivity that we become aware of how we must first address our subjectivity: we must address it as an image. If we truly grasp the nature of our soul, we live within the image. — This is, in a certain sense, the cornerstone—insofar as it concerns a matter of thought—of what stands at the starting point of anthroposophical spiritual science.

[ 15 ] But now, what has humanity as such actually achieved, particularly with regard to—if I may borrow Lessing’s expression—the “education of humanity” through scientific thinking, through the methodology and inner discipline that characterize it? I would like to draw particular attention to what has actually been achieved in the course of modern times. And if one wishes to properly appreciate and value this, one must look back to earlier periods of human development—to those times when scientific thinking as we understand it today did not yet exist, when no such strict, conceptual distinction had been drawn between what human beings subjectively contributed to the external world and what actually exists objectively in the external world. One need only take any literary work today that aspired to have a scientific character and that still belongs to that earlier era, which lacked a scientific orientation, to see how human beings were not yet able to truly separate the subjective from the objective; but neither was he able to develop what is precisely the foremost driving force of the latest phase of humanity’s historical development: full self-awareness, full human self-reflection, which places itself within the universe and becomes increasingly aware of standing within this universe as an individuality, as a personality. The growth of personal consciousness, the growth of the sense of self, the growth of self-awareness—this is what increases in direct proportion to the rise of modern scientific consciousness. One might say that human beings consolidate themselves internally—in terms of all the forces that hold their personality together—precisely under the influence of this reverence for the principle of objectivity. Human beings grow stronger inwardly as personalities, and their longing for free individuality grows in direct proportion to the development of scientific consciousness in recent times. From this observation alone, a conclusion can be drawn that you will find corroborated when you delve into the now somewhat widespread literature of our anthroposophical spiritual science. And what can be inferred from this observation is this: the more a person engages in scientific observation of the sensory world and in the gradual processing of that sensory world, the more they attain an inner sense of self. Through these latter two elements, that aspect of the human being grows which firmly establishes them as an “I” within their entire environment. This should be particularly felt among engineers, because there one can develop a sense of how human inner consciousness is transformed by focusing not only on the establishment of natural laws through observation and experimentation, but also on the weaving of natural laws into the instruments, tools, and entire undertakings one must accomplish for the world. In this integration of the laws of nature into human endeavors, in this integration of the laws of nature into reality, one can sense how human inner composure actually grows under the influence of the scientific way of thinking.

[ 16 ] If one understands this correctly, ladies and gentlemen, then the question must be asked: Under what circumstances does this level-headedness diminish? Under what circumstances does one emerge from this sense of self?

[ 17 ] It is curious: as our understanding of the material world expands, our sense of self grows stronger. If, so to speak, we become absorbed in material understanding, we first reach the peak of our ordinary sense of self. — When does it weaken? Well, you need only recall the most ordinary, everyday phenomenon that shows when the sense of self weakens. I remind you here of the dream, of dreaming. Isn’t it true that it is not necessary for anything to have any external, real-world significance in and of itself when one looks at that thing in order to recognize from it precisely how one enters into true reality? Dreaming can, after all, be made the subject of an extraordinarily interesting study, and a very significant philosopher of recent times, Johannes Volkelt, published his book on dream fantasy as one of his first literary works; it is just a pity that Volkelt, under the influence of the latest philosophical trends, subsequently abandoned the paths he had embarked upon—paths through which he could very well have come close to genuine spiritual-scientific insight. — When one truly studies the life of dreams, one notices many things in the course of dreaming, but one of the most essential characteristics of particularly interesting dreams is their symbolism. Let’s say, for example, that there is some sort of fire alarm outside on the street, but we are still asleep and do not recognize the fire alarm as such; in such cases, the dream sometimes symbolizes some event which, upon waking, we recognize as being symbolic of what appears as an external fire alarm. This is an example of the symbolization of external events. But the same is true of inner states. We dream of a boiling stove, and upon waking we realize: this boiling stove is the dream symbol presented to us for the pounding of our heart with which we wake up. The dream symbolizes the inner and the outer to us in the most remarkable way. But we cannot deny it: the realm of dreams represents the realm in which our ego, so to speak, loses itself once again. It goes so far that we experience what can come only from our own ego as emerging in the dream from a foreign ego. The dream dissolves our ego—as, in a sense, the chaotic manifestation of our inner life, an inner life that is initially unrelated to the external world. It draws us out of that composure into which we grow more and more, precisely as we devote ourselves to material cognition.

[ 18 ] And if one traces what initially appears in dreams while still in a healthy state—if one traces this through all the phenomena that follow on from dream life, through the fainting-like states, through the notorious mediumistic states, through all manner of things that otherwise lead people from the imaginative into the fantastical and the fanciful—if one traces this entire path, where — in a sense, through other metamorphoses — what again appears that is so characteristic of the dream in that the dream is no longer able to adequately grasp reality, but grasps it in the symbol, which is still striving to grasp reality but can no longer do so, — if one considers all these phenomena, these feverish manifestations, as well as everything that emerges as pathological states of the psychological life, one arrives at the other pole—the pole that, when the ego develops toward it, acts upon that ego in such a way that it dissolves, that it departs from sobriety, and that it passes into the unconscious.

[ 19 ] Now there is a remarkable connection between these inner experiences of human beings—which first approach them in a healthy form in dreams, and then, in the other cases I have listed, draw ever closer to the pathological—there is a remarkable connection between this entire experience, I would say, of the human being who is becoming “selfless,” with what we might call: a soul life free from the body. This is evident simply from ordinary observation, namely that the actual soul life becomes freer from the body. So, on the one hand, we have this soul life that is becoming freer from the body. And when we then, as one might say, seek out its scientific correlate, we arrive at something highly peculiar. There is something here that I wish to mention, something that is well known in contemporary external science, but which is not always fully appreciated in terms of its true value and its full significance.

[ 20 ] As you all know, distinguished guests, the Darwinian school of thought—the Darwinian approach to modern evolutionary theory—has exerted a profound influence on the entire realm of modern intellectual and cultural life. Now there is a point within Darwin’s theory of evolution that intersects in a very strange way with what I have just characterized as inner experience. What I mean is this: The true Darwinist—who, in a certain sense, has already been superseded by true science today, yet whose way of thinking is still present in current intellectual trends—says: The various forms of living beings have evolved from one another through the continuous accumulation of small, very slight variations—brought about by something that can only be called chance—such that, ultimately, a living being with certain, let us say, morphological characteristics has, through transformation, given rise to another living being with entirely different morphological characteristics. Let us take as a concrete example the evolution as conceived in Darwinism, namely that lung-breathing organisms developed from gill-breathing lower organisms. It was assumed that the organ which gradually transformed into the lung was the swim bladder. It was thus assumed that the swim bladder had first undergone a slight modification by some chance, and that then, as a result of such modifications accumulating, one organ with a very specific function in relation to the external environment gradually gave rise to another organ, so that gill function could gradually diminish and lung function could take over through the swim bladder, which had been transformed into a lung.

[ 21 ] But time and again, certain objections—and not from the least intelligent naturalists—are raised against this principle of slight variations, emphasizing that such variations, given the rigidity of a living being’s organs, are in fact only of a pathological nature. Thus, if even the slightest deformation of the swim bladder were to occur, it would be pathological; it could not prove to be functional and would have to be shed; and precisely because such minor deformations must be regarded as pathological, no transformations of animal or plant organisms could come about in this way.

[ 22 ] The key point for this discussion is that, in order to explain progress, the natural sciences were compelled to turn their attention to the pathological—to that which deviates from what is strictly organized, from what is strictly ordered in objectivity by laws.

[ 23 ] One might say—and especially when thinking in technical terms, one will be able to develop a sense of this: Whatever is technically achieved so that one can rely on it in terms of its usefulness must be so thoroughly organized through the entire mechanical system that it does not deviate in any way from what has been legally prescribed—precisely so that one can rely on it. Darwinism actually bases its principle of progress entirely on such deviations from what is strictly organized in nature itself, on deviations from what one—for example, in morphology—would like to regard as just as strictly organized or mechanized as the mechanism of a machine. It was thus compelled to base progress in the development of living beings on deviations—on that which many rightly regard as pathological. Is it any wonder, then, that our “I”—which develops into a level-headed being precisely through that which in the external world is ordered in the highest degree according to law: in external phenomena—that our “I,” when these external phenomena show even the slightest trace of the pathological, experiences as a psychological counterpoint the fading of consciousness, the loss of self-awareness? One can thus see a remarkable parallel, a connection, between that which seeks to break free from the laws of nature—that which seeks to overcome what we must acknowledge in external nature or in technology—and that which tears the “I” away from the level-headedness it attains precisely through the material observation of the universe.

[ 24 ] Here we see a reference to the other pole. And spiritual science is now pointing with all its energy toward this other pole. For spiritual science opens up methods that make it possible to prevent the “I” from falling into unconsciousness when this “I” breaks free from the ordinary organization prescribed for it by the body. All methods of spiritual scientific research work toward tearing the “I” away from the activity of the body, yet without allowing it to drift into the unconscious; rather, they guide it consciously into a world into which it would otherwise fall unconsciously and pathologically if the organization, without its intervention, deviates from what must be recognized as its inherent lawfulness.

[ 25 ] What has emerged in modern human consciousness is profoundly significant: this clinging to the pathological as a principle of progress in development, and then the focus on what occurs when one deviates from a fixed organization—the disintegration of the “I.” The aim of the spiritual-scientific method is to ensure that the “I” does not disintegrate—that is, to enable the development of a soul-spiritual activity in a healthy rather than a diseased manner. And this spiritual-scientific method is now being rigorously developed in the same way that the external scientific method is developed. However, it is highly desirable that those who wish to conduct authoritative research in the spiritual world have acquired what I characterized at the beginning of my discussion as the inner discipline and conscientiousness gained through scientific research. Anyone who has not undergone the training provided by modern natural science can, in essence, produce nothing but nebulous ideas in the field of spiritual science. What anthroposophical spiritual science—as understood here—aims for should not be confused with what is produced by mystics or the like, who are lost in nebulous ideas and, lacking this inner discipline, sometimes even with a complete lack of discipline, without this inner conscientiousness—indeed, with a lack of scruples—when they present their so-called spiritual experiences to the world, which, unfortunately, are all too easily believed by those lacking discernment. True spiritual scientific methodology must be attained in the same rigorous sense and on the basis of what one develops as a natural scientist—just as the natural scientific method itself.

[ 26 ] There are two things one must first consider when seeking to develop the method of the humanities. The first is what arises from within as a necessary force of our everyday inner life and also of our ordinary scientific research—namely, the capacity for recollection, or memory. Anyone who has studied the pathological conditions that afflict a person when their memory is not intact—when, say, certain periods of time since their birth have been erased from their memory —you can, of course, find ample studies on this in the psychiatric literature—anyone who has studied what a person experiences as a result of the discontinuity in their memory will see how this capacity for memory forms the foundation of ordinary, healthy life. But what does this capacity for memory mean? It is precisely research in the humanities that demonstrates this. We must possess this capacity for memory in ordinary human life and also in ordinary science. But if one investigates psychologically—now with an unbiased approach to psychology—what is actually contained within this capacity for memory, and if one investigates in particular the development of this capacity from the earliest years of childhood onward, then one finds that ‘the images that emerge as memories from the depths of our soul are precisely what we have acquired through experiences from the external world, even if they often appear transformed, sometimes reshaped by justified or unjustified imagination. But if one studies the entire course of human development, one comes to see in this memory something like a reflection of our life of experience upon our own organism. Just as we see in a mirror what is in front of the mirror —I am now using a comparison for what you will find described in detail and thoroughly substantiated in anthroposophical literature—just as one sees in a mirror what is in front of the mirror, and one does not see behind the mirror, so with ordinary consciousness one sees, as it were, up to a mirror surface, a soul mirror surface, which reflects back the images of memory. How the will intervenes in this process cannot be addressed today; perhaps in one of the upcoming lectures. It is our own organism that reflects what we experience. And just as we cannot look behind the mirror when we stand before it, so too can we not look into our own organism and come to know it as a living organism. We must come to know it through the corpse or through what it reveals to us in pathological and other abnormalities. We come to know it from the outside. For the same reason that we cannot see behind the mirror, we do not come to know this organism from the inside. It is, however, possible—if one has first, through the special method of meditation as described in my books How to Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds? and in the second part of Esoteric Science, one has trained this capacity for recollection to the point where one can rely on it—in other words, if one is not a nebulous mystic but a rational person capable of handling every level of inner research, so that one cannot be “led astray” as one proceeds—it is possible, even through meditation, to “interrupt” one’s memory, just as one can break a mirror and then see what lies behind it. If this is done through the full cultivation of the will, with composure and while maintaining self-awareness, it leads the person to look beyond memory. It does not lead to pathological states. When a person, through spiritual scientific methodology—which I can only briefly describe here in principle—transforms images that must not be mere reminiscences into lasting images; when they devote themselves meditatively to easily comprehensible images; when they let their soul rest upon them, concentrated upon them, but in such a way that everything is excluded that does not arise from the exercise of the human will, and if they exclude all nebulous mysticism, then a person does indeed come to look beyond memory; they come to attain true self-knowledge. This self-knowledge, as anthroposophical spiritual science must strive for it with its empirical methods, differs greatly from the poetic—and in a certain sense admirable—mysticism of a John of the Cross or St. Teresa. Anyone who immerses themselves in the writings of these great souls senses the profoundly poetic, senses what reigns in these wondrous images. Anyone who has become a spiritual researcher in the anthroposophical sense knows something else; they know that, particularly in the case of such spirits, special realities—one might say—blaze up into consciousness from the depths of human nature, into which ordinary consciousness does not look. In the case of St. Teresa or St. John of the Cross, abnormal phenomena occur in the human organs—precisely in the so-called physical human organs, in the liver, lungs, and digestive organs—and however prosaic or profane one may regard this, it is not profane for those who see through the matter—abnormal things take place in these physical organs that “rise up” into consciousness and become there the kinds of images that then find their expression in personalities suited to them. The true researcher of the spirit, however, breaks through the mirror of memory. He does not arrive at that nebulous self-knowledge which is called mysticism and idolized, but rather at concrete self-knowledge. He arrives at a living perception of what the human organs are. There the path opens up to a true understanding of the human organism—the path by which spiritual science also leads into the field of medicine. But that is only the beginning. For when one looks in this way, through spiritual-supersensory powers, into the truly material aspects of the human organism, one also transcends the mere material observation of this human organism. For ultimately one sees how what appears to us as the material aspect of the human being is not merely born out of the stream of heredity—with which it is merely connected—but how it is born out of a world that the human being lived through before birth or conception. Through the detour of inner material insight, one looks into the pre-existing human life. This pre-existing life becomes a reality prior to supersensible knowledge. Ordinary mysticism, as it is idolized by uncritical minds, is rather an obstacle to true spiritual knowledge. — That is one side of the matter.

[ 27 ] Another human faculty that is essential to life in the most profound sense—and which, like the faculty of memory, must not be compromised for the sake of ordinary life—is the power of love. Now, you all know how, in ordinary life, this power of love is bound to the human organism. In the sense that it has its special significance for social life, it is only born at a particular age—namely, when a person reaches sexual maturity; before that, it is merely a kind of preparation—but this love is only a special case of what we generally call “love.” Just as sexual love is bound to the human organism, so too is love in the ordinary sense initially bound to the organism. But just as insight can be torn away when memory breaks down, so too can love be freed from the human organism when it is developed spiritually and psychologically through specific methods. One must then refrain from calling everything and anything “Platonic love” in the trivial sense—which is nothing more than some vapor emanating from the organism—but rather this love must be cultivated in the higher sense through human self-discipline, again through exercises as described in the aforementioned writings. This love, which in ordinary life is not a power of knowledge, can be cultivated so that it is transformed into the power of knowledge of true intuition. If we take into our own hands, through self-discipline, that which we otherwise merely surrender to in life—that which actually educates us in life—and if, so to speak, we increasingly become our own guides in our self-education in a strictly methodical way, then we will succeed in making love a free force within the human being, within the human organism, and then it will become a power of knowledge. And just as we attain self-knowledge by overcoming memory, so do we attain supersensible knowledge by transforming love into a form of knowledge in relation to the external world. There must be limits to our knowledge of the external world; otherwise, we would not be able to develop love within ourselves. If we were not separated from the external world, we could not be so separated from one another as to be able to develop love in social life. But when we have developed this love into higher knowledge—that is, when we possess it in a sufficiently healthy measure—and then transform it into a power of knowledge, we attain knowledge of the world just as we attain self-knowledge by the other path. And this knowledge of the world leads us to the knowledge of that world in which we live only between falling asleep and waking up—when we have no consciousness, when consciousness in turn fades away. We experience a state that is, in a certain way, similar to that between falling asleep and waking up, but we experience this state in full consciousness. There we experience a new external world. There we do not experience the atomistic world that underlies the external sensory world, but rather we experience a spiritual world. To educate oneself in love means to take the step into the true reality of the external world, into spiritual reality; into that reality which our soul takes in every evening when we fall asleep, when our ordinary consciousness—which is still bound to the body—becomes unconscious because of the longing to return to the body lying in bed. When we ascend to a higher consciousness, we come to know the world that will consciously receive us when we pass through the gate of death. Thus, the two ends of our human life first present themselves to us from a scientific perspective. Many other aspects will be further elaborated upon in a subsequent lecture. Today, I have set myself the task of showing precisely how what can be cultivated inwardly and spiritually through the natural sciences must be expanded if true spiritual knowledge is to be attained through true spiritual science. For this reason—because the soul seeks to develop itself not in some amateurish, dilettantish way, but through rigorous methodology, if it is to ascend from knowledge of nature to spiritual knowledge—we may therefore believe: Whoever is now able, out of full humanity, to judge what material knowledge of nature gives us, and whoever is able to recognize that we strengthen our “I” through material knowledge, will also be able to find their way into the perspective that seeks this strengthening of the “I” on the other, spiritual side—into which we drift off, or which we encounter in pathological states—but which we can develop in a completely healthy way—in order to then ascend to a spiritual understanding of the world. Therefore, I believe: Whoever can engage in the study of nature in the right way will also ascend to a spiritual understanding that is accessible to every human being, but especially to those educated in the natural sciences. That is why I believe that the recognition of spiritual science will come precisely through the strengthening of the scientific spirit and the understanding of nature.