The Rudolf Steiner Archive

1. The Free Spiritual Life and the Spiritual State of the Present

[ 1 ] First and foremost, let me express my regret that I am unable to present what I am about to say to you in your language. However, since this is not possible, I must ask you to accept what I am about to say in German.

[ 2 ] First of all, I would like to express my most heartfelt thanks for the exceptionally kind and warm words of welcome that have just been spoken. I only hope that I will be able to live up, at least in some respects, to the expectations placed upon me. I am deeply grateful to the student body gathered here today for the opportunity they have given me to speak a little about anthroposophical spiritual science. I know from my many years of engagement with this spiritual science just how extraordinarily difficult it is to make it even somewhat understandable to our present-day civilization and cultural orientation, and how easily it is met with misunderstandings at first. For this reason, I would like to express my very special thanks to the student body that has invited me and assure you that I consider it of particular value to be met with such openness here, especially from the student body—within which, after all, anthroposophical spiritual science is also receiving some attention in other countries today.

[ 3 ] Well, the topic requested for this evening is “The Reality of the Higher Worlds.” Since, essentially, my entire body of work over the past decades has sought to answer the one great question regarding the reality of these higher worlds, you will understand that a short evening lecture is, from the outset, bound to be somewhat inadequate and incomplete. I will have to endeavor to outline a few guidelines and point out how one might approach this reality of the higher worlds. Of course, I will not be in a position today—though some things may be possible in the coming days on other occasions—to present anything that is completely conclusive, but I will only be able to point to the paths and directions along which such evidence lies. Anthroposophical spiritual science cannot speak of the reality of the higher worlds without indicating the paths that lead to this reality, and these paths are by no means intended to stand in opposition to what has emerged in such an admirable way through humanity’s scientific endeavors and through the scientific spirit of the past centuries.

[ 4 ] Whenever the scientific nature of anthroposophical research is called into question by one side or the other, the research community itself believes that these doubts are based entirely on misunderstandings. For anthroposophy is not meant to be mere layman’s talk, but rather something that approaches the higher worlds—the supersensible worlds—with the same scientific rigor, inner scientific discipline, and methodology as the well-established scientific approach has long used to approach the laws of nature. However, if one wishes to reach the supersensible worlds with the same rigor with which natural science seeks to arrive at its results, it is necessary to go beyond what is generally recognized as scientific today—both in terms of the results and in terms of the research method. Anthroposophical spiritual science is firmly founded on the basis of immersing oneself in all that makes modern science great. This modern science has become great through conscientious observation of the sensory world, through experimentation, and through rational consideration of what emerges from sensory observation and experimentation. Anthroposophical spiritual science seeks to take with it everything that can be learned from this research—if one immerses oneself in it—as it now moves beyond both the results and the methods of research employed by science as it is recognized today.

[ 5 ] This move beyond is based, above all, very strongly on the realization that human investigative capacity—insofar as it has developed within the natural sciences—reaches certain limits. Anyone who understands how to conduct scientific research knows full well that the great question of human existence—the question of the eternal significance of the human soul, the question commonly called the question of immortality, the question called the question of destiny, and thus, in the broadest sense, the question of the higher worlds—lies, for the time being, beyond the boundaries of modern scientific research. And one comes to recognize that the entire mode of thinking, the capacity for knowledge, and the ability to know itself have been developed through sensory research, and that they reach a limit the moment they seek to go beyond the sensory world. Anthroposophy is in complete agreement with recognized contemporary researchers when it comes to establishing that such limits exist for ordinary human consciousness.

[ 6 ] There are, of course, many efforts that seek to transcend these boundaries in a philosophical sense. Yet everything that the human mind—and indeed the human spirit—conceives regarding what lies beyond the sensory world cannot withstand a certain rigorous criticism and reveals itself, above all, to be unsatisfactory in that it, so to speak, reaches into a void; for the mind can sense how it is dependent on what the senses initially provide, and how, when left to its own devices and attempting to break through the tapestry of sensory experience spread out around us, it actually has no content left if one remains within ordinary consciousness.

[ 7 ] People of deeper sensibilities, who nevertheless seek to justify their spiritual and intellectual needs in the face of modern science and do not wish to merely content themselves with adhering to a certain faith, but rather wish to know something about the things that lie beyond the temporal—such people of deeper sensibilities very often take refuge today in a certain form of mysticism. They believe that what external science cannot give them can be bestowed upon them if they immerse themselves in the depths of the soul’s life. They believe that from the depths of the soul can well up that which can provide them with insights into the eternal value and meaning of the human soul, and into the connections between the human soul and the divine-spiritual world.

[ 8 ] But a deeper understanding of the soul, in particular, cannot agree with such mysticism in the ordinary sense. For a deeper understanding of the soul knows all the hidden paths of human memory. Ordinary consciousness certainly has its memories—the treasures of its memory—which it brings forth again and again because this is necessary for a healthy spiritual life. But in the depths of the soul lie many things that mingle with these memories, and whose true nature ordinary consciousness cannot fathom. There, some mystics dredge up from the depths of the human soul something they regard as a utterance from higher worlds, but for the true connoisseur of the soul, these may be nothing more than impressions from the sensory world dating back to early childhood long past. The researcher of the soul knows what metamorphoses can be undergone by what we ourselves unconsciously take into our souls in the very earliest childhood, and how it can reappear, transformed, in later life. Many believe they have found a divine spark in their souls in a mystical way, yet they draw nothing from the depths of the soul other than the transformed experiences of childhood.

[ 9 ] These are the two pitfalls we face when we approach the reality of the higher worlds with earnest and sincere longing and inquiry. The serious spiritual researcher must guard against both a speculative philosophy—which seeks to penetrate the external sensory world through mere intellectual considerations and arrive at a kind of otherworld—and a form of mysticism that, when all is said and done, merely brings forth transformed memories from the depths of the human mind. On both sides, he discovers insurmountable boundaries: On the one hand, the sensory world, which he cannot penetrate with ordinary consciousness; on the other hand, on the human side, the world of memory, which must exist for a healthy soul life and which, inwardly, forms a boundary that even ordinary consciousness can actually cross only through illusions and phantasms.

[ 10 ] Anthroposophical spiritual research seeks to navigate past these two obstacles to attain a true understanding of the higher, supersensible worlds. It therefore admits quite honestly and openly that the cognitive faculties customary in ordinary life and in ordinary science must inevitably reach these two limits, and that one simply cannot penetrate the higher worlds with these cognitive faculties. For this reason, anthroposophical spiritual science aims to raise to consciousness those faculties that lie dormant in the soul—faculties of which ordinary consciousness is simply unaware—and to develop them first, so that only then, with these developed faculties, can the exploration of higher reality begin. This spiritual research does not stem from some nebulous mysticism; it is based entirely on the faculties of ordinary life, but it does not merely transform these faculties of ordinary life—it transforms them into fundamentally different faculties.

[ 11 ] The first thing on which the honest researcher of the spirit must focus their attention is the human capacity for memory, the limitations and constraints of which we have just discussed. This capacity for memory enables us, in ordinary life, to conjure up before our soul—again and again, whether voluntarily or involuntarily—images of what we have gone through and experienced since our birth or from a point in time somewhat later. This fact, which is not usually presented to spiritual research in its full significance, is now presented by anthroposophy to the human soul in its full significance. And it attempts—just as is otherwise the case only with memory—to bring ideas, concepts, in short, the mental realm, arbitrarily into the center of human consciousness. In this way, it seeks to develop an initial higher capacity for cognition through certain exercises carried out specifically with the power of thought. It does not stop at the power of thought as it manifests in ordinary memory. It proceeds further—not toward that arbitrary meditation often spoken of in nebulous mysticism—but toward an inwardly well-ordered, systematic meditation.

[ 12 ] I will first have to touch on the fundamental principles of the matter here. You will find more precise information in full detail in various books of mine, and I will also have to discuss further details here in the coming days. My books that discuss these details are, above all, *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?* and *Esoteric Science*. What constitutes decades of study can only be outlined here in principle through a few guidelines. The point is that the human power of thought is developed to a greater strength and intensity than it possesses in ordinary life and in conventional science. When one exerts a muscle particularly hard during work, the strength of that muscle is increased. What is done here with an external limb is carried out, quite systematically, by the spiritual researcher with regard to the powers of the soul. He places a clearly comprehensible idea or a clearly comprehensible complex of ideas at the center of his consciousness with full awareness and full free will, and he holds his consciousness on such a clearly comprehensible idea for a time—some need longer, others shorter, depending on their abilities and their capacity for concentration.

[ 13 ] I ask you to note that I am speaking of a manageable concept. This is extremely important. If we were to simply draw upon our usual store of memories for our meditation, for our mental exercise, we would not be able to manage. For what we draw upon from our store of thoughts contains many reminiscences and unconscious impressions of life that would then come into play if we were to engage in this mental exercise. Nothing from the unconscious must influence proper anthroposophical meditation. Everything must be manageable. Everything must be subject to full self-control. That is why it is sometimes required—and rightly so—that anyone who wishes to become a researcher in this anthroposophical spiritual science should turn to an experienced researcher and have exercises given to them by that person. When we practice such things—which we seek out in one way or another on our own, or when we have them given to us—they enter our consciousness as something new, just like a sensory experience we encounter, which does not arise from the depths of our soul but rather enters our soul as something new. It is not a matter of gaining something from the content of any such image, but rather that it enters our consciousness with the novelty of a sensory experience, and that we then dwell upon it with our soul forces. Just as we perform work with a muscle, so do we work with our soul forces when we dwell diligently on such an image with inner concentration. If we are careful to observe all the details I have described in my books regarding this practice, then we will not fall into any form of suggestion or autosuggestion, but we will undertake every single moment of such a mental exercise with our will fully engaged. After some time, however, we will sense how we are strengthening our inner spiritual power, how we are making it more intense. These exercises do not take much time on any given day, but they must be repeated over and over again. Some people need more time; others can achieve significant results in just a few months; and some need years. But in principle, the same thing applies in every case: that the powers of the soul—namely, the powers of thought—are strengthened from within through such exercises. And one finally reaches a point where one advances to what is called imaginative thinking.

[ 14 ] I have called what develops there “imaginative thinking” because one gradually notices that thinking is emerging from the abstractness and intellectualism to which it is subject in ordinary life and in ordinary science: Pure inner thinking is gradually illuminated by a vividness and warmed by a liveliness that are entirely comparable to the vividness and liveliness we develop in response to external sensory impressions. It is extremely important to note this, for we all know that when we direct our attention to external sensory impressions, everything is intense; everything is saturated. We are wholly devoted to these external sensory impressions with our entire being. But when, after turning our attention away from external sensory impressions, we then turn to thinking in ordinary life and in ordinary science, this thinking is pale and lacks warmth. People rightly speak of the pallor of abstract thinking. And almost all thinking that we develop in ordinary life and in ordinary science is abstract. Only those thoughts that we develop in the moment when we are fully absorbed in external sensory reality are fully saturated.

[ 15 ] However, one arrives at this liveliness, at this inner richness, through mere inner experience at first, when one engages in the kinds of thought exercises I have described. Then one truly comes to think in a pictorial, imaginative way. One must simply be aware that, at first, in this imaginative thinking, one has nothing before oneself or within oneself that already corresponds to any external spiritual reality. However, one gradually becomes aware of the real, objective significance of this imaginative thinking when one has the following inner experience.

[ 16 ] You all know how, in a growing child, the brain gradually develops into the marvelous organ it eventually becomes over the course of a lifetime. One can certainly say: The brain is initially a malleable organ; it allows the formative forces of the soul to imprint themselves on its entire structure, its convolutions, and so on. This, of course, takes place during the first years of a child’s life. It comes to a halt at a certain point, which we reach through the ordinary natural development of the human being and through ordinary education. And with what we achieve in this way, we then seek to cope with ordinary life and to make progress in ordinary science. But as we developed from year to year as children, we became more and more capable. This process of becoming increasingly capable is experienced anew when one strives for imaginative cognition. There one discovers that through the activity I have just described as a series of thought exercises, one is once again working on something within oneself—that one is working on something that is now plastic. But one also feels that what one is working on there—which, in the same way, I would say, is now being furrowed in a soul-spiritual sense as the physical brain was furrowed in childhood—is a supersensible, soul-spiritual aspect of the human being that stands apart from the physical body. And after some time, one feels that one can now relate quite differently to the outer and inner limits of knowledge. Precisely as a researcher of the spirit, one must agree with those who speak of such limits of knowledge. But one feels that one can now truly and gradually transcend these limits of knowledge through newly developed abilities.

[ 17 ] When this inner experience, this inner realization has come—when you truly feel that you no longer need to remain confined to the sensory world, when you experience something through your imaginative thinking, through your living thinking, when you break through the veil of the senses, when you try to look into your inner self— you experience something that ordinary natural science does not experience, something that ordinary mysticism can only present to the soul in an illusory way; if you honestly experience this as the result of inner development, then you can be certain that you are on a path that can truly lead to higher worlds.

[ 18 ] At first, there is nothing outwardly visible. One has merely strengthened the old forces, made them more intense. But one soon realizes that something essential, something important, is now taking place within one’s consciousness. Gradually, one begins to experience something like an inner vision that spans one’s entire life up to that point, from birth onward. Yes, this is the first supersensible reality one experiences: one’s own inner life since birth presented as a clear, comprehensive tableau. And this clear, comprehensive tableau is expressed by the fact that one’s thinking now stands in a different relationship to what one perceives externally than one’s thinking previously stood in relation to external realities and inner experiences.

[ 19 ] In everyday life, we develop our thinking. We reflect on things. Thoughts reside in the soul; they are subjective. The other is objective; the other is out there. We feel our thought processes as separate from what is out there. Now we have before us a panorama of our own inner life since birth. But I would like to say that thoughts enter into this fabric. One feels oneself to be within this fabric. One says to oneself: Only now are you truly beginning to grasp yourself. You must surrender your thoughts to that which objectively presents itself to your consciousness. — This even gives rise to a certain, I would say, painful experience, at least initially, for the anthroposophical spiritual researcher. The anthroposophical spiritual researcher must go through such painful experiences in various ways. He must not shy away from going through, in a certain sense, inner difficulties—and often pain. I will also have to speak about this today from a different perspective. But for now, what one initially experiences in relation to this tableau of life is that, in a kind of inner oppression, one senses one’s own being. One does not perceive it with the ease with which one otherwise nurtures thoughts and ideas, or with which feelings, impulses of will, desires, and the like are usually present within us; rather, one perceives it as something that weighs heavily upon one. In short, it is precisely within this heaviness that one perceives reality. If one does not experience this heaviness, then one has merely a mental construct; one does not have reality. But by bringing into this sense of oppression everything that one previously had in the form of freely unfolding webs of thought, one is thereby protected from developing, through one’s imaginative insight, things such as illusions, visions, or hallucinations.

[ 20 ] This is something that is so often held against anthroposophical spiritual science. People say: Its exercises lead to nothing more than visions and hallucinations. It brings repressed nervous forces to the surface of consciousness, so to speak, and no one can prove the reality of what anthroposophical spiritual science speaks of as higher worlds. Anyone who considers even what I have already said today will sense that the path taken by anthroposophical spiritual science is the opposite of all those paths that lead to visions, hallucinations, or even mediumship. Everything that leads to mediumship, hallucinations, or visions ultimately arises only from diseased physical organs that, in a sense, exhale their spiritual-psychic content in a pathological manner upward into consciousness. All of this lies below the level of sensory perception. In contrast, what develops as imaginative knowledge lies above ordinary sensory perception; it is formed precisely through objectivity, not through the diseased inner state.

[ 21 ] It is therefore a complete misunderstanding to accuse what is characterized as the anthroposophical method of spiritual research of such pathology. On the contrary, by grasping—with complete freedom of consciousness—what I have described as imaginative knowledge, one comes to see through everything hallucinatory and everything mediumistic for what it is. No one will reject all such psychopathologies more strictly than precisely the person who has not pushed his or her soul further into the body, as the hallucinator does, but who has, through the efforts described, drawn his or her soul right out of the body—the person who has now, on the one hand, come to survey his or her own life back to the moment of birth in such a tableau.

[ 22 ] From what I have just referred to as reality, one can see that one has now truly grasped not mere thoughts, but rather the living forces that have been working to build up our organism ever since we began our earthly life. What unfolds in this way as imagination is nothing other than the sum of the forces through which we grow—the sum of the forces that are also at work in our nutrition. That is why anthroposophical spiritual science calls that which is discovered in this way as a supersensible force at work within the human being the etheric body or body of formative forces. You see: in a completely systematic way, one discovers a higher aspect of the human being—that which, as a supersensible aspect, initially works to shape our earthly body. And the fact that, in what appears before you as a tableau, you do not move as you would in ordinary thoughts, but rather sense reality precisely in the oppressive feeling—this is how you realize: What you are seeing inwardly is the very same thing that is otherwise at work unconsciously in your organism.

[ 23 ] What anthroposophical spiritual science refers to as the supersensible etheric or life body is not some fantastical construct. It is not the hypothetical “old life force” that science has rightly abandoned; it is something that emerges from a very real perception, something that becomes a reality for the heightened power of imagination that has been developed, just as the external sensory world is a reality. And it is not nebulous mystical speculations that lead us to this reality, but rather the strengthening and invigoration of our entirely normal faculty of thought, which is simply extended outward toward a free, purely spiritual-psychic “I.” This is what brings this first higher reality before our soul.

[ 24 ] However, since, as earthly human beings, we initially see nothing more than our own living being unfolding in the sequence of time like a tableau, we must progress further along the path to the supersensible worlds. This happens when, through exercises, we awaken further powers that lie dormant within the soul. As you know, human life involves not only remembering—that is, retaining mental images—but also forgetting. In everyday life, to our regret, forgetting often comes easily to us. But precisely those who live deeply in their thoughts will know that thoughts can also torment us, and that it takes effort to suppress them entirely. This becomes a particularly great struggle when we meditate in the systematic way I have described, when we develop deep inner thinking. When we bring certain images to the center of our consciousness in this way and strengthen the powers of imagination, those images do not want to fade away immediately. They weigh on us. They can only be suppressed if we, in turn, practice this quite systematically. In a sense—if I may express myself somewhat paradoxically—we must artificially practice forgetting, suppressing the images that insist on being there.

[ 25 ] Once again, I have described in detail in the books mentioned many exercises through which we can strengthen this power that suppresses mental images. Then, if we practice such exercises in suppressing mental images for a long time, we reach the point where we can completely empty our consciousness while fully awake. This is not as trivial a matter as one might ordinarily suppose. Most people, at first, who are immersed in ordinary life, fall asleep after a while when they try to make their consciousness completely empty. Now, it is even more difficult to empty the consciousness if one has first filled it with intensified mental images through meditation. But one must practice this. And through this practice, one gradually arrives not only at suppressing individual images, not only at emptying one’s consciousness of them, but through constant effort, one gradually succeeds in removing from consciousness the entire tableau of one’s life up to this point, of which I have spoken. It is almost as if one’s entire life were contained within—I would say—a space that has become time, or a time that has become space. The entire tableau of one’s life up to this point lies before us. Through the exercises I have described, we gradually acquire the ability to erase this entire tableau from our consciousness; after having held this tableau, we learn to empty our consciousness and yet remain awake. This is a very important stage on the path to the reality of the higher worlds. For when we come to completely empty our consciousness in this way—after first having filled it with the tableau of our own life and with the vision of our etheric body—we do not find ourselves facing nothingness. Then we can indeed recognize that everything that constitutes the sensory world is no longer present around us—the sensory world is now just as absent from our surroundings as it is during deep, dreamless sleep—but a world we have not known until now emerges: a world of supersensory beings and supersensory processes. We discover this only after we have first removed the tableau of our own life from our consciousness. It is simply absurd, in the face of what emerges after these efforts, to speak of it as mere reminiscences of life or as possible illusions. Anyone who experiences this in reality knows—just as they know, when faced with external sensory reality, that they are indeed facing a reality—through direct experience that they are indeed facing such a reality.

[ 26 ] The essential point in all of this, however, is that when a person becomes a hallucinationist—a visionary—he loses his ordinary consciousness. The hallucinationist lives within his hallucinations. His usual level-headedness is no longer present. The person who develops in the way I have described loses none of his common sense; he loses none of his usual level-headedness. Everything he had before remains with him, and he can always look back from the sight of the new worlds—the supersensible worlds—that now appear before him. Just as one looks back on one’s memories, he can always look back to what he can incorporate into his consciousness in ordinary life and in ordinary science. Therefore, the person developing in this way can carry his conscious thinking—his thinking, which is entirely permeated by the will—into the entire perception of the supersensible world. He can speak about this supersensible world in an intellectual, rational manner, just as one otherwise speaks about the sensory world in ordinary science. Since he describes these higher worlds using ordinary intellect and the ordinary scientific method, anyone can follow him—even if they have not become a spiritual researcher or an active anthroposophist, but simply allow their common sense to exercise critical judgment. Because the anthroposophical researcher brings this common sense to bear on all knowledge of the higher worlds, one need not be a spiritual researcher to understand his communications. When one receives the communications of the spiritual researcher, they must be presented in such a way that common sense can follow them. This applies not only to imaginative thinking—through which, after all, only earthly life first presents itself to us—but it also applies up to the level of knowledge I have just spoken of, and which I have called “inspired knowledge” in my books.

[ 27 ] Please do not take offense at such expressions. They do not imply anything superstitious or antiquated, but refer solely to what I am describing. I call it “inspired insight” because, just as air from the external world enters our respiratory system as a real entity, so too does the supersensible world now enter the ordinary soul world. As spiritual researchers devoted to such inspired insight, we find ourselves in the following situation. We begin with the ordinary state of the soul. Once we have first acquired the ability to empty our consciousness, we can—no matter where we are in time or space, or whatever we have in our consciousness—bring about the possibility of emptying our consciousness. From certain starting points, something of the nature and processes of the supersensible world then appears to us. This is like an inhalation, an inspiration. The spiritual world is breathed into the ordinary world. And in turn, we must have the strength to restore ordinary consciousness and to judge this spiritual world from the perspective of ordinary consciousness. It is a continuous exhalation and inhalation of the spiritual world, a constant return to ordinary consciousness, that makes human beings fully level-headed even in the face of these spiritual worlds.

[ 28 ] That the term “inspiration” is justified may become clear from something I would like to mention merely by way of comparison. Today’s spiritual researcher is not able to penetrate the supersensible higher worlds in the same way that peoples of earlier times—particularly in prehistoric times—were able to do. The manner in which Eastern peoples penetrated the higher worlds has been handed down and is still widely practiced today in Asia—albeit in a decadent form—as yoga, adapted to a different physical constitution and bodily structure. This is not something we in the West can adopt for our own benefit. That process occurs instinctively, unconsciously, whereas everything I have described takes place with full consciousness and with full will. Nevertheless, we can, in a certain sense, learn something from the way in which, in earlier, instinctive ages of human development, people sought to ascend to the higher worlds and their effects. In yoga exercises, the ancient Indian sought to regulate his breathing—not to breathe in the ordinary way, but in a regulated, orderly, or rather, reorganized manner—in a way that came to their conscious awareness, in which they were always present with their consciousness, whereas ordinary breathing takes place entirely unconsciously as a mere organic process. By experiencing this rhythm: inhaling—exhaling, inhaling—exhaling, the yoga student attuned himself to the rhythm of the world; and through the physical rhythm of breathing, he attuned himself to the spiritual rhythm of inhaling the spiritual worlds and exhaling the spiritual worlds, as I have just described as suitable for our Western civilization. One does indeed attune oneself to a rhythm. The existence that one otherwise has as an earthly existence can, in a sense, be continually inspired and re-inspired in relation to a supersensible, higher world. What is this supersensible, higher world?

[ 29 ] Through imaginative contemplation, one has previously come to recognize that which works within one as the etheric or formative body during one’s earthly existence. This etheric or formative body has been suppressed. A new world has been discovered. To the extent that one lives in this new world, the sensory world is not present. It exists only as a memory, as I have explained. But in the new world that one discovers, one discovers a higher reality—the reality that now works through and permeates the etheric or formative body in the same way that this etheric or formative body permeates the physical body. Once again, anthroposophical spiritual science does not speak from a realm of fantasy, but from strictly systematic paths into the higher realities—from the human astral body, which is discovered in this way and which permeates the etheric or formative body, yet lives in other worlds. And when one examines the worlds in which this astral body lives together with the “I,” just as I live physically among sensory objects, one discovers the spiritual-soul world from which the human being has descended by connecting, through birth—or, let us say, through conception—with the physical matter provided by the father and mother. One discovers the eternal, immortal core of the human being through direct perception, which one has struggled to attain, and which can be verified by sound reason on the grounds I have cited.

[ 30 ] Today, people take particular offense when one does not speak in general terms—as, for example, a pantheist might—of a vague spiritual world that permeates everything, but rather when one rises to a specific description of a spiritual -psychic world from which we have descended through birth into physical existence, and to which we ascend again by passing through the gate of death—a world we thus discover as reality, not through speculation, not through nebulous mystical feeling, but through strictly regulated intuition. People take offense when one describes these worlds, as I have done, for example, in my *The Secret Science*. I would like to make myself understood through a simple comparison to illustrate how these worlds can truly be described. When you look at ordinary recollection and ordinary memory, what do you experience there? You have gone through this or that in life. What is long past, what has long ceased to be an external reality, stands before you as an image in your memory. From this image, you reconstruct the experience for yourself. It has, so to speak, migrated from the external world into you and become part of your soul’s content. From the content of our souls, we reconstruct for ourselves at every moment the entire world of memory—the world of external experiences—in which we have become entangled. The inner world is grasped, taken in, and comprehended in the life of the imagination, the life of the emotions, and the life of the will. By grasping the inner world, the outer world of experiences conjures itself before the soul. But what is grasped through imagination and inspiration?

[ 31 ] One does not merely perceive what one has absorbed during one’s earthly life; one perceives the whole human being. One learns to recognize how the body of formative forces works in all human organs and remains a unified whole throughout one’s entire life. One learns to recognize how the astral body, in a spiritual-soul world prior to birth and conception, carries our eternal core of being, how it enters into us, and how it works within us. The human being becomes, so to speak, completely transparent. One learns to recognize one’s physical body as an effect of the spiritual. Just as we look into our memories and reconstruct our earthly life, so too, when we now look deeper into our inner being—not merely grasping what we have spiritually and psychologically imbued within ourselves throughout our earthly life, but also understanding how we are structured within our organs, how our etheric body, our astral body, and our “I” are interwoven with this physical body— We can also project ourselves outward through contemplation, just as we do through memory, into our etheric body, into the great cosmic experiences, into the experiences of the world. For human beings have been present in everything that has unfolded spiritually, psychically, and physically in the world with which they are connected. If they look within themselves in the manner described, they can recognize through self-observation the events through which they have historically evolved, and the events through which the entire human being has developed within the cosmos.

[ 32 ] Anyone who grasps the full significance of this idea will no longer find it strange that I have described in my *Secret Science* how human beings, in their original forms, were connected not only to the Earth but also to planetary worlds that preceded it as earlier metamorphoses of the Earth, and how, through what is inherent in human beings, can perceive that the Earth will in turn transform into other planetary states; how one can not only perceive this from the perspective of the human being, but how one can truly penetrate into higher worlds through it, and recognize the ordinary worlds—the worlds that extend around us as Earth-dwellers—as the effects of higher spiritual worlds, supersensible worlds. One need only familiarize oneself with all the efforts that anthroposophical spiritual science undergoes to arrive at these results. There is often a belief that what anthroposophical spiritual research presents about the reality of higher worlds is derived from mere whims, from subjective intellectual considerations, or even from fantasies. This is not the case. One must learn clinical research and astronomical research in detail. It is difficult. But what is attained in this way inwardly—I would say, through inner experimentation—in order to arrive at a vision of higher worlds, is even more difficult. It requires even greater dedication, greater care, greater inner conscientiousness, and greater methodical rigor. And what is described here in a serious and honest sense as spiritual science is far removed from what is commonly regarded as occultism, mysticism, and the like. Just as science stands in relation to superstition, so does this spiritual science stand in relation to popular occultism, which seeks to arrive at its insights through all manner of mediums or through all manner of amateurish collection of external, surprising facts. This particular form of modern superstition is most surely overcome by nothing other than serious and honest spiritual research, which develops its thoroughly conscientious methods.

[ 33 ] And when a person has attained, in this way, inspired insight and thus a vision of the world they left behind at birth or at conception, and which they will enter again after death—when a person enters these worlds, they experience something inwardly that, when it appears as a reflection in ordinary consciousness—and everything supersensible does indeed appear in ordinary consciousness as very vague feelings or the like—seems to them to be pessimism. What the spiritual researcher experiences through inspired insight appears to him as pessimism. Why as pessimism? Because the spiritual researcher, in fact, upon entering these higher worlds, already feels something like deep pain, like all-encompassing deprivation. Now one must be armed and prepared—precisely through the exercises I describe in my books—to endure this pain with dignity and fortitude. What kind of pain is it, then? One learns to recognize this pain as a reality. This pain, which is actually an intense longing—it is nothing other than the experience of the force through which the soul passes from the spiritual worlds into physical existence through birth. The soul experiences the final stages it undergoes—after having lived in the spiritual worlds—to descend into physical existence as a longing for the physical world. One experiences this longing as pain. And it is precisely the fact that one does not merely experience something abstractly and theoretically in spiritual science, but that one is fully immersed in spiritual science with one’s whole being—with feeling and will—that constitutes the essence of this path into the higher worlds.

[ 34 ] Theoretical speculation alone is not enough to embark on the anthroposophical path into the supersensible worlds. What must be lived through in the methods of this spiritual research requires moral preparation at every stage. And, fundamentally, there is no better preparation for the moral strengthening of the whole human being—body, soul, and spirit—than undergoing the exercises that must be undertaken to attain the reality of the supersensible worlds. They do not reveal themselves to the mere theorist. They reveal themselves only to those who commit their entire humanity to the task, who bring to life within their souls all the powers of good feeling, of a beautiful perception of the world, and of religious, devout immersion in the mysteries of the universe; who transform love for humanity and love for the world into forces of inner warmth; only such a person attains the moral fortitude necessary to advance in this way toward the reality of higher worlds. It is therefore acknowledged by some people that the exercises I describe for walking the spiritual-scientific path into the higher worlds have a moral aspect that is certainly worthy of recognition. But this is also admitted by those who then turn away and do not wish to participate in the true path of knowledge leading into the supersensible worlds. Yet it is only this path that, in contrast to the scientific yearning humanity has today—a yearning it has had before—leads into these higher worlds. And as one ascends through imagination and inspiration, one first enters into one’s own self. But this own self must also surrender to the environment. I have already pointed out how thinking must, in a sense, flow out into the objective realm even during imagination. We take this thinking with us everywhere. We take the full clarity of thought with us wherever we discover the supersensible worlds. But we must also become aware of how our entire being must, in a sense, surrender to the reality of these supersensible worlds. But after inspiration—through the efforts we undergo, through the experiences we have—we come to feel our “I,” the center of our being, with great intensity. And here we reach the point where we can recognize the harmony, the union, of the experience of freedom with the experience of natural necessity. In ordinary life, we are bound by this natural necessity. How keenly we feel that what lives in our impulses of will—even when it has worked its way up a little from the sinful toward the good—nevertheless arises from the subconscious depths of our soul life, from the instinctive and the impulsive. Just as we can hardly consciously grasp what we go through from falling asleep to waking up, so too can we hardly grasp what lives in our volitional impulses—and yet much of what ultimately plays a role in our conscious, responsible moral life is contained within them. But the person who has gone through inspiration and imagination also gains a strengthening of their “I” through the efforts they have undergone. They experience their “I” more intensely. They experience it, admittedly, as devoted—I would say, poured out—into the outer world, but they experience it in such a way that it is reflected back to them. And they are now no longer in a position to say, as a prejudiced scientific view tends to do: The same natural necessity that causes the stone to fall to the earth, that causes the stone to be warmed by the sun’s rays, that is at work in electricity and magnetism, in acoustic and optical phenomena—this very same necessity is also at work when I act as a human being, when I develop my impulses of will as a human being. — And in conventional science and in everyday life, one cannot move beyond bitter doubts regarding this question.

[ 35 ] On the one hand, there is human freedom, of which we are aware. It is believed that one must deny this freedom if one is, in the true sense, a modern scientific researcher and believes in the conservation of energy and matter. It is then believed that no human impulse of will, no human action, can arise out of free will, for human beings must be subject to natural necessity, just like all other beings in the realms of nature. But when one now has one’s true “I”-being before oneself in a heightened form, one attains a kind of insight that is even higher than inspiration and imagination. I have called it true intuition, true immersion—but now into a spiritual reality. There, what anthroposophy calls repeated earthly lives is imbued with true meaning. What appears necessary in one’s own actions and will reveals itself as the result of previous earthly lives. The eternal core of the human being undergoes repeated earthly lives, interspersed with lives between death and new birth in spiritual-soul worlds. And one now comes to recognize: What extends from one life to the next is a necessary submission—not to external natural necessity, but to that necessity that runs through the repeated earthly lives—with regard to our “I” and its impulses of will. But with our thinking—which, as ordinary consciousness, does not initially grasp this necessity, which is drawn from this necessity, and which develops within the individual earthly existence as a free, senseless thinking, as I have described it in my *Philosophy of Freedom*—with this we have a foundation for our freedom. By striving, as human beings in our individual lives, toward such moral impulses that are grasped through free thinking, we become free human beings here on earth between birth and death. And what lives within us as necessity, what plays out as fate, is not a natural necessity; it extends through repeated earthly lives.

[ 36 ] This, too, presents itself as a vision to the intuitive mind, the third stage of supersensible cognition. In a wondrous harmony, we see before us what appears as the freedom of the individual earthly life, and what we feel as a necessity of destiny—a necessity that is not, however, a necessity of external nature, nor of the natural constitution of human life, but one that radiates from previous earthly lives. This does not make us unfree, any more than we become unfree by entering a new setting for our lives and being dependent on how this new setting is connected to the previous one—for example, when we migrate from Europe to America. It is our destiny, just as the ship carried us across; we enter a new setting but remain free, even though we have migrated from Europe to America. We can distinguish necessity from freedom as soon as we perceive this necessity in our repeated earthly lives and freedom in the individual earthly life. And looking up toward higher worlds gives us a human sense of security by showing us what the meaning of earthly life is. We are not merely seized by a longing for higher worlds—a longing we must, of course, also feel if we wish to stand firmly on earth—for the divine-spiritual is always within us, and we become unsteady in earthly life when we lack our connection to the divine-spiritual. But we do not become people who flee from the world or are alien to it through the true knowledge of the reality of higher worlds in the anthroposophical sense. We know that we must always descend back to Earth in order to gradually incorporate freedom into our human being. An awareness of freedom permeates us, even though we are able to discern the great question of destiny in a spiritual sense from the higher worlds, from the reality of these higher worlds.

[ 37 ] I was only able to touch on what I had to say in broad strokes. After all, there is already a wealth of literature available today that is accessible to everyone. In a short evening lecture, I could only offer a few general guidelines. But from what I have said, you will be able to gather to some extent that this spiritual science, this anthroposophical exploration of the supersensible worlds, is by no means intended to be unworldly or impractical. It does not seek to lead people selfishly up into empty, cloud-cuckoo-land fantasies; no, it would consider it a sin against the spiritual realm if it were to make people unworldly. The spirit is grasped correctly only when we grasp it in its power, when we allow it to permeate us in such a way that we thereby become practical human beings. The spirit is creative. Its task, its mission, is to permeate material existence, not to flee from it. Therefore, anthroposophical knowledge of the supersensible worlds is at the same time a thoroughly real way of life. And anthroposophy therefore strives—I will elaborate on this in detail in later lectures that I am permitted to give here in Kristiania—to enrich not only the individual sciences and artistic life, but also the practical spheres of life with what it has to say, beyond the sensory, material world, drawn from the reality of the higher worlds.

[ 38 ] If one comprehends what a human being possesses in his physical organization from the perspective of the etheric body—or body of formative forces—which is accessible to the imagination; if one comprehends what lives within the temporal human being in the lungs, liver, stomach, brain, and so on, in its form from the astral body, which has descended from the spiritual-soul worlds, then one also comes to understand health and illness in an external way. Then, through such an understanding of the supersensible worlds, not only can a certain intellectual satisfaction be achieved, but one can also experience, for example, a enrichment of medical and therapeutic knowledge. In Stuttgart and in Dornach, Switzerland, we already have medical and therapeutic institutes that put into practical use the insights for medicine—particularly for therapy, but also for pathology—that can be derived from anthroposophical knowledge of the supersensible worlds. And in the artistic realm as well, anthroposophy seeks to make fruitful what it perceives in the higher worlds.

[ 39 ] At the Dornach Building, the Goetheanum, and the School of Spiritual Science, a new architectural style was created out of the anthroposophical worldview. This new architectural style is not merely symbolic or allegorical. Not a single symbol, not a single allegory is to be found; rather, everything has flowed into genuine artistic form. Spiritual science is not a theory; it does not merely address the intellectual. The intellectual, when treated artistically, would indeed result in an allegorical, hollow symbolism. Spiritual science leads to true insight, to a concrete grasp of the content of the spiritual world. This content can then, in turn, be incorporated into matter, just as it is in nature itself. One explores to the highest degree what Goethe demanded of art: it should be a manifestation of secret laws of nature that would never be revealed without it. — And in the same way, we are attempting to draw out of the entire human organism—from the formative forces at work within it, from what acts supersensibly upon the human being—an art of movement that we shall take the liberty of presenting here next Sunday in a performance: the development of eurythmy. This is not a dance art; it is not some form of pantomime; it is something drawn from the supersensible into the sensible realm of human nature, something that truly shows how the human being is inwardly connected to the entire cosmos and its laws, and how, through a visible language, they can express inner mysteries of the soul and spirit just as they can through spoken language or song.

[ 40 ] Similarly, spiritual science can influence social, moral, and ethical life. I have attempted to demonstrate this in my *Key Points of the Social Question*. What exists among human beings in their social relationships can never be grasped in an external, Marxist, or otherwise materialistic way. Human beings are, first and foremost, spiritual and supersensible beings in their innermost nature, and as social beings they are also dependent on actively shaping the supersensible within the social realm. Without this, it is impossible to arrive at any fruitful resolution of the social issues that are so pressing today.

[ 41 ] Ultimately, however, everything that is now sought by anthroposophical spiritual science—not through mere faith but through research—as a path to higher worlds is connected to the deepest innermost part of the human being, to what the human being strives for as his connection to the divine spiritual foundation of the world, with what they seek in devotion—in pious devotion to this foundation of the world. In short, it is connected to everything that human beings must develop in their innermost being as their religious feelings, as their entire religious life, if they wish to attain their full human dignity. Therefore, anthroposophical knowledge of the supersensible worlds simultaneously signifies a revitalization and enrichment of religious life—something we are in great need of today, as any impartial observer will admit. That is why I can hardly understand why, particularly from a theological perspective, objections have recently been raised once again against anthroposophical spiritual research, claiming that it stifles religious life. For example, the statement has been made: “The life of anthroposophy means the death of religion.” — Well, the life of anthroposophy is connected to that very life of the human soul which develops the most intimate religious forces. This anthroposophical exploration of supersensible realities cannot mean the death of religion, but at most the death of something that is mistaken for religion and is, in fact, already dead. In this sense, anthroposophy could point to that which is already dead; it would, so to speak, be a kind of postmortem examination. By its very nature, however, because it is a vibrant path into the supersensible realities, it must at the same time be a means of elevating, enlivening, and warming the religious feelings—the entire religious permeation of the human being—with devotion to the supersensible worlds.

[ 42 ] Thus, anthroposophy seeks to have a fruitful influence in the most diverse areas of life—from the most mundane to the most sacred. In the most beautiful and noble sense—that is its goal, its ideal, however little it may be able to achieve of it even today—it seeks to contribute to the progressive development of humanity in both the most mundane and the most sacred spheres of life. And any impartial person who has lived through with clear awareness the catastrophic period we experienced in the second decade of the 20th century will admit that today the most diverse spheres of life need renewal, that many things need revitalization. Certainly, what I have taken the liberty of outlining briefly before you is connected with the eternal concerns of humanity. It can be cultivated in the arena of life when a person seeks to become aware of their inner security, which can lie only in the awareness of their eternal essence; it can be cultivated in the solitude of a quiet hut, when a person is removed from the forum of life: for a person must be touched at all times by the eternal in his own being, by the eternal within him, if he wishes to be human in the fullest sense of the word. So, on the one hand, it is certainly something that is universally human, something of absolute interest to all people, because it touches upon their eternal concerns. In our time, however, when we see so much in decline, one must also admit that, in the face of the forces of decline, impulses toward the ascent of our Western civilization are once again very much necessary. Anthroposophy deserves some consideration today not only because it pays attention to the eternal, but also in light of the great and weighty tasks of our time.

[ 43 ] Therefore, perhaps I may conclude today’s reflection with these words: Anthroposophy does not seek to lead people in need of spiritual uplift into a world alien to reality by lulling them into mystical daydreams; anthroposophical spiritual science seeks to lead people to the reality of supersensible worlds in such a way that they grasp the spirit in order to intervene practically in material life. They must do this because they need it for their sense of security in life, because of their necessary connection to supersensible worlds and to the eternal within their nature, but today especially to resolve those grave contemporary issues with which we are confronted in these catastrophic times.