The Rudolf Steiner Archive

2. Paths to the Knowledge of Higher Worlds

[ 1 ] I would like to begin by expressing my deepest gratitude for the warm and heartfelt welcome extended by your Chairman, and to thank all of you for making it possible for me to speak to you today about a chapter of anthroposophical spiritual science. I would like to say that this invitation from you is of very special value to me, for it must surely be understandable that what is intended in our future endeavors is directed first and foremost toward the student body, since spiritual treasures are best preserved within the student body and can best find their way into the future from there. It is with this sentiment that I express my deepest gratitude to your Chairman and to all of you for your warm welcome.

[ 2 ] It has been requested that I speak today specifically on the topic: Paths to higher, that is, supersensible knowledge. I assume that only some of you were present at my lecture yesterday, so it will be necessary for me to weave some of the more important points I raised yesterday back into my lecture.

[ 3 ] Anthroposophical spiritual science strives above all for full harmony with the scientific achievements that have emerged over the course of the last few centuries. Anthroposophy is in no way, as some believe, directed against scientific endeavors; on the contrary, those who are truly honest and serious within our anthroposophical movement most appreciate people who have a full appreciation of what has been achieved in recent times in terms of scientific rigor and an inner scientific spirit. However, based on what is recognized as science, one rightly believes that it is not possible to penetrate into supersensible worlds. And in a certain sense, anthroposophy also stands on common ground with recognized science regarding this point. It is fully aware that those who speak of the limits of human knowledge in relation to the understanding of nature are correct. It is also clear that these limits cannot be transcended with ordinary human powers of cognition. Therefore, anthroposophy does not even attempt to find paths to supersensible knowledge using these ordinary powers of consciousness and cognition; rather, anthroposophy strives not only, with regard to the results of scientific research, to begin where ordinary science must stop, but it also strives to begin, using its own methods, where the science applicable to external nature—and also to the physical nature of the human being—must stop. Anthroposophy must therefore not only speak of different things, but it must also speak differently. Nevertheless, it is fully in harmony with scientific rigor and scientific discipline. It proceeds on the basis of first awakening the powers of cognition—through which one is to penetrate into the supersensible worlds—from their slumber within the human being. Anthroposophy does not claim that the knowledge of supersensible worlds requires special qualities or abilities possessed only by certain individuals; rather, it seeks to rely exclusively on those powers that can be drawn forth from every human soul—powers that go beyond what we, as human beings, have, so to speak, inherited through our ordinary development since childhood, and which also go beyond what is achieved through ordinary education and learning.

[ 4 ] If a person wishes to become a spiritual researcher in the anthroposophical sense—if I may put it that way—they must now take their own development into their own hands, starting from the point at which one stands in ordinary life and in ordinary science. The powers that must first be developed are those of thinking. This marks only the beginning of this development, for we shall see that it is not merely a matter of developing one-sided intellectual or thinking powers, but of developing the whole human being. But a start must be made with a specific exercise in thinking. The kind of thinking to which we are accustomed today—not only in our external lives but also in science—relies on external observation; it follows, as it were, the thread of external observation. We direct our senses toward the external world and link our thoughts to what our senses convey to us. Through this, we have a firm foundation in the observation of the external world for connecting the contents of our souls, our experiences. It has been a legitimate scientific endeavor to develop this very foundation—the foundation of observation—more and more. And this observation has been further strengthened by the scientific use of the experiment, in which one is truly able to survey all the individual conditions leading to specific phenomena, so that, in a sense, the processes become completely transparent.

[ 5 ] Anthroposophical spiritual science must depart from this fixation of thought on external objectivity in order to fulfill its task. For it, the primary concern is to strengthen thought inwardly and make it more intense. I took the liberty of saying yesterday: Just as a muscle grows stronger when it performs a specific task, so it is with our soul powers. When we repeatedly bring specific, manageable concepts into the center of our consciousness through systematic practice, and devote our whole being to such concepts, we thereby strengthen our powers of thought. This intensification of the powers of thought must, of course, be achieved in such a way that the full, deliberate will of the human being is present in everything one undertakes. Therefore, anyone who wishes to become a spiritual researcher in the anthroposophical sense can, above all, find a great model within today’s scientific world: mathematics. As strange and paradoxical as it may sound, the anthroposophical spiritual researcher, if he wishes to move beyond the level of a layperson, observes above all something that was already inscribed as a motto in the school of Plato: that no one can penetrate into true spiritual-scientific knowledge who does not possess a certain mathematical culture.

[ 6 ] What, then, is actually so special about the soul of mathematics? It is this: that everything which presents itself to the soul in mathematical cognition is internally transparent and clear; that, in a sense, there is nothing within this cognition to which one surrenders merely unconsciously and without the exercise of one’s will. Of course, spiritual science in the anthroposophical sense is not mathematics. But the very way one enters into mathematical thinking can serve as a significant model. Actually, it is not mathematics itself that serves as this model, but rather—if I may put it this way—the process of “mathematizing.” And once one has, above all, learned to transcend all that is illusory and suggestive through such a “mathematizing” culture, one can then set out with particular success to take in clear and well-defined concepts—but concepts that are new to one. One has them presented by an experienced spiritual researcher or otherwise seeks to arrive at concepts that are not yet present in one’s memory. One places these at the center of one’s consciousness and devotes one’s entire inner life to them, turning all one’s powers of attention away from everything else and attempting to focus on such a concept or complex of concepts for a certain, not overly long period of time. Why must this image or complex of images be something new? Indeed, when we recall memories from our past, we can never be entirely certain what is taking place within our organism—what is driving certain experiences in the extra-psychic unconscious within our organism. We can truly move freely with our cognition only when we are confronted with sensory perception, because sensory perception will meet us at every moment, and because with it we know for certain that it cannot be conjured up in some fantastical way from memories of life. Likewise, what we now allow to be present in our consciousness—excluding sensory perceptions—must be something to which we surrender ourselves completely, surrendering to the point where, without sensory perceptions, we are in a state of inner liveliness comparable to that experienced only through external sensory perception. This is what matters most at the outset on the path to higher knowledge: that thinking free from the senses enters into an inner movement that engages our soul as intensely as external sensory perception otherwise does. One might say: What a person otherwise experiences through external sensory perception, they must learn to experience through that kind of thinking which is intensified and yet entirely permeated by a sober, conscious will.

[ 7 ] This already erects a powerful barrier against everything—suggestions, illusions, visions, and hallucinations—that seeks to enter consciousness. Spiritual scientific knowledge, as understood here, is always misunderstood when people say: “Well, such a spiritual researcher can, through his exercises, only end up with hallucinations or the like—all sorts of pathological states of mind.” — Anyone who takes seriously the way in which the path to higher knowledge in anthroposophy is described will see that it is precisely this spiritual research that makes it most clear to people what constitutes illusions, hallucinations, or even mediumistic phenomena. All of this—which leans toward the other side, the pathological side—is strictly rejected; its worthlessness is seen through precisely by what can be attained through genuine spiritual research. Then one comes to adopt an entirely different way of thinking. The old way of thinking, which is needed for ordinary life and for ordinary science, remains fully intact. But a completely new way of thinking is added to this, when one—in the manner described in my book *How to Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds* or in my *Secret Science*—one performs such exercises, which I have now characterized in principle as thinking exercises, again and again and systematically—some take longer to achieve this, others less time—when one performs these exercises in one’s consciousness as an intimate inner development of the soul. I would like to characterize what is added to ordinary thinking in the following way.

[ 8 ] Perhaps I may make a personal remark here, though it is not meant to be personal; rather, you will surely agree that it is part of the objective purpose of my explanations. In the early 1890s, I wrote my *Philosophy of Freedom* to show how freedom is truly grounded and truly lives in the moral and ethical life of humanity. This *Philosophy of Freedom* has given rise to many misunderstandings, simply because people cannot bring themselves to engage with the kind of thinking practiced in it. For in this *Philosophy of Freedom*, the very kind of thinking is already being practiced that one must actually force oneself to engage with systematically in order to gain knowledge of higher worlds. Only the first step has been taken—the very step that anyone can take even in ordinary life. But at the same time, it is the first step toward the knowledge of higher worlds. Ordinary thinking—you need only reflect on the nature of this ordinary thinking, and you will see how justified what I am saying is—ordinary thinking is, in fact, a form of thinking consisting of spatial perceptions. After all, in our ordinary thinking we essentially organize everything spatially. Just consider that we also reduce the temporal to the spatial. We express time through the movements of a clock. Essentially, we see the same process at work in our physical formulas as well. In short, we ultimately conclude that ordinary thinking is a combinatory form of thinking, one that synthesizes disparate elements. We need this kind of thinking for a healthy, ordinary life, and we also need it for healthy, ordinary science.

[ 9 ] But the kind of thinking that is necessary to gain insight into higher worlds—and which is attained through such exercises—is a kind of thinking that I would like to call morphological thinking, or thinking in forms. This form of thinking does not remain confined to space; it is a form of thinking that lives in the medium of time just as the other form of thinking lives in the medium of space. This form of thinking does not simply link one concept to another; rather, it presents the soul with something like an organism of concepts. When one has a concept, an idea, or a thought, one cannot simply move on to the next in any arbitrary way. Just as one cannot move from the head to any other part of the human organism at will, but must proceed to the neck, then to the shoulders, to the chest, and so on—just as everything in an organism is structured, and just as an organism can only be considered as a whole—so too must the kind of thinking I call morphological thinking be internally dynamic. As I said, it exists in the medium of time, not of space, but it is so internally dynamic that it brings one form out of another, so that this thinking itself continually organizes itself organically and continually grows. This morphological thinking—that is what must be added to other forms of thinking, and it can be attained through such meditative exercises as I have outlined in principle, exercises that strengthen thinking and make it more intense. With this morphological thinking—this thinking that proceeds in forms and images—one attains the first stage of knowledge of supersensible worlds, namely what I have called “imaginative knowledge” in my writings.

[ 10 ] This imaginative insight does not yet reveal anything external. At first, it leads only to human self-knowledge—but to a much deeper self-knowledge than that which can be attained through ordinary self-reflection alone. This imaginative insight brings figures into our consciousness. These figures are experienced as vividly as any other sensory perception. But they possess a very special characteristic. Our ordinary thoughts would not be healthily contained within our consciousness if we did not remember them. An extraordinary amount depends on our ability to remember—on our memory—for the healthy development of our soul life and our mental health. Only those who have a continuous memory of all waking states up to a certain point in their childhood are mentally healthy. You may also be aware of the terrible situation a person finds themselves in—a psychopath, in the sense that certain memories have been erased. In psychiatry, this state of memory erasure is well known, and it is precisely from this that we can deduce how essential it is for a person’s mental health that memory be continuous. This applies to our ordinary thought processes.

[ 11 ] This does not apply to what I have just characterized as imaginative, or morphological, thinking. Just as, when we turn our eye or another sense organ toward an external sensory stimulus, we have the experience of perception only as long as we expose the sense organ; similarly, we have what we have experienced as structured thinking—as imaginative thinking—only in the moment of experience, and what occurs in imaginative thinking cannot, in the ordinary sense, be imprinted in memory. It must be evoked anew each time if it is to be experienced.

[ 12 ] Thus, anyone who arrives at this kind of organic-morphological thinking—which, in a sense, develops itself through living growth—cannot retain the results of this thinking in ordinary memory. Freedom, too, can only be characterized if one rises to such evolving, growing thinking. That is why my *Philosophy of Freedom* has been beset by misunderstandings such as the one that just occurred. But it had to be presented using this method, precisely because freedom is a spiritual experience, and one cannot arrive at it through ordinary, combinatory thinking. This is, after all, what surprises beginners in the method of the spiritual sciences: they usually believe that when they have an imaginative experience, it can be imprinted on their soul just like any other thought. But that is not the case. It slips from consciousness. The only thing one can retain is how one arrived at this imaginative experience. One can recreate the conditions, and then the experience returns. Just as one must return to a flower one has seen in order to see it again after having walked away, so too must one evoke the same inner processes in order to have once more an imaginative experience such as one has had before.

[ 13 ] The content of spiritual science is not easily recalled. This applies even to the most basic concepts for the sincere spiritual researcher. And here, perhaps, I may again share something personal—though it is also objective. You see, what the anthroposophical spiritual researcher has to say cannot be presented in the same way—let’s say, day after day—in his lectures as scientific presentations are usually given. Those are things you memorize, keep in mind, and then present from memory. What the spiritual researcher has to present must come from his living inner experience. He cannot prepare himself in the same way one usually prepares with the aid of memory. He can only create the conditions that make it possible for him to experience even the most basic aspects of spiritual science. One must be clear that anthroposophical spiritual science, even in its very earliest stages, leads to the development of powers in the soul that would otherwise remain dormant, and one must not believe that one can arrive at any conclusions regarding higher worlds through ordinary philosophical speculation.

[ 14 ] This imaginative insight, which I have described to you in this way, leads—as I said—only to a kind of self-knowledge. Ultimately, it leads to a state in which, as if in a vast tableau but all at once in time, one surveys everything that has essentially and lawfully shaped one’s entire life here on earth since birth. Inwardly, one sees the creative formative forces at work in human beings, beginning with one’s own self. Just as is described—and this is acknowledged even by those who think in scientific terms—in the case of certain people who were in mortal danger, such as those drowning, who see a woven, moving picture of their life up to that point unfolding before them, so—though not as a memory, not with the details of life, but precisely with the main events, with those forces that have propelled one forward—one sees this tableau, which, I would say, is precisely a deeper tableau of memory. But at the same time, this tableau is such that one does not merely have before one the ordinary, intellectual life of the soul, but rather that inner life which works from the soul out into the organism.

[ 15 ] Through such a perspective, one now arrives at a point of view from which it certainly seems childish that, as early as the first decades of the 19th century, vitalism speculatively spoke of a “life force.” In anthroposophy, we do not speak of such a life force. Rather, we speak of the view of life, of the view of what I call the etheric body or body of formative forces, which on the one hand represents the soul, but on the other hand—I would say—the condensed, intensified soul that works within the organism. One is thus led at the same time to a deeper understanding of the soul and to a deeper understanding of the way in which the soul works within the organism. I would like to give you an example of this, a simple but characteristic example.

[ 16 ] As you know, modern mainstream psychology actually doesn’t get any further than certain speculations about the relationship between soul and body. The soul is described as if it were moving the body, or—among those of a materialistic bent—the soul is viewed as the “plus” that the body, so to speak, produces. Today, the most common talk is of psychophysical parallelism: that mental phenomena and physical phenomena occur in parallel, and so on. These are all speculations that are really based solely on a reluctance to apply the same scientific spirit that otherwise prevails to human mental-physical, or soul-body, life.

[ 17 ] You are all familiar with the concept in physics that speaks of latent heat—a form of heat contained within an object but which does not manifest as heat. When certain conditions are created, this heat is, as they say, released. It then becomes apparent. The heat is already present within the objects; it causes something to happen within them, but this is not expressed externally through thermal processes. We speak of latent heat, of heat that is released.

[ 18 ] Such a view, naturally modified and enriched, must certainly also be extended to the concrete, non-speculative observation of the soul. We watch the child grow until the change of teeth, around the age of seven. But much more is connected with this change of teeth than is usually supposed. Anyone who observes the relationship between soul and body with an open mind knows that the entire nature of thinking, imagining, and even the life of feelings and sensations—in short, everything psychological in the child—becomes quite different after the change of teeth than it was before. The change of teeth marks, in a sense, a turning point for a certain phase of a child’s life. After the change of teeth, a person no longer needs to direct those forces toward their organism that they had previously directed there. For these forces—which, if I may put it simply, push out the permanent teeth—are not merely localized in the human head, so to speak; they are forces present throughout the entire organism that simply manifest themselves in a single location during the eruption of the permanent teeth. Anyone who traces this entire process as objectively and scientifically as we are accustomed to thinking in the natural sciences today will come to recognize that the forces that push the teeth out were previously latent, bound within the organism; that they have organized the organism throughout; and that they have now been set free during the change of teeth and appear in the child after the change of teeth as soul-spiritual forces. Here we have a concrete, not a speculative, interrelationship between the soul-spiritual and the physical-bodily. Anyone who wishes to look only at the soul and then at the body in the present moment may speculate and experiment at length, but will still arrive only at abstract conceptions of the relationship between soul and body. But those who turn their attention to the sequence of time will observe how, after a child’s teeth have fallen out, certain soul forces emerge—along with a sharpening of the concept of memory and a sharpening of sensations—and they will know that what is now present as a liberated soul life had previously been submerged within the organism. Through observation—not merely through thinking—one truly comes to know the relationship between soul and body. This is an example of how we can explore the interplay of soul and body through imaginative insight. One sees how the soul-spiritual works upon the bodily-physical. This is revealed in the tableau I have described. Once one has developed this pictorial, imaginative thinking in this way, one must go further by drawing on the strength one has gained. I said: Just as a muscle grows stronger through work, so does our power of thought grow stronger by performing exercises such as those I have described—and which you can find described in greater detail in the books I mentioned. If one now cultivates within oneself in this way a strengthened form of thinking—one that reaches the level of imagery and creative power and lives in time—then one can also come to strengthen other forces of the soul life. Ordinary mental images of life come and go, or we may try to rid ourselves of them—either by seeking to dispel them mentally or by allowing our organism to take care of this through forgetting, and so on. Such mental images, which we—as I have described—bring to the forefront of our consciousness for the sake of higher insight, are more difficult to forget than others. We must make a great effort here. This is a second kind of exercise—what I would call artificial forgetting, the artificial suppression of ideas. But if we practice this artificial suppression of ideas long enough, in accordance with our individual dispositions, we will eventually be able to suppress this entire tableau I have just spoken of, so that we can make our consciousness completely empty. The only thing that must remain for us is precisely that thinking imbued with will and prudence. This thinking, however, now appears once again in a new form.

[ 19 ] I have now spoken to you of two forms of thought: ordinary, spatially bound thought, and thought that has a life of its own, in which one concept or thought grows out of another, just as one limb joins to another in an organism. By continuing this morphological thinking for a while, one comes to be able to develop a third form of thinking, and this is necessary when one ascends to the higher level of supersensible knowledge, which I will describe shortly—that is, when one ascends into the higher world to something more than a mere overview of one’s own organization.

[ 20 ] Through imaginative cognition, one comes to view one’s own organization in such a way that one says to oneself: The soul-spiritual, as a supersensible force, works on the physical-bodily in earthly life. One needs this morphological thinking; otherwise, one would not understand what is taking place in time—what is working from the supersensible upon the sensible—for this is present in a state of constant metamorphosis. One must make one’s thinking flexible and internally coherent. That which lives out of the spirit cannot be grasped through mere combinatorial thinking; it must be grasped through an internally living thinking. But one must arrive at yet another kind of thinking if one wishes to be ready for the next higher stage of supersensible knowledge. And I would like to explain this other kind of thinking to you using an example. This example itself is somewhat difficult to grasp, but we will surely be able to understand one another.

[ 21 ] I would like to point out that Goethe attempted to interpret the individual bones of the skull as transformed, metamorphosed bones of the same type as the vertebrae. Goethe saw a metamorphosis, a transformation of the vertebrae into the individual bones of the skull. To a certain extent—albeit in a modified form—this is also the view held by modern science; not quite as Goethe imagined it, but it is still a valid concept today. However, this merely morphological derivation of the skull bones does not suffice; one must go further if one wishes to understand the relationship of the human head to the rest of the human organism—let us limit ourselves to the skeleton for now. One must not merely think of a transformation, but must also consider something entirely different when posing the question: How, for example, does the skeletal system—say, in the form of the arms or legs—relate to the skeletal system in the form of the skull bones, the bones of the head? The fact is that one can only understand the metamorphosis through which one emerges from the other if one assumes that not only does a transformation take place—a spatial transformation over time—but that something entirely different also occurs, namely a kind of inversion. For if you want to understand the mutual relationship—say, between the leg bones and the skull bones—you must compare the outer surface of the skull bones with the inner surface of a hollow bone, say, the femur. So the situation is such that the interior of the femur would have to be turned outward, and its elasticity would also have to change. Then the inside would appear turned outward, and the outer surface of a skull bone would correspond to the inner surface of a hollow bone in the limbs. And conversely: The outer surface of the tibia does not correspond to the outer surface of the skull vault, but to the inner surface of the skull vault. So you must imagine that something similar to turning a glove inside out is taking place. The inside is turned outward, but at the same time its elasticity is altered. A different shape emerges. It is therefore as if one were not only turning the glove inside out, but, after turning it inside out, it would assume a completely different shape due to different elastic forces.

[ 22 ] As you can see, I must present you with something extraordinarily complicated as a first indication of this third kind of thinking: a kind of thinking that not only exists in ever-changing forms, but is also capable of turning the inner structure outward while altering its form. This is possible only if one no longer remains within time through thought; rather, in this turning inside out, that which one thinks about moves, through thought, out of space and time and enters a reality that lies beyond space and time.

[ 23 ] I know very well that one cannot immediately find one’s way into this third kind of thinking, which is entirely different from combinatory and formative thinking—this thinking which, I would say, plunges into non-spatiality and timelessness; and what reemerges is transformed in form, having turned the inner outward and the outer inward. But anthroposophy does not seek to engage in that amateurish rambling about the higher worlds to which many indulge; rather, anthroposophy must point out—because it is as honest as any honest science—that it is not only necessary to leave the realm of ordinary science, but that the mode of thinking must become entirely different. One must hold the human being together internally in a completely different way if one wishes to advance in this manner toward qualitative thinking, for it is simply a change in the entire quality of thought that arises from this turning inside out, from this reversal of the inner into the outer.

[ 24 ] Only when one has led one’s thinking in this way so that it has immersed itself in the qualitative can one follow that stage of insight into the supersensible worlds which must follow on from imaginative thinking. If one has suppressed the tableau I spoke of, so as to create an empty consciousness, then one has, for a short time, an empty consciousness. One can, by merely suppressing a single image, make one’s consciousness empty for a while. But if one suppresses this reality—which has actually served one continuously in growth and nourishment during one’s earthly existence—one plunges into a completely new world. Then one is in the higher worlds, and one leaves the ordinary sensory world behind like a memory. One must regard it as such; otherwise, one is not a mentally healthy person, otherwise one is a psychopathic person, otherwise one hallucinates or suffers from delusions.

[ 25 ] If one proceeds in a proper manner in spiritual research, one retains one’s composure, and one’s consciousness—imbued with the will—remains intact even as one ascends into the highest worlds; and there can be no question of experiencing hallucinations or suggestions of any kind. If one experiences suggestions or hallucinations, ordinary consciousness is completely supplanted by a pathological state of consciousness. But this is the very essence of the consciousness sought by anthroposophy for the purpose of perceiving higher worlds: that ordinary consciousness remains fully intact, that one remains a rational, level-headed person even while ascending into higher worlds. And even what I have described to you as that strengthening of thought through “inverted thinking”—that is, “super-morphological thinking”—is actually intended solely to enable one to penetrate these higher worlds with complete consciousness. One now truly experiences these higher worlds with a spiritual content.

[ 26 ] Once one has gained, through imaginative consciousness, an insight into what has been at work within one since birth — the supersensible that acts upon the sensible —, one now gains an understanding of what existed within the human being’s spiritual-soul existence within the physical world before birth, or let us say before conception, where the human being is just as surrounded by beings—spiritual-soul beings—as we are here surrounded by sensible beings in the time between birth and death. In short, one experiences the eternal core of the human being by looking back beyond birth to that stage of human existence which the person lived through before being conceived here on Earth within the physical stream of heredity; one experiences the person in his or her spiritual environment.

[ 27 ] What has thus led to the knowledge of the higher worlds is not speculation, is not a system of concepts, but is a direct perception. Just as one gains a direct perception of the external sensory world through the development of one’s body from embryonic life onward, so too does one, through the practices I have described to you in principle—and which you will find described in detail in the books I have cited— insights into soul processes and gain the ability to be surrounded by that spiritual world in which we were before birth and into which we enter when we pass through the gate of death. Insight is the means by which knowledge of the higher worlds is attained.

[ 28 ] Well, with that I have first described to you the path of knowledge. However, the path to the higher worlds would not be fully described if it were portrayed solely as a path of knowledge, for what a person experiences there involves something more than merely a life of thought. While it may be difficult to master the two higher forms of thought, something else presents further difficulties. When we here in the physical world rely primarily on observation and experimentation, we do so because this gives us a certain assurance regarding the truth of our insights. One may, from an epistemological standpoint, debate the nature of sensory perceptions and their relationship to true being and so on, but that is not the point here. What matters is that sensory perception guarantees the truth of what we experience psychologically—what appears psychologically as the reflection of these sensory perceptions—and we find reassurance by relying on external reality. Indeed, even in more recent times, the “disease” of spiritualism has arisen, which seeks in exactly the same way to substantiate the existence of the spiritual through external observation. Of course, one cannot be more of a materialist than one is as a spiritist. Spiritism is merely the intensification of materialism, for one seeks not only to assert that matter exists—or perhaps that only matter exists—but even to claim that the spirit appears just like matter, that is, that it is itself merely matter. What appears as spiritism is simply the final phase, the ultimate consequence of materialism. True spiritual science, on the other hand, strives for an ascent into the spiritual worlds, not for a dragging down of the spiritual worlds into material processes.

[ 29 ] But what one has—I would say—as a foundation for a spiritual experience mediated through the external sensory world, one no longer has when one ascends into the spiritual worlds in the manner described. One must have a different foundation. One needs something that gives one the same sense of security—the assurance that one is not floating in a void, that one is not experiencing spiritual realities in a haze—one needs something one can rely on just as one relies on external sensory perception in ordinary life. And what one needs there can, in turn, come only through the development of inner powers. Please do not misunderstand me. I do not mean that the powers one already possesses in ordinary life—one need only use the terms borrowed from ordinary life—are sufficient. Powers must also be developed in areas other than that of thinking, so that one arrives not merely at perceptions, but at perceptions rooted in being. What gives one a sense of reassurance in sensory perception is, after all, that one sense supports the other. When someone has an auditory or visual impression, they are still not certain whether it might be a hallucination. They are only certain when, I might say, the “sense of gravity” supports them—when another sense comes to their aid—when what cannot be sufficiently corroborated by sight or hearing is corroborated by another sense. And what, in fact, is it that compels us to speak of Being in relation to the sensory world?

[ 30 ] You can consider various possibilities. I would have to speak for hours on epistemology—which, of course, I cannot do here—if I were to substantiate what I wish to summarize briefly. But this is true, and you will come to realize it if you follow the relevant line of thought: In the sensory world, we call a thing “real” if it affects us in such a way that we would have to deny ourselves if we were to deny that thing. If you not only hear a bell ringing but can also touch it, and encounter it in other contexts among things, then—if you were to experience this reality psychologically—you would have to annihilate yourself if you could not call the external thing “real.” We call an external thing “real” if, without acknowledging its reality, we would have to deny our own reality. You see, what we designate as reality is intimately connected with our own reality. That is why we must also draw from our own—but now spiritual and psychological—reality the forces that can be compared, for example, to an object I touch that reveals itself through its weight. We must seek within ourselves the supporting forces for the reality of the higher spiritual worlds, into which we immerse ourselves in the manner I have described to you. We can do this only if we further develop certain moral qualities that we possess in ordinary life precisely for the sake of ethical behavior. Just as we strengthen our powers of thought, so must we strengthen our moral powers. It is not merely a matter of developing these moral powers for ethical living, but rather of strengthening these moral powers further.

[ 31 ] I would like to speak to you about just two kinds. The first is that what we call moral courage—or courage in general—in human beings must be developed just as intensely as the powers of thought. The courage we possess within us can be intensified if we correctly observe and experience precisely what we present before our soul in imaginative insight as a retrospective tableau. There we find that, when we immerse ourselves in our own lives, we discover a higher kind of courage—a stronger inner strength of courage—than we usually need for the external life to which we passively surrender. This courage must be heightened.

[ 32 ] And another moral force must be strengthened. While courage actually relates to the emotional life—representing a certain inner security and forming a certain inner strength—we must develop something in relation to the will that arises, for example, when we resolutely set our minds to something at specific moments and then, with iron determination at a later time, strive to create the conditions necessary to actually carry out what we had previously resolved to do. The anthroposophical spiritual researcher must also perform such exercises in a completely systematic manner. He must internally connect the impulses of his will in the present with the impulses that were present within him in the past. In ordinary life, we surrender ourselves to the present. In the life that is to lead us up into higher worlds, we must envision an inner continuity of the will. We must be able to carry out, years later, something that we intended long ago. In this way, we build a strong foundation of will, a strong current of will that we establish within ourselves. This is a very special form of self-discipline. We do not merely make ourselves dependent on what currently drives us to act—whether due to external circumstances, our drives and instincts, or perhaps even our own ideals—but rather we inwardly and spiritually connect a later point in our spiritual life with an earlier one as an impulse of the will. If we cultivate an increase in courage within our minds, if we develop the continuity of our impulses of will so that these impulses endure over time, then we will be able—by elevating ourselves into the higher worlds in the manner I have described—to ascertain the reality of what we then perceive, just as as we can otherwise do in relation to the external sensory world, to also ascertain the reality of what we then perceive. This reality must be ascertainable through inner, strengthened powers. Therefore, the path to the spiritual worlds is not the development of a one-sided power of cognition, but rather the development of the whole human being—in thinking, feeling, and willing; in the pursuit of knowledge; in the aesthetic pursuit; and in the ethical pursuit. And this path to the higher worlds is at the same time a religious immersion, a religious deepening of the human being.

[ 33 ] What is important is that we realize that, just as science has in many respects cast doubt on the spiritual worlds in recent times, it is also through science that these spiritual worlds must once again be conquered. It is short-sighted to believe that by ascending into the higher spiritual worlds with the same level-headed awareness with which one approaches the sensory world through one’s senses, one would in any way undermine religious life. Those who voice criticism in this regard usually do so out of the belief that anthroposophical spiritual science leads only to intellectualism or rationalism. That is not the case. The whole human being—including feeling and willing—flows into that development of thought which is attained in the manner described; and what spiritual science, as understood here, points to as a path into the higher worlds is an unfolding, a development of the fully developed human being. And just as in ordinary sensory life, thinking appears only as a blossom emerging from the organism, so too does higher knowledge appear as a blossom of the fully developed human being, who harmoniously and intensively cultivates all his or her powers on the path into the higher worlds.

[ 34 ] Simply training the mind actually leads only to a world of images. If one wishes to perceive reality within this world of images, then one must also cultivate—in the manner I have indicated—that which in morality is courage, and that which in a life of character is the will that remains our own and manifests itself through time. These two forces, along with others that you can read about in the books cited, must be strengthened. The whole, the complete soul-spiritual human being must be led up into those other worlds in which the human being lives before being conceived here by physical forces and passing into physical earthly life, or in which the human being lives after passing through the gate of death. If one wishes to ascend to this life with insight, if one wishes to attain a vision of the supersensible worlds, then one must lead the whole soul-spiritual human being there—not merely some part of the being that seeks to indulge in these worlds theoretically. In this way, however, this anthroposophical spiritual science also enriches life as a whole. This anthroposophical spiritual science does not seek to make people unworldly through some abstruse mysticism; rather, it seeks to introduce them precisely into practical, truly practical life. And therefore it has a enriching effect on science, on art, on social life, on religious life—in short, on the most diverse areas of life. I can only offer a few hints regarding this.

[ 35 ] When one recognizes what I earlier called the “life tableau of retrospect”—which is a body of formative forces, but one that flows away over time—then one also observes how the human physical body arises from this system of forces, how it takes shape. After all, it is only an outward appearance when we speak of the heart, the lungs, and so on. In truth, the heart is a process, and its outward spatial form is merely the process captured at a single moment. It is the same with every organ. We can perceive what is captured as a form at a given moment. But we cannot perceive the flowing life process from which health and illness arise unless we elevate ourselves to an understanding of the supersensible formative forces of the body. Therefore, medicine—particularly therapy—can derive substantial enrichment from spiritual science, and we have already been able to establish clinical-therapeutic institutes in both Stuttgart and Dornach, inspired by anthroposophy, which are intended to make fruitful for humanity what can be gained from spiritual science with an anthroposophical orientation. And in many other respects, spiritual science can enrich life. In Dornach, when we wanted to establish a School of Spiritual Science, we could not simply create just any framework. What presented itself when the friends of our anthroposophical worldview wanted to erect a building for the School of Spiritual Science was something quite special. I would like to characterize it with a comparison.

[ 36 ] Let’s suppose: a nut with a shell. If you think about it objectively, you will say to yourself: The shell of the nut must be exactly the shape it is because the nut is the way it is. The shell belongs to the nut. If today one were to establish something spiritually in a manner similar to that which seeks to live spiritually within the anthroposophical movement, and one were in a position to erect a building, then you simply go to an architect who will design a building for you in this or that style—possibly something that doesn’t fit at all with what is inside it, like a nut shell that wouldn’t be suited to the nut inside at all. Because anthroposophy does not wish to be merely theoretical, something that lives only in words, the anthroposophical movement could not proceed in this way with regard to its physical setting either. In Dornach, what is heard from the podium, what is performed on stage, and whatever artistic expression is presented to the audience through words or movements on stage must possess exactly the same inner essence as what speaks from the walls, as what confronts the viewer from the outside in the form of the building’s architecture. Just as the same forces of growth that shape the nut also shape the nut shell, so too must that which lives in the word within anthroposophy also artistically provide the framework in a new architectural style. It was therefore entirely organically grounded that a new architectural style emerged in Dornach, which is nothing other than the outwardly visible expression of what otherwise lives spiritually and psychologically within the word. One will be able to understand what anthroposophy aims to be in our time precisely through the fact that it exerts a fruitful influence in this way upon artistic life as well. And in our eurythmy, which is still in its infancy, we have created a human art of movement in which what is present in the moving individuals or groups of people is neither a dance nor a pantomime, but rather what appears in forms of movement is a language just as law-governed as spoken language, or a visible song, just as singing is otherwise heard in tones. What appears as eurythmy is drawn entirely from the spiritual, soul, and physical laws of the human being.

[ 37 ] In this way, we were able to have a stimulating influence on a wide variety of artistic movements through anthroposophy.

[ 38 ] In my *Key Points of the Social Question*, I have attempted to address the major social problems of our time from an anthroposophical perspective. Anyone who considers that social life involves the whole human being—not merely what can be attained through rational science, as in Marxism or similar approaches—will admit that what penetrates the higher spiritual worlds can also penetrate the laws governing human social coexistence, for these laws are precisely the soul-spiritual laws of the higher worlds. They can also lead us to laws that can bring people to a satisfying social coexistence. For it is the spiritual that unites people in society, and what unites them physically is merely a manifestation of the spiritual. The fact that this has been forgotten is, in many ways, the reason for our terrible catastrophe and for the forces of decline we are currently experiencing. Humanity must once again be permeated by the spirit.

[ 39 ] Anthroposophy has also had a fruitful influence on education and pedagogy. At the Waldorf School founded by Emil Molt in Stuttgart, the insights that emerge from anthroposophical research as a true understanding of the human being are applied to the developing human being—the child. The paths that lead us into higher worlds also lead us, year by year, week by week, to observe in the human child—as it grows from birth to puberty—what the child has brought with it from the higher spiritual worlds, and what the educator and teacher must bring to life. I can only hint at the general direction of this. All of this has been attempted in detail as an educational art within the Waldorf school. These are merely examples of how anthroposophy seeks to have a stimulating effect on the most diverse areas of life. As I have already said, anthroposophy can have a revitalizing effect on religious life because it leads scientifically to the higher worlds, because it shows how that which the human being carries within their transient earthly existence—as something that shapes them but is not perceptible through ordinary cognition—takes on its true form, its own essence, in the supersensible worlds. There, it can be perceived through higher vision. Here, it is hidden because, upon entering birth, it is absorbed by the physical form. As the spiritual works within the material, it becomes invisible to ordinary perception. Yet this does not mean it is lifeless. It is merely hidden within the material. The spiritual is to be recognized within the material. The paths into the supersensible worlds that anthroposophy seeks to open are the means to this end.

[ 40 ] For this very reason, anthroposophy does not seek to be something that ascetically leads people away from the ordinary world; rather, it seeks to open paths to the spiritual and to the supersensible worlds in such a way that people can use this spirituality to reshape their material, practical lives. That is indeed the important point: that we recognize the spirit as a creative force. A spirit that were experienced only as non-creative, superimposed upon the material, would be weak. There are many people who say: “Oh, the material aspects of this world are something base; one must rise above them. One must leave the material behind in order to reach the higher spiritual.” — It is true that one must overcome many things to attain knowledge of this spiritual realm. But once one has attained this spiritual realm through love—and one can attain it only through love, religious devotion, and fervor, for the development of moral faculties, of which I have also spoken, leads to penetrating the supersensible worlds through love—then one has brought this supersensible-spiritual realm closer to the material world. For the strong spiritual is not that which flees from the material, but rather that which shapes the material, that which can act spiritually in a practical way within the material. That, on the one hand.

[ 41 ] On the other hand, perhaps I may conclude by saying one thing to you right here: that anthroposophical spiritual science, as it is understood here, shapes the paths into the supersensible worlds in such a way that what is found along these paths is not remote from ordinary scientific knowledge and its effects, but rather permeates them as a spiritual -psychic force itself. Just as a human being is a complete human being because they stand here on Earth in their physical-bodily form, yet this physical-bodily form carries within it a spiritual-psychic element, so, too, science is only “complete science” in the full sense of the word when it is not merely knowledge or understanding of external material reality, but when it can interweave this knowledge with other knowledge—namely, knowledge of the spiritual worlds. For this reason, anthroposophical spiritual science seeks to relate to other sciences in such a way that it fundamentally corresponds to what is required by nature and by the essence of both the human being and the cosmos. Just as the human being must carry within themselves spirit and soul in their material life, so must a true spiritual science—one that opens up genuine, honest paths into the supersensible-spiritual worlds—itself become the spirit and soul of ordinary, material science. And just as the spirit and soul within the human being do not conflict with the body, do not rebel against it, but are meant to be in full harmony with it, so too must anthroposophical spiritual knowledge be in full harmony with true, honest knowledge of nature and history.