The Rudolf Steiner Archive

3. Fundamentals of Anthroposophy

[ 1 ] In three lectures, I intend to give you an overview of what anthroposophy has to say about human beings and about the relationship between human beings and the world. These are, without a doubt, the two most significant areas of inquiry for all human understanding: the world and the human being. They essentially encompass every scientific and existential question, from the smallest to the largest. It is in the nature of this task, however, that I will have to limit myself to discussing what lies within the anthroposophical horizon regarding these two areas—that is, what relates to the great questions of human existence that go beyond sensory perception and the realm of conventional science.

[ 2 ] There is no denying that, with regard to human beings and their self-knowledge, this is one of those questions that must touch human beings themselves most deeply and most intensely. For in order to have security in life, to have a firm standpoint in life, a person must have a conception of his own being. And it may well be said that human beings have always sought knowledge of the world, for they know that what is contained in the mysteries of the world’s development is connected to their own being, and that, above all, they can only know something about the latter—their own being—if they recognize what the world, to which they belong, is capable of giving them. Now, one cannot deny that there is currently a keen interest in everything that, in terms of knowledge of humanity and the world, goes beyond ordinary sensory science, and we see numerous attempts to go beyond this ordinary science in order to explore what lies beyond birth and death, what lies beyond what can be fathomed through ordinary sensory observation and through the intellect based on that sensory observation. Indeed, in recent times we see scientists in particular striving in the most diverse ways to go beyond the areas described, and by way of introduction, I would like to mention at least a few striking views of contemporary researchers that demonstrate that there is a keen interest in questions such as those to be addressed in my three lectures, but also that it is extraordinarily difficult—even for individuals well-versed in conventional science—to penetrate the realm of the spiritual and the psychological. I do not wish to speak in abstract terms; I would like to begin immediately with concrete examples.

[ 3 ] A German researcher who has devoted much of his work to investigating how the supersensory nature of the soul can be explored as such, and how the supersensory nature of the soul affects the sensory nature of the body, has, drawing on his experience as a physician and natural scientist, provided many examples of the effect of the soul—of what is undoubtedly spiritual—on the human physical body, and a striking example, which this physician and researcher, Schleich—whom I also know very well personally—mentions in one of his books, is the following. He describes how a patient came to him in a state of terrible agitation after having slightly scratched his skin with an ink-stained pen while in his office during the day. As the doctor was able to ascertain, it was an extraordinarily minor, insignificant wound. But the patient was seized by the delusion that he had contracted blood poisoning from this prick with the ink-filled pen, and that he would certainly die unless his hand were amputated; and he begged to have his hand and arm amputated as quickly as possible. The doctor could say nothing else to him but that he should remain calm, that the matter would be over in a few days, and that he had nothing at all to fear. Of course, the doctor, acting with full professional responsibility, could say nothing else. He certainly could not cut off his arm. The patient, however, was not satisfied with this, went to another doctor, who told him the same thing—and who, of course, did not cut off his arm either. But Schleich was somewhat apprehensive—being very familiar with human emotional states—and so he inquired about the patient the next morning, and lo and behold: the patient had died! The autopsy revealed no signs of any noticeable internal blood poisoning or the like. There was absolutely no question of that. But the patient had died. Schleich adds the following about this case, which he recounts: Death by radical autosuggestion. The patient had convinced himself that he was going to die; this was an extraordinarily radical form of autosuggestion, and the patient truly died under the influence of this autosuggestion.

[ 4 ] So says a researcher who, after all, is very well versed in all scientific and medical methods. He reports this case to illustrate the power that something purely psychological—that is, a thought that is formed—can have on the course of bodily processes: even to the point of causing death. That is Schleich’s view. Schleich cites a whole host of other cases as examples—ones that are less striking and radical—to prove that there is indeed a possibility of observing the soul, which lives in thoughts, sensations, feelings, and impulses of the will, and which can now, through its own power, act upon the physical body. In other words, the aim is, so to speak, to illustrate the effect of the supersensible on the sensible.

[ 5 ] Another case, recounted by a much more prominent natural scientist, Oliver Lodge, is as follows: Oliver Lodge lost his son Raymond during the World War. The young man fell in battle on the Belgian-German border, and Sir Oliver Lodge—who had long been inclined to build a bridge between the natural sciences and the supernatural—was personally and profoundly affected by this tragedy, by the loss of his beloved son. And through various events that came to his attention—which are irrelevant here and which I therefore need not recount—he was led to use the mediumistic powers of a certain individual to make contact with the departed soul of his son, Raymond Lodge.

[ 6 ] Well, when such a case arises in ordinary spiritualist circles, there is no need to take it particularly seriously, for we know how uncritically matters are handled there, and how amateurishly such cases and such matters are judged and investigated in those circles when it comes to scientific methods of inquiry. But one must take the matter more seriously when dealing with one of the greatest natural scientists of our time—someone who is thoroughly well-versed in the field of empirical scientific research and who is familiar with the scientific method. And that is precisely why the book that Sir Oliver Lodge wrote about his spiritual communication with his son, Raymond Lodge, has made such a profound impression. When one reads the book, one immediately and unquestionably gets the feeling that one is dealing here with a person who does not approach the investigation of such matters lightly, nor without scientific responsibility and conscientiousness. And even in the other matters—which I do not wish to recount here—one sees everywhere that Oliver Lodge applies to this field the same way of thinking, the same scientific method, that he is accustomed to using in the physics laboratory. The actual account he gives—which, as one might say, has rightly made a great impression on all those who have read Sir Oliver Lodge’s work—is as follows. Through the medium in question, Oliver Lodge and several other individuals present during the experiments were made aware of how his son—that is, the soul, the spirit of his son—wished to tell him about a scene that took place shortly before his death on the Belgian-German border, and the medium recounted that Raymond Lodge had his photograph taken, and this act of being photographed was described in great detail through mediumship. It was explicitly stated: Two photographs were taken, and these two photographs were described, and it was implied that in the second photograph, the entire posture of Oliver Lodge’s son was somewhat different from that in the first photograph. At the time these mediumistic communications were made in London by the medium—and Sir Oliver Lodge presents it in such a way that one can truly see, as I emphasize time and again, that he applies all scientific precautions—at the time the experiment was conducted, no one in London knew anything about the photographs or the act of taking them. So, Lodge reasoned, after examining everything, if the communication were true, it could only have come from the deceased son himself. And lo and behold, after about two or three weeks, the photographs—which no one had known about before—actually arrived in London. They were exactly as described by the medium—or, according to Sir Oliver Lodge’s belief, by his son’s soul. Even a natural scientist could initially see in this, one might say, a crucial test. After all, no one in London could have seen the photographs. And it turned out that the message was accurate to the extent that two photographs had indeed been taken, and the second photograph showed a different pose. The photographer had taken the picture of the group that included Raymond Lodge and had positioned them slightly differently for the second shot, and this had been described with complete accuracy. There is not the slightest reason to doubt this reported fact when it comes to a conscientious naturalist.

[ 7 ] Well, I have presented two extreme cases that show how the longing—the thirst for knowledge—of thoroughly serious scientific figures of our time gives rise to the quest to learn more about human beings than what external sensory research can provide.

[ 8 ] Anyone who wishes to speak from an anthroposophical perspective, and anyone who wishes to report on the foundations of anthroposophical research, is already compelled today to point out that these methods of anthroposophical research are, after all, different from those practiced today even by figures who are taken very seriously. For these foundations—and I hope this will become clear from every angle through the three lectures I am to give here—these foundations of anthroposophical research are intended to be even more critical and even more conscientious with regard to scientific thinking and attitude, even in the face of such critical minds. And whoever now dares to voice criticism even toward such figures is perhaps best qualified to judge the far greater certainty upon which anthroposophy—which is so easily accused of being fanciful—seeks to build, compared to even the most conscientious natural scientists of our time. And in order to highlight precisely the critical, truly scientific nature of the anthroposophical foundations, I would now like to present the points that can be raised as critical objections to the scientific interpretations offered here in both cases by respected figures. I am taking these matters as my starting point today because, particularly with regard to my topic today, much has already been covered in my last two lectures, so that the essentials have likely already been addressed in those two lectures for most of the esteemed audience gathered here; I therefore wish to briefly shed light on what has been said from a different perspective. With regard to Schleich’s death through autosuggestion, the following objection must be raised. First of all, please understand that I am merely raising a critical objection, whatever the actual circumstances may be! Let us suppose for a moment that the individual in question—who stabbed himself in the hand with an ink-stained pen and believed he was suffering from blood poisoning—did in fact have an internal condition that was bound to cause a rapid death the following night simply due to natural causes. Such sudden deaths do occur, after all. But on the other hand, anyone who seriously familiarizes themselves with what can be achieved in terms of strengthening and intensifying human cognitive powers—in the sense that I have attempted to explain over the past few days—knows that certain indefinable mental powers can be driven to a particular height by abnormal states; one can certainly say, by abnormal pathological states. And such cases certainly do exist and are, in a critical sense, documented in the literature in such a way that anyone can verify them—cases in which, after all, the human will—we will see shortly how this is possible—is transformed, metamorphosed into a certain faculty of cognition. And because the human will is directed toward the future, it can—under certain pathological conditions—in some circumstances foresee what is being prepared for a person’s future within the broader context of human existence. Whether one calls this a premonition or whatever else, it is irrelevant. And it is certainly a fact that people in mild pathological states—ones that do not manifest as full-blown illness—can, let’s say, foresee how, in fourteen days, they will fall from a horse; they see it as a mental image. All precautions are of no help, because they do not perceive the accompanying circumstances. They have simply foreseen what will happen in the future.

[ 9 ] A critical objection might be raised by someone who truly understands the intensification of a person’s mental states: it is quite possible that Schleich’s patient simply had a condition that caused his death the following night, and that he had a premonition of this impending death beforehand. Such an inner premonition need not reach the level of consciousness; it can certainly remain in the subconscious. But it can express its effect on consciousness through what is commonly described as: one becomes nervous, one becomes restless, one does all sorts of things that are ill-considered. And it is entirely possible that the jabbing of the ink-stained pen into his hand occurred under the influence of the nervousness stemming from this premonition, so that the person in question simply knew inwardly and unconsciously—if I may use this paradox—that he was going to die. But he did not express this as a claim that he foresaw his death; rather, he became nervous, jabbed the pen into his hand, and framed it as the claim that he would die of blood poisoning. It was not, then, a case of death by autosuggestion, but rather that the individual had an inner premonition of his impending death, and everything he did, he did based on that premonition. If this is the case, then Schleich is simply confusing cause and effect; it is not a matter of autosuggestion in the sense that Schleich assumes—that a conscious thought somehow suggestively brought about death—but rather that death would have occurred under any circumstances, and that the premonition of death led the individual to make his demands. You see, one can certainly take a critical stance even toward such matters if one is familiar with what is indeed quite possible: the emergence into consciousness—albeit in masked forms—of certain subconscious states that are always present in the soul. Much of what manifests in consciousness actually exists in a different form in the unconscious depths of the human soul and is merely interpreted differently by consciousness. Let us take the other case of Sir Oliver Lodge. You are probably all familiar with what is called “second sight.” Through an intensification of the human powers of cognition, a person can indeed perceive something that they cannot perceive through their ordinary, healthy senses. In a certain way, a person can perceive in a manner that does not correspond to the usual conditions of the space in which they are confined, and in a certain way, a person can transcend space and time with their powers of perception. Now, this gives rise to a critical objection, even against Sir Oliver Lodge’s scrupulousness. For after all, Sir Oliver Lodge needs this experimentum crucis to prove that no one other than his son’s soul from the beyond could have spoken to him. But anyone who knows how subtle and intimate this very “second sight” operates—how, through the intimacies of this kind of perception, space and time can be transcended under certain abnormal circumstances (which are, after all, always present in a medium, even if usually not for the medium’s own good)—such a person also knows that this can go to a degree that can be characterized as follows:

[ 10 ] In any case, the two pictures arrived in London fourteen days or three weeks later. The people who were present at the séance had their eyes fixed on these pictures. It was a future fact that Sir Oliver Lodge himself and his relatives would view these pictures. And this future fact simply needed to be interpreted by the medium through a kind of second sight. If this was the case, one can no longer speak of the supernatural shining through from Raymond Lodge’s soul into Sir Oliver Lodge’s laboratory; in that case, we are dealing with something that takes place entirely within the realm of the earthly—simply a vision of the future that, while it does indeed go beyond ordinary perceptual capacity, does not justify the assumption that the soul from the beyond manifested itself in the séance room.

[ 11 ] I mention these two cases and the critical objections in order to convey a sense of just how cautious and thoroughly critical the approach of anthroposophical spiritual research is. For this anthroposophical spiritual research does not, as my last two lectures have already shown, start at all from abnormal phenomena, but rather from perfectly normal human life—from what exists in normal human life as powers of cognition, powers of will, and powers of feeling. And anthroposophical research seeks to further develop these powers for the purpose of gaining knowledge of supersensible worlds, in order, so to speak, to have an inner right—to possess the proper conscientiousness—to undertake exercises that strengthen thinking. Meditation exercises, such as those I have described in recent days, strengthen thinking to such a high degree that a person arrives at a form of thinking that is just as vivid and intense as sensory perception. Or there are exercises of the will, as I have already mentioned, and which I intend to characterize further in these lectures. In order to perform these exercises, it is necessary above all that a person pay close attention to everyday life and be well acquainted with the circumstances in which they find themselves in everyday life.

[ 12 ] In Germany, a man with a scientific background recently presented a brief overview of the anthroposophical science I founded. This man is by no means a blind believer. He summarizes what I have presented in a rich body of literature in a brief overview. He does so by initially refraining from taking a position either for or against, and he makes a remark that sounds like the remarks of a staunch opponent, even though the man is neither an opponent nor a supporter. But I must confess that I like this sharp remark extremely well—I like it very much in light of the entire situation in which anthroposophical spiritual research finds itself in relation to the other spiritual civilization of our time. The man makes the remark: Some of my assertions would be irresistibly comical if one were to consider them with ordinary consciousness. — I must admit that I find this remark exceptionally appealing for the following simple reason. When one recounts such things as the story of Oliver Lodge or the other case I mentioned, people prick up their ears because, in a certain sense, it appeals to their sense of sensation—because it departs from what they are accustomed to—and in that context, one does not find any irresistible humor. But when the anthroposophist is compelled to draw precisely on what is entirely normal and human—on ordinary human memory, on ordinary expressions of the will—and speaks of how, through certain exercises, one can strengthen one’s human life of thought through meditation, and how, through self-education, one can develop the will in a certain way, so that a person becomes different from what they were before and, as a different person, can then penetrate the supersensible worlds—then, because one speaks, so to speak, in ordinary words that people apply in life to whatever is around them, and which they therefore do not want to have taken away for something else—then one can come across as irresistibly comical. That is why many things seem irresistibly comical to those people who want to apply the words only to what they are used for in ordinary life. The anthroposophical spiritual researcher simply finds that very often such judgments about anthroposophical spiritual science appear to him as if someone were to receive a letter that they were supposed to read, but instead of reading it, they chemically analyze the ink. I must admit that much of what is said about anthroposophy strikes me as if someone were not reading a letter but instead chemically analyzing the ink.

[ 13 ] This is the essence of the foundations of anthroposophy: that one starts from entirely normal human experiences; that one is well acquainted with what constitutes contemporary scientific knowledge and what constitutes contemporary moral and ethical life; and that one develops precisely these things to a higher intensity, so that one then penetrates into the higher worlds through the intensification of those powers of cognition that are, in fact, present—albeit to a lesser degree—in ordinary life and in science as well. Of course, to do this, one must have a sense for these ordinary human experiences. One must take note of that which is, after all, an entirely ordinary, normal experience, but which falls outside the scope of what one tends to observe attentively. These things must, so to speak, be able to become riddles—whose enigmatic nature is easily overlooked in everyday life, even though they are right there in everyday life. And this is where, for some, the irresistible humor begins when one says: Above all, the questions that relate to the human being’s alternating state between waking and sleeping must become riddles. Throughout our lives, we constantly alternate between waking and sleeping, yet we pay little attention to this pendulum swing of life that takes place between the state of waking and the state of sleeping. People have, after all, come up with the strangest theories. I could speak at length if I were to mention the individual theories that have been developed regarding the transition between waking and sleeping. But I want to mention only the one—the best-known and most common—which simply assumes: During wakefulness, a person becomes tired, and when they are sufficiently tired, they simply fall asleep, and sleep then in turn provides relief from that fatigue. It eliminates—one can describe this in various ways, more or less materialistically—the cause of the fatigue. I’d like to know whether those who radically advocate this theory have ever observed closely enough when someone—who has had absolutely no reason to tire themselves out particularly during the day, let’s say, a portly pensioner—if that person, I won’t even say late in the evening, but perhaps in the afternoon, attends a more demanding concert or even a lecture and falls asleep—not just after the first five minutes, but after two minutes—whether one can truly say that fatigue is the cause of falling asleep.

[ 14 ] These are indeed things that, at first glance, do seem somewhat comical, but which—in their full, serious mystery, especially when considered from all angles—must confront the human soul. And anyone who simply believes they can study the transition between waking and sleeping using the ordinary, currently accepted scientific methods will never be able to arrive at any satisfactory solution to the problems in this field. For even such thoroughly normal questions of life presuppose that one approaches the phenomena not with ordinary powers of cognition, but with those developed through meditation, concentration, and other exercises of the soul—as I have described in my book *How to Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?* and in my *Secret Science*, through strengthened and intensified thinking, as well as a transformed will.

[ 15 ] What does one gain by first attempting to strengthen one’s thinking through earnest meditation? I have discussed in recent days how this meditation, if it is to have a healthy effect, aims to strengthen thinking in such a way that this thinking becomes a transformed memory. In ordinary memory, we have inner images that represent something we have experienced in our ordinary earthly life since birth. When we recall a real event, an image appears before our soul, and the context of a healthy soul life—along with our connection to the external world in which we live—simply guarantees that we do not conjure up things in our memories in some fantastical way, but rather that the image of memory points to something that was once truly real. Thus, one must learn to bring images—such as those of memory—before the soul through imaginative cognition, as I have called it in recent days; images that arise simply by bringing more and more meditative ideas into one’s consciousness and, just as one otherwise strengthens a muscle through exercise, strengthening and making the soul’s capacity for thought more powerful. One must come to strengthen thinking to such an extent that it lives in its content, just as one otherwise lives only in sensory experience, in the senses. But then, once one has undergone such exercises for a sufficiently long time, once one has truly attained such an inner vitality of thought, what emerges is what one might call pictorial, formative, morphological thinking. Then one has in one’s thinking something so alive, such living content, as one otherwise experiences only in sensory perception. But then one learns to recognize something else as well. What modern science has brought upon us is, in fact, lamented by many: it is materialism. Now, however, in certain areas, anthroposophy—which seeks to penetrate the supersensible worlds with its methods—must, under the influence of modern science in the proper sense, become thoroughly materialistic in certain areas. And this is the case once one has learned to strengthen one’s thinking in a healthy way, once one has learned to hold before one’s eyes, in imaginative thinking, images of sensory vividness through which one becomes truly free in the handling of perceptual material—just as one is otherwise free only in sensory perception, where one knows with absolute certainty: When I see red, when I hear C-sharp, I am dealing with something external, not with something that arises from my soul. Thus, when I engage in imaginative thinking, I know that I am not dealing with something that arises from my soul as a phantasm, but with something that lives within me like a sensory perception.

[ 16 ] But then, when one experiences this inwardly—this freedom from physicality, just as one is free only in sensory perception— then one also knows what memory is in ordinary life; then one knows that with memory, with mental images, one dives down into the physical body at all times, that at any moment, by having a mental image, one experiences a parallel physical—or at least etheric—process in the body. One comes to understand the material significance of what constitutes ordinary thought life. One no longer attributes, as the French philosopher Bergson does, for example, what lives in memories to an independent soul, but one knows that in ordinary memory life, the soul simply plunges into the body and has in the body the instrument to conjure up memories. For one now knows that it is only in the imagination that one has come to think free of the body, to think with the soul alone, and that one never does this in ordinary life. In ordinary life, one perceives through the senses, draws thoughts away from sensory perception, and retains those thoughts in memory. But this retaining in memory means being submerged in the body. Only now, through imaginative cognition, does one come to understand the process of remembering and the process of sensory perception. One learns to recognize what it means to live freely in thought, free from the body. But one also learns to recognize what it means to immerse oneself in the physical organism through one’s thoughts and memories. And just as one can come to know this by intensifying one’s thinking—by strengthening and invigorating one’s thinking in meditation—so too, on the other side, the side of the will, one can practice a kind of self-education through which one arrives at a similar result. In ordinary life, the will actually has a specific value only when it flows into outward action; otherwise, it remains a mere wish, even if we live according to our highest ideals—the most beautiful ideals—even if we are complete idealists. If we are not able to take action in the outer physical reality, we may have the most beautiful ideals, but they remain mere wishes. So what, then, is the special characteristic of desire? Desire has the special characteristic of withdrawing from reality. And one can say figuratively: It is like retracting one’s soul’s feelers when one lives in mere desire. One lives entirely within the soul when one lives in mere desire. But one also knows how desire is initially colored by human temperaments. Melancholic people desire one thing; sanguine people desire another. And anyone who were to set to work with a conscientious scientific method would certainly also see the physical conditions of desire. One can thus perceive the ethereal conditions of desire in the temperaments, but also recognize the physical conditions of desire—the specific composition of the blood, the general physical constitution, and the like. However, it is necessary here to truly exercise that critical spirit I already spoke of in the introduction to my lecture today, and I would like to say that this critical spirit dispels many a beautiful dream. Allow me also to point out how many a beautiful dream is dispelled in this way.

[ 17 ] I certainly do not wish to be irreverent or, out of irreverence, to destroy very ideal things in your presence, for I have a sense of beauty and of the sublime—as found, for example, in the mysticism of Saint Teresa or John of the Cross. Do not think that I am in any way inferior to anyone else in my reverence for the beauty found in these mystical expressions. But anyone who has gained experience with the particular way in which, for example, Saint Teresa or John of the Cross present their visions knows what part human desire plays in these things, what role the desires living in the depths of the soul play—especially in these mystical matters—and is then led by those desires to consider the physical nature of things. For the researcher, there is nothing that could be desecrated in this way by pointing out the truth. Yet there is a certain inner agitation of certain organs, a different nervous response in certain organs, which works its way up into the soul and brings about something as beautiful as what is presented by John of the Cross or Saint Teresa or other such mystics. And one is far more justified in seeking, within a certain physical constitution, the nature of the images that emerge here so beautifully, so wonderfully poetically, than in seeking this nature of the images in the contemplation of some nebulous mystery. As I said, I do not wish to pick apart what I revere no less than anyone here, but the truth must be pointed out—the critical spirit of the anthroposophical foundations—and the fact that, above all, the anthroposophist must not succumb to illusions. And above all, they must be free of illusions regarding human desires and their roots in the human organism—the physical organism—and in what I would call the radiance of that which, if I may use the expression, “simmering” within the human organism, transforms into the most beautiful visions.

[ 18 ] If a person wants to become a spiritual researcher in the anthroposophical sense, they must not only strengthen their thinking abilities through meditation; they must also, through self-education, transform their life of desire into something different. This is achieved by systematically taking control of what otherwise happens in life as if by itself. Let’s be honest: In ordinary life, we allow ourselves to be guided by everything much more than we guide our own lives. In ordinary life, this or that circumstance influences us, and when we look back ten years on our past earthly life, we certainly find that external circumstances and the people we have encountered have brought about the development within us of what is different in us today than it was ten years ago. Anyone who seriously wishes to become an anthroposophical spiritual researcher must, in this regard, also engage in exercises that are exercises of the will. The ordinary will to live has meaning when it is directed toward external actions. The anthroposophical spiritual researcher must direct the impulses of the will toward his or her own development, toward his or her own life. He or she must be able to resolve: with regard to this or that character trait, with regard to this or that expression of life, you must become different from what you are now.

[ 19 ] As paradoxical as it may sound, something you’re deeply accustomed to—even if it’s just a small thing—can help you when, on your own initiative and out of your very own impulse, you resolve to change in some way. A small thing, I say—it need only be something as small as one’s handwriting. If someone truly resolves, with iron determination, to write in a different hand than they have up to now, then the application of this strength through the alteration of a habit—here again with reference to the habit—can be compared to the strengthening of muscle power, because the will is strengthened. And as the will strengthens inwardly—applied not to external things but inwardly—it thereby develops its effects within the human being. And what I otherwise change in the external world through the effects of my will, I now change with regard to my own being. And when one undergoes such exercises of the will—as they are described in detail in anthroposophical writings—one comes to transform one’s life of desire in such a way that it becomes free from the human organism, just as thinking becomes free from the body through meditation. Then—for those moments in which one is engaged in anthroposophical research—what one might still say, “Desire is the father of thought,” is no longer true. — When such self-education, such application of educational impulses to oneself, is practiced in one’s mature years, then desire becomes an inner force that unites with the now-liberated thinking. And through this, one comes to truly see what the impulses of the will in ordinary life are, what the thoughts of ordinary life are. Just as one has previously learned to perceive red and blue or C-sharp or C, so one now learns to perceive thoughts as realities; so one now comes to know the impulses of the will as separate from oneself.

[ 20 ] In this way, one comes to correctly assess the alternating states between waking and sleeping. Only by training the mind through practice so that it becomes as objective as a sensory perception—and by no longer being connected to one’s body through this thought developed in free meditation, as one is with a remembered thought—can one come to grasp the act of falling asleep correctly through direct perception. Anyone who wishes to penetrate something like ordinary, normal falling asleep using ordinary cognitive faculties will be able to formulate hypothesis after hypothesis: they will not learn to recognize what falling asleep itself is. And this intensified thinking that one has acquired, together with the transformed desire, are what show a person: When you fall asleep, you can, in a certain sense, still follow the moment of your falling asleep; you look, as it were, toward your falling asleep, and you now experience that, as you fall asleep, you do not simply have before you an altered state of your body, but that you truly slip out of your body with your independent soul life, for you leave something behind, and that is your thoughts.

[ 21 ] Only by strengthening one’s thoughts can one consciously leave them behind when falling asleep. The thoughts remain with the body; they permeate the body as formative forces. And one realizes that one has merely stepped out of one’s body with one’s feelings and will. But by seeing what aspects of the soul one brings with oneself when stepping out of the body, one has also gained a vivid certainty that one possesses an independent soul, that one steps out of the body with this independent soul. And one now knows: What one has left behind in bed upon falling asleep is not merely what can be investigated through physical anatomy, physiology, and biology, but is interwoven with the fabric of thought. One first had to make this fabric of thought strong enough so that one can now leave it behind in this way—consciously, just as one turns one’s face away from colors, just as one leaves behind a visual perception. And through this intensified thinking, one knows: You have left behind in your bed—so that they may exist independently between falling asleep and waking up—your physical body and a force body that contains the thoughts acting as forces. — These formative thoughts, these morphological thoughts, of which I spoke in the previous lectures, are in our ordinary consciousness merely like mirror images. They also have a reality, and with this reality they reside within the physical body as a special etheric body. One now knows: Through your will and your feelings, as you fall asleep, you have stepped out of your sensory body and your thought body—I can also say physical body and etheric body, or physical body and formative-force body. It is just that in ordinary life we are such that our consciousness is not strong enough to remain consciously alert when it is not filled with thought. Consciousness, as we experience it in ordinary life and in ordinary science, must unite with the body and experience the body’s thoughts within itself; only then is it fully conscious. When it steps out of the body as mere feeling and willing, it becomes unconscious in ordinary life. But whoever has mastered the imaginative thinking mentioned here in recent days experiences the moment of falling asleep consciously, and can also bring about states that are otherwise like ordinary sleep, except that they are now not unconscious; rather, the person feels a force at work within themselves, so that they truly experience what they have stepped out of the body with—the soul’s organism of feeling and will—and thus truly experience that which can become free of the body.

[ 22 ] Anyone who has come to know the moment of falling asleep in this way also comes to know the moment of waking up. They now learn to recognize that the moment of waking up actually consists of two parts: We wake up just as we normally do when stimulated by a sensory impression. Every time we wake up, something must somehow stimulate our soul. It need only be our own body, which has slept long enough and, in its altered state, exerts this stimulus. But just as there is a stimulus in the case of a sensory impression, there is always a stimulus upon waking, and this stimulus speaks to our feeling, which had withdrawn as we fell asleep. Just as the eyes and ears normally perceive sound or color, so now the independent soul, through its feeling, perceives something external; and the moment of waking is a perception through feeling, and the moment of waking is a taking hold of the body. Just as we normally move an arm or a leg, so we take hold of the organism with our independent will. There are truly two acts involved in waking up.

[ 23 ] We have now learned about the interrelationship between falling asleep and waking up—specifically, the interplay between the independent soul, which leaves the body every night through its feelings and will, and the states in which this soul exists from waking until falling asleep, when it is connected to the body. The foundations of anthroposophical research are thus a strengthening of the powers of cognition and will, so that one can observe and truly perceive things that one would otherwise be unable to perceive. And if one is able to perceive the transitional states between sleeping and waking in this way, one can also advance to something else.

[ 24 ] If one continues to practice more and more of the exercises I have described in recent days—as they are described in detail in the books I have mentioned—one will eventually reach a point where one does not always have to sleep when out of one’s body, but can actually withdraw one’s feelings and will from one’s body at will and truly look back at the body. Then the human body becomes something objective, just like a desk or a table. And it is only through this that one truly comes to know a thing—not by being linked to it, not by being subjectively imbued with it, but by having it before oneself as an object. What one has before oneself as an object when one steps out of the human body with will and feeling is, above all, the physical body. Tomorrow we will see how it appears in a somewhat altered form, and how, through this perception from outside the body, one also gains a new insight into the physical nature of the human being. But above all, it is the body of formative forces, which consists of a web of thoughts—but of active, forceful thoughts. One looks back upon it as upon a mirror. And one encounters the peculiar fact that one was previously connected to one’s thoughts as a subject, as a personality; now one has the world of thoughts—I would say—before oneself as if on a photographic plate, by looking back upon one’s own body. It is just as one normally has a small image of the observed world within the eye. Just as the eye is an organ for seeing because the world can be reflected within it, so, for such a perception, the etheric and physical body left behind becomes a mirroring apparatus in which something spiritual-soul-related is now reflected, whereas in the eye only something external and physical is reflected. But through this mirror one sees not only the fabric of thought, but one sees the world by having left one’s thoughts behind in the physical body.

[ 25 ] In this way, one can describe in great detail exactly what happens when a person, through meditation and the self-discipline of the will, strengthens their powers of cognition for the purpose of perceiving supersensible worlds. Through this, a person comes to develop certain states that are not states of sleep when they are outside the body, but rather represent what I have called in my writings the continuity of consciousness. Through higher cognition, a person truly steps out of their body with their independent soul being. They recognize this stepping out by the fact that the mirror of thought is now not within them but outside of them. A person steps out of the body, but—as I have already explained—remains fully conscious of himself. He can return again and again; he is not someone who hallucinates or indulges in visions, but rather follows the entire process unfolding here with mathematical certainty. Because the human being can follow the process in this way, he is now also able to assess ordinary earthly life from a distance. He knows what it is like to re-enter the body with his independent soul. He not only learns about falling asleep and leaving the body; he now learns to re-enter his body with his independent soul entirely at will. This makes an even more profound impression once a person has experienced their independent soul and then, as they re-enter the body, finds themselves captured by it again. That is when the world of the spiritual and soul life—which one experiences independently around oneself—comes to an end. One feels it fading away, and one feels oneself being absorbed as one re-enters the body. One also learns to step out of the body by observing how thoughts drift away from oneself, how they remain with the body, and how one steps out of the body with the soul’s feeling and willing essence. But at the very moment one steps out, one feels the spiritual world emerge. What has one now come to know? One has now come to know, indirectly through waking and falling asleep, the processes of birth and death. One has come to understand how, upon falling asleep, a person unconsciously withdraws with their feelings and will from the physical and etheric organism, and how they re-enter it in the morning upon waking. Just as they become unconscious in this way, so do they become more clearly conscious when, after performing the exercises, they step out of their physical body. This is what one now experiences in full consciousness as a foretaste of the process that occurs at death, and of what one experiences when one descends from the spiritual world into the physical body. When the thoughts disappear again, when they assert themselves once more as mere images, as unrealities within the personality, one comes to know the moment of birth.

[ 26 ] While conventional scientific methods remain limited to applying ordinary reason and directing thoughts toward external observation or experimentation—which remain tied to the individual—anthroposophical research enables one to develop a different aspect of one’s personality by objectifying one’s thoughts and transforming one’s own body into a comprehensive, expansive sensory organ. I would say that one’s own body becomes a single eye. But the eye is now outside of oneself; it is at the same time like a photographic plate. The world in which one exists—the spiritual-soul world—is now reflected as a thought-image in the external world. And now, by having, so to speak, seen through entirely normal processes—waking up and falling asleep, being born and dying—one also comes to have an inner insight into the soul. Now, through this insight, one learns to determine whether a particular experience was merely an unconscious imagination—what Professor Schleich calls “death through autosuggestion”—or whether it was “second sight,” as described by Oliver Lodge. One now learns, in fact, to truly recognize how a person behaves not when they become a conscious researcher of the spirit, but when the independent soul is forced out of the physical body by abnormal circumstances. This occurs when the physical body becomes ill in any way. Let’s just say that some organ is injured. That can certainly be enough for a person—a soul-and-spirit person—who is not yet capable of independent vision to experience an imperfect perception of what is otherwise achieved in a conscious, methodical way by the spiritual researcher, precisely because they are driven out of their physical body not by mere sleep but by pathological conditions. Therefore, there is no need to deny the truth of the anomalous observations that already interest people today who wish to go beyond the ordinary and trivial. But one also becomes critical of them, and this criticism stems simply from the fact that anthroposophical spiritual science is not what many people claim it to be; it is not the caricature that many people make of it, but rather seeks, through the recognition of all the scientific, conscientious methodology that humanity has attained over the course of the last few centuries, to advance into the supersensible worlds by awakening special spiritual powers. And since the human being, with his innermost, eternal core of being, belongs to these supersensible worlds, the human being—in his mortal and immortal aspects, in his entire being—can only be understood through this spiritual research, as will be demonstrated in tomorrow’s lecture. But it is precisely by immersing themselves in this eternal aspect of their being—not merely by developing an anthropology that explains how human beings know through their bodies, but by developing an anthroposophy that explains how human beings know through their souls and spirits as independent entities—that human beings come to know the true world.

[ 27 ] The task of the next two lectures will be to describe, from this perspective, the true nature of human beings—including their immortal, eternal nature—and the true form of the world.