The Essence of Anthroposophy
GA 80a
19 November 1921, Berlin
Translated by Steiner Online Library
1. Anthroposophy and Spiritual Science
[ 1 ] Ladies and gentlemen! Anthroposophy seeks to guide human knowledge into those realms where the great questions of life and the soul lie—questions that concern the human destiny in the broadest sense, the question of the eternity of the human soul, that which influences human life from the world beyond birth and death, and so on. But this anthroposophy, as understood here, seeks to conduct its research entirely in harmony with the current spirit of science. If this spirit of science still regards it in many cases today as the product of some kind of fantasy, then anthroposophy must believe that such views are still based on a complete misunderstanding. However, anthroposophy must indeed go beyond the findings that can be arrived at today by recognized science. Nevertheless, this anthroposophy holds modern natural science in the highest esteem and offers it the fullest recognition. Over the course of the last three to four centuries, this natural science has made an inestimable contribution to the overall education of humanity. For anthroposophy, these achievements are significant first and foremost because of the state of mind that a person can attain who is fully capable of immersing themselves in the discipline of this scientific spirit and its research methods, and who can imbue themselves with the mindset that prevails within modern natural science.
[ 2 ] I would like to say that modern natural science has, in fact, been the first to bring to light the full significance of what we call sensory cognition. And anyone who wishes to speak—as we are to do this evening—about supersensory cognition must, above all, have a complete and thoroughly clear understanding of the nature of sensory cognition, free from any form of dilettantism. Through the systematic application of observational methods, through the refinement of experimental techniques, and through the mathematical and other rational treatment of observation and experimentation, modern natural science has indeed gradually risen to the ideal of arriving, through the study of the sensory world, at something that increasingly approaches objectivity—an objectivity into which nothing from subjective, personal arbitrariness of human beings, and nothing from any phantasms or illusions. In this regard, supersensible knowledge must also emulate natural science in every respect.
[ 3 ] If we use the human mind solely for the purpose—and as mathematicians, we do this in particular— to organize and systematize sensory phenomena and thereby discern their laws, then one gradually comes to realize that the senses and their explanations are, in essence, the great educators of the human mind—that mind which is, after all, in a certain sense dependent on a person’s inner organic constitution. We know how much we depend—and modern science, physiology, and pathology can further corroborate this—on our physical and mental constitution in our judgments and in the formation of our concepts. But as we engage with sensory perceptions in a scientific manner, we are constantly compelled to correct, in an objective sense, those elements that seek to emerge from us as illusions or phantasms. This—I say it again—must be emulated by supersensory knowledge.
[ 4 ] Yet the modern scientific method, in its efforts to understand external nature, reaches a certain limit, and prominent natural scientists have, based on the very nature of scientific knowledge, spoken clearly about these “limits of scientific knowledge.” One cannot go beyond the order of sensory phenomena. The moment one seeks to go beyond—through rational speculation—the “carpet of sensory phenomena,” so to speak, that spreads out around us, one must either establish the limits of knowledge of nature, or else, with the mind set free, as it were, extend concepts outward, speculate, and construct hypotheses into the void, into the indeterminate. Such hypotheses have, of course, been formulated in sufficient number. Quite a few people have attempted to work their way cautiously with concepts and ideas beyond the realm of the senses. Yet all such efforts ultimately leave people unsatisfied, for they can never provide themselves with any insight into what justification there actually may be for extending the ideas gained from the sensory world into the realm beyond the senses.
[ 5 ] And so all philosophies, all speculations that seek to reach beyond the sensory world, are thoroughly unsatisfactory to the serious thinker—especially to the thinker accustomed to scientific concepts—and we see the consequences of this in the various ideological movements of the present day. The human heart, the human soul, cannot be content with what the external senses can tell it. The human soul knows that its merely temporal fate—which, from its perspective, is bound to this sensory world—cannot capture its ultimate essence; and so, in response, deeper natures and more serious souls often take refuge in all manner of mystical pursuits.
[ 6 ] These mystical endeavors are aimed at turning one’s awareness, to a greater or lesser extent, away from the external sensory world, and also, to a greater or lesser extent, away from the intellectual analysis of this sensory world, and instead at looking into the inner self of the human being. But just as one cannot arrive at a truly satisfying understanding of the nature of the human soul merely through external natural science or through speculations based on it, so too can one not seriously arrive at a satisfying understanding of the nature of the human soul through ordinary “mystical deepening.” For what good does it do us, no matter how much we cultivate this mystical deepening? What, through it, rises from within the human being to the surface of consciousness? Certainly, some people believe they can exclude all subjective arbitrariness by quietly and meditatively surrendering to what, in a sense, an objective inner flow from the soul can tell us about our own human nature.
[ 7 ] But whoever is truly able to analyze the nature of the human soul—whoever can examine how, in this human soul life, through the detour of a constantly changing external life, there is nothing present other than the external impressions that we have taken into our souls from the outside world since birth—will ultimately always discover that the mystic, who often believes he has found his divine origin, an Eternal—is ultimately dealing with nothing other than the reminiscences of experiences to which the human being was exposed, particularly during those times of childhood when one is not yet fully aware of the relationship between the human being and the external world. And if, moreover, through a sound study of the soul, one is able to see how the inner state of the soul—what might be called a certain
[ 8 ] In short, anyone seeking serious anthroposophical spiritual science must navigate around two pitfalls: limited natural science on the one hand, and mysticism—which is so steeped in illusions—on the other. One must seek a reliable method that is thoroughly modeled on the certainty of natural science, one that is imbued with the same mindset that scientists adopt when conducting experiments in the laboratory or studying physiology or pathology at the dissection table. Anthroposophy must not only arrive at different conclusions than those of established science, but it must also develop its own method.
[ 9 ] You will now understand that, in this brief evening lecture, I will be able to provide only general guidelines—and just a few points for reflection—regarding both the findings of this anthroposophical spiritual science and its methods and lines of reasoning. I will be able to show how the evidence is found. However, what I intend to outline briefly here is already the subject of a vast body of literature, and therefore I can offer only suggestions, not anything conclusive, within the framework of a single lecture.
[ 10 ] Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science must go beyond the ordinary scientific method! Why, then, is natural science limited? Why does mysticism not lead to the true essence of the human being? Because both natural science and mysticism are limited to those cognitive faculties that human beings develop in ordinary life—whether through natural growth, organic development, or the education common today. In this way, we are merely cultivating the scientific method. Anthroposophy must now emphatically draw attention to the fact that human beings can become aware of other faculties that lie deeper within their souls—faculties that lie dormant in the soul for the purposes of ordinary life and ordinary science—and that they can also consciously apply such faculties to genuine scientific knowledge. To develop these abilities, however, one should not reach into some kind of void, nor take refuge once again in some mystical darkness; rather, one must start from what is already present in ordinary science and in ordinary human life.
[ 11 ] Here we have what confronts us in such an illusory way in mysticism: the human capacity for memory at the very limit of our ordinary realm. This capacity for memory is, after all, entirely dependent on the human organism. Yet it is precisely this capacity for memory that gives us, as human beings, our coherent consciousness, our coherent “I.” One need only consider the dire psychological state of those people whose continuous memory is clouded all the way back to childhood. There are medical conditions in which long periods of time are missing from a person’s memory. Such people have, in a sense, cast a part of their own inner life out of themselves. They no longer feel or experience their whole being. In them, one can see the significance of coherent memory for a healthy inner life. What, then, is the nature of this memory? It consists in our ability to summon into our consciousness, in the form of images, experiences we have had in our ordinary life between birth and the present moment. We carry within us images that we can conjure up before our soul in our everyday life, more or less faithfully. The anthroposophical method first takes this soul capacity as its starting point and, by transforming this capacity for memory, develops what is known as imaginative knowledge. This is not merely a collection of imaginings or fantasies, but rather something that can be attained solely through rigorous inner self-discipline and corresponds to an objectivity—albeit a spiritual objectivity—just as memory corresponds to objectivity rather than mere fantasy. I will briefly outline the principle of how one can attain this first stage of supersensible knowledge, namely imaginative knowledge.
[ 12 ] The point here is to allow ideas to be present in one’s consciousness in a manner similar to what normally occurs with memory. However—since we are dealing not with a development but with a transformation of the faculty of memory—these must not be images that one simply retrieves from the storehouse of one’s memories. Such mental images are, after all, shaped by one’s emotional life—and indeed by one’s very physical constitution—and a person can never know what is being suggested to them when they simply allow memories to be present in their consciousness.
[ 13 ] In order to bring about what can lead us to imagination—and what I would like to call meditation (as I have referred to it in my writings)— one must either allow oneself to be guided by the vision of an experienced anthroposophist, or one must try to form one’s own vision or complex of ideas that is easily comprehensible—one that can be taken in at a glance, just as, for example, a triangle in geometry can be taken in at a glance—where one can be absolutely certain: what is present in one’s consciousness is all that exists. Nothing from the world of the emotions or from the organ constitution influences this; one truly has everything that one can take in at a glance.
[ 14 ] But it is not this content that matters; rather, it is that the soul now mobilizes all its powers to keep this content present in its consciousness for a shorter or longer period of time—some people need a longer time for this, others a shorter time; it depends on people’s dispositions. For what matters is the development of these powers lying dormant in the soul—not what we bring into our consciousness through thought, but what we do with what we have thought. To give an analogy: when we exert our arm muscles particularly hard through some kind of work, they become stronger and stronger; they develop more and more strength. Through work and practice, this physical strength, this physical power, develops. It is exactly the same when, for example, through years of practice, we bring images into our consciousness in the manner described and then hold them there for some time. What the soul must do in this process strengthens those soul forces that we do not possess in ordinary life.
[ 15 ] I would like to emphasize: What I am describing here is easy to describe, but difficult to put into practice. It is no easier to make progress using the methods of spiritual science than it is using the methods of a laboratory or an observatory. Certainly, there are people who are particularly gifted for the development of such inner soul powers; they may make very rapid progress. But in general, one needs—without requiring a great deal of time each day, for the individual exercise can be very brief; [how] effective it is depends on the intensity of the exercise, not on the length of time, which only lulls one to sleep— one needs repetition, constant practice, in order to finally reach the point of noticing something very specific within oneself; namely, that one has drawn something from the depths of the soul that one had not previously made use of, neither in ordinary life nor in ordinary science. To make myself clear, I would like to use a comparison.
[ 16 ] As human beings with ordinary consciousness, we can recall events up to a certain point in our childhood. What lies before that point eludes ordinary memory. Why is that? Well, during this period, the child’s inner life is shaped by impressions from the external world, by combinations of these external influences, and by the interplay of emotional impulses with volitional impulses within the soul. This process does not yet operate through the concepts that emerge only with the development of language. Rather, what the child perceives in the external world is imprinted upon the still malleable, formative brain, and it is fascinating to observe just how malleable a child’s physical brain is, how elastically it develops in accordance with the child’s experiences of the external world. But one may also say: This physical brain of the human being becomes rigid, and precisely at the moment when it has become particularly rigid, the brain’s formation ceases, and those forces that previously worked on the brain are set free. They now give rise to the child’s imaginative life. This is most readily kindled through language. Human beings continue to develop this; through careful education, they continually shape, as it were, what they are able to bring forth by virtue of the development of their brain in the first years of life.
[ 17 ] In a wonderful insight, a man like Jean Paul spoke of education in such a way that he said: A person learns more in the first three years of life than in three years of academic study later on. In fact, this is absolutely true, for our organism is formed during the first three years of life, and, essentially, we can shape—and have shaped—our entire subsequent education only in accordance with the way our physical brain is formed during those very first years of life.
[ 18 ] With these abilities, which develop in this way, human beings today remain at this stage both in recognized science and in everyday life. The anthroposophical method now seeks to take up—in a higher sense—what has been accomplished for the human organism in the early years of childhood, not for physical development, but for spiritual development. If one practices such meditations as I have described, allowing these images to remain present in consciousness for a sufficiently long time—depending on one’s individual disposition—and thereby strengthens the soul forces, one will notice: Something similar to what happened in very early childhood is now taking place, and indeed within the person’s full consciousness; only, through a properly guided meditation, one does not intervene in the physical organization, but rather in the finer organization that underlies the physical organism and which one is, in fact, only now discovering.
[ 19 ] In the course of meditation, one must certainly come to realize—as one had to honestly admit to oneself beforehand through one’s power of imagination—that there are limits to one’s knowledge. Thus, one must be able to stand quite honestly on the ground of scientific research and say to oneself, for example, in the spirit of du Bois-Reymond, who delivered his famous lecture “On the Limits of Natural Knowledge” in Leipzig in the early 1870s. For ordinary imagination, there are limits to knowledge that cannot be transcended. But when one lives this meditative life, one finds that, just as a child, through its development, becomes ever more deeply interwoven with the mysteries of the outer world, certain limits are now practically overcome. One can then honestly admit to oneself: Before, you had those limits because you did not use certain abilities. Now you have developed these abilities, and you can cross over these limits. In this way, anthroposophy transforms knowledge—which would otherwise be merely intellectual and formal—into practical, life-affirming knowledge. Before certain limits of cognition are crossed, the ability to cross them—and above all, the awareness that can inwardly recognize: “Now you are capable of something different than you were before”—is first cultivated.
[ 20 ] And it is precisely this inner experience that one has: As one progresses in meditation, one comes to realize that, without sensory perception, one enters into an inner activity that proceeds with exactly the same liveliness as sensory perception. What one experiences inwardly in meditation are images—images that are indeed more vivid than memories, as vivid as sensory perceptions, but do not have the same content as sensory perceptions. Just as one otherwise experiences colors with the eyes and sounds with the ears—whereas mere imagination, and even memory, is something rather pale by comparison—so, with the same engagement of the whole person, one now experiences—just as one does in sensory perception— one now experiences something new: a world of imaginations that is present to consciousness, which was not there before—a thoroughly new world. And one has attained the objectivity of this world by having previously made those efforts of which I have spoken.
[ 21 ] I was unable to elaborate on this further; I could only hint at the principle. In some of my writings—for example, in the book *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?* and also in the second part of *An Outline of Esoteric Science*—you will find the details of this meditative practice described. Here it suffices to have indicated the principle by which one arrives at imaginative knowledge.
[ 22 ] When one speaks of this imaginative insight to those who today often believe they stand firmly on the ground of a scientific mindset, they say: “Although this may seem to have been painstakingly attained, it is nothing more than something acquired through autosuggestion—something that, just like any visions or hallucinations, is brought to the surface of consciousness from repressed nervous energy.” That is why it must be emphasized again and again that what anthroposophy cultivates in this way lies entirely on the opposite path from pathological soul experiences, illusion, hallucination, or mediumship. One need only recall one thing: Anyone who, for example, examines what I have set forth in the treatise *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?* regarding the meditation exercises will see that the primary concern is to keep the human soul life completely healthy and fully intact alongside the development of this higher knowledge—that is, let us say, the imaginative life. In the case of a diseased soul life, the diseased aspect drowns out the healthy one, effectively extinguishing it. In the soul life sought by anthroposophy for the sake of higher knowledge, however, the healthy soul life remains entirely intact alongside that which is now also sought in a healthy way as imagination. Imagination appears as something entirely different from ordinary mental life, but at no moment is the person who has attained it in a different inner state of mind than one in which their remaining memory and cognition continue to exist healthily alongside imagination.
[ 23 ] “Imagination,” I said, “is a transformed memory. This is also evident in its very nature.” Some beginners on this path develop this imagination. They are then delighted when they have achieved the first elementary results—that they can develop a pictorial, objectively given life of the imagination that already points them, at least in a suggestive way, toward a supersensible world. But they lose it again. This stems from the very nature of this imaginative knowledge—and indeed of all higher knowledge. The knowledge we otherwise acquire through ordinary consciousness in the external world leads precisely to memory; we can retrieve it from memory. What occurs in the imaginative life is there, alive, like a sensory experience, like sounds or colors. But it does not imprint itself on memory. This is precisely what surprises the beginner most of all. He believes he can have a supersensible insight, and he believes he can carry it through life like an ordinary memory. Just as when we have looked at a color, then turned away from it, and no longer have it, so too do we no longer have the supersensible experience once we have forgotten it in a supersensible-psychic sense. All of this must be taken into account. Anyone who speaks of this supersensible world never speaks from memory; they speak from an immediate experience of the supersensible world.
[ 24 ] Let me make a brief personal remark. Even when giving a lecture like today’s, in which one speaks about the supersensible world in a general way, one does not prepare for it in the same way as for other lectures on spiritual knowledge; rather, one must above all direct one’s preparation in such a way as to enable the organism and the life of the soul to receive the supersensible insights.
[ 25 ] For if I have a supernatural insight today, once I have had it, it is as if I have forgotten it; and if I want to have it again, I must bring it about once more. I cannot simply recall it; I can only repeat what I did in meditation and concentration to bring about that extrasensory experience at that time.
[ 26 ] Thus, even in the imagination, the supersensible worlds are such that they do not become imprinted on the memory. Why is that? It is because supersensible knowledge, as understood here, is by no means something formal, but rather actually brings the supersensible world to us. We can recall knowledge that merely provides us with images of the external material world time and again. Once we have assimilated it, that is good; then we can retrieve it from memory. This type of knowledge is based solely on image processes, on processes of reflection in relation to the external world. It is, in essence, not a sum of real processes. Real processes unfold in such a way that they are subject to repetition—rhythmic repetition—rather than to memory.
[ 27 ] It is very trivial, yet true, when I say: Our body needs food. The food we consume is processed by it in some way, which I won’t go into further here. But once it has been processed, the process in question is, so to speak, over. The next day, however, we must eat again, and no one can claim that they did eat yesterday; nor would they. We are not dealing with a formal process of reflection, but with a real process. Such real processes are those that occur in the supersensible knowledge referred to here. What has once been brought about as a content of the soul must be brought about again and again by repeating the same steps. One can recall the steps that at that time constituted the preparation for certain supersensible experiences. But only by repeating the same steps can one arrive at the same results.
[ 28 ] Once one has entered this imaginative world, however, one is fully aware that one is now in a world of imaginations. The way one experiences these imaginations is an inner grasping that engages the whole person. But one also knows that one has not grasped an external world with one’s consciousness, but that one has in fact only brought up from within oneself everything that one has drawn out of one’s consciousness. The person hallucinating, who surrenders to whatever visions arise, regards what he has in his images as reality. The one who, trained in anthroposophy, lives within imagination, knows that in imagination he has, at first, only himself. There is already a certain development of power inherent in this awareness of having only oneself, for everything—I would say—that appears in the form of living images, as vivid as any external sensory perception, tempts one to regard it as an external world. It is also objective, but it is our own objective inner world. One must indeed apply a certain inner power of consciousness to become fully aware: one is dealing with one’s own inner self.
[ 29 ] But this imagination can progress to the point where one truly sees one’s own inner self right before one’s eyes, and indeed, so that one now, with the help of this imaginative insight, has the first—though now, I would say, subjectively-objective—transcendental experience. That one has before oneself something like a tableau of one’s life—I cannot say spatial, nor temporal; it is something both temporal and spatial, something in which one has something temporal before oneself, yet as if entirely side by side—that one has such a tableau of one’s life before oneself, one that extends back to the time of birth, which one has oneself lived through in this earthly life up to the moment of birth. [This appears before the soul in such a temporal-spatial image.] At the same time, one surveys what has come to us as experiences over the course of long ages. Otherwise, memory works in such a way that one thing or another surfaces from the stream of experiences. Now, however, one has before oneself—not as a memory, but as an image, and specifically as a vivid inner image—one’s entire life, as it is described even by natural scientists who are sufficiently conscientious in such matters, so that one can recognize it as the truth. Just as, for example, someone who is close to drowning clearly sees his life before him, so too does the person who has advanced in this way to imaginative insight see his life before him in a comprehensible tableau.
[ 30 ] This is the first experience one has. It is the experience that can already lead one to realize: Anyone who, in the anthroposophical sense, acts as a spiritual researcher must also become acquainted with all the inner experiences that accompany such supersensory experiences. What they communicate certainly serves to strengthen and bring peace to life. It gives life a sense of security; it reveals the eternal essence of the human being, as we shall yet see. But the research, the experience itself, is certainly not something that every person would wish to pursue from the outset. One must first have developed a full, healthy soul life—for which exhaustive guidance is provided in the books already mentioned—in order to face with an open mind and strength that which is necessary not for understanding or receiving messages about the supersensible world, but for research in these areas.
[ 31 ] Beholding this tableau of life certainly evokes an inner experience that I would call “oppressive”; a kind of nightmare descends upon life. And this is precisely where progress lies: in the fact that the anthroposophical researcher confronts these things with strong spiritual power and overcomes them; in the fact that, as a preparatory step, he has first developed a healthy spiritual life to such an extent that he can endure in a healthy way whatever he encounters as side effects of gaining knowledge of the supersensible worlds. Further progress then lies in the development of such powers. For this progress must, after all, lead to the point where the human being not only transforms the faculty of memory, as I have described, in order to attain imaginative knowledge. Rather, further progress consists in cultivating the ability to forget—the suppression of mental images—and in bringing this suppression of mental images to such a degree that one can now suppress the entire tableau of life and remove it from consciousness. One develops this artful forgetting by repeatedly and arbitrarily banishing the clear, well-defined images described above—after having allowed them to be present in one’s consciousness—even as they actually seek to occupy our consciousness. Whereas a person who simply surrenders to their nature usually develops a tendency to cling to these ideas, someone who wishes to become a true spiritual researcher in the anthroposophical sense must cultivate the ability to suppress these ideas once again through fully conscious will and to completely empty their consciousness—without, if I may make this remark, falling asleep in the process. Most people, when they want to empty their consciousness, are actually only capable of sinking into a gentle slumber. But this is precisely what the spiritual scientist must develop with all his strength—indeed, with heightened strength: to bring ideas into his consciousness and then bring them out again, so that he is able to remain in a state of empty consciousness for shorter or longer periods of time.
[ 32 ] This is what is significant about the anthroposophical method: that one must bring the will into one’s entire life of imagination; that one must allow ideas to be fully present in consciousness in a way that is clearly comprehensible, then make them vanish from consciousness again, and in this way insert the will into the process of imagining, into the formation of thoughts. Whereas one would otherwise develop one’s thoughts solely in relation to the ongoing external life, passively surrendering to it, one has now, for some time, gained a strong inner power through the suppression of mental images. Once one has transformed the act of forgetting in this way, one is then able to erase this entire tableau of life as well, so that one now removes not merely a single mental image from consciousness, but the entire inner life that has unfolded before the soul like a tableau from birth up to this very moment. One feels overwhelmed by this tableau precisely because one now faces not merely mental images as usual, but that which are inner formative forces themselves. One experiences that, by grasping this tableau of life, one has not merely grasped something intellectual and formal, but the very forces that constitute our inner powers of growth. One beholds what has shaped the organism since childhood as formative forces or—if I may say so—as purely etheric forces. That which has shaped us is what one has first called into consciousness, and what one now brings forth again from consciousness.
[ 33 ] Once one has reached this point, the next stage of supersensory knowledge follows—what I have called “inspired knowledge” in my books. By this I do not mean some old-fashioned superstition, but only what I describe—terminology is needed everywhere. This inspiration consists in clearing away what has arisen in the previous manner, in creating the conditions that empty the consciousness. But the consciousness does not remain empty. Because one has had the formative forces of the human being in one’s consciousness—the forces that shape the liver, lungs, heart, and so on, which one perceives in them—and by now removing these forces from consciousness, it does not remain empty. Rather, what now arises in consciousness is a true spiritual life, a true supersensible world. For by removing these formative forces from our consciousness, we, as it were—just as we otherwise bid farewell to an experience—first take our leave, so to speak, for the moment of insight, from the external sensory world with which the life experiences depicted in the tableau of life are connected. At this moment, we are in another world. We are in the world where not only do the forces lie that have been shaping us since birth, but also those that shaped us before birth or conception.
[ 34 ] Through developed insight, we now become aware that, before we—as soul-spiritual beings—integrated ourselves into what the hereditary currents of the physical-material world can offer us, we existed in another, spiritual world from which we descended and integrated ourselves into what surrounds us materially—like an outer covering, like an outer instrument—during our physical earthly life. In this way, through a genuine practice of knowledge, we come to perceive what cannot be perceived by the ordinary powers of cognition. We come to perceive a world even after we have taken leave of the sensory world in the manner described. We perceive a human spiritual force when we have not only extinguished our perception of the sensory world but have also extinguished our experiences of the life tableau just described. Yet a healthy state of soul always remains for one who perceives in this way. Never is the person who ascends in this way to inspired knowledge in a state where, like a hallucinator or a psychopath, they have something within them that extinguishes their healthy soul life and takes its place; rather, the healthy soul life remains. And just as in imagination the healthy soul life stands alongside the imaginative process, so it is now that there is a rhythmic alternation: prenatal life, life in the spiritual-soul realm, then the human being who stands here on Earth on two legs and thinks with us. And we swing back and forth, as it were, in rhythm—in the rhythm between the supersensible and the sensible worlds. We breathe in, we breathe out. It feels almost as if we are experiencing what we were before we became part of the earthly world, and then we live our way back to what we are as earthly human beings. We experience a rhythm like the rhythm of breathing. And if all rhythms in the world are related—one rhythm always being a reflection of the other—then at least in the rhythm of breathing something can be seen that forms an analogy to what I have just described as a rhythm. Hence, there is a method that is no longer useful for Westerners today: the ancient Indian yoga method, which also speaks of these things. But it is no longer useful for people today because they cannot, like the ancient or modern Indians, perform ordinary yoga exercises; rather, Westerners today need exercises such as those I have described.
[ 35 ] But how are the yoga exercises actually performed? Let us briefly explain this here for clarity. The yogi surrenders to a breathing process that is not unconscious, but rather a regulated, conscious one. He consciously experiences what otherwise takes place unconsciously. Through an altered, regulated breathing process and corresponding inhalation and exhalation, he thus attunes himself to the rhythm of the world. And indeed, through his special constitution, if he performs his exercises over a long period of time, he is able to perceive the supersensible life before birth—where it sometimes appears as a spiritual-soul aspect and at other times here in earthly life. As we can see, the analogy alone justifies speaking of <“breathing”> here. For just as we draw in the breath and then exhale it, so the physical aspect of the human being—which is given through the material current of heredity—unites with the spiritual-soul aspect, inhaling it, so to speak. The breath lasts only for the duration of one earthly life. And in the same way, at death, the spiritual-soul aspect is breathed out again.
[ 36 ] This process of being born and dying is, in fact, what replicates inspired insight within the process of cognition. As strange and paradoxical as it may sound, what is otherwise experienced only once—in birth and death—namely, the physical body’s union with the spiritual-soul aspect, followed by the spiritual-soul aspect’s emergence from it—is precisely what, in the imitation of knowledge, gives rise to what constitutes anthroposophical knowledge. Through this—not through speculation, not through philosophizing, nor through any form of mysticism, which can only be based on illusions—but through a genuine practice of knowledge, one enters into a living experience of that world in which the human being was before birth and in which they will be once they have crossed the threshold of death. It is, however, still strange to people today when, as happens, for example, in *Outline of Esoteric Science*, the worlds that human beings experience before birth and after death are described in such detail as the details of plant life or other aspects of our sensory world are otherwise described by naturalists, botanists, mineralogists, or geologists. But humanity will have to get used to the fact that it is possible to bring inner forces to human consciousness—the formative powers that animate the human being, which are, however, already supersensory sensory powers — let me use this paradoxical term — and which therefore, as a spiritual-soul being, bring the human being into an interrelationship with the spiritual-soul worlds that surround him before birth and after death.
[ 37 ] It is not, therefore, logical reasoning that underlies the anthroposophical spiritual science referred to here when speaking of supersensible worlds or of the eternal nature of the human being, but rather a process of guiding practical knowledge toward the contemplation of that aspect of the human being which is truly spiritual —that which is creative, not created by the organism, that which transforms the organism of its own accord and thereby possesses the guarantee of eternity, of the passage through birth and death. It is only the unfamiliarity of such a method of knowledge that still gives rise today to the many misunderstandings surrounding anthroposophical spiritual science. And it is entirely understandable that even well-meaning scientists, when they set out to examine what anthroposophy offers—and what is described in such a scientifically rigorous manner as a genuine method of knowledge, as is otherwise the case with mathematics, for example—first create a distorted image of it and ultimately say of what they do not understand: “This is nothing more than a collection of illusions, hallucinations, and fantasies”—when they first present their distorted image and then criticize their own construct. But—dear friends—if anthroposophy were what some scholars today make of it, then I would criticize it here even more harshly and disparagingly than many scholars do. But anthroposophy develops precisely the healthy paths in contrast to all the pathological paths attributed to it by those who misunderstand its methods. However, I do not wish to dwell further on the many misunderstandings; I would just like to draw attention to one more point.
[ 38 ] It is indeed true that the practical powers of insight I have described are strengthened by everything one goes through. At first, one gains strength by allowing one’s life tableau to sink, but then it is filled with a spiritual power. Now the seeker begins a new experience that many unconsciously fear, which is why, once they have become acquainted with this spiritual insight, they do not wish to approach it any further. Anyone who views the spiritual world in the way I have described actually feels, throughout the entire time they have exposed their consciousness to this spiritual world, something like a painful sense of deprivation in their soul. This certainly gives rise—if it is not experienced, I might say, with a fully healthy soul—to a very pessimistic view of life. However, since all preparation in anthroposophy must be carried out in such a way that the person is thoroughly healthy in their state of mind, they know that—if they were to simply surrender to this pessimism that lays itself before their soul—they would say: The whole world is one permeated by pain, sighing in pain. Yet this pessimism arises as something that is part of the world’s necessities. One experiences it—one experiences something thoroughly painful—while one is immersed in inspiration from the supersensible world.
[ 39 ] But why do we experience this pain? We come to realize: This pain is merely the repetition of that painful longing which constitutes the soul’s strength—the force through which the soul feels drawn from the spiritual-soul worlds into its material, physical embodiment. It is precisely at this stage that one must relive this longing of the soul through insight. And what appears among pessimists as “world-weariness” is, once again, merely a ray—reaching only into the realm of the imagination—of what is perceived in this way, in true supersensible insight and heightened to the utmost, as a kind of “pain of life” by those who seek to attain supersensible insight. One must certainly be fully aware that the pursuit of knowledge cannot always be merely a pleasurable affair. Anyone who has attained some—perhaps modest—super-sensory insights, or indeed any genuine, true insights into life, will always say: “The happiness I have experienced, I gratefully accept from the world forces.” But what I have gone through in terms of painful experiences and bitterness was, for me, a good preparation for entering that state of mind which truly leads, through deeper insight, into the mysteries of life. That is why even ordinary painful experiences—if they are lived through in a healthy way and one does not allow oneself to be completely overwhelmed by them, even physically—serve as good preparation for what one must experience as a concomitant of inspired insight. But through everything one goes through in this process, one now comes to carry into all that—which I have described as the world beyond the sensory realm—that power of imagination which is immediately lost to a person when they descend into their emotional life or their own volitional life.
[ 40 ] That is, after all, the essential point: that one does not surrender to nebulous inner states, but rather carries along—throughout the entire journey ahead—what one first developed in the imagination as a powerful, vivid mental image. Our emotional life, like dreams, rises from the dark depths of the soul. We become aware of our feelings through imagination. As people of the present, we can truly live only in the realm of imagination while awake. Compared to the life of imagination, the emotional life always has something dreamlike about it. And the life of the will is, in fact, usually something dormant even during the day. A person does, of course, perceive that he moves his arms, for example, through his will. But what lives within him as forces of the will is actually just as hidden from him as what he experiences soulfully from the moment he falls asleep until he wakes up. Thus, in our ordinary state of mind, we introduce a dreamlike element into life through our emotional life, but through our volitional life, we introduce an element that is actually dormant.
[ 41 ] It is interesting how psychologists, such as Theodor Ziehen, struggle with the fact that in everyday life, experiences of the will exist only as mental images. With the inner life I have just described, however, a person carries their life of imagination with them everywhere and interweaves it with fully conscious will. Just as he otherwise consciously synthesizes individual mental images in fully conscious judgment, so too—though this may seem paradoxical to some—does he pursue everything I have just described through anthroposophical insight with a fully conscious, alert life of imagination. As a result, the individual ultimately develops an inner strength that does not cause him to lose his sense of self within this enriched inner life, but rather enables him to see his self in a form that never presents itself in ordinary consciousness. For this ordinary consciousness is, after all, guided inwardly in such a way that we look upon it and designate it with the word “I.” But if we can grasp what is expressed in this little word “I,” we do indeed have the awareness that a reality underlies it, yet in our ordinary consciousness we do not possess this reality.
[ 42 ] When we say “I am,” we are actually pointing to something that we have only as an image, just as we have our impulses of will only as images. For this “I” points deep down into those dormant depths of the soul’s life and of organic life in general, in which the dormant will is also rooted. Only an image rises up. But now we ourselves have descended there; now, through the supersensible knowledge of imagination and inspiration, we have carried our consciousness down to the reality of consciousness; now our true being is given to us in a third stage of supersensible knowledge: In intuition—whereby this word is not to be taken in its usual sense, but is meant to refer specifically to that which can be grounded in the two preceding stages—in this intuitive consciousness, the notion of repeated earthly lives takes on meaning. Through inspired insight, one looks back upon the spiritual-soul life prior to birth. In this self-knowledge, which manifests as intuition, one beholds one’s “I” in that enriched form in which it is not exhausted by [a single] earthly life, but in which it has carried over the results of earlier earthly lives into the present one, and in which it reveals the results of this life as the foundations for later earthly lives.
[ 43 ] I simply wanted to briefly make it clear that when the anthroposophical spiritual researcher speaks of repeated earthly lives, this is not merely hypothetical speculation, but rather a systematic search for those powers of knowledge that lead the human being beyond the ordinary sensory world—and this systematic search leads him to the recognition of repeated earthly lives. Through this, however, they also come to see how that which appears as a necessary destiny—and places us in life in a certain way—is connected to these repeated earthly lives, while everything that develops as our ordinary, conscious thinking between birth and death is precisely the foundation of the human freedom developed in this earthly life. At this stage of insight, one gains an understanding of how that which is necessary within us—that which constitutes our destiny—is connected to our repeated earthly lives. Meanwhile, in each individual earthly life, the human being, through his fully developed individual, personal thinking—which breaks away from the repeated earthly lives and takes personal form in the individual life—places himself as a free being precisely within that earthly life. This is why the one speaking to you today has not only developed anthroposophy but also wrote his *Philosophy of Freedom* as early as the beginning of the 1890s, in which he examines the foundations upon which human freedom truly rests. The necessity into which the human being is placed through repeated earthly lives is built upon what lies beneath the threshold of what flows from our free thoughts. A “Philosophy of Freedom” is entirely compatible with anthroposophical spiritual science.
[ 44 ] In this lecture, I have been able to outline only the basic principles needed to provide an introduction to anthroposophical spiritual science. Anything that goes beyond the scope of this lecture must be sought in the relevant literature. In conclusion, I would like to briefly touch on a few points to illustrate, so to speak, the impact of anthroposophy on the individual sciences.
[ 45 ] Through the insight gained by imaginative cognition, one comes to know the full range of human formative powers. One is then able, through autopsy on the dissection table, to understand not only what human form is externally—and thereby to establish the foundations of physiology, therapy, and pathology—but also, as one learns through ordinary cognition, how mathematics governs the external world. Thus, through an inner insight—one that is inspired like mathematics, except that it is qualitative rather than merely quantitative and formal—one comes to know the qualitative nature of external beings, delving into the reality of these beings. Through this, one learns to recognize the human being from within. And the moment one arrives at the inner formative forces of the human being—in that tableau as I have described it—one also comes to know the inner formative forces of mineral, plant, and animal beings, as well as the formative forces of the world. This then opens one’s eyes to the interconnectedness of what is spread out in nature outside with what lives within human beings in their inner formative forces and, as a consequence, in their organs.
[ 46 ] One learns about the human organs in both their healthy and diseased states. Anyone who applies this understanding to the human heart, for example, knows that the heart is not merely the form one perceives from the outside, but that the process of the heart is one that can only be understood through knowledge of the whole human being; otherwise, one would view it only one-sidedly. It is similar to the magnetic needle, which one would also be viewing one-sidedly if one were to say of it: “One end points north, the other south.” No, to explain the magnetic needle, one draws on the entire Earth and says: The Earth’s North Pole attracts one half of the magnetic needle through its forces, and the South Pole the other. But with human beings in particular, one tends to focus only on what lies within the skin, in isolation. Yet with human beings, too, one must go beyond what is enclosed within the skin, just as one goes beyond the magnetic needle itself. One must know the whole human being if one wishes to study both the healthy and the sick. Spiritual science opens up this possibility, and we have already been able to develop a form of medicine based on anthroposophical spiritual science. Among the institutions of “The Coming Day” in Stuttgart, there is also a Medical-Therapeutic Institute staffed by qualified physicians, where medical work is carried out, thoroughly inspired by the whole of anthroposophy. I myself was able to give two medical lectures to physicians, demonstrating what anthroposophy is capable of achieving by adding what underlies the sensory world as a spiritual entity to the other aspects, and how it can thus enrich a science viewed purely empirically, such as medicine. Humanity today will have to become accustomed to the view that full reality is not merely the material, but that which is permeated by the spiritual.
[ 47 ] Just as medicine can be enriched by anthroposophy, so too can, for example, external social life be enriched, as can other sciences. We have already attempted to provide practical proof of this in one area in particular: the Free Waldorf School founded by Emil Molt in Stuttgart, which is intended to be a “unified school” in the best sense of the word and which I direct. At this Waldorf School, a worldview in the anthroposophical sense is not, as it were, cultivated; only those who wish to pile up all manner of misunderstandings regarding anthroposophy say such things. At this Waldorf School, education is based on a genuine understanding of human beings—and thus also of children—that does not merely observe the outer appearance of a person and reduce it to pedagogical, didactic, and other such formulas; rather, drawing on a genuine understanding of children, students are educated and taught there in such a way that a teacher at this school must, above all, observe what is working its way to the surface in the child physically, psychically, and spiritually; what works its way through expression and speech, through thinking, feeling, and willing—so that, with a gaze trained in this regard by anthroposophy, the teacher, through what he encounters week by week, indeed day by day, in the developing human being, nurtures the child in such a way that the education itself is an organic process. After all, youth education today is usually conducted in such a way that we receive certain things during childhood—some of them quite well. This is by no means intended as a diatribe against the existing educational system, but it must be said that in the developing human being, certain things are instilled that are presented to the child with far too sharply defined contours; these then do not continue to develop with the person later on, but simply remain within them. In contrast, the Waldorf school method consists of providing the child with ideas, feelings, and impulses of will, without expecting them to remain, by definition, exactly as the child first receives them, but rather that they are conveyed to the child in a thoroughly organic way—that is, with contours that are in constant flux; so that what the child receives as instruction becomes, within the child, something that grows, just as the child’s own limbs grow.
[ 48 ] In this way, one can model the various spheres of social life on the processes of the world—those processes that are not only material but also imbued with spirit. And it seemed to me a significant achievement that at the last congress of the Anthroposophical Movement in Stuttgart (August 28–September 7, 1921), Dr. Caroline von Heydebrand, a teacher at a Waldorf school, was able to give a lecture on the topic “Against Experimental Psychology and Experimental Pedagogy.” I do not intend to say anything here against the great merits that experimental psychology and pedagogy do, after all, possess. But precisely when one acknowledges such merits, one cannot overlook how, in the fields of pedagogy and psychology, human beings have actually become alienated from one another inwardly—and thus also from the child. One must first experiment externally to understand how human beings conceive of and retain things, because one is not inwardly connected to the child. The lecture delivered by Dr. Caroline von Heydebrand at the Stuttgart Congress is a significant one that deserves to be widely known. And Emil Leinhas delivered another lecture that should also be widely known—on the collapse of the national economy—in which he characterized the current national economy with all its contradictions; a lecture that could well be groundbreaking for a renewal, to be drawn from the humanities, of both the scientific and practical treatment of the social question, as I myself have attempted to outline in my “Key Points of the Social Question,” based on the necessities of life in the present and the near future.
[ 49 ] Thus, through what it attains in direct spiritual insight, spiritual science can not only give human beings certainty about their eternal being—and thereby provide them with the inner center they need if they are not to become incapable of living by perceiving, for example, their supposed insignificance—but anthroposophy can also greatly enrich life in general, just as it can permeate the arts. Goethe said—having intuited such things from his comprehensive worldview (I attempted to demonstrate this in my writings on Goethe in the 1880s, from which it can be seen how anthroposophy can also emerge from Goethe’s worldview; one need only carry it further)— Goethe did indeed say at one point that art is based on a certain revelation of secret laws of nature that would never become vivid without it. — Or, in another passage, he once said: “To whom nature reveals her manifest secret, that person longs for her most worthy interpreter, art.” — And while traveling in Italy, after seeing artistic creations that particularly interested him, he wrote to his friends in Weimar: “The great works of art have been produced by human beings according to true and natural laws, and are at the same time the highest works of nature. Everything arbitrary and imagined falls away; there is necessity, there is God.” And: “I suspect that the Greeks proceeded according to the laws by which nature itself proceeds, and which I am on the trail of.”
[ 50 ] But one can only perceive this creative aspect of nature if one beholds the spiritual reality lying behind sensory facts and natural entities through anthroposophical insight. Therefore, even what confronts us in art in a sensory and visual way—but in such a way that the sensory and visual always speaks to our spirit and soul—can certainly be enriched through imaginative and inspired contemplation. Only those who have no real inkling of spiritual science, as it is meant here, but who focus solely on ordinary intellectualistic knowledge, claim that creating from the spirit can lead only to a hollow, allegorical art. But you will find nothing allegorical or symbolic, for example, in the School of Spiritual Science building in Dornach, which was erected there for anthroposophical spiritual science, and which, in all its forms, has been shaped out of the vision of the spiritual world—out of the vision of those forms and color harmonies that can be so mysteriously infused into the outer material that what Goethe expressed with the words is precisely fulfilled: Art is a manifestation of secret laws of nature that would never become apparent without it. — Thus, art, too, can be enriched by anthroposophy.
[ 51 ] And in eurythmy today, we present to the world an art of human movement that has already been widely observed, in which what lies within the human being—in terms of proportion, harmony, meaning, and inner stylization—is drawn out and expressed through the movements of individuals or groups of people, so that what emerges is not merely mimetic dance, but something entirely different: a truly visible language that, like spoken language or song, inevitably gives expression to the inner life of the soul.
[ 52 ] And religious life, too, must be enriched by leading the human being up into those supersensible worlds where, precisely for religious feeling, the spirit and soul must find their home. It is therefore actually grotesque when, in a recent work dealing with contemporary religious experiments—and, among other things, with anthroposophy, which does not in any way claim to be a new religion but rather, as I have described today, scientific knowledge—anthroposophy is judged in such a way that it is said: “The truly religious person could not really tolerate it, for it is a competitor to religion; it might even become a substitute for religion.” A substitute for religion—the most terrible of terrors! The one who is appointed as the official guardian of religious life already thinks of anthroposophy in entirely economic and commercial terms. A competitor is emerging—and speaking from the perspective of that competitor, he continues: “The creation of anthroposophy means the death of religion.”
[ 53 ] Now—distinguished guests— one should, however, in good sense and with a sound mind, believe that religious life in particular could be enriched by the fact that a science—which takes its subject as seriously as any other scientific discipline—makes the supersensible worlds accessible to human perception in such a way that the description provided by a researcher of the spirit can also be understood by those who are not researchers. For this can indeed be the case with spiritual science, which simply adds to material knowledge the understanding of the spiritual life that permeates the material processes of the world. Yet even today, people already harbor some fear of this knowledge. A philosopher who is highly regarded today once said a few years ago: He wanted to speak about the relationship between the spirit and the human body. One could certainly do so, he argued, because one need not know either the spirit or the body, but only study the relationship between the two. He then offered an analogy, addressing his audience: “After all, I don’t need to know each and every one of you personally, nor do I need to have been introduced to each of you; even without knowing one another, a certain relationship exists between us. By being together in this room, a certain relationship exists between you and me.”
[ 54 ] So, in circles where people discuss worldviews, there is a fear today of true spiritual knowledge—which is, however, necessary if one wishes to speak of spirit and body—because people have talked themselves into an agnostic approach to knowledge that sees only limits everywhere and is unwilling to develop the practice of knowledge that transcends those limits.
[ 55 ] Certainly, spiritual science must be worked out slowly, just like any other science. But in practice, it leads—just like the other sciences—into the natural world. And spiritual science does not lead people into some dreamy, cloud-cuckoo land, but into the real spiritual world. Therefore, it permeates the material world with spiritual impulses that enable human beings to intervene in all material circumstances; so that they do not become mere dreamers about spiritual life, but rather people who are permeated by genuine spiritual activity and can thereby perceive and work in the wider world. For only the person who does not dream himself into a fantasy world, but who is aware that the spirit must intervene in material life in a practical and formative way through human beings, is truly discerning. In this sense, anthroposophy does not make a person impractical, but rather practical for ordinary earthly life; it places him within his duties and the ordinary tasks of life. It does prepare them for eternity, but it prepares them in such a way that they can carry the eternal into the temporal. It does not reject the honest exploration of material phenomena and material entities, but it seeks the Spirit that permeates this matter everywhere. It seeks the spiritual above all in human knowledge itself; in doing so, it liberates knowledge—which otherwise can only slavishly follow the material external world—and thereby creates impulses for action that enable the human being to intervene practically in life. Therefore, one can say of anthroposophy: It strives, at the very least, for matter to be spiritualized by human beings themselves, so that human beings do not lose themselves in the realm of material processes, but rather can find themselves—through free knowledge—as free human beings within the full scope of life.