The Rudolf Steiner Archive

3. Anthroposophy and the Mysteries of the Soul

[ 1 ] Ladies and gentlemen! Human beings do not truly confront the mysteries of existence until they have developed a certain level of awareness about life, until they are compelled to form ideas, sensations, and feelings about their relationship to the world. But once they have reached such a state, the mysteries of existence then represent for them precisely what one might call a question of life. For they are not merely connected to some theoretical longings; they are not merely external matters of education. Rather, they determine the whole of a person’s relationship to the world, the way in which a person can find their bearings in the world, the degree of security they can have in life, and the inner stability with which they can navigate this life.

[ 2 ] However, there is indeed a considerable difference between the various kinds of mysteries of existence. Human beings stand in relation to nature and must form concepts and sensations regarding this relationship to nature. And if I may use a comparison, I would say: When a human being has attained consciousness in the way I have described, and cannot make sense of certain things that confront them as mysteries of nature, then existence—to which they once belonged—appears to them—as I said, this is merely a comparison—as a spiritual darkness. He feels as if he has been placed in a dark world; he feels that he cannot find his bearings in this dark world. Yet this entire relationship to the mysteries of the external, natural world remains, to a certain extent, something external to the human being; it concerns his external relationship to existence.

[ 3 ] But when it comes to the mysteries of the soul, a person stands in a completely different relationship to these enigmatic questions. He lives within these enigmatic questions; these enigmatic questions essentially constitute what may at first appear to be mental health and illness, but which can also become physical health and illness. For—my esteemed audience—the life of the soul is something extraordinarily complex, however simple it may appear at first glance. What we carry in our consciousness during our waking hours from morning to evening—as is now fully recognized by science—is, after all, only a part of our soul life. A large part of our inner life lies in unconscious—or, I might also say—subconscious depths; it surges upward in the form of vague sensations, vague moods, and indeed all manner of other inner contents, and constitutes what is an indeterminate fundamental disposition of our inner life. But what unfolds in this way—more or less vaguely—in the depths of our inner life and wells up to the surface is intimately connected with what actually constitutes the happiness or suffering of our lives. And it is precisely those who, through the anthroposophical path, attempt to penetrate the inner life of the human being who very soon realize how everything that surges up in such an indeterminate way from the depths of the soul is connected to the physical body—how, at first gently, then more and more, our entire state of health—which makes us capable of life or incapable of it—can depend on these subconscious soul states.

[ 4 ] Today, however, I do not wish to speak to you in that manner—my esteemed audience— as is so often done these days when discussing the unconscious of the soul—by placing everything that shimmers unclearly in consciousness into this vast container, the unconscious, and forming more or less vague ideas about how this unconscious or subconscious works. I have, after all, been speaking here from this very place for many years on questions of anthroposophical research, and therefore cannot begin today with the most elementary aspects of this research; rather, I would like to consider the questions of the soul’s life in their very essence, as they are connected, in a certain sense, to the happiness and unhappiness of life. To do so, however, we must address what, in human soul life—permeated by all manner of things that are initially unknown, which we intend to point out more or less clearly through today’s reflections—can have a disturbing or soothing, joyful or painful effect, and everything in between.

[ 5 ] Now, when we—I would say—even just glance superficially at our inner life, we find two poles that can be clearly distinguished from one another: On the one hand, the life of the imagination, which essentially encompasses everything that unfolds clearly and luminously in our consciousness. And on the other hand, we find the life of the will, which, in a certain sense, initially emerges from the depths of the soul in a dark, gloomy manner.

[ 6 ] As I have mentioned here on several occasions, we distinguish—in the ordinary course of human life—between two states of consciousness, of which only one is actually a distinct state of consciousness: we distinguish between the waking state and the sleeping state. In the state of sleep, conscious imaginative life ceases; the entire life of the soul sinks into a more or less pitch-black darkness. But if we look at our soul life with complete objectivity—even while awake—we can really only say that, with regard to everything that pertains to the realm of imagination, we are truly awake. As waking human beings, we have control over ourselves, insofar as we have filled our consciousness with clear images and luminous thoughts. We also accompany our volitional impulses; we accompany our actions with thoughts. But even in the simplest physical movement of the human body, it remains a complete mystery how the thought in consciousness is connected to what is actually taking place during a volitional impulse or an action. How obscure it is, after all, what actually happens inside the arm when I merely raise this arm—when the thought, which has raising the arm as its goal, seeks to realize itself, to “shoot” into it, so to speak, and to set the arm in motion by force of will.

[ 7 ] What goes on within our own organism eludes our waking daytime consciousness just as much as what actually takes place in the human soul from the moment we fall asleep until we wake up, so that we really must say: It is the nature of this human soul life that even in the waking state we experience an influence of sleep, that the state of sleep continually permeates us, and that we are fully awake only in the act of imagining itself, in the experience of luminous, clear thoughts. Between these two states—between what I would call the fully awake state of imagination and the life of the will, which is immersed in darkness—lies the life of feeling and emotion, participating in both. Our feelings permeate our thoughts. We bring certain sympathies and antipathies from our feelings into our life of thought, thereby usually connecting our thoughts or separating them. We accompany what flows into our impulses of will with our emotional judgment, perceiving some actions as fulfilling our duty and others as failures to fulfill that duty. And because we experience a certain emotional satisfaction with actions that fulfill our duty, or a certain dissatisfaction with what we cannot achieve or fail to do for some other reason, emotional life flows back and forth between the life of the imagination and the life of the will.

[ 8 ] But the true mysteries of the soul do not reveal themselves to the dull-witted person who, in the manner just described, surrenders himself on the one hand to the life of the imagination, and on the other to the life of feeling and the life of the will; rather, these mysteries of the soul emerge as the person becomes more and more conscious. And even then, the true, lived mysteries of the soul do not appear fully consciously; rather, they belong precisely to the more or less subconscious experiences of the human being. A person will never become entirely clear in their consciousness about what actually influences the moods and states of their inner life—those that shape their daily happiness and daily suffering—or where these actually come from.

[ 9 ] And one must indeed seek out and clearly articulate what remains unclear in one’s consciousness, and I ask you to bear this in mind, first of all, as I proceed with the remarks I am about to make: that I will be compelled to express in clear words something that never exists in this clarity within consciousness, but which is present in the life of the soul—whether as a source of healing or of illness—something that a person senses and feels without being able to bring it into conscious awareness. And because this is so, the mysteries of the soul are not merely theoretical; rather, they are very much lived mysteries of existence.

[ 10 ] When a person, so to speak, lives entirely according to their life of imagination, they feel—as I said, I am clearly articulating what is only vaguely felt, what is never fully brought into consciousness—they feel something like the futility of their own existence. The life of imagination is a life of images. The life of the imagination is something that fills us during our waking daily life with the impressions and perceptions we receive from the external world. What we experience from nature forms the content of our ideas; it lives within us; it is precisely what we draw up from our memories. But even though we are aware that, yes, you are active in processing these experiences into images—by separating and connecting them, you are inwardly active—you do not have this activity fully present in your mind. What is present in your mind is, in essence, a reflection of the external world. We know that we must anchor our imaginative life to this external world. What we have is merely an image of the external world. We live by living in our imaginations, in images. We do not experience a fully realized existence within our imaginative life.

[ 11 ] And this feeling plays itself out in the subconscious, as strange and paradoxical as that may sound. And even though it is not present in the conscious mind, it is alive in the subconscious; this feeling manifests itself in relation to the life of the imagination in certain anxious feelings, in feelings of fear.

[ 12 ] It sounds paradoxical—ladies and gentlemen—but there is an undercurrent in human spiritual life. Most people are unaware of it, but most people—or rather, all people—are constantly under its influence. And this undercurrent is a fearful current—the fear that we might, so to speak, lose ourselves in the world, that we stand on the edge of an abyss—precisely because our world of imagination is a world of images. And yet, an indefinable longing lives within the human soul: How do I find existence in this world of mere images?

[ 13 ] One can certainly compare this unconscious sensation in the undercurrent of the soul to the sensation that a person—caused by physical factors—experiences when they are not getting enough air, when they suffer from a lack of oxygen, and consequently consciously fall into a state of anxiety. What a person consciously experiences through physical states is, in fact, always unconsciously perceived as a concomitant of the life of the imagination. And so one can point, on the one hand, to a mystery of the soul—not in theoretical terms, but by bringing to the surface from the depths of the soul something that is germinating or slumbering within it.

[ 14 ] And on the other hand, as a person turns toward the element of will, they experience—I would say—the opposite state. There is a different undercurrent at work in the life of the soul. There, the human being feels how he is exposed to his drives, his emotions, his instincts; how something natural intervenes in human soul life that does not open itself to the clarity of thought, that is always, in a certain way, immersed in a reality, a world that we cannot penetrate with light, that forms a darkness within ourselves. And yet, if one can penetrate these undercurrents of the soul with unbiased observation, one can describe how that which—one must always state a contradiction when attempting to characterize precisely what exists in the depths of the soul—how that which lives there is unconsciously felt. One must then characterize it by saying: It is felt in much the same way as anger is felt in consciousness, or as a person feels when they cannot exhale, when their blood circulation is so disrupted that the air they breathe is not properly processed in their body, when a kind of suffocation sets in. Something like a hot-tempered disposition always arises from such a tendency toward the element of will in the human soul.

[ 15 ] These are forces that dwell deep within the unconscious of the human soul, that well up and constitute the very mystery of human soul life. And the person who merely takes ideas in their pictorial nature and the will in its instinctual nature—as they present themselves to consciousness—may indeed sense these mysteries of the soul as something indefinite, as an indefinite sensation of the soul, but does not truly grasp them. Deep down, he does not know what this indefinite force within him is, even though it profoundly influences his happy or unhappy state of mind in life.

[ 16 ] It must be said again and again: The mysteries of the soul are not what we perceive in nature; the mysteries of the soul are what are experienced inwardly, what well up from the deep undercurrents of the soul, and what must first be interpreted. That is why—my esteemed audience—any form of scientific inquiry—against which, of course, as I have often emphasized here, no objection should be raised within its rightful domain—that is why any form of scientific inquiry has little to offer when it comes to the true mysteries of the soul. We can see this, and I would like to cite two examples to illustrate it. We see it in all of modern scientific thought: how fundamentally helpless science—which celebrates such great triumphs in other fields—is when it comes to the life of the soul, even though the highest mysteries of existence are tied to this very life of the human soul. I would like to recall two examples which, in my conviction, are deeply indicative of what is actually there and of what is scientifically necessary in order to penetrate the very realm that human beings experience as the mystery of the soul.

[ 17 ] It has now been almost half a century since the great physiologist du Bois-Reymond delivered a speech at the 45th Congress of Natural Scientists in Leipzig—a speech that must be referred to time and again, even though it has been discussed at great length and has now been almost forgotten and has disappeared from the discourse. This speech dealt with the “Limits of Knowledge of Nature,” and du Bois-Reymond rightly identifies, on the one hand, the limit of knowledge of nature as the material world in its essence. He says: Where matter enters, the human mind cannot penetrate. — It penetrates through the external observation of sensory phenomena to the revelation of material existence, but it cannot specify what matter itself actually is. Du Bois-Reymond identifies this as one limit. He identifies the other limit as that of human consciousness—which today is nothing other than human soul life. He says: Even with the most complete knowledge of nature, one cannot even gain any conception of how the simplest sensation arises in the human soul. Even if one knew perfectly clearly how carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen atoms move within the human brain, one would never be able to deduce from a clear understanding of these movements how the simplest sensation—“I see red,” “I smell the scent of roses”—arises; that is, how the first elements of the life of the soul come into being.

[ 18 ] And du Bois-Reymond is, in fact, entirely correct in this statement. Here lies a second boundary for the external natural sciences, except that du Bois-Reymond’s conviction is precisely the one that must be transcended through anthroposophical research. Du Bois-Reymond believes that the limits of knowledge of nature are the limits of all scientific inquiry. That is why he says: If one wishes to penetrate this realm of the spiritual and psychological, one must do so by means other than scientific ones. For where supernaturalism begins—where, in other words, one enters the realm of the spiritual and psychological—science ends. This is precisely what anthroposophical research seeks to defend before the world: that science need not be limited to external, natural existence, and that science can develop the means to penetrate the spiritual-psychic realm as well.

[ 19 ] The other example I wish to cite is that of an outstanding figure, Franz Brentano, who sought to establish a science of the soul entirely in accordance with the methods of modern natural science. That was his ideal. Ladies and gentlemen, I have discussed in detail the entire body of facts underlying Franz Brentano’s research in the third part of my book *On the Mysteries of the Soul*, and I would like to mention here only a few fundamental points. In the early 1870s, Franz Brentano attempted to write a treatise on the psychology of the soul. The first volume was published in the spring of 1874. The second volume was promised for the fall; it never appeared. The entire work was planned as a four-volume set; apart from the first volume, nothing else was ever published except for individual fragments, which, however, remain merely fragments. The entire work has remained an unfinished work. I have explained why this had to be the case in the aforementioned work. Franz Brentano simply wanted to conduct research into mental life entirely according to the model of the natural sciences, and in this first volume one finds a remarkable confession by Franz Brentano. He says there, for example: “With this scientific method of inquiry, one does indeed succeed in modestly making one’s way through the details of mental life.” One can describe how one idea connects with another, how one idea separates from another, how certain feelings are linked to ideas, how volitional impulses are linked to ideas, how memory functions, and so on. But if, as Franz Brentano says, we were limited to investigating only these details of mental life, and if knowledge of the most important questions of human existence had to be traded for this rigorous scientific approach—where would that lead us? For Franz Brentano considers justified the longing—one that already existed in Plato, in Aristotle, and in ancient Greece—to use what can be investigated in detail about the human soul as a stepping stone to the great questions ranging from birth to immortality. And it would be sad, Franz Brentano argues, if, in the name of scientific rigor in the exploration of the life of the soul, we were forced to forgo knowledge of what becomes of the better part of humanity within us when the physical part is consigned to the earth upon death.

[ 20 ] And one can see from what Franz Brentano set forth in the first volume of his *Psychology* that his entire scientific aspiration is directed toward taking the individual questions—which, strictly speaking, are of little concern to the general public, and which this general public is happy to leave to the scholar—and leading these individual questions along a broad path all the way to the great questions of human immortality and the divine spiritual content of the world, as reflected in the soul. However, Brentano was unable to find this path from his natural-scientific way of thinking, and because he was an honest scholar by nature, he left the subsequent volumes—for which he could find no path of inquiry—unwritten until his death a few years ago.

[ 21 ] I would like to say that this very fate of the researcher reveals, in the truest sense of the word, how what is often recognized today as the sole criterion of scientific rigor must falter in the face of the great enigmatic questions of the human soul. That is—I must say it again—what anthroposophy must defend before the world today: that the path which Brentano could not find through natural science—through mere natural science—can indeed be found, my esteemed audience! And it can be found if one does not stop at the ordinary faculties of the soul’s life, as they initially present themselves in external life, as they are used in ordinary science; if one does not stop there.

[ 22 ] I have often spoken of the fact that within every human soul lie dormant—to use a scientific term—latent cognitive abilities that must first be drawn forth from the soul, just as certain abilities must be drawn forth from a child through external education. Those who have already matured to the point of possessing ordinary cognitive faculties must undergo such inner education through devoted inner soul exercises. This is so that they may develop within their souls those faculties through which what I have characterized on both sides as the mysterious human soul experience no longer remains obscure; the experience in relation to ideas, the experience in relation to impulses of will—so that, in a sense, the human soul process may become transparent, so that one may penetrate into what is actually taking place in human life of ideas and in human life of will. For without penetrating these everyday mysteries of the soul, one cannot find the path to the great questions of immortal existence and the divine-spiritual content of the world, in which the human soul also has its origin.

[ 23 ] I have often described in lectures here how a person must engage in inner exercises—purely psychological and spiritual exercises—through which they awaken their otherwise dormant powers of cognition to life, so that these powers can truly help them in their understanding. I have pointed out how one can strengthen and intensify one’s imaginative life. Just as we strengthen a muscle by using it continuously in work, so can we strengthen our imaginative life by following the method I have described in detail, for example, in my book *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?*. If we direct this imaginative life in a certain direction through inner, spiritual work; if we bring certain easily comprehensible images into the center of our consciousness and repeatedly devote ourselves in this way to a form of imaginative work to which we would not otherwise devote ourselves. I can only hint at this in principle here, but you will find clear insights in the work just mentioned, as well as in the second part of my *Secret Science*, showing that a person’s imaginative life can become something entirely different through such meditative and concentrative exercises of thought. I would like to say that—without any kind of abnormal endeavor, but simply through the further development of what is normal in human beings as a life of thought and imagination—a stronger, more vigorous imaginative life can be brought about. And by cultivating this more vigorous imaginative life—by rising, through meditation and concentration, above what in our ordinary imaginative life is actually merely pictorial—one arrives at what I call in the aforementioned books “imaginative thinking rich in content.”

[ 24 ] This imaginative conception lives with such inner vitality within the mere thought as a person otherwise lives in his or her external perceptions. But through this—my esteemed audience—one gradually comes to the point where the life of the imagination is no longer merely abstract, merely—I might say—pictorial; rather, through purely inner research—conducted with the same seriousness as any scientific research— one discovers through inner research that the soul—which could otherwise fill its life of imagination only with the results of external impressions—is inwardly filled with forces that, so to speak, surge into the life of the soul. When developed through meditation and concentration, the images are no longer merely this ephemeral substance; rather, they are infused with, permeated by forces that I would like to call formative forces—forces that constitute an inner, spiritually plastic element. And after some time, one discovers that through this development of the life of imagination, one grows together with what the formative forces of the human body itself are. After some time, one discovers that the life of thought is, in a sense, nothing other than the diluted life of forces underlying human growth. That which shapes us inwardly and plastically in the physical body from birth to death is—I would say—in a diluted state, our life of imagination in ordinary consciousness.

[ 25 ] We look at the newborn child. We know—my esteemed audience—that in this newborn child, starting from the brain, the malleable, plastic forces are at work shaping the body. We observe the child’s growth as it radiates directly from this plastic brain activity; we follow it up to a certain turning point in human life on earth—up to the change of teeth, up to around the age of seven. As we perceive this life force pulsating within the human being—this force that is plastically active within us—we initially sense it as something indefinite. On the other hand, as we powerfully develop our imaginative life through meditation and concentration, we are unconsciously led back to the very same element that has been working so plastically within us from our earliest childhood. And this is a significant discovery regarding inner human life: that one can strengthen the life of imagination to such an extent, make it so intensely inner, that one then feels oneself within what are the human formative forces—the formative forces at work in human growth and metabolism. As strange as this may still sound to modern research. It is indeed possible, through a strengthening of the soul life, to grow into that which, in a sense, then absorbs us as the very forces that plastically shape our outer physical body. Through the life of imagination, one grows into reality; one grows into a formative element. And in this way, my dear friends, one comes to know what lies behind the mere thought process. One learns to recognize how a spiritual force, with which one has now connected, works within the human organism from birth to death. The life of imagination acquires its reality; the life of imagination is no longer merely a life of images; the life of imagination becomes a life of forces that is embedded within existence itself.

[ 26 ] And only through such insight can that which—one might say—generates the undercurrent of anxiety and fear in the human soul be overcome by consciousness, so that what anthroposophy points to here is not merely a theoretical solution to the mysteries of the soul, but a thoroughly inner, practical solution that must be experienced. Anthroposophy must point out that, through its research, that which lives within the human being—which, I would say, only appears to be so greatly diluted that it emerges as our ordinary life of imagination, but which, in truth, is the inner sphere of growth of our existence—can enter human consciousness and be grasped by it. And since, on the other hand, the human being loses—I might say—his center of gravity in his life of imagination and falls into an anxious undercurrent of this soul life, he can take in the findings of anthroposophical spiritual science regarding the life of imagination and can thereby maintain this life of imagination on a firm foundation of knowledge. Anthroposophy does not offer the solution to this mystery of the soul by presenting a theory, but by presenting a finding that a person can fully grasp with their common sense and that then — as if imparting weight — manifests in the life of the imagination for their consciousness, for their soul life, so that what anthroposophy appears to offer as mere knowledge about the life of the imagination can flow into the soul’s mood and state, resolving the enigma. One can indeed recognize, on the one hand, how the human being is a formed being, how he appears as a whole in a specific form, how his individual organs are shaped out of the spirit, and how—so that we may be free beings, so that we may not merely act compelled by these inner forces but may devote ourselves to free reflections—we develop our purely pictorial imaginations into something plastically formed.

[ 27 ] What is presented here, I have—my esteemed audience — in my *Philosophy of Freedom* in the early 1890s, by showing that human beings are free beings precisely because they can live within pure thoughts that are not connected to any external reality for their consciousness, and because they can shape their moral impulses within these pure thoughts. When faced with mirror images, one is in a position where one must take action oneself if the mirror image is to change; mirror images do not determine one causally. Human beings would never be free if they were determined by a reality in their ordinary consciousness. In ordinary consciousness, ideas exist as images. Consequently, one is not determined by them, just as one is not determined by mirror images. One is free. In order to be free, one’s life must rise above that which permeates it plastically as a force of growth, as a “body of growth”—so to speak—as a body of formative forces. But human beings must pay for this life of freedom with the characteristic undercurrent of anxiety in their inner life. And therefore, in their ordinary consciousness, human beings must come to fully experience their sense of freedom, but also be able to set against this experience of freedom, as a polar opposite, what anthroposophy can offer as a consolidation of the life of imagination in the manner indicated.

[ 28 ] But if one proceeds further along this path—my esteemed audience—one moves from what I would call a very diluted, purely pictorial life of the imagination to that which is true reality, that which lives and shapes the human being. It is not the physical body, it is not the physical organs; it is a supersensible, active force—but it is there. One perceives something that lies outside the physical body. And one penetrates into it simply by tracing the mysteries of the soul in one direction; one thereby penetrates into that which, independent of the human physical body, constitutes a supersensible reality within the human being. One advances to that which, through birth or conception—let us say—is formed as the human physical body, which is prepared there through mere hereditary relationships, through mere external natural facts, and which is preformed as the human body. One learns to recognize how, through the inherited characteristics derived from parents or ancestors, and through the entire body forming within the mother’s organism, that which comes from the spiritual world connects with what one encounters in life when one engages in the life of the imagination. One arrives—I might say—at one aspect of the question of immortality. One looks upon that which is immortal, that which is eternal in human nature, because it penetrates from a spiritual world—through conception and birth—into that which is human and physical, and because it continues to work even during earthly life as the inner, formative power with which we connect by strengthening our life of thought in the manner described.

[ 29 ] Thus—my esteemed audience—anthroposophy offers the perspective that someone like Franz Brentano sought. Brentano also began with an investigation of thoughts, but he left the thoughts as they are in ordinary consciousness. He limited himself to merely registering what is present in ordinary consciousness. Only the strengthening of the life of thought through meditation and concentration leads this life of thought to the inner, plastic power of formation. And it truly leads along the path that begins with the grasping of the simple, everyday thought and ends with that spiritual-soul element of the human being that lived before birth, before conception, in the spiritual-soul world itself, and that has united with the hereditary forces and the physical forces of the human body. There is no other way to solve the mysteries of the soul than by truly finding this path—from the simplest phenomena of everyday life to the great enigmas of existence.

[ 30 ] Ladies and gentlemen, I have so far referred to what human beings can achieve in relation to their inner life. There he arrives at that which, in a sense, drives the human being outward into space, that which vividly permeates the human being’s physical form, that which finds expression in the form, that which, as I have indicated, descends from the spiritual world and flows into the human being’s outer form, including the form of his inner organs. But this is only one side of human life. And the soul also participates fully in the other side of human life, if we cultivate the life of the will in the same way that we can develop the life of thought through meditation and concentration. If we now cultivate the life of the will—not in the sense that we are strengthening it, strictly speaking, but rather in such a way that we make it more devoted, more spiritual.

[ 31 ] This can be achieved by, in a certain sense, detaching this life of the will from its everyday context; that is how it can happen. I have, in turn, given many individual exercises that would have to be practiced for years—spiritual science is no easier than research at an observatory or in a clinic—that would have to be practiced for years. But I would like to single out just a few examples to illustrate the principle. If one takes that which acts as will in ordinary thinking—for there is always a will present in thinking; thoughts are shaped by the will; the mental aspect is only one side; in the life of the soul, the will is always interwoven with thoughts and thoughts with the will—if one takes the element of will that lives within thoughts, by tearing it away from its usual course—which adheres to external physical facts—for example, by imagining something in reverse—let’s say. Whereas we are accustomed to imagining a drama from the first to the fifth act, let us imagine this drama once in reverse, proceeding from the final events back to the beginning. Let us then proceed to imagine external events in reverse. For example, in the evening one can imagine one’s usual daily life in reverse, proceeding in as small segments as possible, from evening to morning, even to the extent of imagining the act of walking up a flight of stairs in reverse—that is, as if walking down the stairs in reverse from the top step to the second-to-last step, and so on.

[ 32 ] Because we are constantly accustomed to directing our thinking in the same way that external events unfold, thinking actually plays a passive role for us in relation to the will that is unfolded within it. It becomes actively engaged internally, imbued with inner initiative, when we train it through exercises such as “reverse visualization,” in which we detach it from the course of external events and make it rely on itself. For if we reinforce what we achieve in this way through careful and energetic exercises with truly serious self-observation—by observing what we do as beings of will as if we were standing beside ourselves and observing, step by step, the unfolding of our will; or even if we were to move on to active practice, if we were to perform exercises specifically for the purpose of setting ourselves a task and then carrying it out precisely with iron-willed energy, so that we live entirely within the element of the will—I merely wished to indicate, in principle, such exercises that detach the will not only from external events but also from its bondage to the body itself, that make the will independent, spiritualize it—then in this way we do indeed arrive at a development of the will, so that we experience our soul life, which is now unfolding the will, outside of our body. It is a significant experience.

[ 33 ] But it is only through this that one comes to understand what the will actually is. In everyday life, the will is bound to the organs. We see it unfold as we move our limbs. In a sense, it is only through our life of thought that we observe the processes and effects of our will. We gain insight into it when we have detached it from the physical body, when we experience it in and of itself, becoming completely one with it. Then it is permeated by an elevation of that force which is otherwise also bound to our physical organism—permeated by the force of love. And that self-sacrificing element in the life of the soul, which otherwise—I might say—appears to us as a dark, emotional life of the will, is transformed into a transparent, luminous clarity within love.

[ 34 ] I know how little people today are willing to accept love as a power of cognition. In everyday life, it is not. But when it is developed to the point where the will is no longer rooted in instincts, drives, or emotions, [but rather] lives in the purely spiritual realm, apart from the physical, then this will is truly understood in its essence. And then it reveals itself as something entirely different from what the element of thought has revealed. As it has intensified, the element of thought has revealed itself as that which shapes in a constructive way, which—I would say—gives rise to organs, and which ultimately culminates in human procreation. The element of thought unfolds as a formative activity, a formative activity emanating from the soul and working into the human physical body. The element of will—which unfolds in such a way that, precisely when one perceives it separately from the body, one can then observe how it acts upon the body—unfolds within the body in such a way that it does not plastically shape the physical, but rather the plastically shaped is reduced, dissolved, atomized, and made to flow away. The element of will is that which constantly—I would like to say, and I ask that you not misunderstand me—which constantly (the expression is meant figuratively, but it signifies something very important) burns up the formed elements of the human being, causing them to go up in flames—spiritually speaking.

[ 35 ] Human life, as it flows from the soul into the physical body, can only be understood by perceiving it, on the one hand, as this plastic element, and on the other hand, as the dissolution of the plastic element—as, I might say, the plastic element’s entry into the atomized, the dissolving. And since everything that unfolds as will within the human being is, within the human body, this dissolving, atomizing, and melting-away formative force, this will-like element is what is now experienced as that which points the way to the other side of human life—that which points the way toward death.

[ 36 ] Just as we come to know, through the plasticity of thought, first and foremost the spiritually plastic element of the human soul that enters the physical body through birth or conception, so we learn to recognize how the volitional element dissolves the human body, but in the process of dissolution—I would say, as I have said, figuratively speaking—allows pure spirituality to emerge from the flame. We come to understand the soul’s departure from the body. In this way, we learn to understand death through the dissipation of the volitional element. We come to understand what happens to a person at death because we come to understand what happens within a person during everyday acts of volition. Everyday acts of volition bring about in the physical body—as I said, figuratively speaking—a kind of combustion process, but from this combustion process emerges what constitutes our inner soul life. What we perceive inwardly as the soul could not exist if we were always merely a body, merely a physical form. The physical must be broken down, must dissolve, and from the dissolution of the physical, from the constant destruction of the bodily, the experience of the soul emerges. And we come to understand the departure of the human soul from the physical body at death, which, when summarized in a single moment, represents what is constantly unfolding in the soul’s development toward spirituality through the will. Just as I experience my will in the present moment—how it forms a kind of process of combustion, a process of dissolution within the body—and just as the spiritual comes to life in the human body through this destruction—so do I learn to recognize how, with the final destruction of the body at death—which is nothing other than the ultimate effect of the will hidden within the body—the spiritual returns once more to the spiritual-soul world.

[ 37 ] This is what, from within anthroposophy, leads us vividly into the mysteries of the soul. Anthroposophy does not seek to be merely a theory; certainly, it seeks to provide knowledge, but not merely theoretical knowledge—it seeks to provide knowledge that nourishes the soul. And in this way, it can present the individual daily experiences of the soul before the mind’s eye. It can then move from these individual experiences to the great questions of the life of the soul.

[ 38 ] Ladies and gentlemen, please allow me to go into this one detail so that you may see what exactly underlies that which anthroposophy is intended to bring into the mysteries of the human soul. Please allow me to discuss the details of human memory.

[ 39 ] Once one has come to possess within oneself this intensified imaginative life, as I have characterized it, and has, on the other hand, come to understand how the plastic element is continually broken down by the life of the will, then one is able to view the inner processes of the soul with transparent clarity. One sees how a person relates to the external world, how they receive their impressions from the external world, how they then form concepts and thoughts about these external impressions, and how, after some time—or even after a long time — retrieves these ideas as memories from certain depths, or how they also emerge of their own accord—as we say today—as freely arising memories.

[ 40 ] Even in this emergence of mental images of memory, a significant mystery of the soul becomes apparent to anyone who wishes to observe human psychological life with an open mind; and one might say that people have spoken in a thoroughly curious way about what memory actually is. People have imagined—and still do so at times today—that: Well, a person receives impressions through perceptions; these are evoked by the senses, then travel through the nervous system, and are transformed by the imagination. These mental images then sink into certain depths of the soul’s life and resurface when they are recalled. Now, no one who thinks impartially can form any clear idea of how these mental images—when we do not have them—are supposed to wander down there in the unknown depths of the soul, only to resurface when they are either needed at that moment, by sheer whim, or when they seek to latch onto something that appears as a new perception, as a new impression from the outside world.

[ 41 ] Anthroposophy thus moves on to the genuine, true observation of human soul life itself. Through its understanding of the intensified life of imagination and the spiritualized life of the will, it penetrates the entire process that unfolds from the perception of the external object through the formation of images of the imagination, through the formation of memory, to the reemergence of the remembered images. One might say: Because anthroposophical research advances toward powers of knowledge through such a structuring of the life of imagination and will—as I have indicated—the entire psychological and physical process, and the way these two processes interact, is transformed in the same way that—if I may use a comparison—something I perceive as completely dark, opaque object in front of me—by being illuminated, it suddenly becomes transparent. The entire human soul process becomes transparent through this intensified life of imagination and this spiritualized life of will.

[ 42 ] And what should we focus on now in light of what I have suggested? Ladies and gentlemen, we see how external impressions extend for miles into the senses, how the entire process continues, and how, in fact, what I have described as the formative, plastic element of thought life—of intensified thought life—continues to operate as an extension of the ordinary process of perception. I perceive externally, but it is not merely the abstract thoughts I have in ordinary consciousness that are at work within me; rather, that which is only fathomed through spiritual science is constantly at work. This plastic quality in these ideas works its way down into the depths of the human soul and body. And then, once this has taken place—once the thought has worked formatively into the depths of the soul and the body—the human being moves on to something else. There, a volitional decision is at work; the will is at play; but it is the spiritualized will that is present. This will unfolds in that aspect of human life which is bound to the external brain. It breaks down what is accessible to ordinary consciousness by dissolving the brain’s structure; it breaks down what the impression has built up, so that we have an outer surface of the brain—if I may put it crudely—spread out over underlying layers where, however, the structure continues to exert its influence.

[ 43 ] Let us now suppose that I recall something at random; this happens in such a way that I unfold this will from within a certain series of mental images. This unfolding of the will is, in turn, connected to a process of dissolution—provided that no external impressions intrude at this moment; and the fact that these do not come is ensured, in turn, by the development of the will, which is itself a process of dissolution. And this dissolution allows what lies in the depths to emerge, in the case of the arbitrarily recalled memory, as a plastic form of the human being. When freely arising ideas come to the surface, the process is reversed. There is some external impression present that forms into a thought. The thought is plastically active. It is imprinted on the brain. This plasticity is similar to the plasticity that once shaped, in the depths of the psyche, that which can live there in a certain form. That lives within the plasticity that the thought has now formed.

[ 44 ] In short, as you can see, the life of the soul becomes transparent in this way. One learns to recognize it in its interplay with physical life, in the interplay of the spiritual with the physical and with the soul; one learns to recognize it in its inner, plastic structure, in its constant erasure and burning away by the element of will. And by learning to understand every single moment of life in this way, one learns to grasp, within these currents of life, what the great questions of life are. Through thought, one learns to recognize what enters physical earthly life through birth; through the will, one learns to recognize what moves out into the spiritual world through a person’s death. Thus, the results of anthroposophical research appear as something that advances from the details of life toward the comprehensive understanding of the mysterious human soul.

[ 45 ] In this way—my esteemed audience—we recognize how, even in ordinary memory, thought acts in a plastic manner, as if something were being formed within the body. In memory, we also experience how that which is not yet in the body—but which is connected to the body through birth and conception—interacts plastically with the body; we come to know the human element of life in this plastic formation, because we become acquainted with the individual plastic element that already appears in the formation of memory.

[ 46 ] Anthroposophy seeks to look upon the mysteries of the soul with a sense of vitality! This should be understood as the very essence of anthroposophical research: that it consistently adheres to the scientific rigor to which we have become accustomed today through the great and tremendous advances of external natural science, but that, while adhering to this rigor, it simultaneously goes beyond what mere external observation, mere external experimentation can offer; that it proceeds from the faculties which, precisely by their very existence, make the human soul a mysterious being for human beings themselves; and that, through the cultivation of these faculties, it leads to the practical—not merely theoretical—resolution of these mysteries of the soul.

[ 47 ] There is no need to fear—my esteemed audience—that someone who takes the standpoint of such a so-called solution to the mysteries of the soul, someone who might one day wish to present as a finished matter, as a completed insight, that which solves the mysteries of the soul, might then cause the soul to fall into inertia toward its own life, into indifference. No—my esteemed audience—the soul poses those mysteries that I have cited today as the living, experienced mysteries of the soul; the soul poses these mysteries at every moment of life, and in every moment of life we need anew the findings of spiritual research, which have a balancing effect on that which rises so mysteriously from the dark depths of the soul. What I have called the anxious current of human soul life, what I have called the angry undercurrent of human soul life, is nothing other than the inner call of the human soul not to take itself for granted, but to experience itself fully and continuously—to experience itself in such a way that this human soul remains a mystery to itself at all times, that it continually needs the solution to this mystery.

[ 48 ] And it is precisely this ongoing solution to the mystery of the soul that anthroposophical research seeks to offer, connecting so closely with the reality of existence that—if I may use a trivial comparison—one can say: Just as a human being in his physical life is a being who must continually take in nourishment, who cannot be satisfied with a single act of eating because he consumes this nourishment and integrates it into his life process, so it is also with what is presented to us through anthroposophy as the result of the mysteries of the soul. Its inner, intense effectiveness eludes us if we do not continually take it in, if we do not continually move forward. Because we are dealing in this realm with a reality—not with a theory that can be learned and retained by memory, as is the case with the reality of nourishment—we are therefore dealing with something that must, through anthroposophy, penetrate into the ongoing process of life.

[ 49 ] And it is indeed true—for when a person engages with the findings of anthroposophy regarding the mysteries of the soul, they will come to realize the following: You will learn—my dear friends—as strange as it may sound, this is a truth that anyone who engages with anthroposophy can experience, especially in relation to the mysteries of the soul: fundamentally, one cannot “learn” anthroposophy. One can allow its findings to approach one; one can read books and listen to lectures. But if one does not continually experience what one has taken in, if one does not, in a continuous process, connect what is presented in anthroposophy with the human soul—just as one continually connects the physical substances of the external world with physical processes through nutrition and metabolism—if one does not connect what is presented in anthroposophy with the soul’s processes in this way, one will see that it loses its significance for the soul just as the physical loses its significance for the body when it is not continually introduced into that physicality. And just as the absence of physical nourishment manifests physically in hunger and thirst, so too does that which seeks to be influenced by a true understanding of the spiritual significance of the life of imagination and will manifest itself in a being who is anxious and pathologically angry, rising up from the depths of the soul. And if a person advances by being able to cherish within their consciousness—as nourishment for their soul—what anthroposophical research provides, then, then they will find what they need as a balance in their soul life, what they must perceive and experience as a continuous solution, as a continuous, living solution to the ever-living mysteries of the soul.

[ 50 ] And it must be said again and again: Anthroposophy does not depend on this—although by allowing what is set forth in the aforementioned books to speak to oneself and examining it, one can embark on the path of independent anthroposophical research—that every person can verify through anthroposophy what is presented in anthroposophy. Even if one does not do so, one can still use common sense to judge whether what emerges in anthroposophy is reasonable or unreasonable. A person can use their common sense—without becoming an anthroposophical researcher themselves—to follow what the anthroposophical researcher asserts. But in addition to this common sense, a person has something else. After all, even if one is a layperson in the fields of physiology or biology, one does not know the chemical composition of one’s food, but one ascertains what the food truly is for the human being by consuming it, by combining its forces with the forces of one’s bodily processes. In this way, they can integrate into their soul life the findings that anthroposophy offers—which show how it solves the mysteries of the soul—and they will find that it nourishes them spiritually.

[ 51 ] And what, essentially, are these “mysteries of the soul” in the context of this anthroposophical forum? When grasped in their living reality, the mysteries of the soul are nothing other than the expression of the soul’s and spirit’s hunger and thirst. And the solution to the mysteries of the soul is, in essence, nothing other than the absorption of true spiritual content, of true spiritual beings, which unite with the human spirit and with the life of the human soul. And so—I would say—spiritual fulfillment, which must be continually renewed, is the solution to the mysteries of the soul. The more vividly one grasps this process and the more one realizes how anthroposophy seeks to engage with practical life in every respect, how it seeks to take root in the most mundane aspects of daily life and to ascend to the great enigmatic questions of existence by introducing the human being to the divine spiritual foundation of existence, by leading them to their immortality—the more one will realize that anthroposophy cannot be mere theory, but can be something that is thoroughly experiential. R

[ 52 ] From this perspective—my esteemed audience—anthroposophy seeks to influence the most diverse practical areas of life. From this perspective, it has sought to shape what I have often discussed here—namely, the founding of our Waldorf School by Emil Molt—and the efforts being made in the practical-social sphere.

[ 53 ] As you can see, anthroposophy solves the mysteries of the soul by addressing the whole living human being—body, soul, and spirit. In this way, it overcomes the one-sidedness of both cognition and spiritual life that would inevitably arise from the findings of modern natural science—which are fully recognized in their own field and are indeed regarded by anthroposophy as a triumph.

[ 54 ] But—my dear friends here today— one would have to take such things into account, and one would do so, were it not for the fact that anthroposophy is still so widely misunderstood, as was the case, for example, this past summer here in Stuttgart at the anthroposophical congress, where, drawing specifically on Waldorf education, Dr. von Heydebrand, in a lecture that has also been published, outlined the one-sidedness of purely external, experimental psychology. Not because one [should] take an oppositional stance against this experimental psychology of the soul—it can indeed be properly appreciated in its own field, with its findings, if, on the other hand, one can penetrate what is being investigated in such an external way with what can be attained spiritually and psychically through anthroposophy. For anthroposophy provides an understanding of what acts spiritually and psychically upon the physical body of the human being from the spiritual and psychic realms.

[ 55 ] This, however, can also invigorate all external research; it can invigorate education, it can invigorate medicine—as has also been discussed here in earlier lectures—and it can also invigorate social life.

[ 56 ] Here, too, I would like to point out a fine example from the lecture that Emil Leinhas gave at the aforementioned congress—which is also available in print here—that illustrates what political economy, arising solely from imitations of scientific methods, cannot achieve. Here, a start has been made toward a genuine revitalization of social life arising from the spiritual and soul aspects. And what, ultimately, is the reason for this?

[ 57 ] Through anthroposophy, one comes to understand how thought has a formative effect. Now, thought does not only have a formative effect within the human body as the soul-spiritual element; it also has a formative effect when we are able to introduce it in the right way as social ideals into human social life, and the will, when truly understood, also works in the right way in social relationships. For just as, as we know, the human physical body is dissolved through it, so too will that which is correctly introduced into social life as a penetrated element of will recognize, at the right moment, where any institution has outlived its usefulness and must disappear, so that its very fruits may be reborn in a new form. Just as the spiritual-soul aspect rises from the dissolution of the physical body in the manner described, so do the higher structures of social life arise through the disappearance of certain external institutions that have outlived their usefulness, and through the interplay of this disappearance with the plastic, constructive forces. What can flow out into social life—I would say—is also the solution to social enigmas, that which is discerned through the correct anthroposophical understanding of the mysteries of the human soul.

[ 58 ] But this leads the human being—let me say this in conclusion—to understand himself in the right way, to fill himself with true inner strength, with the true strength of his real self, which lives in human feeling, in the human soul. Between the life of the imagination and the life of the will lies the human life of feeling—always incomprehensible, always elusive, yet no less experiential for that. And within this emotional being, for those who are able to view life as I have characterized it today in relation to the mysteries of the soul, the eternal “I” that passes through repeated earthly lives is revealed. Then one learns to view together the vividly formative, developed life of imagination and the spiritualized life of the will, which is in decline.

[ 59 ] In this way, one learns to grasp that aspect of the human being which has entered into the person through birth or conception in such a way that it initially points back to earlier earthly lives, all the way to that state in primeval times when outer cosmic life was so little separated from inner human life that it required not repeated earthly lives, but a continuously progressing, spiritual -psychic-natural life—to bring about this very progress. One learns to look at repeated earthly lives and at the spiritual-psychic lives lying between them; one learns to look into the future toward a state in which human beings will once again have united themselves with the spiritual to such an extent that repeated earthly lives will lose their meaning, as human beings rise to the spiritualization of their existence—I would say—rising through an experience that strives from the mere inanimate toward the spiritual.

[ 60 ] By solving the mysteries of the soul, one is led to the true solution of the mysteries of the world; one ascends to the human soul, to the cosmos. Through this, however, one attains living knowledge, living insight, which, as I have just indicated, is spiritual nourishment. Through this, however, the kind of knowledge that anthroposophy seeks to offer becomes a true inner anchor for the soul in those areas where life tends to waver. Security in life, a foundation for life, and a sense of direction—these are found by seeking the spiritual fulfillment offered by anthroposophy. That which secretly makes us want to exult—in which we might lose ourselves—is what anthroposophy brings us back to ourselves by transforming it into inner stability, by giving our inner balance an inner center of gravity. And likewise in the difficult moments of life, when we are often in danger of sinking into misfortune; we can find a foothold through a state of mind that is inwardly sustained by the full awareness of the spirituality that fills the human being—where we become fully conscious that the life of thought is not in vain, that it can find reality in the plastic, formative power of the world and the soul, and that the will is what continually brings this plastic formation of the soul’s power back to the spirit. This provides a foothold in life’s difficult moments; it places life on solid ground; and it also leads us in the right way toward the end of life.

[ 61 ] Sometimes words spoken before the turn of the millennium continue to resonate. So here, in light of what has been said today, we might be reminded of the words of an ancient Greek presocratic sage who, drawing on a premonitory insight, uttered these weighty words: “When the human soul, freed from the body, soars into the free ether, it is an immortal spirit, freed from death.”

[ 62 ] Yes, one can solve the mysteries of the soul through true science. One can arrive at this conviction by attempting to unravel the mysteries presented by everyday spiritual life through true spiritual insight. One can see a glimmer of insight into immortality in the ordinary events of life. And whoever can correctly assess the unfolding of individual thoughts, feelings, and acts of will will already see the immortal within them. And they will then look up toward immortality in the broadest sense and thereby come to a true grasp of the eternal in human nature, which is rooted in the eternal foundation of the cosmos and the evolution of the worlds.