The Rudolf Steiner Archive

7. The Essence of Anthroposophy

[ 1 ] One often hears it said today that in gloomy, chaotic times of spiritual life, when souls have lost their courage, confidence, and hope, all manner of occult or mystical endeavors find fertile ground. And in circles where too little importance is attached to distinctions, what is currently often counted among such pursuits is that which calls itself anthroposophy. Now, this evening’s lecture, which is to deal with the nature of this anthroposophy, is intended to show you just how inaccurate it is to lump the anthroposophical method of research together with many other approaches with which it is currently conflated.

[ 2 ] Anthroposophy—ladies and gentlemen—has indeed grown out of the scientific rigor and conscientiousness that have developed, particularly in the field of the natural sciences, over the course of the last three, four, or five centuries, and especially during the nineteenth century. However, anthroposophy seeks to take what can be developed scientifically within certain limits to the point of comprehending the so-called supersensible worlds, to the point of comprehending those mysteries of existence that concern, above all, the deepest longings of the human soul itself—the longing to explore the eternal within the human soul and the connection of this soul to the divine-spiritual foundations of existence.

[ 3 ] Although anthroposophy certainly originated from scientific foundations, since it deals with the vast, all-encompassing mysteries of existence that concern all human beings, it had to develop in such a way that it appeals to the understanding even of the simplest human mind, that it meets the practical needs of the time in human soul and spiritual life—needs that seek inner support for the soul, security for the soul, strength to act, and faith in humanity and in the human destiny. And this anthroposophy also had to meet the most diverse social and, in particular, religious aspirations in the way I intend to describe this evening, even though it itself—and this must be emphasized again and again—has a scientific starting point. But with regard to this starting point, one might say: Anthroposophy must take more seriously—than many who believe they stand on the solid ground of scientific research today—the very possibilities that are open precisely within scientific research. And here, above all, anthroposophy must look to what truly level-headed scientific thinkers recognize as the limits of natural science.

[ 4 ] When we employ the research methods of the natural sciences—observation of the external sensory world, experimentation, and reasoning that combines the results of observation and experimentation—and thereby [discover] the laws of nature as we are accustomed to recognizing them, we simply arrive at the view that this scientific research has limits, that it cannot actually go beyond the sensory world and its laws, that it cannot comprehend more of the human being than what is derived from this sensory world as human-physical-bodily nature; that it must be content to acknowledge limits with regard to what constitutes the human being’s true value, essence, and dignity; and that it must be content not to penetrate into the truly spiritual and soul-related aspects of the human being. It is precisely such matters that anthroposophy—if it is to be taken seriously—must address with the necessary conscientiousness. It must clearly recognize this one pitfall: that one cannot simply, out of sheer arbitrariness, transcend the sensory world using the kind of thinking one has been trained to employ in the natural sciences. Not out of mere arbitrariness, but because this way of thinking develops its strength and its training through sensory observation itself, and therefore immediately runs into a void, into the indeterminate, into the unsatisfactory, when, left to its own devices, it attempts to penetrate into realms that lie beyond the sensory world.

[ 5 ] As you know—my esteemed audience—there are certain philosophical speculations through which thought, left to its own devices, seeks to move beyond what is given to the senses toward the supersensible. This thought, left to its own devices, seeks to draw all manner of logical conclusions from the temporal toward the eternal. However, anyone who, without prejudice, seeks to satisfy their spiritual needs for the eternal through such logical conclusions will find themselves in a state of dissatisfaction, for they will soon see: just as certain as this thinking is when it considers the essences and phenomena of nature, so uncertain does this thinking—left to its own devices—become when it seeks to go beyond what is accessible to the senses. This is precisely why we have the conflict among the so-called philosophical systems. One, according to his subjective disposition, goes beyond the sensory world in this way and establishes this system. Another establishes that system. All of this does not result in a harmonious worldview at all; rather, it results in something thoroughly unsatisfying. Anthroposophy must clearly bring to mind precisely what an unbiased mind must feel toward such thinking left to its own devices. And with this, it is presented with the one obstacle that must be overcome if the paths are to be opened for exploring the eternal in human nature and the eternal in the universe.

[ 6 ] Anthroposophy must certainly acknowledge the limits of scientific knowledge of nature. And anthroposophy must, on the other hand, look at how certain deeper-minded individuals today perceive these limits of scientific knowledge of nature and are now seeking help elsewhere—help that natural science cannot provide for the great mysteries of existence. They then seek help in so-called mystical contemplations. They seek help in what is often called the soul’s self-contemplation. Here, the soul is supposed to descend into the deeper recesses of its own inner being through contemplation, and then discover something in these deeper recesses other than what is found through natural science or in ordinary consciousness. But precisely those who set about the search for the eternal as earnestly as those who follow anthroposophy must also recognize, in this other path, the illusions to which such mystics often succumb. For anyone who can observe human soul life with an open mind knows what human memory actually signifies within the totality of soul life. Memories are kindled by external sensory perceptions. That is where we, as human beings, receive our impressions. We then often retrieve the images of such impressions from memory, sometimes years later. And it can happen that some external sensory impression has been taken in by our soul—perhaps half-unconsciously—without having been considered with the necessary attention. It has then sunk into the deepest depths of the soul’s life, and it resurfaces, voluntarily or involuntarily, years later. And it need not resurface in the same form in which it was sunk into the soul; it can resurface transformed, so that only the more discerning observer of the soul’s life recognizes it. That which is set in motion in the soul by an external impression is received by all manner of sensations, feelings, and impulses of the will; indeed, it is received internally by the human being’s organic constitution, by the physical constitution of the human body, and by the overall condition of the human body. And, completely transformed, it can be brought forth from the soul again years later. And the person who is then biased may believe that what is merely a transformed sensory impression—one that has undergone the most diverse metamorphoses in the soul—is, when brought to the surface through inner contemplation, some kind of revelation of the Eternal that does not originate from the external sensory world. Anthroposophy must recognize precisely how mystics who seek their revelations in this way fall into the most bitter illusions, and it must acknowledge the second pitfall in this form of mysticism. It must navigate past the pitfall of the limits of scientific knowledge and the pitfall of the limits of one’s own human soul life.

[ 7 ] I had to preface these words—my esteemed audience—so that you might see how conscientiously anthroposophy seeks out all potential sources of error. For in what follows I will have to describe to you the paths that anthroposophy itself takes to enter the spiritual, the supersensible worlds, and in doing so I will have to describe to you many paradoxes that are still quite unfamiliar today. One could easily believe—and many do believe—that anthroposophy is nothing more than a more or less fanciful attempt to penetrate, through knowledge, into worlds with which serious science should have nothing to do. Anthroposophy knows that one cannot conduct research into the spiritual and supersensible realms. And therefore it can also gain a starting point regarding the way in which one can truly conduct research. By recognizing which paths can lead to illusions and errors, it advances toward the actual—I would say—initially intuitive answer to the question. It tells itself: With the ordinary powers of cognition—as found in everyday life and in established science—one cannot, due to the limits of natural science and the limits of mystical contemplation, go any further than to external nature and to what the human being takes from this external nature into his or her soul life. So if one wishes to go beyond this outer nature, one must call upon powers of the soul that lie dormant in the soul during ordinary existence, that are not present at all in ordinary existence, or rather, of which the human being is not aware. And anthroposophy seeks to develop these powers that lie dormant in the soul, so that these newly awakened powers of cognition may then penetrate into worlds that cannot be entered with ordinary powers of cognition.

[ 8 ] Even today, serious, scientific researchers speak of all manner of abnormal forces of the human soul or the human organism, which are said to demonstrate that human beings are involved in contexts beyond those revealed by ordinary biology or physiology. Anthroposophy, however, has nothing to do with such abnormal forces of the soul life. It focuses on the normal forces of the human soul life and simply develops them further. To do this, however, one needs, as a starting point, what I would call intellectual humility. One must be able to ask oneself: What were we like as children, as very small children, when we entered the world with a dreamlike soul life, in which we could only imperfectly use our own bodily limbs and could orient ourselves in the world only imperfectly or not at all? But from the depths of the human being, through education and through life, those forces could be developed that had previously lain dormant in the depths of this human organism. Now, having acquired these soul forces—which education and life have brought to fruition—one must say to oneself: Other forces might still lie dormant in this human soul, forces that can be further developed from a certain starting point in life, just as the child’s soul forces have been unfolded up to the present stage of development. However, only practical experience can teach us that this is indeed the case, and this is where anthroposophical research comes in. The task here is first to look deeply into the entire human soul life in order to further develop the individual powers of this soul life as they simply exist in normal existence.

[ 9 ] Ladies and gentlemen, we are first and foremost concerned with the human power of thought—the formation of thoughts—on the one hand; and with the power of will on the other. Between the two—between the power of thought, which develops through external impressions or from the orientations that life has given us, and the power of will, through which we engage in life as active human beings—lies the soul, the sum of our sensations and feelings. Anthroposophical research will now be primarily concerned with developing the power of thought and the power of will to a higher level than that found in ordinary life. For the eternal cannot be explored through external measures, but only through the intimate cultivation of the soul’s powers themselves. But if the power of thought, on the one hand, and the power of will, on the other, are developed beyond what they are in ordinary life, then that which is the deepest, innermost, and most soulful essence of human nature—the power of feeling—will, as we shall see, follow along of its own accord in some way. The question, then, may initially be: How is the power of thought to be developed to a higher level of cognition than that represented by ordinary life?

[ 10 ] I have now described the paths and exercises in my book *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?*, in the second part of my *Secret Science*, and in other books. Today I would like to begin by outlining the fundamental principles of training the soul’s faculties; for details, I must refer you to the books mentioned. For an introductory lecture, however, it must suffice to point out precisely these fundamental principles, which point to the true meaning and the essence of the matter.

[ 11 ] What we experience as the power of thought in everyday life is, after all, based on external sensory impressions. These external sensory impressions are vivid. We stand before the world of colors and sounds. We receive vivid impressions. The thoughts that form from these impressions remain in our soul. We rightly call them pale. We know that these thoughts have less intensity in everyday life than the sensory impressions do for the life of the soul. We also know that the ordinary thoughts that follow the sensory impressions are, in a certain sense, accepted more passively by people than the way the sensory impressions stir the soul. What is at stake here, first and foremost, is that it is precisely the sensory impressions—with the vitality they instill in the soul—that are taken as a model for the elevated, invigorated life of thought itself, which anthroposophy seeks to develop for the purposes of its research. The aim is for this life of thought to be elevated, intensified, and invigorated in the following manner. What I am about to describe may seem simple, but taken as a whole, spiritual science—as it is understood here—is no simpler than research conducted at an observatory, in chemical or physics laboratories, or in a clinical setting. What I am describing here today in simple terms and in principle requires, depending on the individual’s aptitude, years, months, weeks, and so on.

[ 12 ] There are now many such inner spiritual exercises. I want to highlight only the most characteristic aspects. The point is to first become aware of one’s actual attitude toward thinking in everyday life. As strange as it may sound, anyone who looks at their own thinking with an open mind would actually have to say: The expression “I think” is not entirely accurate. Thinking develops in relation to external things. We become aware of it only because we, so to speak, look back at the physical organism—because we, so to speak, see ourselves from the outside. We become aware only that the thinking that develops is bound to our physical organism, and therefore we say the words “I think.” This “I think” is not at all fully justified for ordinary consciousness. Anthroposophical research strives precisely to make it fully justified. It strives to do so, for example, by placing a simple idea or a simple complex of ideas at the center of the consciousness of the entire soul life. One can do this by concentrating the entire soul life on this one idea or this one complex of ideas. This can be achieved through practice. I have described the individual exercises in the books I have already mentioned, which can help one direct one’s attention in such a way that one diverts it from everything else that otherwise occupies the soul from within and without, and—with complete inner volition, as one otherwise does only when solving mathematical problems—devote oneself with one’s whole soul to such a simple complex of ideas or a simple idea.

[ 13 ] Now, it is particularly good—and indeed, this is how it should be—that one does not simply retrieve such an image from memory. As I have already indicated in the introduction to this lecture, memory contains all sorts of experiences that are in a state of change, of metamorphosis. If one simply draws such an idea from memory, then all sorts of things from the subconscious and the unconscious get mixed into the picture, and one can never be sure that one has in one’s consciousness only that to which one is directing one’s attention arbitrarily and with full deliberation. And that is what matters. Therefore, it is good, for example, to seek out—somewhere in a book or the like—the very thing to which one wishes to direct one’s attention, as something entirely new, like a completely new sensory impression to which one can surrender with the vitality of the soul, and which acts solely through itself. Or one can ask someone experienced in such matters to provide a complex of ideas, so that one has something that is completely new to the soul. One must not fear that, in this way, another person might gain any suggestive power over the soul. For the point is not that some content of imagination acts upon the soul, but that the soul itself develops its very own powers in the most intense attention. Then the following becomes apparent: Just as one can strengthen and build up the muscle of an arm by using it in work, so one can intensify, strengthen, and build up thinking as a soul force by concentrating it with the utmost attention on a specific complex of ideas and by repeating such exercises in a rhythmic sequence. Through this, one gradually comes to make one’s own life of thought—without relying on sensory impressions—as vivid and as intense as the soul’s experience is otherwise in the external sensory impression. Just as one’s thoughts are otherwise merely pale in comparison to the vividness of sensory impressions, so too must one, through these mental exercises—which I call meditation and concentration—develop a form of thinking that is internally strengthened to the point of matching the vividness of sensory impressions.

[ 14 ] You can see right away here—my esteemed audience—that anthroposophical research proceeds in a direction entirely opposite to that of the development of certain pathological, diseased states of the human soul. What a person develops through visions, hallucinations, mediumship, suggestion, and the like in hypnosis moves in exactly the opposite direction from what constitutes the continuation of normal thinking ability in the anthroposophical research method. When a person develops anything that leads them to hallucinations or visions—in which they become susceptible to suggestion—their soul forces, so to speak, flow away from the sensory impressions; they flow down into the person’s physical body. As a hallucinatorm or visionary, the person becomes more dependent on their physical body than they are when experiencing external sensory impressions. But it is precisely this kind of soul experience in response to external sensory impressions that is the ideal of the anthroposophical path of knowledge, which is to be developed. Thus, above all else, by practicing meditation and concentration—with full inner volition and voluntarily directed attention—a person must be fully absorbed in the soul content that they themselves have brought into the center of their consciousness. Through this, something comes about that is fundamentally different from all pathological states of the soul, with which the anthroposophical path can only be mistakenly confused. When a person becomes hallucinatory or visionary, when they enter a state of hypnosis, or become susceptible to suggestion in any way, their entire personality is submerged in the hallucinatory and visionary life. Their ordinary consciousness of common sense disappears into the hallucinatory and visionary experience.

[ 15 ] The opposite is true when, through meditation and concentration practiced as I have described, a kind of higher consciousness develops. When a person comes to truly possess a heightened, more intense, and more powerful way of thinking, then higher soul forces develop. But the ordinary, level-headed person—as they are otherwise engaged in the life of knowledge and the life of duty—remains fully intact alongside this other, so to speak, second personality. They simply stand alongside this second personality with its higher capacity for knowledge. They stand alongside it with their ordinary capacity for knowledge, exercising control and criticism. This is a fundamental difference that cannot be emphasized enough when speaking of anthroposophical knowledge.

[ 16 ] And then, when one strengthens one’s thinking in this way through meditation and concentration, one comes to a point in one’s development where one says to oneself: Now it is truly I within myself who is thinking this; now I have experienced my “I” to a greater degree within my world of thought. Just as I otherwise experience myself in external sensory experiences, so now I experience myself in pure thought. But this thinking also undergoes a transformation. To the soul’s eye, so to speak, it no longer looks like the ordinary, pale thinking developed for the sensory world. It is no longer abstract thinking; it is experienced thinking. It is intense, like colors and sounds. And one experiences oneself intensely within it. And a point is reached where one knows: Now one no longer thinks with the aid of the physical instrument. For in ordinary thinking, one always thinks with the aid of the physical instrument—this is precisely what anthroposophy must acknowledge. Now thinking has detached itself from the nervous system. One knows this through inner experience. One knows, when the moment has come, that it is the soul within itself that now lives independently in thought—in thoughts that are no longer abstract thoughts, but rather thoughts in images. As the soul now truly experiences itself as a soul for the first time—at a specific moment when the human being is ready for it—the first result of anthroposophical research appears before the soul’s gaze, and that is that, in a vast tableau of life, the entire earthly life up to the time of birth suddenly stands before the soul. We normally have access to this earthly life through memory, but initially as a subconscious or unconscious stream within the soul. Voluntarily or involuntarily, certain images of memory can be brought up from time to time from this stream, which extends back to our earliest childhood years. But what lives in the soul as a more or less unconscious stream of memories is not what is meant here when we speak of the tableau of life, through which we suddenly have before us the inner essence of our human experience, insofar as this experience is, for the time being, our earthly experience. It is not as though we had individual events, as memory presents them, before us, but rather we have before us what can be surveyed as the impulses that give us our abilities, as that which, from within, provides us with our moral powers, and which, from within, also directs our powers of growth and guides our nourishment. We have before us something that I have called, in the aforementioned writings, the “body of formative forces,” or—if one draws on older [terms], which have always existed in connection with such matters—the etheric body or life body of the human being.

[ 17 ] This is a second, supersensible organization. It cannot be reached through ordinary natural science, nor through mere logical thinking; rather, one must have developed what I have characterized as “empowered thinking” and what I have referred to in the aforementioned books as “imaginative knowledge”—not because it involves imagination, but because this thinking lives pictorially in the soul and is itself knowledge. And so, alongside the spatially limited, outer physical body, one experiences what I would like to call a “body of time”—a body that is in motion, which can suddenly be beheld before the soul’s gaze like a mighty tableau of life, and which contains everything that has shaped us inwardly throughout our earthly life, as far back as we can look. One cannot directly draw this body of formative forces, which is the first component of the higher, supersensible human being. If one wishes to draw it, one must be aware that one is proceeding as if, for example, one were painting a flash of lightning, which can also be captured for only a moment. Whatever one might draw or paint of the etheric body would be like a flash of lightning, captured for just an instant in its perpetual motion.

[ 18 ] Thus—my esteemed audience—we have arrived at the realization that human beings do not merely harbor within themselves the results of physical, chemical, and mechanical forces, but through direct perception we have come to recognize that human beings carry within themselves something specifically thought-like, something attainable through condensed, strengthened, and energized thoughts. The first anthroposophical insight is that we come to know this first supersensible aspect of human nature—the body of formative forces, the etheric body—through direct perception.

[ 19 ] To make further progress, it is now necessary not only to perform the concentration and meditation exercises as described, but also to observe how, despite being able to devote oneself to meditation and concentration with complete freedom of will and absolute inner composure—like a mathematician performing calculations—one nevertheless gradually becomes entirely absorbed in the very thing one is concentrating on, and how one struggles to emerge once again from that which the soul has thus focused on with the utmost intensity of attention. One must therefore, in parallel with these exercises in concentration, perform entirely different ones, all of which amount to once again removing from the soul that which one has brought into consciousness through willful choice—the very thing on which one has concentrated—and, so to speak, sending it away just as calmly, just as willfully. By performing such exercises—in which one suppresses mental images that one has first placed with all one’s strength at the center of consciousness—for a long time and in a rhythmic sequence, and by doing these exercises for a sufficiently long period, one attains a very special capacity of the soul that is of greater importance for further research. One comes to achieve what I would like to call: empty consciousness in a state of complete wakefulness.

[ 20 ] Ladies and gentlemen! It will become clear what is meant by this if one considers how a person—when they have no external impressions, or when they do have them but they are as if none existed because they consist of a monotonous drone or endless repetitions, so that attention is weakened by them—it is well known how a person then enters a sleep-like, dull state of consciousness. It is not at all possible to achieve empty consciousness without proper practice. Only by first practicing to have strong, energized thoughts in one’s consciousness and then suppressing them does consciousness remain so intense, so alert, that it retains this alertness even when it initially has no content. [One must first be able to establish this empty consciousness if one wishes to go beyond] what is the first result of anthroposophical research—namely, viewing the inner life of the soul since birth as a tableau.

[ 21 ] If one has practiced such exercises in suppressing mental images for a sufficiently long time, and has attained a certain level of maturity in this regard, then one is able to suppress this tableau of life that I have described, once it has presented itself to the soul. And when one is able to suppress this tableau of life, that is, our entire inner being, as it manifests itself in this earthly life, taking shape within our body as an ever-changing, dynamic entity—if one suppresses this inner being, this inner ethereal earthly human being—as I would like to call it—this body of formative forces, and if one does not fill one’s consciousness with external impressions but instead leaves it empty for the time being, then the second stage of higher knowledge begins. I have called the first stage “imaginative cognition.” It provides only one’s own subjective inner life in a tableau of life, as I have described it. And now one must be perfectly clear that through this first stage of supersensible knowledge, one has only one’s own inner life, the subjective. Then one will not even arrive at illusions, much less at visions or hallucinations. Anyone who is a spiritual researcher in the anthroposophical sense is absolutely clear about every step of their path of research. But then, when empty consciousness is established by suppressing this tableau of life, the second stage of higher, supersensible knowledge begins. I have called it inspired knowledge. One should not think of this in terms of anything superstitious or traditional, but—since terminology is necessary—only of what I myself am describing. And then, once this has occurred—once empty consciousness has arisen through the suppression of the life tableau, the body of image forces—then, through inspiration, what the soul was as a purely spiritual-soul being before birth or before conception—or rather, in a world of its own that is spiritual-soul in nature—manifests within the soul. And now comes the great moment of research, when, through direct perception, one becomes acquainted with the eternal in human nature.

[ 22 ] You see—my esteemed audience—one who speaks from an anthroposophical perspective cannot point to any abstract concepts that would demonstrate how immortality can be proven through logical deductions or the like. Instead, they must explain, step by step, how the soul must proceed through intimate inner exercises to reach the point where it can behold that which lives as the Eternal within our soul—where it can behold this Eternal within the soul at the moment when, through conception, the soul has united with the physical-bodily forces derived from its parents and ancestors. You may ask: How does one know, when a spiritual-soul element appears for contemplation through inspiration, that this is the spiritual-soul element of the soul prior to conception?

[ 23 ] Now—my dear friends here present—I can only explain what presents itself to the soul here as a direct experience by means of a comparison. Someone who has a memory of an earthly experience may now have an image of what they experienced ten years ago. Through the content of this image, they know that what they have in their soul is not directly caused by an event of the present time. They know how the content of the image points them to something that happened ten years ago. Thus, the content of what one now experiences through inspired consciousness is such that it contains something entirely different from what exists in the sensory-physical realm, where the soul is in the body. Just as with the memory of earthly experiences, one also experiences time along with it. The impression itself indicates that one is dealing with the prenatal period—that is, with life before conception—with the experience the soul went through in a purely spiritual-soul world before entering, through the mother’s body, into the physical-sensory realm that then envelops it during earthly life.

[ 24 ] Now—my esteemed audience—once we have reached this stage of inspired insight, and the question of immortality has thus opened up from one perspective—namely, with regard to a certain solution concerning the aspect of non-birth—we can now, through other exercises aimed at gaining insight, turn our attention to the other side of the question of immortality. And this can only be achieved through certain exercises of the will. You will find more detailed information in the two books mentioned above. However, I would like to outline the basic principles for you here.

[ 25 ] The human will does not think. It is unlike ordinary thinking. Ordinary thinking is, in fact, internally stimulated by external impressions. The human will originates from within the organism itself, but in everyday life we experience this will only in a very particular way. Take the simplest act of volition or volitional impulse. Suppose it is simply a movement of the arm or a movement of the hand carried out in response to a volitional impulse. What, in fact, did you actually provide to your consciousness in this volitional impulse? One does not usually give this any thought. For systematic research, one must have a secure starting point. What we have at first is the thought: We want to raise and move our arm or hand. But how this thought then sinks into the body’s organization, how it stimulates the muscles, engages the bones—how that which is will unfolds within the body—of this, the human being knows nothing in ordinary consciousness. It is only through an external impression—about which one can form a thought—that one perceives the raised arm or hand. As for what lies between the first thought—which intends the movement of the arm or hand—and the final impression—what lies in between—one must say: If one truly practices inner spiritual insight, this eludes consciousness just as spiritual experience eludes consciousness from the moment of falling asleep until waking up, with the exception of the chaotic dreams that well up from sleep.

[ 26 ] One could say: It is only in relation to the life of imagination and thought that a person is truly fully awake; the element of will involves a kind of slumber even while awake. And as paradoxical as it sounds, it must be stated: Between the thought that has a volitional impulse as its goal and the action carried out, there is a transition that can certainly be compared to falling asleep and waking up. The thought drifts off into the unknown realm of the will and awakens again as we observe the action carried out. The deeper one delves into the mysteries of the development of the will—I can only hint at this—the more one comes to realize that between these two suggested realms—the thought of intention and the thought that reflects the observation of the execution—there truly exists a kind of sleep within the human being even in the waking state. A major transformation with regard to the will is then brought about through exercises, through certain exercises of the will.

[ 27 ] From the wide range of exercises for the will described in my books, I would like to highlight a few. For example, one can exercise the will precisely by training it through thinking. In the life of the soul, it is the case that the individual faculties—thinking, feeling, and willing—which we must distinguish in abstract thought when we wish to describe something about the soul, are in reality not so far apart, but rather that one faculty interplays with the other. Thus, the will interplays with thinking as we connect thoughts and separate them again, and so on. Now, one can perform an exercise of the will by arbitrarily thinking backward—that is, reversing the process one is otherwise accustomed to following based on external facts. For example, one might think through a play in reverse, from the fifth act back to the first—that is, from the final events of the fifth act back to the opening events of the first act—or mentally retrace the final page of a poem or a melody in reverse. Another exercise that is particularly beneficial is to let the day’s experiences pass vividly before one’s mind in the evening, but by beginning with the last event of the evening and proceeding toward morning. In doing so, one must consider individual things as atomistically as possible. One must go so far as to imagine climbing a staircase as descending it, moving backward from the top step to the bottom, and so on. And the more one forms mental images in this way—in a completely unfamiliar manner that does not follow the facts—the more one detaches the will, which is accustomed to passively surrendering to external facts, from those external facts and also from physical corporeality.

[ 28 ] Once you have done such exercises, you can support yourself with other exercises that I would like to mention: exercises in serious self-examination and self-education. One must eventually be able to judge one’s own actions and impulses of the will from the outside, just as one objectively judges the actions and impulses of the will of another person. One must, so to speak, be able to become one’s own objective observer with regard to one’s decisions and actions. Yes, one must be able to go even further. When one looks at one’s life—one knows, after all, how one has become a different person over the years. Everyone knows how, in terms of one’s entire mental and emotional state, one has become a different person compared to ten years ago. But what has been made of us over the course of the years—that has been done by life, by external reality. One need only look at these things impartially and see how a person passively surrenders to this external reality. A person can now, precisely in order to find the path into the higher worlds, practice self-education in an active way. He can, so to speak, take his self-education into his own hands by resolving: “You will break this habit.” They devote all their energies to breaking a habit or incorporating a different quality. If one succeeds through self-discipline in achieving what is otherwise given only by life itself, then one gradually arrives at what is the detachment of the will from physical embodiment. And something occurs that I can now, once again—I might say—only characterize as paradoxical. Because these things are still unfamiliar to contemporary thinking, they sound paradoxical. Yet they are entirely certain results of the anthroposophical path of knowledge, which, in the manner I am describing today, can be taken in order to enter the higher worlds.

[ 29 ] Compare, my esteemed audience—as I said, this may sound strange—an eye whose vitreous body is clouded, that is afflicted with cataracts, which, due to its opacity, cannot serve us for seeing; compare that with an eye that is completely healthy and transparent. I would like to say that it is precisely because this eye does not make itself noticeable through its own physical presence, but is selflessly integrated into our organism, that it serves us for seeing in ordinary life—not in an unhealthy way, but in a way that is entirely healthy for this ordinary life. One should not seek something abstract or unhealthy in ordinary life as a means of reaching the higher worlds. For ordinary life, our entire physical organism is, in a sense, such a large, opaque eye. And through such exercises of the will, our entire organism is made transparent. The will is spiritualized.

[ 30 ] We penetrate into that which lies between the two thoughts: the thought that sets the goal for an action, and the thought of the most recently observed action. We penetrate—by making our organism, as it were, completely transparent to the soul—into a spiritual world. That is it. Just as the eye is not present in the organism for its own sake, so too will the entire physical organism cease to be present if these exercises of the will are continued; it will, as it were, become transparent. And just as the physical organism is that which, through its instincts, drives, emotions, and all its organic processes, absorbs our volitional impulses and renders them opaque—plunging them, as it were, into a state of sleep—so now everything becomes transparent, just as everything that is material in the eye becomes transparent through the transparent vitreous body of the eye.

[ 31 ] And by having, so to speak, shaped our entire physical organism into a transparent sensory organ, we have now developed—to a higher level—a soul force which, as I know, many are reluctant to accept as a cognitive power. It is not meant to be regarded as a power of cognition in the sense that it is in ordinary life, but it is developed to a higher degree, and in that sense it becomes a power of cognition. I am referring to the power of love. The power of love is, in ordinary life, what makes us, as human beings, valuable above all else as social beings. Love is the best and most beautiful force of everyday life, both in its individual form and as social love. When it is heightened—as it can be through the aforementioned exercises of the will—and when these exercises of the will make our organism transparent in the manner described, then love is developed to a higher level. We develop the power to transition into the objective spiritual realm, and the third stage of knowledge sets in—that of true intuition, which I have called “intuitive knowledge.” The word “intuition” is also used in everyday life—I will return to this—but I do not use the term “intuitive knowledge” in the same way as in everyday life; rather, I use it in this developed form, as I have explained. This is a form of knowledge in which the human being stands within the spiritual realm, having, so to speak, made their body transparent and transformed it into a sensory organ.

[ 32 ] And through this insight—my esteemed listeners—something else now enters the soul’s consciousness: We now recognize how a human being can live within a will that has become free, independent of physicality. To a certain extent, the human being lives through the thoughts that he has first strengthened and to which he connects his will; he lives outside the body. But this provides the cognitive image of the process of death. What truly happens in death—that the spiritual-soul aspect detaches itself from the physical body and continues its own existence in the spiritual-soul world after the human being has passed through the gate of death—is beheld in the image, in the cognitive image, through intuitive knowledge, once we have first transformed our entire organism into a sensory organ through the cultivation of the will. Thus, immortality consists of pre-existence and of true immortality—the fact that the soul cannot perish upon physical death. The eternity of the human soul is composed of non-birth and immortality. It can be perceived through genuine anthroposophical research. This is intended, first of all, to point out how human beings learn to recognize their own eternal, their own immortal nature through intuition.

[ 33 ] But as a person comes to recognize his or her own soul-spiritual nature, he or she also comes to recognize the spiritual-soul environment. Through inspired and intuitive insight, they come to know the spiritual-soul world—in which the human soul lives before conception and after death—as a world of real spiritual beings. Just as the sensory world lies spread out before us—a world full of sensory beings that we perceive with our senses—so too does a spiritual-soul world lie spread out before the soul, which experiences itself in its spiritual-soul existence; a world from which we emerged at conception and through birth, and into which we re-enter at death, And just as our own physicality falls away from us, so too does that which, through the physical-sensory realm, bound us to other human beings fall away, and we find ourselves reunited with other human beings in accordance with our spiritual-soul existence. Through this, immortality—the abiding in the spiritual world—becomes a genuine result of knowledge.

[ 34 ] But even the spiritual-soul world that constantly surrounds us—which cannot be explored by thought left to its own devices through the laws of natural science—this spiritual -psychic world, which is hidden within spiritual nature—just as colors and sounds are hidden within the sensory world—this world, too, reveals itself to the kind of perception that can be developed along the path described. And there—I would say—the whole of nature of its own accord becomes something other than what it already is for sensory perception. Not as if external nature were to disappear in terms of its material properties and substances. It remains fully present to supersensible knowledge, just as a healthy human being remains present with sound common sense alongside the personality that is developed through the higher powers of cognition. But alongside external nature, a supersensible, a spiritual nature develops, so to speak—allow me to use this contradiction. I would like to give a single example of this spiritual perception within nature. To ordinary perception and science, the sun stands in outer space with its contours. We construct the form of this sun—insofar as it exists in physical space and acts within physical space—through astronomy and astrophysics. For research that makes use of the higher faculties I have described, the sun becomes something entirely different. There one learns to recognize how what exists in space as the physical body of the sun is merely the body for a spiritual entity, but this spiritual entity fills all the space accessible to us. The solar essence fills the space accessible to us, flowing as a current of force through minerals, plants, animals, and our human organism. It is, as it were, consolidated or concentrated in the outer, spatial-physical form of the solar body, yet the solar essence is present everywhere.

[ 35 ] And just as we come to know external nature by representing it in abstract thoughts—so that external nature lives on in these images—so, too, does the spiritual foundation of nature live on more deeply within our spiritual human being. Let us trace our abstract thoughts within ourselves. They are images of external, sensory nature. Let us trace what is spiritual in the external world; let us look for the solar aspect within ourselves—only then will we truly come to know our own constitution. Then we find this solar quality in our own human nature—in all the forces that are particularly active during our growth, the forces that permeate us in our youth, the forces that emanate primarily from our brain, and that have a formative, building effect on our physical organism, especially during early childhood. We come to know the solar nature within our own organism, and we come to know each individual organ—the heart, the lungs, the brain, and so on—insofar as they contain a specific manifestation of the solar forces. And we come to know each individual organ in terms of its formative, constructive forces by coming to know its connection to the solar nature. And I do not shy away from describing, at least in principle, those things that still seem paradoxical—perhaps even fantastical—to people today, but which are reliable findings of anthroposophical research.

[ 36 ] Just as we come to know the solar aspect, so do we come to know the lunar aspect. We come to know the physical Moon with its physical contours. But the lunar aspect, in turn, fills the entire universe accessible to us, permeates all realms of nature—the plant, mineral, and animal kingdoms—and also permeates our physical organization. We come to recognize in the whole human being the inner workings of the lunar forces, the forces of decay, those forces that are particularly active when we are in a phase of decline and aging. But these decomposing forces, just like the solar forces, are always at work in the process of nutrition, both in youth and in old age; we come to understand the inflow of the entire cosmos into the human being. Through this, however, we come to understand all the processes that are present within the human being. We come to understand the connection between the cosmos and the human being. And just as I was able to describe the fundamental principles of the solar and lunar aspects, so too can these principles be described for other aspects of the cosmos. In this way, one comes to understand a more intimate relationship between the human being and the spirit of nature in the cosmos than is known to conventional science and everyday life.

[ 37 ] But with that—my esteemed audience—I have now reached the point where I may discuss how anthroposophy, despite having developed as a supersensible science in the manner described, can meet the needs of life and the individual sciences, as well as practical life in general, in all areas of existence. First, I must point out how the human being becomes transparent in a completely different sense in terms of knowledge by viewing him in his relationship to the cosmos. Even the physical human being becomes a sum of processes. That which otherwise appears to us as a self-contained heart, a self-contained lung, a self-contained brain—this transforms, in a way one could not have anticipated, into processes, into a state of becoming. One learns to recognize how the forces of construction and decomposition are contained in each organ in different ways. A spiritual physiology, a spiritual biology, can be developed.

[ 38 ] But above all, these insights prove fruitful in the field of medicine—for pathology, therapy, and medicine in general. Those who gain insight into the human organism in this way also come to understand the abnormal constructive forces—that is, the proliferative forces and proliferative processes—within the human organism. And they also come to understand the abnormal destructive forces, the inflammatory processes, and so on, in their proper context. And one learns to recognize, for example, the opposite process to an abnormal growth—that is, a proliferative process—through the interaction of solar and lunar forces. One learns to recognize the corresponding remedy in a plant or a mineral. One learns to recognize how a proliferative process in the human organism corresponds to a catabolic process in a plant or a mineral, and so on. In short, from the mere trial-and-error approach to remedies, one arrives at a clear understanding of how everything that is spread out in nature—through the processes of formation and decomposition, through the other cosmic processes at work in all beings—continues to exert its influence in the human organism.

[ 39 ] When one looks at this in detail, it is equally inspiring that it has actually become possible for a significant number of physicians to feel motivated to truly embrace such a form of rational medicine, one that can be enriched by anthroposophical spiritual research. In Dornach, near Basel, and also in Stuttgart, there is already a medical-therapeutic institute led by medical specialists who, however, incorporate into their medical practice the insights that anthroposophical research—drawing from spiritual sources—can add to what external natural science is capable of discovering about the human body and remedies. Above all, this must be stated: Neither in this field nor in any other does anthroposophy in any way seek to mount an unjustified opposition to the truly legitimate scientific approach of our time. On the contrary, anthroposophy, when properly understood, must build precisely upon scientific rigor—upon truly rigorous scientific methods. The aim is not to oppose in any way what is recognized as medicine, but solely to further develop it. And the fact that it can be further developed is, as I said, recognized by a relatively large circle of physicians. And even if this circle is only relatively large, it will certainly expand, for it is precisely this—the realization that new healing powers and new healing methods can be discovered through the spirit—that will be of interest to the broadest circles of people. This is an area where anthroposophy can have a fruitful effect on life. Another area is the arts. Ladies and gentlemen, anthroposophy has, after all, existed for decades. At a certain point in time, a number of friends of the anthroposophical worldview felt the need to build a home of their own for anthroposophy. Due to circumstances I cannot go into further detail about, this home was built—it is not yet quite finished—near Basel. This home—how would it have been built if it had emerged from a different spiritual movement? Well, if such a building had been necessary within another spiritual movement, one would have turned to an architect who, drawing on the classical, Renaissance, Rococo, Romanesque, or Gothic styles—or a blend of these styles—would have created a structure that would have served as an outer framework for what is to be pursued through anthroposophy. Anthroposophy cannot manifest itself in this way. Anthroposophy does not seek just any theory, nor anything that has to do solely with the intellect, with the human mind, and that can be framed in any way by some structure. Anthroposophy seeks to act upon the whole human being, just as it emerges from the whole human being. Just as it, so to speak, makes the whole human being a sensory organ, as described. Thus, everything that manifests in the world through it comes from the whole, from the complete human being. And as for how the artistic expression that is to be shaped for it must be shaped, I will clarify this through a comparison. If you have a nut shell, it is, in a certain way, grooved and rounded. The laws according to which it is grooved and rounded are the same as those according to which the nut kernel is formed. One cannot imagine that the shell is formed according to laws different from those governing the nut kernel. So it is when anthroposophy is to build, paint, or sculpt in order to create a framework for itself. In a sense, everything artistic must flow from the same laws from which the ideas flow—ideas proclaimed from the podium based on the vision of the spiritual world. That is why an existing, conventional architectural style was not adopted; instead, a new architectural style was created. It may be as imperfect as possible, and those who criticize it may be right. It is a first step, a beginning. But what had to be strived for can be characterized in such a way that one might say: In Dornach, every wall design, every column, every sculpture, every painting had to reveal the same thing that is expressed when, in the Dornach building, ideas are proclaimed from the podium—namely, what is proclaimed as anthroposophy, which can be explored in higher worlds through direct perception. The spoken word is merely another form of what is intended to serve as an artistic framework. Everything has truly flowed into artistic forms. And yet there is not a single symbol or allegory in Dornach, as some believe.

[ 40 ] And one can see that, even though everything is imperfect—as is indeed necessary in the beginning—one can say: Goethe’s conception of art, Goethe’s artistic sensibility, can be recognized today in such a striving, even if this striving is still quite far from success. For what does Goethe say precisely at the point where he sought to express his artistic sensibility and his view of art in the most intimate and profound way? He said: Art is a manifestation of secret laws of nature that would never be revealed without it. — And Goethe made another significant statement: “To whom nature begins to reveal her most intimate secrets, that person feels a deep longing for her most worthy interpreter, art.” — But one feels this longing most keenly when, through supersensible perception, one receives the spirit that works in nature, revealed within one’s own soul. What one receives are not symbolic, abstract allegories, but genuine spiritual formation that also possesses a sense of materiality and, as something truly artistic, can be incorporated into the individual materials. Thus, what anthroposophy is has a fertilizing effect on the artistic realm in all its forms.

[ 41 ] And a [third] example that demonstrates how anthroposophy provides inspiring and transformative impulses for life is the Free Waldorf School in Stuttgart, which was founded by Emil Molt and is directed by me. This Waldorf School aims to be a school where anthroposophy is not simply imposed on the child’s soul as a worldview. That is entirely foreign to us at the Waldorf School. The point of the Waldorf School is precisely to translate what anthroposophy has to offer into direct practical skill—into pedagogical and didactic skill. In the Waldorf school, the aim is not to instill anthroposophical ideas in the children at school—as evidenced by the fact that we have Protestant religious education taught by Protestant pastors and Catholic religious education taught by Catholic pastors, and that we have created a separate, independent religious education program only for the children of dissenters—a program that, however, is not intended to be merely anthroposophy applied to religion.

[ 42 ] Simply by the fact that anthroposophy provides, in the way I have described, a true understanding of the whole human being—the complete human being in body, soul, and spirit— by providing a genuine understanding of the human being—first and foremost for the child—anthroposophy thus provides the spiritually grounded foundation for truly putting into practice the great pedagogical and didactic principles established by the great educators of the nineteenth century. Here, too, anthroposophical research does not seek to stand in contrast or opposition to the good that already exists; rather, genuine knowledge of the human being is necessary for pedagogical and didactic practice. And it is possible—when one fully understands the whole human being in body, soul, and spirit—to derive the curriculum and educational goals for every year of life, indeed for every month of a child’s life, directly from the child’s own nature. It is possible to draw everything out of the human being through a true, genuine understanding of humanity. In practice, anthroposophy aims to have an impact on pedagogy and didactics. It does not seek to establish abstract, new principles—there are already enough of those—but rather to influence educational practice itself. And that this is possible—that real curricula and educational goals are not established through abstract principles or majority decisions, but rather can be derived from the nature of the developing human being itself for every month and every year—this becomes evident after one has practiced this anthroposophical approach in a Waldorf school for some time. Thus, what the Waldorf School aims to achieve is intended to flow only into pedagogical and didactic practice, not into the children’s worldview.

[ 43 ] And to mention a few other areas as a final point, I would like to draw attention to the fact that anthroposophy, by focusing its insights on the whole human being, can certainly have a stimulating effect on social life as well. We have seen, after all, how the one-sided application of the scientific way of thinking has its limits and simply cannot grasp the true nature of the human being, and how this perspective, when it flows into social impulses, is bound to have a destructive effect. I do not believe that, even in the broadest circles, there is yet enough unbiased judgment to recognize how destructive to the entire culture of humanity is what has become, in Eastern Europe, the practical reality and, at the same time, the realized illusions of social impulses arising from this view of the purely natural. And what began its destructive course in Eastern Europe now hangs like a great threat over the entire contemporary civilization.

[ 44 ] If we deepen our understanding of social impulses by not focusing externally on the instinctive, the merely natural aspects of human beings, and, in a sense, to regard human acts of freedom merely as higher instincts, then one will be able to recognize the true freedom of the human being in the spirit, as I have attempted to describe it on the basis of such anthroposophical principles in my *Philosophy of Freedom*, published in the early 1890s, then a body of social impulses will also emerge that places the whole human being alongside other whole human beings and that can have a corrective, spiritualizing effect on that which today hovers over human civilization in such a destructive manner, like a menacing specter of the future.

[ 45 ] It has been shown how healthy thinking can emerge from both pedagogy and social life—I would like to cite just these two examples among many. Last summer, when we held the first anthroposophical congress in Stuttgart. Dr. Caroline von Heydebrand, a teacher at the Waldorf School, explained how external, experimental pedagogy—the validity of which should by no means be contested, but which nevertheless offers only something external—can be properly supplemented by what arises as an intimate relationship between human beings, including between the teacher and the student. This excellent lecture is available in printed form as a brochure, as is a lecture by Emil Leinhas on a different topic. From an anthroposophical perspective, Leinhas addresses what is imperfect about today’s national economy—imperfect above all in that it remains unproductive for real social life. Anthroposophical economics will be something practical; it will be able to provide practical social impetus. In this respect, Emil Leinhas’s pamphlet, *The Bankruptcy of National Economics*, is also a favorable sign for the future.

[ 46 ] Well—my esteemed audience—these are just a few examples that illustrate how anthroposophy can have a life-affirming effect. Indeed, when one considers ethical, moral, and virtuous life in the unbiased way that I have attempted to do—and seeks to place it on a secure foundation in the aforementioned book *The Philosophy of Freedom*—one encounters the concept of intuition. In this *Philosophy of Freedom*, I was able to show how that which lives in the moral conscience is simply taken in from the spiritual worlds through an unconscious intuition of pure thought, through an unconscious moral intuition. The true moral impulses arising from the conscience are moral intuitions from the spiritual world, which are then found in their truth only through the inspirational and intuitive insights, as I have described them today from an anthroposophical perspective.

[ 47 ] Thus, anthroposophy, with its insights, resonates with even the most intimate and significant moments of sensation and feeling in the human soul, above all with religious piety. It would be slander to portray the matter as though anthroposophy were seeking to found some kind of sect or establish a new religion. Since anthroposophy is based on the foundations of knowledge that I have described today, it cannot and does not intend to have anything sectarian about it. Nor can it found a new religion. But the religious needs and beliefs that people hold can only be met in a positive sense if knowledge of the supersensible also becomes accessible. And one would think that the representatives of religious denominations, in particular, would feel a deep sense of satisfaction when a spiritual movement emerges in our time that, from the perspective of knowledge, substantiates what faith seeks. And in fact, it is incomprehensible that the official representatives of religious denominations do not see anthroposophy as a strengthening of religious life, but often as something hostile. If they were to truly recognize the foundations of anthroposophy—rather than merely glancing at it superficially—they would be able to see in anthroposophy the very firmest support for genuine piety and for true religious life. For when a light of knowledge comes to meet the seeking soul from supersensible worlds—not merely from the sensory world—faith does not receive an unfavorable influence, but rather a strong support, just as in the moral realm the soul receives powerful sources of goodness, just as it gains the strength for moral action, a way of life, certainty of life, and a life goal by coming to know itself as a member of a spiritual world, just as the outer body is a member of a physical world. In this knowledge of being a member of a spiritual world, human beings will also be able to realize their true human worth, a truly humane ethics, and a humane morality.

[ 48 ] And so, I may well summarize in a few sentences what I wanted to present as the essence of anthroposophy—simply to encapsulate, as in a single image, what I have discussed in this reflection, which, although it is already long enough, is still insufficient and can only be regarded as an introduction to what I wanted to say about the essence of anthroposophy.

[ 49 ] We have the human being before us. We have depicted him before us in terms of his physical corporeality. We recognize him in his full essence only when we see how his physiognomy is the expression of his soul, when his movements become for us the expression and revelation of the physical-natural aspect of his corporeality, and when we see the soul-spiritual shining through his physical-corporeal being. In the natural sciences—which are now fully recognized by anthroposophy in their legitimate endeavors, with which anthroposophy is in no way in conflict but which it merely seeks to further develop—we have, so to speak, the insights into the outer body of the world. We ourselves have a kind of corporeality in our physical-sensory understanding of nature and in its intellectualistic interpretation. Just as we have the whole, complete human being before us only when his soul and spirit are revealed through his physical body, so we have a complete understanding of nature before us only when it expresses—through all the facts, experiments, revelations, and natural laws it offers us—as it were, in a wondrous physiognomy— expresses a spiritual-soul aspect of world knowledge. And so this is what anthroposophy would like to be: just as a human being expresses himself fully and completely only when his spiritual and soul aspects speak through his physical and bodily aspects, so anthroposophy would like to be, for every body of knowledge provided by external natural science, the soul, the spirit of true, complete, and full knowledge of humanity and the world.