The Rudolf Steiner Archive

10. Anthroposophy and Spiritual Knowledge

[ 1 ] Before I turn to the actual topic, allow me to simply note that today’s lecture will have to address all sorts of things for which even a scientific justification cannot be provided at this time, for the reason that in the last lecture here several weeks ago, an attempt was made to address the relationship between anthroposophy and science in such a way that the anthroposophy I am referring to here neither shies away from this discussion nor seeks to place itself in opposition to contemporary scientific methods. Nevertheless, since I assume that a large portion of the audience who were present at that time have already heard these things, I will refrain from repeating them today.

[ 2 ] Well, when we speak of the great mysteries that present themselves to the human soul as one looks toward the spiritual world or seeks to perceive something, the questions that arise cannot, in essence, relate to the possibility that a person might at any moment doubt that they are dealing with spiritual beings in their own life. Indeed, one could even say that the questions regarding the nature of the spiritual world arise precisely because a person knows that, through their own activity in the world, they are dealing with the workings of what is spirit within them. But on the other hand, they cannot come to terms with the question: What is the nature of this spiritual reality with which they themselves are engaged? In fact, all questions relating to the spiritual world must ultimately boil down to this: What is the nature of the spiritual, which we know so well? It is precisely the fate of that which we know so well that is at stake in these enigmatic questions of existence. Even those who deny the spirit in earnest—not merely out of affectation—deny only that what they regard as spirit has an independent significance in relation to material existence. Thus, their denial pertains to the nature of the spiritual, not to the spiritual itself.

[ 3 ] But why, since human beings do possess a spirit, do they encounter difficulties in this area? That is the question that actually arises, more or less unconsciously, before the human soul. Certain individuals experience these questions consciously, while the majority do so unconsciously; yet this does not mean that they experience them as any less significant for their soul’s mood and state. They also experience that these questions play out in the depths of their inner life and, through all manner of states of happiness or suffering, rise up into their daily state of mind, so that one can say, in a certain sense, that a person is more or less suited—or unsuited—to themselves and the world, depending on how well they come to terms with such fundamental questions of existence.

[ 4 ] Now, one could cite many of the things that lead people to ask these questions. From the whole wealth of what torments the human soul, fills it with doubt, and the like, I would like to highlight something that can illustrate how such enigmatic questions—as meant here—present themselves to people.

[ 5 ] Every day, as we transition from the waking state to sleep, we see what we carry within us in the waking state—our surging, fulfilling inner life—sink down into the realm of unconsciousness. And we sense—consciously or unconsciously—as our conscious spiritual life sinks into the unconscious, the powerlessness of that which we actually carry within us as our daily, perceiving spiritual life from the moment we wake up until we fall asleep. And even if one merely senses it, this sensation gives rise to a mood of the soul regarding what can be experienced as that which is most precious to us in life sinks into the unconscious state. And we then ask ourselves: Does this spiritual life—for the sake of which we actually want to be human—now, in the grand scheme of things, also share that fate of having to sink down somehow, without being connected to an eternal existence that is inherent in it, that sustains and supports it, as we say?

[ 6 ] That is one side of the question, which presents itself in such a meaningful and powerful way. But this question also exists in contrast. We wake up—perhaps through the transition from the world of dreams, which we must, however, regard as illusory—to what we call reality in ordinary life. In a sense, we grasp physicality through our soul; we transition into that state in which we make use of our body at every moment as our healthy physical life unfolds. But even there is something that seems mysterious to us; there we see that which we actually refer to as spirit sinking down into physicality. We make use of our organs as they appear to us—our physicality. But how that which is spiritual acts through arms and legs, how it acts even through our senses, how it makes use of the body—that is what initially eludes ordinary consciousness. And one can say: While one becomes aware of the powerlessness of the spiritual in the moment of falling asleep, upon waking one can become aware of how that which we call the spiritual sinks down into a kind of unknown world. We do not know how that which we wish to refer to as the spiritual plunges down into our physical organism. Powerlessness on the one hand, sinking into darkness on the other—these are the two poles that present themselves as profound, heart-wrenching mysteries for humanity, yet which human beings cannot possibly avoid.

[ 7 ] And how, on the whole, does humanity today fare in perceiving these questions as the true enigmas of existence? One might say: Two things stand in the way of the spiritual world, with which human beings seek a relationship for the reasons already mentioned—two things that are particularly relevant to people today. One is filled with illusions regarding the spiritual world, while the other is filled with pain and torment whose origin remains unfathomable. The one is superstition; the other is doubt. Those who fall into superstition are, to a greater or lesser extent, people who have not yet familiarized themselves with the magnificent achievements of the modern scientific worldview—people who have remained untouched by the conscientious method applied by a portion of the world. They take hold of whatever comes to them according to their own desires and will, or whatever comes over them from the anthroposophical worldview and knowledge; they take this in and fill their minds with whatever may arise within the human soul, without grounding it in a true and honest way toward themselves. In a sense, they fill the world of their own accord with all manner of thoughts and emotional constructs, and in doing so they feel a certain sense of satisfaction. But the moment they try to come to terms with the world, what they have taken in through this kind of superstition becomes evident everywhere, clashing with every possible aspect of the world. The events and things we encounter in the external world do not confirm the illusions we conjure up from within. One ends up being a person who is disoriented in this world and incapable of acting, because the powers on which one relies ultimately fail; they are, after all, powers born solely of one’s own will and desire. This is the situation into which the less scientifically minded segment of humanity finds itself when confronted with these questions.

[ 8 ] The other part of humanity—which, in turn, has immersed itself in the rigorous, scientific methods of the present to the extent that it is able to recognize the significance of science for contemporary culture as a whole—has often trained its thinking to seek out connections in the external sensory world, and has sensed how far one can go and what ideals still remain to be realized—for example, in the field of natural science. But they have also learned—or at least believe they have learned—that if one truly engages one’s thinking with what confronts one externally through the senses, for which one can find a certain kind of regularity through thinking that then satisfies one regarding the sensory world, then this kind of thinking is no longer sufficient to rise to the spiritual realm. It is precisely the power of the spirit in modern science that leads one all too often to despair of the power of this thinking when it comes to penetrating beyond the realm of the senses into the spiritual realm through one’s own human research. And so it is that those who are still sincerely moved by science find themselves plunged into doubt.

[ 9 ] But—my esteemed audience—just as the superstitious person must become disoriented because his illusions do not prove to be forces for action, so too can the honest person, who doubts with his heart, not come to terms with himself. For that which arises from doubt penetrates deeply into the human soul with such force that, through pathways still largely unexplored by science today—those that lead from the human soul, from joy and sorrow, from pleasure and pain, to the health of our nerves and our entire organic system—it carries into that realm what we hold within our souls, and that we, even physically, gradually grow weak precisely through doubt. I would say: The spiritual consumption that we must acquire precisely through doubt continues to take hold in our physical constitution. And so, when doubt gnaws at us, we also become weak in life as a result; and above all, we become timid and shrink back from everything that, according to our assumptions or even our common sense, should ultimately prove to be a necessary relationship with the spiritual world. This is also why a large proportion of those who have come to know these doubts are today seeking refuge in a realm where anthroposophy will certainly not seek them, for anthroposophy proceeds from a healthy soul life and seeks, through the further development of this healthy soul life, to cultivate higher powers of knowledge within the human being, through which he can look into the spiritual world. But those who are often seized by doubt today do not turn to their own healthy nature—which must be cultivated above all else—but rather to that which must be regarded as more or less pathological: to visions, to those dream-like images that often arise in waking consciousness. And we can say: All these phenomena are ultimately based on a lowering of the human organism’s vibrational frequency.

[ 10 ] There is no medium in whom the entire human organism is not thrown out of balance, so that it is precisely because the human organism is not functioning properly that the abnormal mental phenomena admired in mediums come to light. Even exceptionally learned people fail to realize that there must be a tremendous degree of uncertainty when one embarks on paths of knowledge that border on the pathological. Furthermore, one can also say: All of this must always be based on the fact that something in the human organism is not functioning normally, so that in all these processes there is always something present that, fundamentally speaking, can only come to the fore before humanity because the human organism itself has strayed from the healthy path.

[ 11 ] This proves, in essence, how people today seize every possible opportunity to arrive at the necessary understanding of the spiritual world. Anthroposophy, as I understand it here, has to do with a path into the spiritual world—as should have been particularly evident from my last lecture—one that proceeds, above all, from a healthy human soul life and physical life. Please refer back to my previous lecture. I cannot repeat everything today—the soul exercises I have described, which are to be practiced in a way suitable for modern people and for culture as a whole, so that the higher faculties of cognition and will may develop from the ordinary powers of the soul, just as the higher faculties in a child develop from unconscious powers. Please look it up; you will find all of this in the first preparatory section of my writings—the section that addresses how everything present in a person’s soul and physical life—such as restlessness, rashness, unconsciousness, and so on and so forth—must first be subjected to careful self-discipline. This first part of my books is often said—even by opponents of anthroposophy—to be well worth considering, for it provides the ordinary person, who knows nothing of anthroposophy, with more or less moral guidance.

[ 12 ] Now—my esteemed audience—it cannot be denied that this is the case; but on the other hand, this endeavor ultimately aims to develop, within the healthy human soul—within the whole healthy human being—the powers of cognition through which the spiritual world can become vividly perceptible. Precisely when, based on these views, one looks back through such powers of cognition at the course of human history, one finds, through this very process, the means to understand what anthroposophy actually aims to achieve in terms of spiritual knowledge, in accordance with the demands of the modern soul.

[ 13 ] As I have already said, since people today often refuse to enter the spiritual world on their own terms, they seek out, among the paths already mentioned, those that are time-honored in terms of traditions and religious creeds. People accept this; they even carefully select what they accept—simply because it is there, because they were born into it and raised within it. They accept it and then say, to justify themselves a little in their own eyes: “Yes, these things must be based on faith,” whereas true science—which, however, actually relates only to the external, sensory realm—must be distinguished from faith. But when one explores history not merely through external historical research, but precisely with that gaze which is sharpened by higher, supersensible powers of knowledge—as described in my books and in my last lecture—when one explores the historical aspect of spiritual life, it presents itself quite differently from how it is viewed by modern science. Above all, we see where those worldviews actually come from into which people today are born and raised.

[ 14 ] Anyone who can investigate this field will find that everything we possess today in the way of traditional beliefs—which have become convincing through their age—was acquired in earlier epochs of human development through the process of knowledge, not through faith, but through the process of knowledge as it was appropriate for those earlier times. We live precisely in an age that has developed concepts for what can be considered scientific. And we cannot help but take the position that we rely on what modern cultural development has also incorporated into human spiritual life.

[ 15 ] When we look back at the spiritual culture of the past, we see that great and mighty things emerged from it; yet they emerged through the process of human insight. Today we have only the insights that are handed down to our impulses of will. We accept them; we do not look for their sources. These, however, lie in older insights, and if one engages with them, one will be able to gain clarity regarding what anthroposophy can offer about the relationship to the spiritual world for today’s—for modern—human beings.

[ 16 ] Let us consider, for example, two examples of ancient wisdom, through which we actually discover the essence of life into which we are born and raised today in terms of faith. I could, of course, select other examples from the abundance available, but I would like to highlight two characteristic examples that led people to this ancient wisdom. I would like to highlight a certain type of ancient, Eastern, so-called yoga system, through which people in ancient times sought to strengthen their thought processes in such a way that, by means of this strengthened thought system, they could perceive not only the sensory world but also the spiritual world. This is one aspect of the older insights. We can no longer follow this path, but by delving deeply into it, we gain, so to speak, an understanding of what modern humanity must strive for.

[ 17 ] What, then, was the result when the yoga scholar performed certain exercises intended to lead him to a more vigorous way of thinking? It meant that this yoga scholar shared with humanity at large the fact that inner life was far more spiritually fulfilling than our life today. One must simply understand what actually lived in the souls of humanity in earlier times. When they observed the external natural world, they could not help but add to what they heard in a sound that which they perceived with their eyes—and it was as natural to them as seeing color or hearing sound— to add what was born in their souls as something spiritual, and this transformed the whole of nature for them into something that manifested itself everywhere in a spiritual and soulful way.

[ 18 ] The man who lived as a yoga scholar over in distant Asia now found himself in the same situation as humanity at large. He was in the same state as humanity at large, the one I have just described. People at that time yearned to attain knowledge, and they did so by striving to strengthen their thinking.

[ 19 ] Now there is a certain method that is regarded by many who understand the subject as particularly pernicious, but it goes back to what was entirely appropriate in earlier times; to make myself clear, I would like to describe it in its oldest form.

[ 20 ] In his quest for knowledge, the early yoga scholar certainly performed exercises related to human breathing. For certain periods—some shorter, some longer—he carried out a breathing process that differed from the ordinary one. For example, he chose different durations for inhaling, holding his breath, and exhaling. Through this, he entered into a completely different kind of breathing rhythm, lived within it, and felt so transformed in his powers of thought that he now perceived thinking as a much stronger, much more powerful force than he had experienced in everyday life. Through this, he looked into that other world he had wanted to glimpse. And if we ask ourselves, what is the basis for all this? We can answer: Yes, in ordinary life the breathing process actually proceeds in such a way that we do not pay attention to it; it floats in the unconscious. At most, we become aware of it. Otherwise, it can enter the human soul life only in a semi-conscious or quarter-conscious state. But that which exists as the unconscious for ordinary consciousness was raised into consciousness for the ancient yoga scholar, so that it was transformed. He became aware of his breathing.

[ 21 ] The further consequence of this is that when we inhale, the breath and its effects permeate our entire organism; what constitutes the respiratory rhythm continues right into the brain, and what the brain performs is permeated by the respiratory process. In our brain activity, we are always dealing with something that is permeated by the inner respiratory process; we simply do not notice it. Let us learn to view the musical experience from a psychologically sound perspective! I would say that the truth would become tangibly clear to us: that we are dealing with a thought process that is related to a continuous flow through the organs. What takes place internally—though it is a completely unconscious state—was brought to consciousness by the yoga scholar. Through the different kind of breathing he practiced, thinking became something entirely different for him.

[ 22 ] He did not carry it out in his mind; he did not engage in thought solely according to logical rules, but in such a way that it took on a musical character. But through this, thinking can also grasp something entirely different from what it can grasp through mere logical forms. The ancient Indian yoga scholar sensed through this, his own path, how he could enter into another world—the one he sought—by strengthening his physical organism and, thereby, his soul-spiritual nature. Now, however, what is attained in this way leads one so deeply back to one’s own being—it leads one away from the external, the robust world with which we, as modern people, are confronted—that we, as modern people, not only must not take this path, but also cannot take it. It leads the human being so far back into themselves that they must retreat into a soulful hermitage. Such a method of knowledge originates with people who, in essence, had set themselves apart from the rest of human life. That was one approach. We must not imitate it, for such hermits have no place in our modern culture. We can only trust those who are capable of fully immersing themselves in life—which is the task for all of humanity. This must be taken into account in the highest realms of knowledge; otherwise, it becomes a matter belonging to bygone eras.

[ 23 ] Well, that is one thing—my esteemed audience—that I would like to present to you. The other is what has been developed for those practices commonly understood under the term “asceticism.” Asceticism goes back to the practices that were appropriate in the past. It is based on the fact that certain functions that would otherwise occur are now artificially toned down, so that the organism is not as energetically active as it must otherwise be when a person is engaged in ordinary life. Through this, however, a person arrives at very specific experiences, and by becoming acquainted with these, what they recognize on the other side is complemented. And this asceticism as well—which is thus a toning down of bodily life—is based on something that was already recognized in ancient times: that it is a fact for the world that surrounds us here between birth and death. For this world, our organism is indeed the very means through which we can gain results and energy in and for this world. We must simply be clear that this is based on the fact that we have our other senses; we experience ourselves in union with the rest of the world.

[ 24 ] But because this organism is active in such an energetic way within this physical-sensory world, it is therefore an obstacle to the knowledge of the spirit. If we subject it to ascetic discipline, so that it no longer functions in a way that keeps us fully immersed in the sensory world, then it becomes less and less of an obstacle to penetrating the spiritual world. That is why, in earlier times, people sought to immerse themselves in the spiritual background of the world by reducing the degree of this obstacle. And—my dear friends here today—that, too, is not a path we can take today. For by attuning their organism in this way, people render themselves unfit for the kind of life that is demanded of us today. But anyone familiar with the historical development of human spiritual life knows that modern humanity, placed within this life with its demands from the external world, faces as its traditional worldview the very insights that were once discovered through the paths I have described. Today, through faith, we take in much of what was attained in the manner I have described. We are not aware that it was attained in this way; we do not know that an ancient form of knowledge underlies it, and so we construct the concept of faith for what is revered today.

[ 25 ] Anthroposophy now stands in relation to modern spiritual life in such a way that it follows paths that are appropriate for people today and that are entirely compatible with what we otherwise seek as science. While the yoga scholar strengthened his thought process by taking a detour through the breathing process, in my writings *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?* and *The Secret Science*, you will find instructions that do not rely on this. Instead, you will find descriptions of exercises that relate solely to the soul life, that remain purely within the soul, just as we remain within the soul when working on a mathematical problem. Through these exercises, thinking is now directly strengthened, and one then notices that when, through that concentration—those other exercises you can read about in the books—one continues to cultivate thinking in this way, it becomes something else; dead thinking transforms into living thinking. One arrives at an inner experience of the difference between living and dead thinking. How does one arrive at this? Well, to understand what I have to say about this, one must already ascend to these intimate realms of the soul life.

[ 26 ] I would like to begin with something that is frequently the subject of our worldview today: people seek—Goethe did so in his own way, modern people try to do so in their own ways, and I myself have attempted it in my earlier writings—to compare, for example, the external forms of living beings. Let’s say, for example, that modern people today seek to understand the form of a higher animal; they form a mental image of the higher animal’s form. In this way, they have the higher animal before them as long as they are conducting their investigations. Then they carry an inner image of this higher animal with them. They preserve in their soul a kind of mental counterpart to what they have experienced out there. But then modern humans must turn their attention, for example, to the human form. They now also form a mental image of this human form; let us assume they have succeeded in doing so just as they did with regard to the form of a higher animal. Then they compare the two and formulate a kind of evolutionary theory. He carries all this out using the very concepts into which we are simply born and raised today through our ordinary mental life. But now let us ask ourselves about something very important, which, however, is scarcely felt by modern people today. Let a modern person form a fairly precise inner concept of a higher mammal based on his or her current scientific education, and ask: “Now that you have this concept, can you—through an inner, living transformation of this thought—grasp the life force, that which nature demonstrates to you, and can you make the transition to the living human form? Do your thoughts undergo the same metamorphosis as nature does externally, from the idea of the animal to the idea of the human being?”

[ 27 ] Now—my esteemed audience—take a look at the concepts and ideas about animals and humans presented side by side, and then compare these ideas. You will arrive at something admirable, but it is not living thought, nor is it a living world of ideas. Human beings stand there with their world of thought, which is their inner reflection of what lives out there; but they turn to the higher forms of animals with abstract, lifeless thoughts.

[ 28 ] But if the exercises I have referred to are carried out—if these exercises are carried out—then something is indeed accomplished in the life of the human soul that can be compared to a corpse becoming a living being through some process. We do indeed come to say to ourselves: The animal, for example, has the distinctive feature that the orientation of its head is horizontal; the human being differs in that he transitions from the horizontal to the vertical orientation, and so on.

[ 29 ] We look at the magnetic needle; we align it with the various directions in space. Everywhere it behaves differently than when we align it along an axis running from the magnetic North Pole to the South Pole. We tell ourselves: This is a special direction; it has something to do with the inner nature of the forces that animate the magnetic needle. Human beings acquire this kind of perspective for the external world, but they also apply it to the higher worlds. They acquire a knowledge that consists in knowing this: Since the animal’s primary orientation is horizontal, it has a different orientation in the entire cosmos than the human being, whose orientation is vertical. When the human’s orientation is vertical—so that the spinal cord is thereby aligned vertically—one comes to know inwardly, through the living concept, how the external world takes on a thoroughly living character. Space ceases to be merely the indeterminate that expands into the insubstantial; space becomes inwardly filled with directions of force and beings of force. And one learns to develop this possibility within oneself once one has recognized the animal form within. One learns to experience how even the thought of the animal form is transformed into the human form; one learns to recognize an inwardly active life of thought. One learns to recognize this, however, not as a person who retreats to a hermitage—as the old yoga scholar does—but as someone who, precisely through this process, is able to truly engage with present-day life; for we are arriving at living concepts that, more than ever before, enable human beings to connect with the innermost essences of the external world.

[ 30 ] But now—my esteemed audience—you may object: Yes, there have always been philosophers who have arrived at certain living concepts, but these concepts nevertheless give the impression that one is standing in the midst of something unsubstantial. One cannot trust that what takes place in living thought will manifest itself in the same way out there in the real world.

[ 31 ] Yes, if things remain as they were with Schelling or Oken, if they remain that way, then one is not protected from simply grasping something unreal in a fanciful way. Instead, thought can then provide a kind of inner delight that is brought forth in a living way, just as the flower of a plant grows out of its foliage. But reality is brought about through something else in this path of knowledge. The one who brings thinking to life in the right way begins to experience something from which modern people, however, often shy away. And because they shy away from this, they also shy away from the whole of anthroposophy, which seeks the real spiritual world through these very paths of knowledge. The moment one enters into these specific aspects of one’s life through those exercises, at that very moment it becomes clear that each such living concept does not affect the soul in the same way as the dead concept we otherwise possess; rather, at first, each of the living concepts—as we gradually make them our own—causes us pain, inflicts spiritual suffering upon us that affects us no less than any physical suffering. This is the process one must go through—and through which the gates to the spiritual world are to open—where every living concept, which in turn leads one a little deeper into the spiritual world, every such living thought, triggers suffering and pain in the soul.

[ 32 ] Why is that? For this reason—my esteemed audience—because we must not only develop a living way of thinking, but also experience reality within that living way of thinking. However, we can only experience reality if it exerts an effect upon us.

[ 33 ] Let us consider our senses, specifically the eye. Among other things, what takes place within the eye are purely chemical decomposition processes. If these processes were not so subtle, we would also feel pain there; however, this pain has been overcome for the stage of human development that has already been reached. What once had to be felt during other phases of human development is what brought about painless perception.

[ 34 ] We must experience this state of suffering so that it appears to us as permeated by the spiritual-soul aspect itself, because the entire human being must itself become a comprehensive sensory organ. One cannot look into the spiritual world until the human organism has become a spiritual-soul eye. We must endure that state of suffering which transforms our entire human organism into a sensory organ for the spiritual world. As our entire organism overcomes this suffering, it becomes a sensory organ for the spiritual world. Only then, when we have experienced this as well, do we know that we are standing within a true spiritual world. Then one will say to oneself: I am very grateful to my destiny for my joys, but what I have gained as knowledge, I owe to what I have lived through in suffering, and that is what actually led me in the first place to the special nature of what knowledge is. Through this, I have been compelled to pursue this nature further. Unless one goes through the tragedies of life—and overcomes them—the gates to the spiritual world do not truly open.

[ 35 ] But when they open up, something entirely different emerges from living thought; what truly arises is that we look—just as we look with our eyes and ears at colors and sounds—that we look upon the concrete spiritual world to which we ourselves belong with the eternal part of our human life, that we are rooted in the spiritual world surrounding us. And once one has managed to rise above the individual animal form in the manner described, one finds that something further becomes apparent: one now has a human being before one; one can examine him in a different way than is done in the clinic or in the dissection room, when life has departed from him. One can fathom the essence of the human being in a different way. Just as the thought of the animal form—which one has now brought to life—reveals to us a higher, living reality, the animal’s inner form of growth, so too do we now see in the human being standing before us not merely the physical form; through purely spiritual perception, something emerges that we can truly regard as the human being’s spiritual-soul aura. And when one looks into this spiritual-soul aura—this act of looking is a result of the coming to life of thought—one looks upon that which stands before one as a spiritual-soul being, before the human being came into existence, before he descended from [the] spiritual-soul realm—one looks at the human being in relation to that which lives on within him from his pre-earthly existence. Living thought helps us in this, when we follow it in the physical outer world.

[ 36 ] Thus, anthroposophy seeks to arrive at a true understanding of the spiritual-soul nature in the life that precedes this earthly life. And by looking in this way at the human being in his or her essence—which can exist even without a physical body—one comes to know more precisely what the nature of the spiritual-soul realm is; in this spiritual perception, one sees how a completely different world existed in the time preceding our birth, how a completely different world stands before our spiritual perception.

[ 37 ] Here on Earth, as human beings, we cannot look inside ourselves. What anatomy provides us with is an external view. When, for example, a finger is moved solely by the impulses of the will, what does a person know about what is happening within their organism to cause the finger to move?

[ 38 ] Modern anthroposophy recognizes, based on the same scientific principles, where other exact sciences stand in their respective fields. And even if we were to have fathomed all the laws of the starry sky to their very end—everything that guides the path of clouds and sunbeams—and even if we were to have fathomed everything else that surrounds us in earthly life, here within the human being, whom we have called the microcosm, there would still be a greater number of mysteries for worldviews than there are out there in space. What lies out there in space, human beings survey in their lives between birth and death. More wondrous than all that which makes up the solar systems in the world is that which can be found within the microcosm.

[ 39 ] In the world from which we descended before we became united with our physical body—during that time when we lived as spiritual-soul beings in the spiritual-soul world itself—we looked upon that which we carry within us as human beings. There, every attention, every thought is directed toward everything a human being can experience; in the final period before a human being descends, this is focused on the question: How do I connect with that which is linked to me through the line of inheritance? The child experiences the transformation of its brain as it unfolds according to inner laws. We experience the process of becoming human before we descend into this human existence. This is the one aspect that we attain as our living thinking.

[ 40 ] The other side of this is that we are now learning to look at what a person does. We see how a person encounters another person at a certain stage of life; we see how, through this encounter, they experience something extraordinarily significant, which then gives their own existence in this physical earthly life a completely different direction; one sees this and says to oneself: This is a coincidence.

[ 41 ] But the one who is able to look at things in the right way sees how a person, even before entering this earthly life, already has certain sympathies and antipathies, and how these lead to rejecting one thing and accepting another. If one denies this, it is like the world of colors for someone who is born blind and then undergoes surgery—he might just as well deny the existence of the world of colors. Thus, it seems like something fantastical when the one whose spiritual eye is open observes how, from childhood onward, antipathy and sympathy pave the way for wisdom—or even for that which initially appears in life as folly. One comes to understand just how fleeting the result of antipathy and sympathy itself is through living, suffering-overcoming thought—this human action interwoven with sympathy and antipathy. Then one looks at one’s destiny and how it was earned in earlier earthly lives; one learns to look into repeated earthly lives.

[ 42 ] Here lies the spiritual and soul-level bond that unites humanity. It unites genuine, profound religious feeling; it unites that which seeks only to shape what exists in our minds; it unites with that which is the demand of our deepest inner life. By opening oneself to this spiritual insight, a person gains the ability to also come to understand how they will encounter those with whom they have formed a community here in the spiritual life.

[ 43 ] In this way, I have once again shown a step—my esteemed audience—toward what leads us, through anthroposophy, from the sensory-physical world into the spiritual world.

[ 44 ] What is attained through this path consists of purely spiritual and psychological processes that the ancient Indian yoga scholar discovered through his breathing practice. We do not destroy the human physical organism, but rather we approach the life of the soul; we allow the life of the soul to undergo an inner suffering that, at the same time, places the human being outwardly into today’s world as one who acts and wills, and does not condemn him to a life of seclusion. This is precisely what must be reclaimed in modern culture: that we openly engage with those who present their research to humanity in this way, and that we position ourselves toward them in such a way that we agree with them.

[ 45 ] He can do nothing else but show, time and again, by describing the paths and the results, how precisely what he accomplishes is merely a continuation of what people can find justified in ordinary life. And if it were then said that this concerns only those who already look into the spiritual world, the answer must be: That is not the case; human beings, by their very nature, are not predisposed to error and doubt, but rather to truth. That is why even someone who is not a painter can stand before a painting that is rendered in truth and beauty and experience it as such.

[ 46 ] With this sound human judgment, a person can approach what the anthroposophical spiritual researcher has to say and will be able to recognize the truth for themselves, even if they are not yet a researcher themselves. Those who are not researchers can judge the truth through sound human faculties. But what anthroposophy seeks to accomplish—that, it believes, is not merely the goal of individual hermits, but rather what modern humanity truly needs.

[ 47 ] What do we have in today’s spiritual life? People in the past had an inner spiritual life that they even carried out into the outer worlds. We can look into the outer worlds, but this inner spiritual life has been lost to us; we have abstract concepts, which are excellent for carrying out everything that does not require living, inner powers of insight. But this urges us to emphasize again and again: With your thoughts, which are so magnificent,

[ 48 ] you have nothing but, in essence, something dead, you have mental concepts of the spirit, and even though we certainly do not wish to evoke the old times when spiritual knowledge was sought through such means, a living spiritual vision was nonetheless found in those ancient times in a manner appropriate to that era; the people of that time had attained an inner spiritual life, something that realized the living spirit within their inner spiritual life.

[ 49 ] If we return to that living thinking as understood by anthroposophy, then knowledge will not only provide us with vivid concepts, but it will also provide us with the living spirit that walks among us. In this way, we will also experience physical plants and animals, and we will connect our own human feelings with these spiritual beings—the living spiritual world itself—which, in turn, is to be brought into physical, sensory existence through what is now living knowledge as opposed to dead knowledge.

[ 50 ] We must first make one thing very clear to ourselves: We want to attain a kind of knowledge that brings our world into being not merely through thought, but through the Spirit itself. The Spirit is at work wherever human beings act out of the Spirit. And especially today, when social life is in such a dire state, one feels the need for something spiritual to be present within social life. One sees, particularly in social life, that things cannot continue without the Spirit’s involvement; in short, anthroposophy seeks to find understanding among those people who feel, so to speak, the pulse of contemporary culture. Anthroposophy seeks to have people engage with the present not merely through thoughts and ideas about the spirit, but by being imbued with the living spirit itself, because one must realize that only with this living spirit will we be able to solve the tasks facing all of humanity, present in such a way that only through their living resolution can we grow into a future culture that sustains human beings at their spiritual and physical heights.