The Rudolf Steiner Archive

11. Anthroposophy and Spiritual Knowledge

[ 1 ] Ladies and gentlemen! Before I begin my remarks today, please allow me to say a few introductory words. What I will have to say today can certainly be justified scientifically. And I strive time and again to establish a connection to science by demonstrating that anthroposophy is in no way at odds with the valid findings or the rigorous research methods of the present day. But I took the liberty of addressing these points—at least in part—in the lecture I was privileged to deliver here in this very same venue a few months ago. And since I can assume that a large number of the esteemed listeners who were present at that time are here again today, repeating what was said then would certainly seem quite superfluous to this audience. I shall therefore consider what needs to be said about the relationship between anthroposophy and science to have been covered by what I said on that occasion.

[ 2 ] Ladies and gentlemen! When we speak of the spiritual world, questions and mysteries of a fundamental nature arise before the human soul—questions and mysteries that are not merely theoretical, but are connected to inner peace and joy, to the entire inner destiny of the human soul, and to a person’s fitness and competence in life. Yet the true nature of these difficulties that arise for human beings in relation to the spiritual world is not always viewed in the proper light. That human beings must claim for themselves a spiritual being—this, in fact, can give rise to neither a mystery nor any doubt whatsoever. For in every moment of their waking existence, human beings know that precisely that in which they feel their true human dignity and their true human being is what they call their spirit. They are concerned with such enigmatic questions that arise in this regard. They are concerned, precisely, with what the destiny of this spirit is—the spirit that actually constitutes their very being. Whether this spirit is something that belongs to the transitory, whether we may ascribe permanence to it, whether it is what emerges, so to speak, like a bubble of foam from material existence, whether it is what gives meaning and value to the material world. So this is essentially what is at stake, not the spirit as such. Even materialists will not deny the spirit, but will simply regard it as the result of the material processes of the world.

[ 3 ] When a person feels compelled to explore the nature of the spirit—not only for the sake of science, but also for the sake of happiness in everyday life—it is because, in the face of this fate, there is a constant welling up in the soul — one might say — from unconscious depths that are actually brought to consciousness only through a scientific worldview, because uncomfortable, anxious moods continually arise from them. And these are connected to a vast number of experiences that flicker through our soul. I could cite many such experiences that cause people anxiety in relation to the spirit, but I will mention only two as examples—two that belong precisely to the kind of experiences people do not always realize, that do not always enter their consciousness. But it is precisely such worries that lurk in the depths of the subconscious, evoking moods and states of mind, bringing joy and sorrow to the soul, and permeating everything that makes a person capable or incapable in life. When we name them, we are often referring to something that the simple, naive mind does not bring to consciousness, but which is all the more deeply rooted in the soul and connected to the entire life of feelings and sensations. And from this realm, I would like to cite two examples.

[ 4 ] One is what one can feel in that moment—which actually occurs every day in a person’s life—when a person transitions from the waking state to the sleeping state. The inner spiritual activity in which a person finds their true essence begins to fade. It becomes completely unconscious, and the person enters into the indeterminate. Even if one does not always perceive it, there is nevertheless something in this experience that one could call the powerlessness of ordinary spiritual life. There is something in the existence of the world—into which we enter through the state of sleep—that takes away from us that in which we recognize our human dignity and our human value; it takes away our spiritual life. This powerlessness in the face of the spirit is the one thing that, more or less—half or wholly unconsciously—underlies the enigmatic questions about the spiritual being.

[ 5 ] And on the other hand, it is that which can occur again when a person awakens in the morning—perhaps through the transition from the dream state, which they can only regard as a sum of chaotic experiences in contrast to the reality of waking life—and then immerses themselves once more in their physical being, making use of their physical senses and organs. But then the person notices—I would say—the other pole of that which raises questions regarding the nature of the spirit within them. They notice that, in contrast to what they are as a spiritual being, they are engaged in their physical existence. It lives in the senses, in the nervous system, in the limbs; it lives in all of these. But if we ask ourselves the simplest question: By what means do we move our hand, our arm? In our ordinary consciousness, we cannot account for what flows down from the intention to carry out the action into our physical existence, what works and weaves within this physical existence so that, ultimately, the raising and lowering of the arm come about. It is as if what we call our spiritual life were plunging into darkness.

[ 6 ] Thus, on the one hand, we see the feeling of powerlessness in our spiritual life, and on the other hand, the descent into an indefinite darkness that lies within ourselves. And when a person brings before their inner eye everything that surfaces in moods and states of mind as a result of experiencing such things, they feel compelled to answer the question in some way: Yes, what is the truth of the matter regarding this spiritual life? Is there another spiritual life in which that which seems so powerless and dark to me is somehow rooted, a life that guarantees its enduring existence? But then two opinions, two opposing forces of thought and feeling, come to stand between human beings and this spiritual world—forces that fill people with illusions about the spiritual world and that drain something from them, from their mood and state of mind.

[ 7 ] One of these is superstition. The person who wishes to become aware of his connection to a spiritual world strives inward, seeking—not through his understanding, but out of his own will—to give himself over to all manner of illusions, all manner of clouded judgments, things that are supposed to tell him something about the spiritual world. I need only hint at these things for you to sense the sources of illusion that lie in what we call the various forms of human superstition. But let us consider how the superstitious person must fare in the world.

[ 8 ] What he conjures up within himself—and which is meant to make him aware of his relationship to the spiritual world—clashes at every turn with external reality. Let us look at the processes and the things around us. When we approach their laws, we find everywhere that something else is true than what we believe based on superstitious notions. This leads us to a certain sense of disorientation. We stumble through life instead of being able to feel connected to our spirituality, to the true laws of the world. And we also become unfit because we cannot find within ourselves the forces that correspond to the laws of the external world. Ultimately, a superstitious person must become an inadequate person for themselves and their environment. Yet it is precisely those who, out of a certain will or a certain life situation, must refuse to engage with the entirety of contemporary scientific life who fall prey to superstition. Thus, those who are little affected by the significant insights that scientific life offers us easily fall prey to the disorientation and inadequacy in life that I have just described.

[ 9 ] On the other hand, those who truly immerse themselves in this scientific life—who conscientiously engage with what the senses, experimentation, and observation can offer through scientific methods—are exposed to yet another pole of spiritual experience. Such people then sense how they must shape their intellect so that it may enter the realm of true reality unclouded and unhindered by all manner of illusions. But then they go on to realize: With this intellect, which is so well-suited to the realm of the [sensory] world, one cannot ascend into the supersensory world. And it is precisely those who take scientific life seriously who are then plunged into doubt. And these doubts, when they take hold of the serious mind, the serious soul, descend from the intellect—where they are initially rooted—deep into the life of feeling and emotion. And it is precisely through anthroposophical research that one recognizes how intimately our emotional life is connected to the states of suffering and joy in our physical being. So that ultimately, what descends from the intellect into the emotional life as doubt extends all the way into our physical existence. Consequently, the human being—and one may use this radical expression in this case—is cast by doubt into a kind of spiritual consumption, and then into physical weakness and physical incapacity. Ultimately, doubt also renders the human being unfit for life, for oneself and for one’s fellow human beings.

[ 10 ] Because these matters affect modern people so deeply, those who take spiritual life seriously seek out the most diverse sources of information in an effort to establish a connection with the spiritual world. We see how it is precisely these individuals who are already turning today to that which, because of its vagueness and the uncertainty of its insights, can never actually form the basis of true knowledge. They turn to the pathological aspects of human nature. Because they doubt what a healthy soul and a healthy body can produce in terms of knowledge regarding the supersensible world, people turn to abnormal human nature and believe that in what it reveals—which deviates even from what normal cognition brings to us—something can be found that points us toward things and processes in a world other than this one, a world in which human beings feel just as little at home and where they cannot accept that the spiritual might sink into indeterminate darkness. And so, today, skeptical minds from the fields of science often turn to mediumistic phenomena; they turn to pathological human natures from which emerge all manner of visions and inner perceptions that are, after all, nothing more than hallucinations. For if we look impartially at the factual reality in this field, we can see how the medium—who, in terms of their normal life of cognition, is cut off from the external world—draws all manner of inner experiences from a pathological physical condition—since a healthy nature gives rise to a healthy capacity for cognition—and then communicates these experiences. One is never in a position to examine these experiences with the same precision with which, for example, one examines those of a dream. In cognition, what matters is that whatever is experienced from some source can be tested against the common sense of everyday reality. We can do this with dreams, but not in the same way with mediumistic revelations, because we do not see through them, because they do not live within us. Nor can what emerges from a pathological state as visions and hallucinations be examined in terms of cognition. We will always find that something is unhealthy somewhere when visionary or hallucinatory elements emerge from the soul life. And one can say: It is merely a continuation of the despair regarding sound, normal understanding in the face of the supersensible, which expresses itself in such a search.

[ 11 ] On the other hand, there are indeed many people today who have not yet emerged from what education provides—that which we are born into—but there are already quite a number of people today who, having despaired of other paths to enter the spiritual world, are now returning to what—I would say—even the most naive minds seek to satisfy their need for the spiritual. There it is—that which is time-honored, that which has developed down to our time from the creeds of ancient times; it is there. One can certainly sense how such creeds—and they extend right into our contemporary philosophy—truly reveal something of a spiritual world. But since they simply exist as results, since they have been preserved through tradition and approach people in a certain finished form, one can really do nothing other than surrender to what, in the present, is called “faith” as opposed to actual knowledge.

[ 12 ] Indeed, those who lack the courage to advance toward knowledge seek to justify belief through all manner of conceptual constructs. But those who approach events with a deeper insight into the soul and follow them from period to period—those who do not merely track the external facts of history but trace the inner life of the human soul within historical life—find that everything that appears today in traditions, in worldviews—whether in the form of creeds or philosophies to which people then devote themselves with a certain degree of faith—all of these can be traced back to ancient forms of cognition, not to ancient forms of faith.

[ 13 ] Ladies and gentlemen, I will certainly not be among those who would recommend such old forms of the pursuit of knowledge for the present day. However, in order to understand how human beings can, by their very nature and essence, arrive at an understanding of another world, it is necessary to examine the ways in which, in earlier epochs of human history—differently from how we must do so today—human beings sought knowledge, and how the results that emerged from those earlier paths of knowledge—even though we lack clarity today regarding what those paths actually were—were integrated into the course of human development and how they persist to this day. People would be quite astonished if they were to realize, with complete historical accuracy, how even the most self-evident philosophies are based solely on the results of earlier forms of knowledge.

[ 14 ] I would like to highlight two examples of how such insights were arrived at in very, very ancient times—two examples; I could cite others as well, but I want to choose two that are characteristic. The results of these paths of knowledge—which can no longer be our own—live on today in tradition. Many, indeed millions, of people devote themselves to them without even realizing it. For what lives on in all creeds and worldviews was once sought by individual people on their own paths of knowledge. In particular, the first path of knowledge that I will describe is not currently characterized quite correctly. For people actually characterize only what has remained in Eastern countries—to which many who despair of their own knowledge are drawn today—what has remained in the ancient Eastern world as old traditions, but has remained corrupted and decadent compared to what was once a fully legitimate quest for knowledge.

[ 15 ] What I would first like to describe is what is commonly known as the so-called yoga path of Eastern spiritual seekers. Through this yoga path—without people necessarily realizing it—which is said to yield the results to which many devote themselves, what was actually sought through it? This will become clear to us once we bring its most important characteristics to mind. One practice to which the yoga scholar paid particular attention was a form of breathing different from ordinary breathing.

[ 16 ] I am, of course, well aware—my esteemed audience—that breathing exercises in particular can be quite harmful to people today. However, what is harmful to human nature today stems precisely from forms of spiritual knowledge that were once entirely justified in earlier, more primitive forms of human nature and, given the nature of the human spirit at that time, were indeed genuine paths into the spiritual world. The yoga scholar sought to bring into a different rhythm what otherwise takes place unconsciously within the human being—that which becomes conscious only in pathological states or in other abnormal cases, and which thus essentially remains unconscious in healthy individuals. He sought to inhale, hold his breath, and exhale in a different way than is customary in everyday life. What was he seeking to achieve in this way? He sought to bring one element of human soul life—the element of thought—to a perception of worlds other than the ordinary ones. And the yoga scholar noticed that through this abnormal breathing, his thought process was directed toward a completely different orientation. What orientation? We can understand this by referring to what is considered physiological today. When we inhale, the breath is driven through the spinal canal into the brain; for people today, this is an unconscious process. Nevertheless, it is no less true that through the processes taking place in the body—which serve as the external framework for the soul-spiritual processes of life—not only is everything driven through them for which the brain is the instrument, but also that which constitutes a refined breathing rhythm. As we think about the world, the subtle current arising from the breath continuously vibrates, flows, undulates, and weaves within our brain and throughout our nervous system. Because the yoga scholar breathed in an unusual way, he became aware of what normally remains unconscious during the breathing process. And he was able to trace what now flows into the brain from the breathing process,

[ 17 ] And what resulted from this was that thinking became something different—something that in ancient times was very much alive for humanity, something that in ancient times was such that human beings did not, as we today rightly do everywhere, see pure colors through our physical eyes or hear pure tones through our physical ears; rather, ancient human beings saw everywhere that which arose within their souls as a spiritual-soul aspect. In the clouds, in thunder and lightning, in a spring, in a plant, in a stone—everywhere, apart from the sounds the ear provided and the colors the eye delivered, and so on—everywhere, people in earlier times perceived something spiritual-soulful. People today say: Those were figments of the imagination. They were not figments of the imagination; just as we perceive the color red through our eyes, so the people of old perceived what was soul-spiritual—in waves and wind, in lightning and thunder, in plants, stones, and animals, in springs and streams, in the sun and the moon. This way of thinking, which was common knowledge among humanity in those ancient times, was naturally also the way of thinking of the yoga scholar. But as he now channeled his life-sustaining breath through this way of thinking, it became something different for him. Through the thinking he developed in this way, he perceived a different world than he did through his ordinary thinking. He perceived the world that, above all else, gave him the certainty of his own being.

[ 18 ] And when we read today the wonderful poetic descriptions found, for example, in the Bhagavad Gita regarding the nature and workings of the human self, we see that they were derived from the fact that yogic scholarship rose to a level of thinking that had been attained through the self-regulated process of breathing. Above all, the ancient human being, by perceiving the spiritual-soul aspect in all things and processes of the external world, lacked an inner spiritual awareness. Through the process of yoga, he became aware of his own spirituality. And what often resounds from ancient times—things that have changed only in outward form—lives on once more in worldviews and creeds. And many philosophers and adherents of religions do not realize how what they say about the human soul and the Self in connection with the Eternal has developed from ancient times, when it was the result of the training of ancient yogis. But one can realize that these are inner exercises intended to lead people, through this path of knowledge, upward into the supersensible worlds, so that they might come to know their relationship to a world other than the one that otherwise surrounds us. On the one hand, in the direction of thought, this was such a path of knowledge.

[ 19 ] Another older path to knowledge—one that is still widely recommended today—is less harmful than the path of yoga when applied to modern nature, but it cannot bring true knowledge in our time. The path of yoga is unsuitable for people today. For by performing a certain breathing process, one alters the organism from its normal state. The organism becomes refined and sensitive. The faintest breaths of life weave themselves into it, so that the person becomes extremely sensitive to the harsh, rugged outside world. The yogi therefore likes to withdraw from this world. This was possible in ancient times, when people sought higher knowledge from those who withdrew from life. This does not apply to our life today. Our modern life has reached a point where anyone who wishes to impart knowledge to others must be fully immersed in life. Of one who wishes to withdraw into a hermit’s life, we will say: You can reveal nothing to us. Only when you live life with us and yet arrive at certain insights can we follow your path to insight. Therefore, for modern people, we need different paths to insight than those of the past. And one such older path to insight was that of asceticism. However, what was once practiced as asceticism in ancient times—as a legitimate path—had become corrupted; and what can be widely read and learned about this asceticism today is not the very practice through which ancient humanity once sought insights in a manner appropriate to its time—insights that, in many ways, live on far more than those of the yogi in contemporary worldviews. On what, then, is this asceticism based? It is based on a subduing and stilling of our physical nature. And it was then the experience of those who underwent such asceticism—when they subdued their bodily functions, when everything that takes place in the physical body proceeded more calmly than in ordinary life—that they became filled with the experience of inner forces. The will became purely soul-based as the outer physical existence was subdued. And such ascetics said to themselves: Yes, bodily functions are, in fact, nothing other than an obstacle to penetrating the spiritual worlds. For the outer, ordinary world, our body is indeed the right tool. We can live spiritually and psychologically in the world between birth and death only if we can surrender to what, in a purely physical and physiological way, triggers our senses in response to the external environment. Only when we can make normal use of our body can we truly live in harmony with the external world. But precisely because this body is so perfectly suited—both in terms of cognition and will—for waking life between birth and death, it proves incapable of allowing human beings to experience inner soul life in its purity. Therefore, such ascetics sought to subdue the physical so that the spiritual-soul life might unfold within them. And they felt bliss when it unfolded. And in this bliss, they felt that which was otherwise bound to powerlessness united with a Spirit that never sinks into powerlessness or darkness; they felt united with the spirituality of the cosmos.

[ 20 ] If we were to attune our bodies downward, we would become unfit for the outer world. We would be unable to accomplish what we humans today must do in an age when we are surrounded by a magnificent outer culture. We would become unfit if we were to devote ourselves to such asceticism in the old sense. Therefore, for modern human beings, inner practice must proceed as I took the liberty of outlining the principles of in my last lecture, and as you will find described in detail in my book *How to Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?*, in my *The Secret Science*, and in my other writings. There, and in these writings, I showed—and continue to show—how modern human beings practice purely in the soul-spiritual realm: not by performing breathing exercises based on the physical, not by attuning the physical-bodily aspect, but by performing exercises that are purely inner and intimate, exercises that consist of concentration and meditation of the mind, which involve the person devoting themselves not to a different breathing process, but to a different way of thinking. This is the difference between the ancient yoga method and the exercises described in the books mentioned—exercises that do not turn a person into a hermit and do not subdue their physical body—in that the ancient yoga scholar relied on the breathing processes, which were directly related to bodily life and calmed active thinking—but which modern people must attempt by concentrating on certain thought forms, thereby overcoming what we otherwise find everywhere today in ordinary life and in ordinary science—abstract thinking—so that they may achieve inner flexibility.

[ 21 ] I would like to say that our exercises are aimed precisely at achieving the opposite of what the ancient yoga scholar sought to achieve. In his naive consciousness—shared by the rest of humanity, a characteristic of that era—he believed that his thinking was internally alive, and he wanted to calm it. He sought the abstract nature of thought—which we already possess today simply because human nature has evolved—and from which we now wish to break free in order to gain insight into other worlds. What is remarkable is that in ancient times people strove with all their might for what we already possess today, and that today, by turning directly to thought, we are steering that thought in directions different from those found in ordinary life and in conventional science. That we take today’s abstract thinking—which we increasingly perceive as dead—and breathe life into it from within, so that we transition from the abstract, dead thought to the inwardly living thought. This is the secret of our practice today: the revitalization of the abstract, dead thought that exists within us in ordinary life and in ordinary science. Through this, we achieve the goal today of looking into other worlds through our knowledge.

[ 22 ] What takes place here leads us to the characteristics of certain subtle processes. However, one must resolve to delve into such subtleties. If one is not willing to do so, one cannot truly understand the path of knowledge leading into higher worlds. As a person engages in such exercises—as I said, I do not wish to describe them further today—they begin to notice how their thinking gradually comes alive. And I would like to illustrate how this happens with an example, one that is appropriate for today’s culture.

[ 23 ] Let’s suppose we look at—say—a higher animal in the way we are accustomed to, having received a scientific education today. Through our abstract thinking, we seek to understand the inner conditions and circumstances of life, as well as the morphological structures, of this higher animal. We clarify all of this for ourselves—to the extent that modern science allows us to form a correct conception—so that we can inwardly visualize the essence of the animal. We are then accustomed to relating what we visualize in this way, for example, to the physical form and inner bodily nature of the human being. We also clarify for ourselves how the internal organs are formed, how they function in humans, and how the external form is structured. We then compare what we can thus set before us in the human being—what we have elaborated down to the level of natural laws—with what we gain from the animal. And by comparing the two, we arrive—whether in a more or less materialistic or spiritual sense—at a certain conception of the relationship between humans and the higher animals.

[ 24 ] But now let’s ask ourselves something else—something one actually only learns to ask once one devotes oneself to such exercises, which relate purely to thinking and enliven the thinking process. One asks oneself: Yes, if one now turns one’s ordinary abstract thinking toward the higher animal realm and clarifies for oneself what one can clarify about it, is one then able, with the concept one has formed of the animal—with one’s idea of this animal—to ascend from it to the idea of the human being? Can one—what one observes externally as a transformation of form, what one can then externally compare in its various manifestations and relate to one another through logical abstractions—can one accomplish this with inner vitality in relation to the idea, and does one thus ascend from the idea of the animal to the idea of the human being? So, does one reenact in abstract thought what is presupposed of us out there in nature—as forces of growth and form? No, one does not. But when [one] devotes oneself to the newer, purely spiritual yoga, when one succeeds in enlivening this human thinking in such a way that, by deriving from an external thing or an external process the idea through which one internally visualizes this process, then he crosses over to something of a completely different nature with this idea, as it transforms itself in the same way that the external process is meant to transform. Then, with this living concept, he immerses himself in things, whereas otherwise one merely stands there—if one has only abstract thinking—and does not immerse oneself in them. And so, through this modern system of practice with regard to thinking, the human being becomes inwardly of a completely different nature. His thinking becomes something entirely different inwardly and enables him to truly immerse himself in the world to which he belongs—but to immerse himself with that which he experiences inwardly and spiritually. And as he immerses himself, he becomes certain of this: that which lives within me as the spiritual—which may appear powerless and submerged in darkness—is nevertheless grounded in the spirituality of the world. For as it immerses itself in living thought, it becomes one with the spiritual essence of the world; it lives in harmony with the eternal, spiritual foundation of existence, and in this way, the human being comes to know his or her eternal self through thought.

[ 25 ] But then—my esteemed audience—doubts arise all the more. The path is, at first, of this nature on one side. However, one must not believe that the person who seeks his path to knowledge in this modern sense lives, at first, in pure bliss by entering into a state of mind entirely different from that of ordinary consciousness. What lies before us can be gauged by well-founded objections that can indeed be raised from all sides—I would certainly say—that can be raised with a certain justification: objections that stem from references to a philosophy such as Schelling’s or that of Oken—witty, powerful, and brilliant conceptions of the world, arising from a kind of living thought. However, if we examine both with an unbiased human sensibility—in the way that Schelling or Oken formed their thoughts about individual facts, then transformed them in a more imaginative manner so that they would fit something else, so that they could submerge from being into becoming—then what is present is merely thinking, a mere dwelling in inner [imagery]. Nothing there guarantees being, reality. This is precisely what must be held against such thinkers: that while they set thought in motion, they cannot endow thought with a character that guarantees its reality in the immediate life of human cognition. And here one may point to that which, in an anthroposophical manner, seeks to immerse itself cognitively into the supersensible world—something that is always connected whenever a person strives to walk their path of knowledge in the proper way through exercises such as those described here. He then arrives at such living thoughts. He develops them by attempting, through them and by immersing himself inwardly in the world, to grasp that world. But precisely when he has such a living thought in a particular instance and, in all seriousness, seeks to comprehend something through it, he truly experiences inwardly what can be called the deepest inner pain of the soul, the deepest inner suffering of the soul. Such a thought, which is capable of inner transformation, cannot be experienced without pain, without suffering in the soul. That is why anyone who has acquired even a little insight will never tell you anything other than this: Yes, for what I have experienced from the outside as happiness, as pleasure, as satisfaction in life—for that I am truly, truly grateful to my fate; but what I have gained as a little insight, I owe, fundamentally speaking, to the sufferings that life has brought me, most of all to the suffering of the soul. And these spiritual sufferings, which [in a sense] came upon me of their own accord, have also given me the certainty that the reality of a living thought can only be experienced by living through its effect, its truth, inwardly in suffering and pain; and true knowledge of the spiritual world cannot be attained without inner tragedy.

[ 26 ] After all, this might also become apparent through a somewhat more impartial and nuanced way of looking at things. What, then, is the matter with our sensory approach? Well, my dear friends, when we give ourselves over to sensory perception, a subtle change does indeed occur first in our sensory organs; even in the wonderfully constructed eye, small changes take place. Today, because we are organized in such a way that we no longer perceive what early humanity perceived—these small changes as pain— we are immersed in these sensory perceptions only because we experience them with a certain natural freedom from pain—precisely because we are not fully present in them as whole human beings. But what the animated thought brings about is what makes us whole human beings—and we become aware that the physical human being is permeated by the spiritual—as whole human beings, this practice makes us into sensory organs, and we must attain the capacity to perceive the spiritual world—which we acquire through this sensory organ—by first enduring and overcoming pain and suffering. And once we have overcome it, not only does the healthy physical body remain intact, but the soul within us becomes capable of looking directly into the spiritual world. But then, through this insight—which is conveyed to us by our becoming fully a sense organ after passing through pain—what arises in us in this way connects with what arises through active thinking. Through the interaction of the sense organs with animated thinking, one acquires an awareness of reality regarding the spiritual world, just as we otherwise acquire an awareness of reality through the world of colors and sounds. Through this, however—my esteemed audience—modern human beings also come to glimpse into another world. Since he now has a spiritual reality before the eye of the soul in this way—becoming, as it were, the eye of the soul as a whole human being—and since spiritual reality lies around him alongside sensory reality, the human being, even in his physical form, appears before our soul in a different way once we have this animated thought. He lives, after all, in images. And when we look at a human being, what stands before us as the outer human form—indeed, that very outer human form—reveals to us something connected to the purely spiritual-soul aspect. In a sense, we look upon a spiritual-soul form just as we look upon the physical form with our physical eyes. And by looking upon this spiritual-soul aspect, we connect the physical body with what I openly call—even if it may cause offense—an “auric” aspect of human nature. We see an auric aspect; we see a spirit-soul organism. And this spirit-soul organism—which reveals through its very nature, just as the physical organism reveals when we have an adult human being before us that this person was once a small child—points back to what we were as purely spiritual and soul-being in a spiritual-soul world, before we descended into the physical world and united with that which had been prepared in the mother’s womb from this physical earthly world for union with the purely spiritual-soul being that lived in the spiritual-soul world before birth—or, shall we say, conception. And not only are we pointed in this general way toward what we ourselves were—if we have prepared ourselves for it—but we are also pointed in a concrete way toward what the human being was back then. We gradually come to know the human being as a spiritual-soul being in the spiritual-soul world, just as we come to know the physical human being through our eyes and intellect. However, we must rise to a certain level of insight, which consists in saying to ourselves: Yes, the outer world that surrounds us—we first look at it with all the faculties we possess in normal life between birth and death. We look at everything that surrounds us in the stars, in the clouds, and in the realms of nature; we look least of all into ourselves. For we know, when we are unbiased, that what we perceive within ourselves is, in essence, merely a pictorial representation of what we experience in the external world.

[ 27 ] Between birth and death, human beings are oriented toward the external world. An extraordinary wealth of content reveals itself to us as we turn our eyes and other senses outward toward this environment, from the stars down to the tiniest worm. But those who are open-minded enough can intuitively perceive that what they carry within themselves is shaped in an even more wondrous way. Yes, the external world may be magnificently shaped, and through science we may uncover great, powerful laws within it. But if we can look within—not through anatomy, not through what is revealed by external science, which leads to the splendors of the external world, but through inner faculties—then we will say to ourselves at every moment: What lies within human nature reveals something far more magnificent than the cosmic external world. It differs only in terms of external space, but not in terms of richness. This inner human realm—which we can only sense in our ordinary consciousness—is truly a microcosm, truly a small world; and however magnificent the outer world may be, here within the human being it appears even more magnificent. But between birth and death, we grasp this only intuitively. For when we make use of our sensory and volitional faculties, we plunge beneath them into darkness. We do not see what our lungs are building up; we do not convince ourselves that what our lungs are building up is something greater and more magnificent. We look into our heart, but we cannot convince ourselves that the inner organization of the heart is far more powerful than what we encounter as an organization when we examine the relationships between the Earth and the Sun. We can only sense all of this. But with the tools of science, we cannot look into the inner world. But if we look into the world with supersensible vision—the world in which we lived as spiritual-soul beings before our birth, or, let us say, before conception—then we find that, while here between birth and death the cosmos is our external world, toward which we direct our actions, our spiritual-soul being before conception—the human inner being—is the external world.

[ 28 ] We look into this inner human being; we look because we must immerse ourselves—actively—by preparing, for example, for the transformation that takes place in such a wonderful way in the child as the brain develops. That which we create from within ourselves, from the soul-spiritual realm—that is what we behold before we descend into the physical world on Earth. The human inner world, which appears dark to us between birth and death—we do not merely observe it; it is not merely our knowledge, nor is it merely what we admire when we give free rein to our sympathies and antipathies; it is also that toward which we directed our actions before birth or conception. The nature of the human will has as its goal that which the human being, so to speak, is then able to shape inwardly from within his own constitution. And—my esteemed audience—as unconsciously as this takes place in ordinary life, it must be achieved. And what the human being experiences in the purely spiritual world through cognition and action is what is then carried out, albeit unconsciously, in this physical earthly life. And that is one aspect of the auric human being.

[ 29 ] The other side of the auric human being comes into view when we focus not on the outer form, but on that which lives in the human being’s impulses of will and in their actions. Then one truly learns to view the world differently—namely, the world of human beings. One says to oneself: What people do appears to us just as the world of colors appears to someone born blind who has undergone a successful operation. That person comes to know a whole new world through the opening up of an external sense. In the same way, a sense is opened up to us through our transformation, as whole human beings, into a sensory organ. With this sense, however, we view what human life entails in a different light. Above all, we come to know ourselves through this sense organ—not like the ascetic who mortifies his outer physicality so that it poses no obstacle to the spiritual, who brought suffering upon himself in order to reach the spiritual through physical suffering; rather, we reach the spiritual through suffering in the soul. Through this, however, we come to know within ourselves that which is now spiritual-soul in this earthly life. We learn to recognize that which, as the spiritual-soul, is preparing itself and will in turn strive forth from the physical as the second auric body when we pass through the gate of death. In this way—by becoming a sense organ ourselves—we become acquainted with our life after death. We become acquainted with that which passes through the gate of death as the eternal soul nature of the human being. We become acquainted with the forces within us that strive toward the spiritual world, toward the spiritual in the cosmos, just as we strove toward it before birth through our deeds and our vision.

[ 30 ] But we become aware of something else as well. For example, we come to recognize: One person encounters another; their two life paths converge. Something develops that is of decisive importance for the fate of both. From that point on, the two walk their life’s path together. This is usually called coincidence. But if one learns—I would say, just as a person born blind learns to see colors after undergoing surgery— if one comes to know what a person accomplishes in life through this sensory organ that he forms from within himself as a whole human being, then from early childhood onward one follows what he accomplishes out of sympathies and antipathies—out of sympathies and antipathies that are in turn replaced by others. What becomes one’s life path always strives forth from within us; thus we can trace a line, as if by design, toward what has become one’s destiny. We see: what shapes one’s life comes from within. We come to understand more clearly what open-minded older people, having gained wisdom through age, used to say. Goethe’s friend Knebel once said: “When one looks back on life, it actually seems quite deliberate, and at the individual decisive moments one feels as though they were part of a life plan laid out in advance.” — Thus one looks into that which, arising from sympathies and antipathies, from impulses and desires, takes shape as one’s life in deeds; and from there the path leads on to the perception of the thread of destiny through repeated earthly lives. We learn to recognize how that which springs forth in sympathies and antipathies can be traced back to earlier earthly lives. It can only be hinted at how, in this way—by becoming a sensory organ oneself—one gradually gains a glimpse of the repeated earthly lives through which the thread of destiny runs. Through higher sensibility, one sees into the spiritual and eternal.

[ 31 ] It is now—when human beings, in a truly modern way, do not alienate themselves from life but can instead fully immerse themselves in it—that they nevertheless find their way to those other worlds with which their soul must ultimately feel connected, and discover how to find this path toward true knowledge. Now what he acquires in this way as a person of knowledge can deepen within him, so that his whole being is stirred. Now what is knowledge unites with inner religious devotion; now, because the human being finds the path in a modern way, knowledge can in turn become religion; now knowledge can lead to true, genuine devotion. Human beings reach this goal of knowledge precisely through a wholly inner path. Previously, one had to bring the body into harmony. Now one leaves the body as it is, so that it remains fit for outer life, so that one may have the trust of other people. But in the soul, by exerting this soul all the more strongly, one nevertheless undergoes suffering; one brings about suffering in an inner way that was previously brought about in an outer way. And now it may be that, if such anthroposophy—as meant here—is understood, the individual can be understood if one simply listens to him without prejudice. After all, today—in a certain sense—every single person can, by following certain rules, pave their own way into the spiritual world. But this is not necessary, for one can grasp and understand through one’s common sense what the spiritual researcher can reveal through their insight. Just as one need not be a painter to appreciate the beauty of a painting, so too does one need not be a spiritual researcher oneself to find within oneself the truth of what the spiritual researcher says. For through his higher insight, this spiritual researcher is, after all, merely led into the higher worlds. He, too, must recognize the reality of these worlds through his common sense. Just as one uses common sense to verify that a dream does not correspond to external reality, so too must one use a more profound logic to recognize the truth and reality of what the spiritual researcher explores in the spiritual worlds, in order to fathom humanity’s true relationship to these spiritual worlds in such a way that neither powerlessness nor darkness arises. But at the same time, something else arises that we very much need in the present. We are currently living immersed in a wealth of ideas and thoughts. Science and many other aspects of life provide us with these ideas and thoughts, but these ideas and thoughts are abstract; in the sense of what has been said today, they are dead. At most, we have thoughts about the spirit, ideas about the spirit, but the spirit does not live among us. This is what we, as modern people, must acknowledge as a confession when we look back on earlier ages. Certainly, we cannot wish for them to return. Much of what people in the past regarded as correct for their way of life must seem quite unsympathetic to us. And precisely with regard to this way of life, an immense number of hopes and illusions flit through the minds of people today. But if we do not wish to resurrect the old times, we must still say: They lived in the spirit; for they were immersed in the spirit. They did not merely indulge in abstract thoughts. This spiritual life unfolded for them as life itself, not merely as thoughts about spirituality. Today we have only thoughts about the spiritual. We will once again have spiritual vitality among us. We need this by developing thoughts about the spiritual—developing them in such a way that the concrete, the living-spiritual takes root within us, so that we are permeated to our very core not only by thoughts but by the Spirit, so that we also know: Spiritual beings live around us, with us, in our life of will, in our thoughts. We do not need the Spirit merely in the form of thoughts; we need the living Spirit everywhere in our midst. We must also know that through the experience of thought and living will, we can conjure up not merely the abstract but the concrete spiritual. If we also know that the spiritual lives within us as thought, that it lives with us as a companion, can inspire us, can fill us with enthusiasm, and can unlock our true human being and human dignity, then, with such a human relationship to the world—elevated into the supersensible, into the spiritual—we can find paths in the present that lead us to demands such as those being raised today amid deep longing, deep tragedy, and also many illusions. But to do so, we must seek the Spirit as a companion in our striving—both in the present and the future—through the spiritualization of our thought and the revitalization of dead thought. That, and nothing else, is the aim of anthroposophical world research; that is the aim of the anthroposophical paths intended to lead from the physical world into the spiritual world—toward healing and inner blessing, [toward] a true experience of the all-encompassing reality, which is not only physical but also spiritual. And it is in spiritual reality alone that human beings can find satisfaction for those enigmatic questions of which I spoke at the beginning of today’s lecture.