The Rudolf Steiner Archive

9. The Demands of the Times and Anthroposophy

[ 1 ] Ladies and gentlemen! Many acknowledge that when we speak today of an urge to find something for the human heart, soul, and spirit—something that cannot come from past traditions or even from contemporary science—we are not merely expressing the ideal or the longing of a few individuals; rather, this reflects a need of our time. Anthroposophy seeks to serve this need of our time. However, many dispute that it can even come close to doing so. It is acknowledged that the need for spiritual deepening and for a spiritual elevation is present today in the most eminent sense. But people behave quite strangely when, based on ideas—which they often believe to have truly arisen from these contemporary needs—they then judge the anthroposophical spiritual movement specifically. One characteristic judgment among many others—which goes something like this—is that anthroposophy is a misguided path toward a goal that has been correctly identified and is necessary for the needs of our time. I will not mention the name of the person who had this judgment published; names are irrelevant, for they often only cause annoyance, but this is indeed a judgment that is put forward from many quarters. However, there must be something extraordinarily peculiar underlying this view if it could rightly be said that, while anthroposophy can indeed identify with a certain degree of certainty the goal that is appropriate to and even necessary for the needs of the times, it is also, in the fullest sense of the word, a wrong path toward that goal.

[ 2 ] As we conclude this week-long course on anthroposophy today, let us try to understand what might actually underlie such a judgment.

[ 3 ] Anyone who makes such a judgment recognizes this: The scientific way of thinking has shaped the human souls of the civilized world over the centuries, has given their quest a certain character, and has left a certain imprint on what they call knowledge. They also recognize that what has been instilled in humanity in this way must be taken into account. It has found its way into everyone, even the simplest minds; it has also given these simplest minds the critical standard by which to judge everything that approaches them as a worldview. Furthermore, those who make such a judgment recognize: It is the old traditional creeds, the old traditional worldviews, that believe they possess a certain body of knowledge concerning the supersensible and the eternal aspects of human nature; yet, precisely because of the way in which they present this knowledge to humanity, they cannot satisfy today’s needs—needs that have been cultivated in humanity in the manner just described through the developments of the past few centuries. And so a discerning person recognizes: Here is a humanity thirsting for fulfillment in its worldview; here are others—who are, in a sense, leaders—who face this humanity, but who — neither from modern natural science nor from the old traditional creeds, nor even from what they knew how to make of both — know how to speak to this humanity in such a way that it is able to receive what is said as a proclamation of what it demands out of its thus-developed contemporary needs. And so those who are able to judge will see that anthroposophy is emerging. One may think what one will about the details of what emerges from the anthroposophical method of research; but even such a person will have to admit how this anthroposophy strives to take into account the needs of our time just described.

[ 4 ] And so those who pass judgment say: Yes, a certain intellectualism, a certain rationalism, has indeed developed precisely within scientific thinking. But if one educates the human soul solely in the spirit of this rationalism and cultivates this intellectualism, and if one offers seeking souls only what can be attained in this way, then the human soul does not feel satisfied. For its longing, its urge, arises from something other than mere intellect or from what can be satisfied by mere rationalism. That is why those who, while sensing the needs of the times, cannot engage with anthroposophy, say: We must not approach our contemporaries with intellectualism or rationalism; what is presented as a worldview must not be clothed in the forms of pale, abstract thoughts; it must not be derived through [rational] path; it must be drawn forth from the irrational depths of the human heart, perhaps even from the subconscious depths of the soul.” And then perhaps such a person might also say: “What a person recognizes has already become an object; but what they are to revere as their eternal essence within the soul must not be an object of cognition.” One may also well hear it said that what man thus turns to must be an Absolute that penetrates the human soul not by the clear path of thought, but somehow by an irrational path. And one may hear similar things.

[ 5 ] It is something that actually reveals itself in a curious way when one considers the criticisms of anthroposophical will today. Anthroposophy is accused of wanting to overcome mere intellectualism and mere systems of thought, yet of being, in turn, something rational—of working with thoughts. People shy away from intellectual work—and with some justification—and they say—again, with some justification—that anthroposophy does not wish to rid itself entirely of thoughts; which is why people have a certain aversion to it. It is said that the modern worldview has been burned by the life of thought, even though it is so cold and pale. People wish to draw from a non-conceptual realm—from a seething of the soul’s faculties untouched by the conceptual—that which is to become the content of a satisfying worldview and understanding of the world. It is then quite natural that, when one shuns thought in this way, one is wary of attempting to articulate such a worldview in thought in any way. And that, consequently, when one wishes to express the inner life of the soul, one chooses the thinnest of thoughts for the purpose. After all, one must have thoughts, for mere feelings or impulses of the will—or anything merely irrational—cannot enter into worldviews, nor can they enter into a life based solely on imagination. One cannot even bring them into consciousness. But if one wishes to bring into consciousness, as the content of the soul, that which one is already striving for, then one makes the thoughts as thin as possible. One forms a very small, tiny thought: the irrational, the unconditional, and so on. But one has not thereby escaped thought; rather, one merely wants to make the thought so small, so tiny, so easily comprehensible, so infinitely trivial, that one does not realize that, in the end, one does indeed have a thought—in which, however, one intends to summarize something else. In contrast, anthroposophy seeks to recognize, to the fullest extent and in the most comprehensive sense, what fate the life of thought has actually undergone within the human soul in recent times. Anthroposophy knows: With modern natural science, the life of thought has taken on a certain character—a character that allows it, at first, to penetrate outer nature, the world of the senses, but which prevents it from penetrating that with which the soul can feel connected in its eternal essence. But anthroposophy, taking into account all the immense spiritual values gained through recent developments in thought, cannot simply exclude the concept of thought; rather, it says to itself: Humanity has evolved to the point of thought, to the grasping of thought in its purity, and in so doing, thought has indeed become something that, at first, has only a narrowly defined scope. But anthroposophy knows: This thought, as it was attained, must be regarded as something of absolute value; one must start from it. It does not shy away from accepting as a gift of human development that which has yielded magnificent results in a certain sphere of humanity, but which, in order to achieve these magnificent results, has sacrificed that which the human soul, in its eternal nature, must have as its horizon.

[ 6 ] Thus, anthroposophy first addresses the thoughts, viewing them as a seed that—though initially, as natural science has brought it forth on the waves of its development, cannot be taken directly as part of the immediate realm of worldviews—can nevertheless be developed, from which something can be drawn that is not yet revealed by the seed itself — just as the fully grown, blooming, and fruit-bearing plant is not yet present in the seed, but is only hinted at for those who can assess the seed. And so anthroposophy seeks to strengthen the thought through what has already been referred to here on several occasions as meditation and concentration—through the means of inner soul development.

[ 7 ] Then, when one strengthens it through meditation and concentration, it becomes something different in one’s inner experience. And I was able to show: As the thought strengthens itself inwardly, one first surveys the supersensible aspect of what lives here on Earth in human beings as their physical body; one surveys the body of formative forces, the body of time—that which organizes us from birth to death as a spiritual entity that underlies the physical body as a [creative] spiritual foundation and is constituted in such a way that, when the thought gains strength, it can condense so intensely that [it] is itself identical with the sum of those forces that are at the same time the growth forces and formative forces of the physical organism. These formative forces, as they are born with us into the physical world at birth, become diluted within the human organism; they become thought forces. Thus we take them up into abstract thought. But when, through meditation and concentration, we condense these abstract thoughts once more, they become inwardly full of vitality and growth-giving power, transforming into genuine, growing formative forces of the human organism. Through this, we ascend in full, living awareness to that which shapes, animates, and sustains the human organism between birth and death. And when we then reach the point where we can progress from imaginative awareness to inspired awareness—that is, when we can remove these thoughts, these formative forces that we have attained through meditation and concentration, from our consciousness once more, so that we can establish a state of empty consciousness— then we advance toward the perception of the spiritual in the natural environment, advancing above all [toward the perception] of the spiritual-soul aspect in the environment, as we ourselves were before we descended into the physical world and united ourselves with a physical body. Inspired insight, then, reveals to us the spiritual-soul aspect from the perspective of pre-birth.

[ 8 ] What are we doing when we engage in such exercises and thereby gain certain insights that satisfy our need for knowledge? What are we seeking within the power of human thought by engaging in such exercises?

[ 9 ] If I want to hint at what one is seeking here, I must say the following. The human soul is a unified whole; yet it manifests itself in three distinct external forms: as a thinking soul, as a feeling soul, and as a willing soul. But willing lives within thinking, and thinking also lives within willing; and within feeling, both thinking and willing live. One might say that the life of thought is a life of thought only in the main sense; it contains a hidden life of the will within itself. When we connect and separate thoughts from one another, so that through this connecting and separating we enter more and more deeply into reality, the will is at work in this connecting and separating of thoughts. But this is not what we see; we overlook this will, as it were, and conceal it. But when we engage in meditation and concentration, we turn away from what ordinary consciousness regards as the content of thought; through meditation and concentration—by resting on a specific mental image—we suppress, as it were, the content itself. What we bring into consciousness, however, is the will—which is otherwise never taken into account—that lives within thought itself. And it is this will that one grasps in order to then, through it, grasp the body of formative forces and the eternal aspect of the soul—as it was before birth, as it was in the spiritual-soul world—in order to enter a physical body. Thus, in the will, one grasps that which, on one side of eternity, can be apprehended by the human being. The other exercises I have described are exercises of the will; they lead to the will becoming independent of the physical body. And what is it that we seek when we practice this strengthening of the will? Just as we seek the will within the power of thought through meditation and concentration, so do we seek thought within the will through the exercises of the will. When we develop the will in everyday life, we actually perceive no mental power within this will. We do, however—as I have already explained in recent days—start from the thought that we are bringing about a simple expression of the will, for example, when we merely raise an arm or a hand. But then the will penetrates deep into the depths of our organism, and we only see the result again in the raised hand, in the raised arm. But anyone who performs such exercises of the will, as I have described them, will find that this will, wherever it is directed, is everywhere permeated and infused with the power of thought—a power of thought that extends down into our limbs, a power of thought whose content we cannot even describe as human thoughts, but whose content we must describe as world-thoughts, because we are immersed in them through those thoughts that are not in our consciousness but are present in our entire being and in the full expression of our will. We discover these thoughts—which are not in our consciousness—as world-thoughts, as wisdom, but also when we shed the body and pass through the gate of death. Within the flow of our will, we discover our Eternal Self through thoughts that are otherwise deeply hidden within the human soul. This gives rise to the insight into the process of dying; it gives rise to the realization of what we are once we have passed through the gate of death and re-entered the spiritual world.

[ 10 ] As we can see, anthroposophy seeks the will in the power of thought, and thought in the power of the will. And by taking into account in this way—I would say, for its own sake—what human beings otherwise neglect in life, it arrives precisely at what otherwise remains hidden from human beings, namely, that which passes through birth and death as the eternal aspect of the human soul; and at the same time, it arrives at that which underlies all of external nature as its spiritual-soul aspect. This is how anthroposophy values the thought. In thought exercises, it values the thought by regarding it as a seed from which it develops other soul faculties—which are, however, then expressions of the will. But anthroposophy also values the thought when it lies hidden beforehand—like a flower in its bud; yet because one is already familiar with the thought from ordinary consciousness, it is drawn forth as something well-known when one experiences the will independently of the physical body.

[ 11 ] Thus, anthroposophy is able to avoid despising thought and can calmly accept it when people say that it is, after all, rationalistic. It is not rationalistic, as the people who say this believe, but rather, by appreciating the loftiness of thought, it is at the same time able to transform thought into something else.

[ 12 ] Anyone who undergoes these exercises along both paths—the path of thought and the path of will—will experience, before actually entering the spiritual world, something that should not be overlooked if one wishes to properly appreciate anthroposophical research. Anyone who, as a true rationalist, immerses themselves in the life of thought—which is precisely what the demands of the times reject—does not actually realize how subtle a soul element thought is. But anyone who becomes aware of this will speak much as Friedrich Nietzsche did—as recorded in his posthumous writings—about the tragic philosophical age of the Greeks, where he shows how those pre-Socratic Greek philosophers arrived at their first reflections, which, though not yet as pale as ours, already contained a sufficient degree of intellectual pallor. To Nietzsche, these concepts of Heraclitus, Parmenides, and the others seemed icy; the human soul feels literally permeated by an icy coldness in these thoughts. Nietzsche describes this in a moving way as a philosophical experience of the most intimate kind.

[ 13 ] Anthroposophical research must arrive at this experience and must know to what the life within the soul can be compared. When one approaches this thinness, this pallor and abstractness of thought—when one truly experiences it, does not brush it aside by simply returning to rich, full-bodied aspects of life, but instead surrenders to these thoughts—then, when one seeks to enter the spiritual world, a certain fear takes hold: a fear of nothingness, that fear which always arises in the face of emptiness. And this fear must be overcome in such a way that the person is well prepared beforehand through the methods I have described in the book *How to Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds* and in the second section of my *Secret Science*. The person must be prepared to pass through this fear in the right way, so that when they arrive at the experience of the pale thought, they have the certainty: You must pass through this anxiety just as you must pass through the state of sleep from the moment you fall asleep until you wake up. But just as you can trust that you will awaken from sleep again every morning, so you can trust that, when you pass through this anxiety, a world will welcome you—one that you will only then be able to judge. Before that, you have gained only the confidence that the Spirit pervades the world, and that you will find it when you leave this state of fear behind. Those who wish to prepare the soul to perceive the spiritual world must endure these trials.

[ 14 ] And when the human being is to arrive at the visual experience of death on the other side, he experiences something else entirely. There, the spiritual world emerges from the currents of the will in the form of objective thoughts about the world. But once it has appeared in this way, once we begin to be filled with these thoughts—which are greater than our subjective thoughts, in which we feel that the laws of the world are drawing into our organism as living forces—we then become aware that something is now also drawing into our impulses of will, drawing in like a foreign feeling that takes hold of us as a certain anger at the merely finite. As paradoxical as it may sound, one must experience a certain anger—to which one must expose oneself—arising from the experience of the eternal in the finite. In this anger, one has something by which to bring to mind the great distance between the infinite and the finite. For what is to be experienced by human beings must be experienced with insight from the spiritual world. This must certainly be grasped through clear thought, but if that were all, it might be merely rationalistic. Yet it penetrates the human being as a reality that enters into a relationship with human feeling and also with the impulses of the human will, so that it becomes clearly evident that we are dealing with the unity of a reality—not mere thought—within the human being.

[ 15 ] Ladies and gentlemen, what may be clearly and distinctly present in this way in the developed soul is, however, present in all human souls—even in those with the most naive minds—in a subconscious state. It is present in the subconscious state when a person, drawing on recent spiritual developments, approaches abstract ideas—such as those found in the natural sciences, for example—in such a way that they seek to form a worldview from them. Then, subconsciously, they experience what the anthroposophical spiritual researcher experiences consciously; they experience the fear described here. Although they do not bring it into consciousness—they do not bring it up into their intellect—they devise logical reasons as to how impossible it would be for anthroposophy to achieve what it seeks, for example, by contemplating these ideas. He reinterprets it in order to avoid, in this way, the necessity of transforming the thought into a living reality and passing through the fear—just as one passes through the night with the confidence that one will wake up again in the morning. And on the other hand stands the reluctance—that anger that overwhelms one—to enter into the eternal nature of the human soul as reality.

[ 16 ] In this concluding lecture today, I am thus presenting to you just a few characteristics of what the living understanding of anthroposophy can do for a person by enabling him—as I said here in my previous lecture — can, through his common sense, live out what is experienced in this way by those who are truly walking the path into the spiritual world to seek that which the deepest need of our present age is yearning for and pressing for within the human soul. And in contrast to this, one experiences that people devote themselves to all sorts of things—and especially to rationalistic developments—just so they do not have to admit to themselves that they are shrinking back from that fear, from that anger, which I have described.

[ 17 ] Then people like that come along and say: Yes, it’s true, people’s need for time must be satisfied. But we want nothing to do with anthroposophy, because it wants to take refuge in thought once again—we have seen, after all, that it does not seek to do so in a rationalistic form, but in a completely different form—whereas we want to seek, from the irrational, that which can satisfy the human soul. We want to try to analyze what may be present in every human soul in order to determine how it can be expressed in the simplest, non-rationalistic way. Then such people believe—or at least that is what they say—that they can bypass anthroposophy by reinterpreting what they are, after all, experiencing in their subconscious!

[ 18 ] And then one can observe some very curious things in the opposition to anthroposophy. For example, it is said: This need of our time already exists, but anthroposophy is a wrong path toward the correctly recognized and necessary goals; and those who correctly recognize this need of our time but do not wish to follow the wrong path of anthroposophy—oh, they already know that they need not wait at all for what anthroposophy offers, but rather how humanity’s need of the times can be satisfied on the basis of entirely different, irrational human psychological motives.

[ 19 ] But it is very strange when one addresses such objections individually and in concrete terms. I will certainly avoid—for good reasons—mentioning names today; but one can find out, for example—and I am stating facts—that people say: “Oh, what does this anthroposophy want?” There are other people who are once again seeking, in a fundamental way, to establish a relationship—first, with the soul of another human being, which is, after all, also a spiritual entity, and then with the spiritual-soul aspect of the world.” When such things are said, the name of a particular figure is then mentioned, whose writings are held up as a counterpoint to anthroposophy. I have recently learned that the name of a particular figure has been mentioned—I must share this so that misunderstandings regarding anthroposophy do not continue to pile up again and again, and I am at liberty to share this because I am speaking of a person whom I hold in very high regard— and this person, of whom it is said that she offers something that makes it unnecessary to wait for anthroposophy, met with me about eighteen years ago to discuss anthroposophy. However, because they could not gain access to anthroposophy—though they would by no means have been averse to it had they been able to muster the inner strength to do so—they then tried the external methods valued by the opponents of anthroposophy in precisely the manner described. Then several more years passed, and I met this same person again in a different place; once more she tried to engage with anthroposophy, but she could not—perhaps also taking into account what is valued even more in the outside world today than anthroposophical research. And during my last lecture tour a few weeks ago, this person came to see me again, clearly expressing: “There must be something that goes beyond what I myself am capable of, beyond what I myself can offer in my books.” And this person said, word for word: “There is something here that seeks paths into the spiritual world not merely through thought or reason, but through the will and through ethics; that is something that interests me, and I would like to get to know it better.” That is roughly what this person said to me, word for word. A few days ago, I heard that this very person—who would so gladly connect with anthroposophy in this way—had accomplished something that means we need not wait for anthroposophy!

[ 20 ] Ladies and gentlemen, things behind the scenes of existence often look quite different from how they are portrayed by those who—perhaps unconsciously—actually have goals quite different from those implied by their words. Given that contemporary life, with its demands of the times, lies before us, we need not be surprised that the position of those who are actually called upon to understand anthroposophy in light of these demands is often still a grotesque one.

[ 21 ] Listen to how I describe the methods of knowledge in anthroposophy: They are purely inner methods of knowledge, methods through which the soul enters the spiritual world through inner experience; what is experienced there is experienced as inwardly as only mathematical experience can be; the truth and certainty are experienced as inwardly as only mathematical certainty is experienced inwardly—except that mathematical certainty is formal and does not pertain to reality, whereas the knowledge attained by the soul through meditation, concentration, and exercises of the will—and so on—is thoroughly real, and its standing in relation to this experience is then a standing in the real supersensible realm, when it attains to it. And it is precisely in books such as *The Secret Science*, *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?*, *Mysteries of the Soul*, and others, it is described how the anthroposophical researcher arrives at these results; it is described in such a way that anyone who wishes to apply these methods to their own soul can verify these things at any time. The only requirement is that the person who wishes to verify them must apply the methods to their own soul. Those who merely wish to understand anthroposophy and thereby make it fruitful for their lives—as I explained in my last lecture here—do not need to apply the methods of spiritual science to themselves, but can certainly stop at assimilating it through common sense and a healthy sense of the soul.

[ 22 ] But even if one is not a particularly prominent philosopher or other scientist today, one must surely one must gain an understanding that a genuine examination of what the anthroposophist, as such, says about his findings can only be carried out by applying the very same methods he uses—by verifying how he arrives at his findings—innerly—that is, in the spiritual world itself—by verifying it innerly in the spiritual world itself. Instead of understanding things this way, people who call themselves scientists today come along and say: Let someone who arrives at anthroposophical findings come to some experimental laboratory, and there let them try to verify whether he can truly arrive at such findings! But the nonsense inherent in such a demand is no less than that which would arise, for example, in the following scenario: Someone says, “I am a mathematician; I have solved these and those mathematical problems; see for yourselves whether they are correct by acquiring the necessary mathematical skills and verifying the results.” But people reply: “That doesn’t suit us; why should we have to acquire these mathematical skills in the first place? Come to the laboratory, where we’ll examine your brain through experimental psychology and so on to determine whether your mathematical results are correct!” Such demands, which are so absurd, are being trumpeted to the world today and, unfortunately, find a credulous audience.

[ 23 ] This is what must first be said about the path of anthroposophy in relation to the needs of our time. But what is it, actually, that the soul penetrates and from which it proclaims the achievements of humanity in such a way that these achievements can be understood by common sense—if only it truly wishes to do so?

[ 24 ] To characterize what can thereby be given to the world—or, if I may perhaps express myself more modestly, what is intended to be given to the world—one must recall the way in which earlier times related to the content of spiritual life. Let us look back to earlier times, from which the traditional worldviews have been handed down to us. In those days, people spoke as if of spiritual beings. Naturally, when they spoke of this, they did so in terms of concepts and ideas. But even though knowledge of and insight into spiritual beings was instinctive in earlier times, people nevertheless possessed an inner certainty about this spiritual world, so that they knew: You do not merely have concepts and ideas of the spiritual world; you have the spiritual world itself within you; you do not merely speak of gods and angels—one could also choose other terms—these gods and angels do not merely live in your ideas, but they live as living beings in that which you are connected to with your soul; they are spiritual realities.

[ 25 ] This is what modern times have brought about: the loss of this direct experience of the spiritual. When modern times speak of the spirit, they mean thoughts. In the past, no one would have understood what it means when people today say: “Ideas are realized through history.” But everyone would have understood what was meant by: Spiritual beings are realized through history. Ideas are merely the means of expression for the spiritual world that lies behind them, and this world lives in every single activity that a human being performs. Just as a human being feels at home in the sensory world, so too does he feel at home in the spiritual world. But people who emerge from this direct experience of the spiritual world used to have—for example, when they stood before a shrub—I am speaking in radical terms now, but perhaps this will characterize it adequately—a direct relationship with it, so that the spiritual confronted them directly and the natural object was also immediately penetrated.

[ 26 ] We have recently witnessed the following development in human history: viewing the details of nature in such a way that we no longer experience them elementally in our spirit and soul, but rather that the abstract thought expressing the natural phenomenon is what is present first. We stand before a bush; what first comes to mind is what we can experience in relation to the bush. But this separates us from the spiritual, and thus nature has been stripped of its soul by us. By being able to penetrate nature with abstract thought in the more recent epoch of human development, abstract thought separated us—along with the natural world—from the actual spiritual world. But what people lacked when they perceived the elemental spiritual in every single thing was human freedom. It could only develop in the age when human beings, instead of direct spiritual images, now experience abstract thoughts in nature, so that nature is no longer compelling and no longer exerts a direct effect on human nature.

[ 27 ] It is precisely because we have lost spiritual reality in the natural world and retained only the image of spirituality in abstract thought that our freedom has become possible. This is described in detail in my *Philosophy of Freedom*. But this has also created a necessity: if we now wish to return to the spiritual, we cannot stop at the thoughts we find today in shrubs and trees, in stones and the sun, in rivers and mountains; for there dwell the abstract thoughts that the human race had to experience in order to become free. Today we must deepen these ideas through meditation and concentration. Then we will look upon nature once more in such a way that the spirit gazes back at us from all of nature’s beings. And in the same way, we find the spirit in social human life in the manner in which we, as human beings, relate to one another—by cultivating love for our neighbor and expressing this love through our actions.

[ 28 ] Anthroposophy thus views the experience of thought in modern times in such a way that it says: Thought has become the most ethereal element even in external natural phenomena; it has become what—one might say—is a final remnant of the spirit; it must be condensed again, must be strengthened, and then it will lead us back to the spirit. Anthroposophy is not rationalism; it does not stop at pale thoughts, but struggles its way through to these thoughts—truly to that inner coldness of thought that Nietzsche, too, describes so poignantly; but as the soul reaches such ethereal thoughts, it is, so to speak, enabled thereby to have windows opening in every direction. For anthroposophy, abstract thoughts are like windows; the surrounding world reveals itself as transparent in every direction. And as the soul then condenses its power of thought, it penetrates through the windows that have been opened by abstraction, now entering the spiritual world. Through this, we come to experience not only a world of abstract ideas and ideals, but also, once again, what humanity once experienced as a reality—of which, however, only an abstract shadow remains in present-day worldviews and religious creeds, even if people today believe they are looking into the irrational to glimpse a spiritual world. And then we come to the point where we no longer merely seek to know the spirit or represent it in our thoughts, but actually experience it.

[ 29 ] Our living knowledge is merely the detour we take to bring living spirituality into our lives, so that we may once again live from morning to night in such a way that we know: Each of our actions, each of our feelings, and each of our thoughts is such that spirituality lives within them. That this does not make a person unfree, but rather truly free—that is precisely what I sought to demonstrate in *The Philosophy of Freedom*. Even back then, I tried to show: If a person conceives of thinking in such a way that they can once again find the strength for it—so that, for example, through moral intuitions they can ascend into the spiritual world in the ethical and moral realms—if they ascend in this way to pure thinking, then they are in a position where they can grasp “the course of world events by a single thread.” But this is the second aspect beyond the path itself: it is a world filled with God, a world filled with spirit, that is becoming ours. Anthroposophy is not merely intended to provide a worldview; rather, it is meant to become for human beings the impetus for a real experience through which the divine-spiritual enters into the recent development of humanity, because human beings—for the sake of their freedom — can no longer follow the old paths to the spirit and would remain spiritless if he did not seek the path from thought and will, as I have characterized it.

[ 30 ] Thus, anthroposophy does not merely strive for a spiritual experience, but rather seeks to prepare a field, a dwelling place for the Spirit that will permeate humanity—for its thoughts, its feelings, its actions—to offer this Spirit a field and a dwelling place so that it may be among us, so that we may think, feel, and will everything not merely out of transient human nature, but out of the eternal Spirit of God! Anthroposophy does not merely seek to be a process of knowledge; it seeks to be a real process. And in this way—I would say, by preparing a dwelling for God here on earth—by seeking to be a form of knowledge that is at once life itself and at once builds a dwelling for God, the Spirit, it inherently relates to the third aspect of our great contemporary needs: the social aspect.

[ 31 ] The social question—and everything it encompasses—deeply touches the soul and heart of modern human beings, insofar as these human beings possess a soul and a heart in the true sense of the word. This, of course, is the fundamental question. But can it actually be understood in the way it often is today?

[ 32 ] Certainly, distinguished guests, for the moment, every well-intentioned human perspective must be fully acknowledged and appreciated; but for the good of humanity, something else is still necessary. Today we hear how millions are starving; we ourselves may have the opportunity to find ourselves deeply immersed in the misery left behind by the terrible catastrophe of war in the civilized world. We see how unemployment is rampant everywhere, affecting the victors even more—and affecting the neutral countries in particular—than the defeated nations. We look upon this world that has been so severely tested. Certainly, no objection should be raised against those people who, out of the goodness of their hearts and also out of a certain understanding of the world, say: “The next step is to provide bread—bread to satisfy hunger!” Yes, that is true; that must also be regarded as the next step. But we, as the whole of humanity, must move forward in such a way that such times of hunger and hardship will no longer be possible, as they have become possible today. For what caused them?

[ 33 ] Anyone who looks at the world with an open mind will say: Even if a crisis were to occur in nature, or if some kind of barrenness were to arise in nature, this must surely be offset in the global economy—provided it is managed properly. On the whole, nature provides people with what they need from it. If entire groups of people do not have what they are entitled to, it is not because nature withholds it from them; rather, it is because people do not understand how to properly process and distribute what nature provides! Nature provides what could supply all people with food and the bare necessities; it simply needs to be managed in such a way that people can give it to others and take from it in the right way. Poverty has not—at least not on the whole, setting aside individual details—arisen from nature; poverty has arisen from the way people have treated nature and from the way people have behaved toward one another. Poverty has come—and all poverty comes—from the kind of spirituality that prevails among people, and it is through that same spirituality alone that poverty can be remedied in the long run. In our human interactions, we must not merely find abstract concepts through which people can grasp reality—even, if you will, a spiritual reality—but we must find a living spirituality through which we also approach our work, through which we find the means and ways to produce what our fellow human beings may require of us in terms of the results of our labor. We must find that spirituality through which trust can be restored in those who are capable of leading the work, so that its results can flow in the right way into human social organisms. And we must find the God who is able to flow through social life in the right way. But we can find Him for social action only if we have first found Him in living knowledge, if we have first found Him in nature and introduced Him into human life as a living spirit, just as I have described. First, we need a path to the spirit; but we need a striving for the spirit that leads not merely to theoretical knowledge, but to an experience of spirituality—one that, with regard to social life, does not lead to abstract ideas about social order, but to concrete ideas, so that through the flow of these ideas, the divine-spiritual itself flows into the social order. As much Leninism, as much Trotskyism—that is, as much materialism—as there is in the world, so many forces of ruin are at work in the world! The only help lies in the return of spirituality to humanity. It is certainly true that much can be criticized about social life in earlier times; but that belongs in a different chapter than the one we are discussing today. What we must discuss today is that our age demands a spirituality that can be attained only through thought that has reached its highest development—and only in this way.

[ 34 ] But this is the path that anthroposophy wishes to take. There may well be individual aspects within anthroposophy that are capable of and in need of improvement. But humanity, in having to live in accordance with the needs of the times, will have no choice but to seek its leaders where such paths into the spiritual world are being taken—as anthroposophy seeks to do. For what matters is not merely that we free ourselves from materialism, but that we free ourselves from dead ideas—which are merely representations of something real—and that we grasp the real within the ideas themselves. This cannot be achieved through abstract ideas; it can only be achieved through condensed ideas—those that have been further developed within the soul; this can only happen by experiencing the world-ideas within our developed will. To many people today who have become accustomed to the old currents of scientific thought, this seems so paradoxical that they want to test the anthroposophist in the laboratory using laboratory methods, just as one might want to test a mathematician in the laboratory to see whether an integral is correct or not; they do not wish to investigate what he presents as his mathematics, but rather to verify his personal conduct. It must be understood, however, that the spirit can only be experienced in the spiritual realm—that realm which, everywhere, has the windows we have alluded to for the spiritual-soul aspect. There, the thoughts—the windows through which the spiritual can enter the human soul—are [experienced], and in this way, the reality of the spiritual world is experienced as something with which human beings grow together as spiritual-soul beings.

[ 35 ] This—dear friends—illustrates the way in which anthroposophy believes it can serve the needs of our time. I have endeavored today to explain what the true path of the anthroposophical method of research is. For I do believe that once one takes a close look at this true path, one will not be able to say: Anthroposophy represents a misguided path toward a goal that has been correctly recognized and is even necessary for the needs of our time. No! If one examines what people—who thus pass judgment—call a wrong path, one ultimately discovers, time and again: This is not the anthroposophical path; it is the caricature that people themselves first create of this anthroposophical path; it is the bogeyman they themselves create and then criticize, so that their words have absolutely no connection whatsoever to the true anthroposophical path. This is what one can experience day in and day out: that people criticize their own phantoms of anthroposophy because they do not want to get to know true anthroposophy.

[ 36 ] Those who, during this university course, represented the anthroposophical approach to research in a wide variety of scientific fields have honestly spoken out against the prevailing trends and in favor of the needs of our time. They sought to demonstrate how this approach to research can enrich the most diverse fields of science, life, art, and social order. They sought to champion the true nature of that which is entirely open to honest criticism, but which today is often seen only as caricatured, turned into a bogeyman, and then criticized in the manner I have indicated. That is why I, for my part—since I am wholeheartedly connected to this anthroposophical movement—would not want to fail to express my heartfelt thanks to all of you here at the conclusion to all those who, in recent days, drawing on what they have attained through their scholarship, life experience, and so on, have stood up for anthroposophical research and the anthroposophical worldview. It is to them, in the name of anthroposophical thought and the anthroposophical spirit, that I would like to express my heartfelt thanks. For whatever one may think of what anthroposophy is already capable of today, or of what it has produced: Anthroposophy is earnestly striving to align its intentions with the needs of our time—not because it wishes merely to serve the transitory; anthroposophy does not at all conform to these contemporary needs; it speaks from the eternal depths of the human soul, addressing the eternal, yet its striving coincides with the needs of our time. Humanity has long enough concerned itself solely with the transitory; today, driven by the demands of the times, it yearns to rediscover the eternal, to reintroduce it into human feeling and human action. In this, anthroposophy may serve these demands of the times, may serve this striving of the human soul, for its own striving coincides precisely with what the needs of the times are. It strives in such a way that, in conclusion, I would like to summarize what it has perhaps not yet achieved—but what it intends to achieve—in the following words, which are meant, in a sense, to express the spirit and the will of anthroposophy.

[ 37 ] This will knows full well how dark, how gloomy the paths of human life are when they are not illuminated by a certain light; and humanity today arrives precisely at its contemporary needs—as I have characterized them—precisely because it is surrounded by so much darkness in life, and must therefore strive earnestly to attain that light which can illuminate the darkness and gloom of life. This light—how is it to be found? The human soul alone is the lamp for this light. But this lamp can only be kindled into light when the Spirit ignites it. The human soul becomes the radiant light of life when the Spirit kindles it! But when the human soul is kindled by the Spirit as the light of life, it also becomes the torch that can truly illuminate human life—the fruitful insights, the life-warming feelings, and the energetic impulses of the will that are necessary for human beings.