The Rudolf Steiner Archive

10. Anthroposophy and the Mysteries of the Soul

[ 1 ] Ladies and gentlemen! Anthroposophy is misunderstood—and indeed, in many cases, denounced today—not merely because it requires a different way of speaking than that used by conventional science, but rather because it must not only speak of different things but also speak differently, in a different manner. That it must speak of different things than conventional science is, after all, what anyone who expects anything at all from supersensory research would expect. But the fact that it must also speak in a different way—I would say, if the word is taken in a higher sense—in a different form of expression, is precisely what one does not expect. For centuries, a very specific way of thinking and of expressing one’s thoughts and research has developed, largely through the natural sciences, which have achieved such great triumphs. To people today, this form of expression seems so certain, so well-founded, that they cannot tolerate it when a field of knowledge—one that is actually much closer to human nature—must be discussed in a different way.

[ 2 ] Yet there is no doubt that many of our contemporaries feel that the scientific approach fails to grasp what is most important to human beings precisely when it proceeds in its own field with the utmost fidelity to its methods and the greatest conscientiousness. And that is why many people today are seeking a path precisely toward those questions and mysteries that lie so close to the human soul—questions and mysteries, I might say, that are not imposed from the outside by nature, but which arise from the very nature of human beings themselves.

[ 3 ] If we are to speak of these latter mysteries in a way that characterizes them, then perhaps, my esteemed audience, we may recall the words of a brilliant mystic, Master Eckhart, who once said: What good is it [to me]—or: What good would it do [me] to be a king if I did not know that I am a king!—if I had absolutely no idea that I was a king?

[ 4 ] Now, one might even admit that there could still be some benefit to being a king, even if one were no longer aware of it. But what Meister Eckhart sought to express applies to something else to an even greater degree than to his analogy. It applies to the very essence of being human.

[ 5 ] Are we, in fact—let us ask ourselves this without bias—are we truly human in the full sense of the word if we are not aware of our humanity? If we cannot ask ourselves: What is our true nature as human beings?

[ 6 ] The moment one thoroughly considers this question, one immediately realizes how little the natural sciences actually have to say about the most important aspect of this question: What are we in terms of our true human nature?

[ 7 ] One could cite many examples if one wanted to characterize the full depth and full significance—spiritual depth, spiritual significance—of this question. One could approach this characterization from a wide variety of angles. Today I would like to begin—since I have often had the opportunity to speak in this city on topics similar to today’s—with the fact of life itself; I would like to point out which aspect of the external world of facts most intensely presents the true mystery of the soul to human beings.

[ 8 ] Perhaps one could say: This fact presents the true mystery of the soul to human beings in the most self-centered way. But it is precisely this mystery of the soul that is set before us by this fact—set before us in a way that, I would say, is quite self-evident in general: And this fact is, of course, the fact of death. Let us keep this fact before our eyes for a moment—this fact of death in all its significance. Let us simply try, without prejudice, to set this fact before our souls.

[ 9 ] Death—as natural scientists sometimes say today—is characterized, in terms of its essence, by the presence of a corpse. A trivial fact, to be sure, but precisely as a trivial fact, perhaps one of the most shattering aspects of human physical existence. What can we see when we bring the fact of death—the existence of the corpse—unbiasedly before our souls? The moment the physical body becomes a corpse, a path of development begins for this physical human being—a development of what is within him, outwardly material and physical—a path of development that proceeds in a completely different way than it had up to the point when the human being had to pass through the gate of death.

[ 10 ] We see how what remains of the human being as a corpse—regardless of whether it is consigned to fire or to the earth—unites with the elements of nature, how it is taken over by the elements of nature, and how these elements of nature now assert their essence and exercise their dominion over that which is handed over to them from the physical human being. The substances and forces in the human physical body no longer follow the laws they obeyed up until death—at least as far as the outer, visible world is concerned—but rather follow the laws imposed upon them by the outer physical nature, which the human being had merely observed until death.

[ 11 ] So that we can say: It is the external world into which a human being dies—not only at the very moment of death, but also because, by incorporating him into its laws as a physical human being, he dies into this external physical world.

[ 12 ] If one looks at this fact with an open mind and a sense of wonder, then—I would say—all sorts of mysteries of the human soul emerge from this perspective. And above all, a significant question presents itself to people when they are open-minded enough.

[ 13 ] He looks upon the various elements that take in his corpse—that is, his outer physical body. He says to himself: These elements, into which my physical body passes, essentially act in the same way as they do out there by taking in my physical body; indeed, they bring the same things into me every day during my life. By consuming food and drink, a person takes into himself those substances and forces to which he will be surrendered at death.

[ 14 ] Can one reasonably assume that the laws governing the substances and forces to which we, as physical human beings, are surrendered upon death—that these laws exist only out there in the world? Should we not reasonably assume that what receives us after death—as it enters our physical body in the form of food and drink—unfolds the same states of lawfulness within us? A lawfulness that is overcome only by the inner being of the human individual?

[ 15 ] We see, I would say, the path leading in one direction: the surrender of the human physical body to the substances and forces governed by the same laws that we actually take into our physical bodies.

[ 16 ] Of course, one would have to cite many details if one wished to fully characterize the full significance of this mystery of life—or, I would say, this mystery of the soul—which, through this fact, presents itself to our soul in such a deeply unsettling way.

[ 17 ] But another question immediately arises here: Can external natural science—which is devoted primarily to the cultivation of observation through the senses, to knowledge gained through experimentation (that is, once again, observation through the senses), and to the development of the intellect bound to this observation and these experiments—can this external natural science approach the very essence of the human being? It can certainly approach that which, after death, is surrendered to the physical elements and their laws. It can certainly also approach that which, arising from these physical laws, is incorporated into the physical body day by day; and with its meticulous method, it can also investigate the laws—which, in the human body, are initially no different insofar as they concern the substances and forces of the external world, that is, life in the external world itself—and it can trace the laws governing what is taken in by the human body day by day. But it can now also study human beings themselves with their psychological manifestations; it can investigate the significance of what we take in daily for the psychological life of human beings. And in this regard, natural science has already accomplished an extraordinary amount, and there are ideals—which are very well-founded—that lie ahead of it in this respect.

[ 18 ] What can already be known today about the significance of the brain and nervous system for imagination, what can be known about certain processes related to proper or improper nutrition or the proper or improper processing of food—processes that also exert an influence on the soul—all of this can be investigated by the external natural sciences in a conscientious manner, and indeed is being investigated today. And anthroposophy would not be able to justify its very existence in light of what natural science has been able to achieve if it did not fully acknowledge what natural science is capable of accomplishing in this regard. Therefore, it is time and again a misunderstanding of what anthroposophy seeks to be when it is placed in any kind of opposition to contemporary natural science. No such opposition exists. What natural science is capable of achieving is fully recognized by anthroposophy!

[ 19 ] But now it will be readily admitted: Yes, in this physical body—into which are incorporated the substances and forces of nature governed by external laws—all sorts of things take place; all sorts of things take place of which the soul is initially unaware, and of which the soul gradually becomes aware through the study of science, physiology, biology, and so on. But in this physical body—regardless of whether the soul knows or does not know what is happening—the causes for the way the soul feels in particular instances and for its overall mood nevertheless lie. That which one need not know at all—what might be called general discomforts, whatever may be occurring in the organs in terms of illness—may resonate upward into the soul. In the soul, it finds expression as a mood. It need not at all take root in consciousness; it expresses itself in a general mood of the soul.

[ 20 ] So one must, I would say, assume many things that are present in the material processes and the interplay of forces within the physical organism, and which operate in such a way that the soul certainly plays a part in them. But since the soul plays a part in this, it also plays a part in what is already at work during life in the same way that those forces act to which the physical body is surrendered after death.

[ 21 ] Within us, dear friends, we carry the very same laws that bring about our destruction as physical human beings. And since these same laws enter us through food and drink, our soul participates not only in the power that sprouts and grows within us, but also in all that ultimately manifests itself in the destruction of our physical being. As the substances and forces of the external world work within us, the soul participates in our decay even during our lifetime. And when the sequence of facts that arises from this is presented to the soul without bias, then one comes to recognize: Death, which stands before us as a single moment at the end of physical life, is ultimately nothing more than the sum total of what, in essence, reigns and weaves within us throughout our entire physical life. I would like to say: Parts of death, the tiniest parts of death—in a sense, the atoms of death—reside within us in every moment of our physical life, and our soul life participates in these atoms of death.

[ 22 ] But all of this is expressed in the human soul through the mood in which the soul participates in the world’s forces of destruction, in the world’s forces of decline. And as complicated as the life of the human soul may seem, one thing is certain: The most significant moods of doubt and despair—those moods that often arise without any external cause, or at least without any noticeable external cause; those that often weaken a person; those that often conjure up, from the deepest recesses of the soul, the most significant mysteries of life and the soul, upon which a person’s entire state of being—whether healthy or ill—depends— they stem from the soul’s participation in these forces of decline in the world.

[ 23 ] Especially when one looks deeply into what is rising up from the depths of the soul and influencing consciousness—consciousness does not know what it is, but consciousness contains this influence within itself and experiences it in its soul’s mood — when this is fully conscious, then precisely those other mysteries of the soul emerge before consciousness, those that, in a sense, point toward the opposite path, those mysteries that people have always associated with the word that is the opposite of death: the word “immortality.”

[ 24 ] The question of immortality is not merely a selfish human concern—arising, for example, from the desire not to vanish with death—but rather, the question of immortality is intimately connected with what one might call, in the spirit of Meister Eckhart’s example of the king, the following: A person is only fully human when he truly knows his own essence.

[ 25 ] But—my esteemed audience—I would like to say: This knowledge, insofar as we can acquire it through the external natural sciences, this knowledge takes away from us the reality of death. For everything we can know—even if it were the greatest, the most significant thing about human beings that we can know through experiment and observation—can only pertain to the physical body and must, with death, lose its significance for the human being, for it pertains to something that is absorbed into the extra-human, that is, non-human, natural reality. And human beings must ask themselves the question: Can one, in a similar way to how one has looked at the dissolution of the physical body, and as one can look at what the soul experiences as inner mysteries by participating in the destructive forces of the world, can one look in the same sense at the creative forces of the world, at the sprouting, budding forces? And this is the direction toward which anthroposophy seeks to point, drawing upon the same spirit that modern natural science has adopted and the same scientific rigor.

[ 26 ] But it cannot point the way by—I might say—drawing attention to something that, like death, can unfold daily before every human being’s eyes; this anthroposophy can lead us only in this way—viewed according to the opposite principle of research into the reality of life—only by pointing to something that does not initially present itself as an external fact, nor even as an inner fact of soul life, but must first be attained by the soul.

[ 27 ] Death—my esteemed audience—voluntarily places itself before our souls. We must first work to understand the nature of immortality if we wish to recognize it. No knowledge of this can be bestowed upon us, at least not in its most intimate essence.

[ 28 ] That is why it must be emphasized time and again that anyone who now wishes to consciously pursue the path to the world of the soul—to the very essence of the soul—can only follow this path through inner activity, through inner work. That is, through what I have often referred to here as “soul exercises.”

[ 29 ] Now, my esteemed audience, we will be able to form a concept of these spiritual exercises from the perspective necessary for today’s discussion of this topic if we first bring to mind how the human spiritual life is, in fact, a unity. Let us first survey this inner life by looking within ourselves. It ebbs and flows, I might say. It expresses itself in ideas through which we bring the outer world to mind. It expresses itself through feelings and sensations; it expresses itself through impulses of the will that lead us to our actions and that, as members of the social order, we bring forth from our souls into the whole world.

[ 30 ] That which surges and weaves within a person—as ideas, feelings, sensations, and impulses of the will—cannot be explored by the methods of external natural science, which is limited to what perishes with death, —this is something many people today recognize, provided they are open-minded enough to consider what the soul actually is and how it differs entirely from what is accessible to external sensory observation and experimentation. And then such people turn away from scientific considerations, because they believe that science can exist only for external nature, and they then turn to certain—as they are called—mystical pursuits.

[ 31 ] Anthroposophy, as it is understood here, must not be confused with that kind of mysticism which seeks only to enter into the life of the soul, as one might say, through self-absorption; for anthroposophy is a true science and knows that when one looks back, as it were, into the ordinary, earthly—if I may put it that way—soul nature of the human being, one can fall prey to great illusions and great deceptions.

[ 32 ] Anthroposophy is less prone to delusions than its opponents and even its well-meaning critics actually believe! It is very often thought that anthroposophy succumbs to those inner forces that lead to illusions, hallucinations, and all sorts of mediumistic phenomena. People fail to realize that the entire way in which anthroposophy characterizes its methods of inquiry points in the exact opposite direction from anything that might in any way lead to illusion, hallucination, vision, and so on. What anthroposophy is all about is, above all, absolute clarity regarding what first presents itself to the human being. Anyone who looks into the inner world with an open mind—who, in fact, I would say, follows the mystic’s instructions—will see what an uncertain thing this looking inward is; for example, memories pointing back to early youth or even childhood experiences—how these memories simply surface in later life, and how one fails to recognize that what appears there as thoughts is actually nothing more than the memory, a reminiscence of something previously experienced. And if these memories were to surface in such a way that they remained unchanged, one would soon realize that one is dealing with mere memories. But within the human being, the impressions of external experiences are absorbed into feeling, into impulses of the will, even into temperament, into the entire human constitution—I would say into the innermost aspects of human health and illness. And after decades, these ideas can resurface, transformed into a completely different form, yet they are nothing other than what was originally sparked by external observation. The one who often believes himself to be a mystic,

[ 33 ] looks within himself, has such visions; they appear to him as if they had never been borrowed from the outside world, as if they came from the eternal depths of human soul life, as if he could experience directly through such visions how the soul exists in divine-spiritual worlds, [in] the foundation of the world, in the Eternal, and so on.

[ 34 ] Anyone who objectively understands the metamorphoses and transformations that memories can undergo also knows that he cannot cling to such self-reflection. And so, to the impartial observer, on the one hand there are the findings of the natural sciences, which show how the soul in earthly life is bound to the physical body—that very physical body which, upon death, is surrendered to the external forces of nature; and on the other hand, there is what is often presented by nebulous, hazy mysticism, through which one arrives at nothing other than the retrieval from the soul of that which one has in turn received from this external world—albeit so transformed that one does not recognize it, viewing it as belonging to an entirely different world.

[ 35 ] It is precisely when a person has prepared themselves sufficiently to recognize how little external natural science—and how little mysticism, too—can offer them, then they come to recognize the value and significance of those spiritual exercises that simply consist in not merely brooding over or contemplating the life of the soul inwardly, but in bringing it into inner activity, into inner work, so that it becomes something other than what it is in everyday life.

[ 36 ] Nature takes our body from us at death; it incorporates the substances and forces of this body into its own laws. What anthroposophy seeks as the path toward the opposite goal is the soul’s surrender to incorporation into that which is opposed to external nature—into the Spirit. Just as, with external physical death, the physical body is surrendered to external nature, so—not merely in a formal act of cognition, but as an inner reality through anthroposophical knowledge—the souls are surrendered to the Spirit, so that they may unite with the Spirit.

[ 37 ] And just as the reality of human physical annihilation through death confronts us, so too does the immortality of the human being confront our soul—through the fact that, in anthroposophical knowledge, we unite the life of the soul with that which underlies the entire world as spiritual life, spiritual beings, and spiritual forces.

[ 38 ] It is precisely this—as an actual inner experience—that anthroposophical knowledge strives for: the very opposite of what the event of death is for the physical human being. And just as the soul participates in the processes taking place down there in the physical body, and just as these physical processes influence the soul’s mood—even when the soul is unaware of their nature—so it is that our soul is united — as is revealed precisely by the very insight I will speak of shortly — that our soul is united on the other side with the spirit, and that it comes to know its experiences on this side only by striving for insight as a fact, as an actual inner experience. And this actual knowledge can be attained by the human being, on the one hand, further developing their thinking through inner activity beyond what it is in ordinary life, and, on the other hand, further developing their will beyond what it is in ordinary life.

[ 39 ] Between the will and thought lies the heart—feeling right in the middle. The most precious treasure of human life is this feeling, this heart. But if we develop thought on one side and the will on the other, then the heart—the feeling—goes along with it and becomes something else entirely.

[ 40 ] So that we—my esteemed audience—may understand the way in which thinking is formed on the one hand and the will on the other, let us make it clear to ourselves that the soul is nevertheless a unity—a unity in its surging, weaving life— even though it expresses itself on one side through thinking, on the other through the will, and in the middle through feeling.

[ 41 ] For example, when we observe the external natural world, we must first engage our senses. But what we perceive through our senses, we then process in our thoughts. If we were to apply our will in this process, we would not be able to gain a true understanding of nature. We would not be able to do so if we were to allow the will—which permeates our everyday life on a psychological level—to influence our thinking about nature. We would end up with figments of the imagination instead of natural laws. A conscientious scientific method cannot accept this.

[ 42 ] We have, on the one hand, those ideas and thoughts that must be developed from external nature—that aspect of our inner life where, in everyday life and even in ordinary scientific life, the will recedes and thought appears in a certain one-sidedness, as a mere image of what exists externally—and, on the other hand, we have the actual will. Let us be honest with ourselves regarding the actual will. Let us take a simple impulse of the will: I raise my arm, my hand. First, I have the intention that something should be lifted at some point. And then the intention—which is a thought—descends into the depths of the subconscious, uniting in a certain way with the organism. How this goes unnoticed in everyday life is because what [happens] is, in turn, an experience; that becomes clear again; the beginning and end can be clearly seen. What lies in the middle—how the will, so to speak, shoots into the organism and brings about the intention—is submerged so deeply into the subconscious as is human life from falling asleep to waking up.

[ 43 ] One might say: In terms of one’s will, a person is, in a sense, asleep even while awake. From the intention to raise the hand or arm to the moment of noticing the raised hand or arm, everyday consciousness is, in essence, asleep; it falls asleep as the impulse of the will shoots into the organism, and only awakens again when the result is perceived. There the will confronts us, unmediated by thought. But this will is—I would say—something as foreign to our consciousness as what takes place around us between falling asleep and waking up.

[ 44 ] Now, one can further develop the human soul in both directions—both in the realm of thought and in the realm of the will—beyond what it is in ordinary life and in ordinary science. And what must one do in these two realms, the realm of thought and the realm of the will?

[ 45 ] As I have already said—my esteemed audience—the will takes a back seat to thought. Those thoughts that give us clarity about the world—these thoughts cause the will to recede entirely. And those impulses of the will that are present in everyday life cause thought to recede, as I have just explained.

[ 46 ] But it still lives on—both in thought, and indeed in the most abstract as well as the most concrete thoughts; in every thought there always lives a remnant of will, though it is simply not conscious. And in every impulse of will there lives a thought. The thought flows into something, then reappears in the result. If we now seek the will within the thought, and the thought within the will, then we train the soul in both directions. What does it mean to seek the will within the thought? One achieves this by practicing what I have already described here on several occasions—by practicing meditation and concentration, for this means the soul resting on certain ideas that are presented to it in a completely comprehensible way, as clear as mathematical concepts.

[ 47 ] In this devotion—which often lasts for years (it takes less time for some people, longer for others, depending on their aptitudes)—in this devotion to transparent ideas, a power of thought is developed: the aspect of the will that is not present in ordinary consciousness, the element of will within thought, the way it intervenes in our organism, and indeed now into our entire organism—one discovers—whereas one otherwise always looks only at the thought itself—one discovers within the life of thought the life of the will that is otherwise hidden; then the first element of supersensory knowledge enters human consciousness. For what intermingles—so to speak—in our thoughts is not, as is usually the case, a pale and abstract thought life; rather, it introduces into the thought life something that is as vivid and as intensely inner as what we otherwise experience only through external sensory perception. What we otherwise experience inwardly as a pale, abstract life of thought becomes so vivid and lifelike—as the volitional being is discovered within it—that we have a reflection of external sensory perception in our life of thought. And these processes take place in such a way that complete consciousness—as we develop it in a mathematical problem or in a geometric exercise—is present in all soul exercises that lead to such, I would say, “will-veiled” pictorial thinking.

[ 48 ] Anyone who examines in detail what I have described regarding these concentration and meditation exercises in my books *Secret Science* and *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?*, and in my book *On the Mysteries of the Soul* and in other writings, will see how unfounded it is to claim that some kind of dreamy inner life is supposed to lead to what is described there as imaginative cognition—as a pictorial, cognitive inner life—that all these processes are such that we, I would say—if I may use this trivial expression—we approach and ultimately take possession of this imaginative thinking just as soberly and with just as much common sense as we approach and take possession of the solution to a geometric problem. One might say: Everything that must be done to attain such knowledge is carried out in such a way that it can be justified before the most transparent form of knowledge—mathematical knowledge. And in fact, one must say that it is most surprising that mathematicians, of all people, do not sympathize with what constitutes the innermost essence of the anthroposophical research method. For the activity of the soul that is exercised in anthroposophical research is, in essence, the same as that exercised in mathematics, except that the content is different: in mathematics, it is formal, whereas in what is to be regarded as the anthroposophical research method, it is one that leads into reality, into the actual world.

[ 49 ] And indeed: We are led into a very specific reality when, through meditation and concentration, we allow our thinking to progress to the point of grasping the element of will that is otherwise overlooked. For it is precisely there that the first result of supersensory research, of supersensory knowledge, truly presents itself to us. And this is what I have called in my books the human form-force body.

[ 50 ] For when we have brought our thinking up to this level—to the level of imagination—we learn to live, not in abstract thinking, but in a kind of thinking that is, in fact, much more real inwardly than abstract thinking. Now we learn to immerse ourselves in a living thought process that flows toward reality and embraces our soul. We immerse ourselves in a thought organism. And the first result appears before us: it is what stands before us in a great tableau of life—that which has been at work since our birth, inwardly permeating our physical body as something supersensible—namely, the body of formative forces.

[ 51 ] This body I am speaking of here is not, like the physical body, merely spread out in space; this body is a body of time. Just as the individual organs in the physical body are related to one another and interact, so too do the temporal processes from our birth to our death form a great unity within this body of formative forces. What the body of formative forces experiences, for example, from the age of 45 to the age of 50, is related to what was experienced between the ages of 10 and 15 in much the same way as—let us say—a certain part of our brain is related to the heart or our stomach in the physical body. We have a time-body that is connected to us, but which represents a vitalized thinking—a thinking that simultaneously contains growth forces, sprouting and budding growth forces. We now feel not only what we have inwardly experienced here on Earth since birth—such as the stream of memory from which one thing or another surfaces from our recollection—but we also feel how these memories are merely the abstract, higher waves of that which, beneath the surface of ordinary consciousness, interweaves with and permeates our body, that which lives in our metabolism, [what is in the] beating of the heart, what lives in our activity, our nervous system—but which becomes manifest there as a spiritual body, as a supersensible, ethereal body.

[ 52 ] The levels of understanding in earlier epochs, which were not yet able to perceive these things as clearly as modern anthroposophy strives to do, but which had a hunch based on a dim form of clairvoyance—they knew that such a body of formative forces existed. At that time, it was called the etheric body or the life body. I do not want these terms to be understood to mean anything other than what I myself have characterized here! And so, as in a grand tableau, we discover what we are as a unity ever since we have had a physical body on this Earth.

[ 53 ] The first supersensible realm—my esteemed audience—is not yet anything that leads us beyond our earthly existence. Anthroposophy must certainly proceed conscientiously, step by step, but it is the very essence of earthly existence—the first supersensible element within us, this body of formative forces—that is characterized by its organization in accordance with time, just as our physical body is organized in accordance with space.

[ 54 ] But we can move on. We can perform the next exercise, which, so to speak, builds on thinking, meditation, and concentration, yet at the same time takes us beyond them. It consists in the following: after we have first made an effort to direct our entire soul’s attention in meditation toward a single image—so that we perceive nothing at all of the rest of the world, but turn the soul solely toward this one image—we then strengthen the soul through this concentration, just as we would otherwise strengthen a muscle that performs a task over and over again. Thus, through this ever-recurring concentration and meditation, [we] grasp some imaginative complex that is easily comprehensible, [which] strengthens the soul; so that [we] ascend to what we have just described—to the apprehension of the element of will in thinking—and thus attain imaginative knowledge. Although common sense—I would say—always remains present in this anthroposophical method, we must nevertheless say that something like a second personality stands alongside the person as they usually are, and this second personality now experiences what I have described—let us say, for example, in imaginative insight.

[ 55 ] The difference between the anthroposophical experience and the experience of a medium is that the person who experiences things as a medium—who has hallucinations and visions—immerses their entire self, their entire personality, into these states, which are closely connected to their physical development. They lose sight of who they otherwise are; they live only in what presents itself to their soul in an abnormal way.

[ 56 ] The person who immerses himself in imaginative insight and also in the higher stages of what I am about to describe projects a second personality from within himself—the observer of the supersensible—outward; but he always remains there, observing and evaluating alongside this observer of the supersensible, with his common sense, just as he is in ordinary life.

[ 57 ] That is why anthroposophy can be presented to anyone; it can be understood through common sense, because even for an anthroposophical researcher, what presents itself to him in the form of supersensible perception must first be checked and critiqued by what remains alongside it—the faculty of common sense. But the fact is that by first concentrating on certain ideas, one also develops an inner inclination to retain these ideas in the soul—an inclination not to let them go. It takes a greater effort than ordinary forgetting to bring such ideas—which one has first brought into the soul with all one’s strength, with the strongest power of inner attention—back out of the soul again.

[ 58 ] This brings us to the second exercise, which involves bringing forth the mental images on which one has focused intently—I would say, the ones that have completely absorbed one—and bringing them back to the surface. So that, after one has concentrated—I would say, after one has meditated on them—one can arrive at what I call empty consciousness.

[ 59 ] When one develops this empty consciousness—when one develops and applies the power to bring about this empty consciousness, emerging from meditation and concentration—then this consciousness is not filled with any memories or impressions from the external world; it is truly empty.

[ 60 ] But then, when this consciousness is empty—and it does not remain empty for long, because the external world intrudes upon it—one has initially created this consciousness oneself; one is awake but without content. After some time, however, the content arrives—the content that would otherwise come to us through development and be processed by the ordinary intellect—and this is the content of a supersensible, spiritual world. And by having—after attaining imaginative cognition through meditation and concentration—established this empty consciousness, one thereby gains insights into the spiritual world, into the supersensible world, which surrounds us just as the sensory world does. Now one learns: Once one has attained this—I will now call it the “initiated consciousness”—once one has attained this initiated consciousness, one stands within the spiritual world in its entirety, and alongside it, with one’s sound common sense and healthy senses, one retains the same insight into the physical-sensory world as one otherwise has as an earthly human being.

[ 61 ] The essential point is that these things develop side by side; then a person will never be able to fall into pathological states if they engage in such methods of inquiry. But once one has trained these powers, to suppress meditative and concentrative images and create empty consciousness, one may also end up suppressing that very tableau of life which has placed our inner being—our body of formative forces—before our soul, showing how it has worked and woven a supersensible reality within all of us since the beginning of our earthly existence, we can now—once we have acquired these powers to create empty consciousness—we can remove—after first bringing the body of formative forces into consciousness—we can shut down this body of formative forces itself. We gradually attain such a powerful force that we can now also switch off this, our own spiritual world, so that we create empty consciousness in relation to it. But then—my esteemed audience—when we create empty consciousness in relation to this body, the human soul, the human consciousness, is not merely filled with this present empty consciousness and its spiritual -soul content from the environment, as I have just described, but rather this human consciousness is filled with that spiritual-soul content that we ourselves were before we descended from the spiritual-soul world and assumed our physical body through the inheritance of substances and forces from our parents and ancestors. This means: We come to perceive what we were before we took on a physical earthly body. That is, we come to perceive our being before birth or before conception. This arises through supersensible knowledge, the second stage of inspired knowledge, which is attained in the manner I have just described.

[ 62 ] Anthroposophy is not capable of conjuring up anything from the imagination, nor from a superficial mysticism; rather, anthroposophy must gradually gain its insights by first drawing upon the power within the human constitution that leads into the supersensible realm. Anthroposophy is slandered when it is merely called a philosophy. It is not based on philosophical speculation, but on a perception that is as vivid as any [sensory] perception can be, but which must be attained by the human being developing the powers that otherwise lie dormant in the soul, in the manner I have outlined in principle, and as you can find further elaborations of this in the books mentioned.

[ 63 ] But now—my esteemed audience—something quite extraordinary presents itself to the spiritual researcher’s soul. At the very moment when he, so to speak, comes to know his humanity, his soul-being, as it was before his descent to Earth—at that very moment—his physical body appears to him as an external object. He now lives, so to speak, with his newly formed personality, as if transported back to his existence before his physical body came into being. He now has this physical body before him as something external. And because he has this physical body before him as something external, he looks at this physical body—that is what must be taken into account. He does not merely see this physical body as it appears to physical perception in ordinary life, but he sees this physical body in terms of its internal organs, albeit with these internal organs spiritualized.

[ 64 ] If you imagine the human heart, the human lungs, the human brain, the various human organs—not in physical terms with physical contours, but as processes, as inner activity, as ascending processes of becoming and growth, as descending processes of destruction and death that interact with one another—if you conceive of the inner human organism in this way — but not the human being as a whole, as we usually perceive him through physical observation, but rather physically, yet with the physical translated into the spiritual, so to speak—if you imagine this, then it stands before the human being at the very moment when he looks upon his spiritual-soul existence as it was before he descended to Earth.

[ 65 ] I do not shy away—my esteemed audience—because the things I am speaking of are well-established findings of spiritual scientific research, and since I simply, of course, cannot provide all the intermediate steps—which can, however, certainly be found in the books mentioned— but I wish to list the results—at least in some areas, to say what must nevertheless seem thoroughly paradoxical to people today, namely, to present to people, at the stage I have just characterized, the following characterization.

[ 66 ] Consider this—my esteemed audience— you look within yourselves; you find within your inner being spiritual memories—memories connected to experiences—and believe that what appears within your soul as a life of imagination, as images imbued with feeling, is something you have actually experienced. You can distinguish precisely—I would say the subtle, delicate, interwoven nature of the soul that you recognize—and you can relate it to the robust, external physical reality of life, to which it must indeed be related. But what if the following were to happen? What if something were to suddenly emerge in your soul, causing you to say to yourself: “Yes, where on earth did that come from? I’ve never experienced anything like that.” You will not rest until you can relate what has emerged in your soul—which appears like a memory—to a specific experience; only then will you be at peace. And you always relate that which is a subtle, weaving, spiritual-soul activity within to something robust and material in the external world with which you have been in relationship.

[ 67 ] Now, when it comes to inspired insight, the situation is this: the human being stands before his own soul—I would say the entire inner being of his organism, with all its individual organs and the forces that compose these organs—lungs, liver, everything is there; the human being perceives them inwardly precisely as a physical being. It is just that, in more recent times, this physical aspect appears to him to be permeated by the spiritual, but it is the physical organization. And this is like having a multitude of memories—we can compare it to that—of which we do not know what they refer to. But we can learn what that which confronts us within our own organism refers to in the external world. For once we have acquired this empty consciousness, we learn to see the external world in a new form.

[ 68 ] You see, my esteemed audience, through our physical perception—and also through physical science—astronomy, astrophysics, astrochemistry—we see the physical sun with a contour that is more or less precise or imprecise. But that is not the whole of the sun, just as what we see with our physical eyes is not the whole of the human being. At the moment when empty consciousness is established, we also perceive—in addition to what presents itself to the outer eye in external science—something sun-like, so to speak, that weaves through the entire space accessible to us and exists as a force-formation; it concentrates physically there, yet it also spreads out. We perceive something sun-like throughout the entire space accessible to us.

[ 69 ] And this solar quality—which is recognized only through empty consciousness in inspired insight as a living being—this solar quality merges in a remarkable way with what we recognize in ourselves when we encounter another human being. We perceive their physical body with our external senses. Then, in a sense, what their physical body is—as an extension—is summarized in their soul. We must imagine the soul as a concentrated form of what is spatially extended; when we look out into the vast external nature, into the cosmos, the conditions are reversed. There, for example, is the physical aspect of the sun—that which is concentrated—and the spiritual aspect, which is now what is widely extended in space. But we perceive it. Just as we perceive the human physical body with our external senses as the vast, extended entity, and grasp it as the concentrated essence only in the soul, so we perceive this with the sun as an external manifestation; and we perceive an inner, structured life and weaving throughout the entire space accessible to us—an extending, forceful aspect of the solar nature. We observe how it permeates the mineral, plant, and animal realms, as well as human physical life. We now begin to relate something specific in our heart and in our lungs—which we have first perceived through inspired insight—to the solar principle.

[ 70 ] And in the same way, we learn to recognize the spiritual aspect of the moon—the lunar quality—and relate it to something else. We come to know the sprouting, budding forces in our organism as the solar aspect; we learn to recognize those forces that are forces of decay and destruction as the lunar aspect. We learn to relate other aspects of the great cosmos to our inner being.

[ 71 ] Well, what do we learn from this? In everyday life, we encounter external events of a robust nature; these are physical events. They are reflected, as it were, in our thinking and in our feelings. We carry the spiritual within us. Outwardly, there is the robust physical. In relation to what we perceive as spiritual from the cosmos, this very spiritual is out there, and within us are our physical organs. Just as our ideas and our memories are reflections of the physical universe we experience, so too are our physical organs—as their spiritual interpretation, which we are coming to know, reveals—inner reflections, if I may use the term, or reflections made physical of that which is spread out in the great cosmos. We learn to relate our organs to the great cosmos, to the entire cosmos—that is, to the spiritual content of the cosmos. We grow, through the mysteries of our soul, into the mysteries of the cosmos, which we learn to observe from the outside.

[ 72 ] Now we must turn to the mental exercises, and I would like to say that to that transition from the mental exercises to something else—which I have characterized as empty consciousness—we must add the exercises of the will.

[ 73 ] The simplest exercise of the will—my esteemed audience—can still be performed through imagination and thought. It is carried out by doing what I would like to call “reverse thinking.” Anyone can perform these exercises in a simple way by recalling the events of the day in the evening—in reverse order—and letting them pass before one’s mind; first what happened before going to sleep, then something that happened a little earlier, and so on backward until morning, in as small segments as possible. One can also feel a special interest—one has a special interest in the event, one has a special interest in the events from the fifth to the first [real event] relived!

[ 74 ] What, then, is achieved through such real processes? It is—even though it arises from imagination—an exercise of the will. Otherwise, when we imagine, we leave ourselves at the mercy of the external sequence of events. We develop our inner life along the thread of external events, of external facts. Now, through our imagination, we resist what is there as a consequence of external facts. We reverse the thought. This requires the application of a strong force—a strong exertion of will—a force greater than we usually apply. The will gradually withdraws from our thinking.

[ 75 ] We can strengthen these exercises of the will by gradually breaking certain habits we have and transforming them into others. If we go even further—if, for example, at a certain stage in life we tell ourselves: You now want to cultivate something that is, for you, like a trait of your temperament, like a very intimate, inner, deeply ingrained habit. It will take you years before it becomes second nature to [you], but you want to work on yourself every day. When you take matters into your own hands in this way—when you truly incorporate something that springs from thought into your will—then the will becomes something entirely different! And then this happens—it may seem like just a comparison, but it certainly represents a reality, my esteemed audience. How is our eye organized in such a way that it can serve the purpose of seeing? It is because the eye’s own substance does not assert itself; the eye is, so to speak, selflessly integrated into our organism. The moment the eye—for example, in the case of severe illness—asserts its own substantiality, we can no longer see! Seeing—and the same is true of the other senses—perception is possible only because the organ of perception sets aside its own materiality, becoming, so to speak, selfless.

[ 76 ] Now, I will certainly never claim—of course not—that our entire organism is in some way diseased in relation to ordinary life or ordinary science. But this ordinary organism that we carry within us in our earthly life is, after all, designed for external, everyday life, for ordinary, everyday consciousness. For that, it is very healthy; but not for higher experience, not for penetrating the supersensible world. There it appears like a severely diseased eye, and, on the contrary, I would say, it becomes even more opaque when we merely perform mental exercises. Through these mental exercises, precisely that which is our heart and our lungs becomes, more than ever, like an external object—opaque. Through the exercises of the will, this opacity is counterbalanced, on the other hand, by a growing transparency. It happens that, little by little, we truly perceive what is taking place between the intention to raise the arm or hand and the final effect. That which lies submerged, as if in sleep, between the thought and the thought again—that which descends into the organism as will—becomes graspable to perception.

[ 77 ] But as a result, the organism—in the spiritual-soul sense, of course, not as with the eye, but in the spiritual-soul sense—the entire organism becomes spiritually and soulfully transparent. The human being becomes, in a spiritual and soulful sense, a single sense organ. Thus, the human being—I would say—develops opacity on one hand by getting to know his organs and learning to relate them to the cosmos. And on the other hand, by being able to move at will from one to the other—and that is what matters—he also develops the transparency of his entire organism.

[ 78 ] And when he develops the transparency of his organism, then—my esteemed audience—that which otherwise appears in the physical world as the unfolding of love—that love which, after all, underlies all our truly free actions, as I have summarized for the moral world — as presented in my *Philosophy of Freedom* as early as the beginning of the 1890s — and which reveals in spiritual life what is significant as a characteristic of ethics and morality. I have described this particular inclination of the will toward the activity that unfolds in love from its ethical perspective; now I must describe it from the perspective of knowledge.

[ 79 ] Through this, however, the human being comes to become truly free with his will from his physical organism, just as he is free from his eye when he sees. He looks through his physical organism with his spirit and soul. And he looks into the spiritual-soul world, standing within it just as he stands within the physical world through his senses in a physical way. He learns to immerse himself in the intuitive knowledge that now lies within the reality of the spiritual.

[ 80 ] Now, the next experience is the image—the content of the image—of what a person truly experiences as they pass through the gate of death. In this sequence of insights, as I have described it to you, the human being first became independent of his physical body in terms of his thinking. Through this, he gains insight into his being as it was before birth, or rather, before conception. Now, through his will, he becomes free from this body, as the body becomes transparent in a spiritual-soul aspect, and the human being stands within the spiritual-soul world. Now they have a visual understanding of the actual process that takes place at death, when the body not only becomes transparent but is shed, handed over to the element of earth, and the spiritual-soul aspect unites with the spiritual-soul world.

[ 81 ] This has been prepared throughout our entire earthly life: what we perceive through meditation, concentration, and empty consciousness of the pre-birth period—or that which lies before conception—is in a reciprocal relationship with what emerges from the will. We learn to attune ourselves—just as we have attuned ourselves to the volitional nature of thought, so we learn to attune ourselves to the thought-nature of the will; cosmic thoughts open up to us—not subjective thoughts, but those thoughts that work from within the world. The world becomes intellectually transparent to us when we place ourselves within it in this way through intuitive insight. The event of death appears before us, but it contains the causes for a true knowledge that has been conscientiously cultivated—a knowledge that only someone who confuses it with all that what appears today as occultism and the like, who does not engage with what is described time and again as the conscientious method through which a human being can ascend to a spiritual insight that truly allows them to approach the realm where the mysteries of the soul are experienced—but where also those experiences arise that, in a certain sense, are actually the answer to these mysteries of the soul. For in life we do, after all, enter into the facts.

[ 82 ] On the one hand, we had to point out the event, the fact of death. For then the soul leaves the body—leaves the body with which it was connected during its earthly existence. Human beings are connected to the physical-sensory world through its laws. And on the other hand, human beings develop within themselves that which unites the soul with the spiritual, as I have described. There the soul unites with the spiritual, and it experiences how, after detaching itself from the body, it continues to develop as a unity with the spiritual after death, until it has developed to the point of birth—or, as we say, conception—in the spiritual-soul world. And just as we have processes at work below that are simply carried in from the laws of external nature—processes that influence the soul during earthly life, determining its state, its mood, its happiness and its misfortune—just as this manifests from within, so now those processes unfold in which the pre-birth and post-death elements interact. Just as we are dependent on our body, so are we dependent on our spiritual nature. And just as that which remains unconscious in the body to the soul until it is scientifically investigated, so too does that which flows to the soul from the spiritual realm—giving it its mood, its state of mind, its happiness and its unhappiness—remain unconscious to the soul, for which the receptive human soul is fundamentally open.

[ 83 ] That which is experienced entirely as an analogue in the spiritual realm—just as the unconscious is in the physical realm—plays as significant a role for the soul and its independence as the physical realm and that which is connected to it. After all, there is essentially something else that is similar to death, yet at the same time its opposite in its very similarity; with our physical body, we live in the outer world. By continually taking in this outer world through food, by allowing the laws of the outer world to continue to work within us, and by, on the other hand, immersing ourselves in the spiritual world, we take the spiritual laws into ourselves. And within us, the spiritual laws and the physical laws come into contact.

[ 84 ] But what is the case with regard to the laws of physics? They are life; they are rhythmic life; they are constantly renewing themselves. We have to eat every day. If I may say something very trivial: We cannot be satisfied with the fact that we ate yesterday or the day before yesterday or the day before that and simply remember it today. That is the case with external, abstract knowledge intended for ordinary consciousness; we do not assume that the memory of eating is enough for us.

[ 85 ] What we take in from anthroposophically oriented spiritual science is—albeit in the spiritual realm—something that must have for human beings the same rhythmic existence as, otherwise, the physical exterior, the bodily processes. We cannot simply recall—and be satisfied with that—what we take in as anthroposophy, as we might do, for example, in chemistry or in the external sciences.

[ 86 ] Those who have themselves ascended to the highest realms of anthroposophy feel that they must return again and again to what for them is the conception of the higher, supersensible world; otherwise, something like a spiritual hunger arises within them. This is just as real. Yes, one cannot be satisfied with ordinary memories. We enter once again into a realm of reality by seeking out that which shows us how the soul is connected to spiritual life.

[ 87 ] That—my esteemed audience—is what anthroposophy has to say about the mysteries of the soul; at least the beginning, I would say. In the short time allotted for this lecture, I could only sketch how anthroposophy delves into the realm of the mysteries of the soul, how it actually demonstrates—rather than merely clinging to everyday life—that it points beyond birth and death, into a supersensible world to which the soul, with its eternal core, belongs just as it belongs to the physical-sensory world through its physical body. By facing the fact of death, the human being learns to perceive the reality of anthroposophical knowledge and, through anthroposophical endeavors—or, let us say, the beginning of a solution to the mysteries of the soul—to attain something that becomes for him a true spiritual nourishment, necessary time and time again.

[ 88 ] This, however, gives rise to a form of knowledge that is alive. And anthroposophy is thus the foundation for a form of knowledge that is alive—one that is not a dead form of knowledge valid only for mere recollection. Through this, anthroposophy also gives rise to that which can be of significance to life. But I need only point to one area: the Waldorf School in Stuttgart, founded by Emil Molt and directed by me, where instruction is provided and education is carried out entirely in the spirit of an understanding of the human being that can already emerge in the child through a view of the whole, complete human being. We do not seek to realize this through the external transmission of a worldview. We do not teach the anthroposophical worldview. In its current form, it is not suitable for children. But what emerges from the anthroposophically oriented worldview for teaching and education is a genuine engagement with the child’s being, a genuine engagement with the true nature of the human being.

[ 89 ] What, specifically, does education today—which humanity will have to develop—require? Humanity will have to approach the great tasks of life in a completely different way than is already the case today. Humanity will have to approach the ever-increasing challenges of life in education and teaching in a completely different way than people are capable of today.

[ 90 ] And no matter how much one may object—ladies and gentlemen—to the Dornach building, it nevertheless demonstrates how, in the realm of art, that which is otherwise presented in words as the content of a worldview can take effect! Ladies and gentlemen! I would like to use this comparison again and again: Take a nut, and take its shell. In the nut shell, in its bends and curves, you find the same laws, the same formative forces at work as in the nut kernel itself. The anthroposophical worldview makes it just as necessary—as it is with the nut to form its outer shell in accordance with the kernel—to have some corresponding outer framework. It could not have had [merely] an outer shell. Something that does not carry inner life within itself could not have appeared so outwardly. Not just any architect could perhaps have erected a good building; that could not be the case with what we are developing as an anthroposophically oriented worldview.

[ 91 ] What is intended—moving from mere life to true vision—what confronts us as genuine forms, as genuine artistic forms, whether in painting or in sculpture, must, even while remaining artistic, contain not a single symbol, not a single allegory; rather, everything has flowed into the artistic; yet it must have the same effect as what is otherwise presented in words at the Goetheanum. What is presented there on stage in Dornach is merely another way—expressed artistically—of conveying what lives within us when it seeks to become word, in order to step forth before the world as a word of worldview.

[ 92 ] But that which leads us into spiritual, supersensible worlds—by proceeding from thinking and research that are just as clear and methodical as any external science—that which leads us into the supersensible—provides not only a foundation for living knowledge, for a living science, but also a creative force for artistic creation and artistic enjoyment.

[ 93 ] No matter how much one may object to Dornach and its style—I myself am its harshest critic; there are some things one would not build that way a second time—one only learns through practice; but that is not what matters; what matters is the will! What matters is that one can truly strive toward a living artistic style based on a living worldview, so that the outer shell within the world functions according to the same laws as the nut shell does for the nut, and just as the nut kernel also has a corresponding outer shell. How superficial any old architectural style would be in comparison to a worldview that is now being born out of the immediate urges and longings of contemporary humanity! But such a striving must at the same time lead into the deepest foundations of the human being.

[ 94 ] What I mention last is not the least important point, and one would actually expect that those who are public representatives of religious denominations would not see any opposition in anthroposophy, but rather a source of help. For people today—even down to the most common knowledge and the simplest minds—are shaped by what popular science has to offer. And what constitutes the content of the supersensible must be measured against the education of humanity. Even in schools today, teaching is based on the habits and methods of thinking characteristic of external science. As a result, the connection between human beings and the supersensible world is being increasingly severed. Religious life will continue to decline unless it is given a new foundation, unless it receives support through knowledge—through verifiable knowledge of the supersensible world.

[ 95 ] Therefore, representatives of various religious denominations should view anthroposophy as a helper who seeks to support precisely what they themselves most wish to support—in the very way that contemporary humanity will increasingly want to see such support provided. Truly, a Christian is faint-hearted who fails to realize that his Christianity is only truly supported in the present day by anthroposophy; no longer through what is traditionally handed down, but through the living contemplation of the Mystery of Golgotha, to which we arrive when we move from such a solution to the mysteries of the soul—as we have set before our souls today—into the depths of religious life.

[ 96 ] Revitalization of religious sentiment, thought, and feeling—this is what is to emerge as the third aspect of that worldview which presents itself to the world as anthroposophy, a worldview that does not merely seek to think, but seeks to come alive inwardly through all the soul forces within the human being, and seeks to make the inner, spiritual human being perceptible to one’s own consciousness alongside the outer, physical human being.

[ 97 ] But this is what makes anthroposophy—as imperfect as it still is today—it is in its infancy, and I am the first to admit its imperfections; yet I am also the one who could write all the critiques that are being written today myself. For anyone who dares to say such things to the world today—as well as the things that have been said here before you today—also knows what objections can be raised against them, and need not wait for judgments to emerge from this or that quarter, arising from a consciousness that is not yet willing to engage with anthroposophy. Nothing new is offered to him by these judgments, which, after all, mostly stem from a lack of understanding! I say this to show that anyone who is deeply immersed in anthroposophy, as it is understood here, cannot be surprised by what they encounter!

[ 98 ] Ladies and gentlemen! If a way of thinking that does not engage with anthroposophy were correct, then there would be no need for anthroposophy. If anthroposophy could simply please everyone today, then there would be no need for it to exist at all! It does not strive to be accepted without further ado today, for it speaks to forces lying much deeper within the soul; and yet it knows: even among those who disagree, these yearning, driving forces toward scientific, artistic, and religious deepening are present.

[ 99 ] New paths are being explored in all three areas. Anthroposophy is aware of the weaknesses that still plague the present day. But it certainly aspires—let me say this in conclusion, esteemed audience—through its unique method of research, through the life it awakens in the soul as a result of this method, and through the deepening it can bring to human feeling and artistic understanding—it aspires thereby to be the foundation of a spiritual science. It seeks to be that which leads human beings to the creative aspect of artistic creation and artistic sensibility. And finally, it seeks to be that which develops within the human being a strong, soulful, spirit-filled vessel for religious life as well.

[ 100 ] If she strives to work toward these three goals, then perhaps she may believe that she is working in line with the most significant demands of our time.