The Rudolf Steiner Archive

3. Anthroposophical Spiritual Science and the Major Civilizational Questions of Our Time

[ 1 ] Ladies and gentlemen! Anyone who speaks in all seriousness about a topic such as the one we are discussing this evening—or the one I will be discussing here in Utrecht on the 24th—must be aware that even today there are numerous souls who long for a new worldview, or at least for a new direction in their worldview and way of life.

[ 2 ] It can be said, however, that not all those souls who long for such a new direction in our present time are already fully aware of it; much of this longing lies dormant in the depths of the human soul. Yet for anyone who can view both the inner life of the individual and contemporary social life with an open mind, it is immediately clear that such souls are searching—seriously searching—in the present. And this search is fundamentally linked to the great questions of civilization in our time.

[ 3 ] There are many such questions concerning civilization today, but they can all be managed to a greater or lesser extent if viewed from two perspectives. The one great mystery that has taken root in human souls—one might say for a long time—and which is already finding a very special revelation in these souls today stems from the scientific development of the last three to four centuries. This scientific development has brought humanity great, tremendous triumphs in terms of knowledge and has provided remarkable insights. Yet for those who now approach the findings of this modern science with their whole soul, particularly in relation to questions of the soul and spirit, understanding becomes ever clearer and clearer. I would like to note in advance, so as not to be misunderstood: That spiritual science which is anthroposophically oriented—and which I have in mind here as I present my remarks—stands firmly on the ground of modern, scientific thinking. But we shall see that precisely because it wishes to stand fully on this ground, it must go beyond what is usually regarded as the limit of this scientific way of thinking. Anyone who seeks not merely external knowledge for practical or other life tasks, but who wishes to gain something from scientific insights for the life of their soul and spirit, will—if they are open-minded enough—gradually come to realize that, the deeper one delves into these insights, the more they represent true mysteries; the less they resolve anything of what wells up from the depths of the soul as the great existential questions of human life. On the contrary, these scientific insights teach us something entirely different; they teach us to pose the questions that we, as human beings, must ask from the depths of our troubled souls more deeply and thoroughly. They teach us to raise more mysteries than we have raised before. For someone so open-minded, who immerses himself with his whole soul in these insights, there is simply no other way but to establish a connection between what natural science has brought forth over the last three to four centuries and what is present in the ancient, traditional religious creeds as a genuine spiritual elevation, as genuine spiritual content. One can discuss the question at length in theoretical terms: whether religious life—the deepening of a person’s religious experience—should follow its own path alongside modern scientific knowledge. The human soul is, after all, one, and a person cannot help but, on the one hand, draw spiritual nourishment for the eternal destiny of his soul from religious foundations, and on the other hand, accept what [the natural sciences] have to say, for example, about the structure of the heavens, the evolution of organic life forms, and the like. He cannot help but ask: How do these two relate to one another? We can say with our intellect: These two spheres of life spring from different sources. Yet no matter how much we proclaim that they flow from different sources, they converge within our soul, and we must seek a balance. But in the search for this balance, new mysteries arise—mysteries toward which the person of the present, when he truly looks up at the general educational life, when he is immersed in this general educational life, is drawn; mysteries that unsettle him, that call for yet other sources from which a true unification of our entire soul life must flow.

[ 4 ] And so we see that one of the most important questions facing civilization today is actually an inner question of the soul. Before we can intervene in any meaningful way in social life, we must come to terms with ourselves. We must gain a certain inner strength. Therefore, fundamentally, all external questions of life—all questions of practical living—are ultimately dependent on the questions of the human soul.

[ 5 ] On the one hand, there are the great questions of civilization facing us today. But on another front, there are the mysteries of life concerning contemporary, modern human beings. Scientific discoveries have not merely remained discoveries. They have intervened in practical life to a great extent, in a truly admirable way. Through modern technology, they have brought us everything that we essentially encounter at every turn in our external lives today—things without which modern humanity can no longer really live. But here, too, the modern achievements—the practical results of the scientific way of thinking—have not actually brought us solutions, but rather, fundamentally, new, practical life puzzles. Over the course of the last two to three centuries, we have managed to create a complex technology and, along with it, a correspondingly complex human way of life. We have had to place large numbers of people in front of machines, which are a product of the modern scientific way of thinking. We have had to adapt humanity to modern transportation systems, which are a result of precisely this way of thinking. In the realm of purely mechanical and machine-based activity—including where the mechanical aspect appears in commerce, in global transportation, and in the global economy—the scientific way of thinking has proven fruitful. But with regard to social thinking—with regard to human interaction with one another as human beings—it has, so to speak, left everything else behind. There is no need for theoretical instruction on this; one can see it in the social upheavals manifesting themselves today, which are having a terrifyingly unsettling effect on humanity. One can see this in how little guidance humanity initially has for channeling and directing these forces—which are gradually taking on a terribly destructive character, a character that destroys life—in any way that would be beneficial to humanity.

[ 6 ] And so, particularly with regard to what is human, to what is moral, and to the soul-spiritual aspects of human interaction, many mysteries have arisen in this modern, civilized life. And we are faced with the great spiritual question: How can modern insight be reconciled with the religious needs of humanity? And we are faced with the great practical, social question of life: How do we bring such a direction into what has become a mechanical-technical existence, so that—in a sense that has grown out of the modern worldview—interpersonal relationships are possible in such a way that all people perceive this relationship as leading to a life worthy of human dignity?

[ 7 ] In short, we are faced with civilizational questions demanding solutions, which fall within the two currents described above. Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science—which I would like to discuss here today, initially in terms of its findings—seeks to address precisely these enigmatic questions that confront modern humanity from the two perspectives just described. However, it must do so in a way that is still unfamiliar to the broadest masses of humanity, namely the civilized world. It is therefore regarded by one side as fantasy; by the other, perhaps as something even worse. Yet one cannot make progress in human development unless one is willing to speak out even about those things that, in any given age, are still fiercely opposed precisely because they are unfamiliar.

[ 8 ] We can see this, after all, in those souls who experience what I described earlier in a particularly acute way; how they yearn, as it were, for a flow of the supersensible, spiritual world into the human soul through insights. And today, such yearning souls turn to many things that are, admittedly, incompatible with our present-day civilized life. We see numerous souls who look back to what existed in ancient times among our ancestors: a certain harmony between religious feeling, artistic expression, and scientific knowledge. Even the external science of anthropology, through its research into ancient times, reveals to humanity today things that compel us to hold these ancient cultures in high esteem.

[ 9 ] Some people look longingly toward the East, where, admittedly, remnants of an ancient, primordial wisdom have been preserved in a decadent form. They long to experience a sense of what once was. We see this emerging in numerous souls, but if we truly understand the meaning of human development, we must tell ourselves that, while we can understand such souls who long for something ancient or for what remains of the ancient in a state of decadence—such as Indian mysticism or the like— We can understand such a longing, but we must say: Such a longing is entirely contrary to the purpose of human development as a whole. For this development is such that every age has its own character. And what was once in harmony with the impulses and feelings of the human soul in ancient times is no longer so today.

[ 10 ] However, there is more we must say. We must say: This longing for the old, or this urge to rehash Eastern wisdom, also stems from a certain weariness of the modern human soul. This weariness of the modern human soul manifests itself in the fact that, while a person may immerse themselves in traditions that are centuries or millennia old, and may devote themselves to the traditional external structures of practical life , yet within today’s complicated life, they find it difficult to muster the strength to unfold something creative—something fundamentally creative—within the human soul, something capable of bringing new spiritual forces from the depths of the soul to its surface, something capable of providing new guidelines for practical social life. Modern man may easily surrender himself, but creation—that is far removed from his soul, which is, at heart, deeply weary. Yet it is precisely to the creative forces of the human soul that the anthroposophically oriented spiritual science referred to here wishes to turn. For it believes it has recognized that only through a new creation arising from the deepest, most elemental forces of the human soul can satisfaction be found regarding what, in essence, is longed for in the manner described by numerous people today from the great currents of civilization.

[ 11 ] What spiritual science has to offer, at least initially, in terms of knowledge is, admittedly, entirely grounded in modern, scientific thinking. But at the same time—precisely because it is grounded in this way of thinking—it must go beyond this scientific way of thinking to the knowledge of the supersensible; whereas this scientific way of thinking, with its means of knowledge—which are, admittedly, magnificent and admirable—grasps only the external sensory world and what the intellect can deduce from this sensory world as abstract laws of nature and the like.

[ 12 ] If I am to characterize the relationship between what I mean here by “anthroposophically oriented spiritual science” and modern natural science, I would like to use a historical comparison. But I ask you not to regard this comparison as immodesty. It is not meant that way. The feeble attempt at spiritual science—which can only be made today and corresponds to the limited capacity of human beings—should not be compared outright with a great, momentous event, but rather with something that is also characteristic of that historical event: I mean the discovery of America. When Columbus set out to discover America, he actually intended to sail across the great ocean in order to reach, from the other side, that which was already known to him—namely, to reach India from the other side. People therefore believed they were heading toward something already known. Along the way, however, they encountered something unknown that they had not anticipated.

[ 13 ] This, in essence, is the situation of the modern researcher into the spiritual realm. He wishes to take as his starting point what modern life offers as a result of numerous scientific endeavors. He would like to venture out onto all the paths of research that are being pursued in a conscientious and thoroughly methodical manner by this modern scientific community. Yet along this path, he does not find what, in essence, a large number of researchers believe they are finding: a kind of “known” that—even if it is to be distinguished by its smallness or similar characteristics from what we have around us in our sensory world—is nonetheless a “known.” Just as Columbus thought he was reaching India—that is, something familiar—so too do researchers of the external sensory realm seek to discover atoms, molecules, ions, electrons, and the like, which are, after all, nothing other than what we already have in the sensory world, reduced to its smallest form. And when we now look out into outer space using conscientious modern research methods, armed with all the admirable instruments that have been constructed, we will find nothing other than what we already know here on Earth. We construct the entire heavens for ourselves out of the sensory elements we already have here on Earth. One might expect this at first, and, strictly speaking, anyone who is not a dilettante in scientific life—but rather proceeds from the conscientious scientific life of the present—might expect something similar. But when he becomes fully clear about what is actually before him as a researcher, he arrives at something else. He may believe he is arriving at something familiar—atoms, molecules, ions, electrons—but along the way he discovers something unknown, as unknown to him as America was to the traveler to India. Along the way, precisely by immersing himself in the thought processes, in the entire range of soul processes that he must employ in scientific research, he discovers a supersensible world previously unknown to him.

[ 14 ] Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science seeks to refine and deepen an understanding of what one does inwardly and spiritually when conducting research in a clinic, a laboratory, or an observatory. Only by paying precise and careful attention to this inner activity of the soul can it realize: It is indeed the spirit that is at work within you—even when it is focused solely on the external material world—precisely in the course of methodical research. And then, once one becomes fully aware—as earnestly and as intensely as the human soul is capable—of one’s own activity in research, one feels the urge to further develop these soul forces that one carries within, forces that are, in a sense, stimulated by one’s ordinary upbringing. And then one arrives at the methods of spiritual science, of which I would now like to give you a brief hint here.

[ 15 ] At the starting point of these methods of the humanities, however, there must be something that is quite unfamiliar to people today. What I would like to call “intellectual humility” must precede the path of spiritual research. And I would like to explain, once again through a comparison, what I mean by intellectual humility. Imagine a five-year-old child; if we put a volume of Shakespeare in his hands, what will he do with it? He will tear it up or play with it in some other way, but he certainly will not do with it what is appropriate for a volume of Shakespeare. When the child has lived another ten to fifteen years, his soul forces will have developed to such an extent that he will do the right thing with this volume of Shakespeare. We can say: what has been drawn out from the deepest innermost part of this child is precisely what now enables it to do something entirely different from what it was capable of before. If one wishes to become a spiritual researcher, one must be able to say to oneself with intellectual humility: One could, even as an adult, approach the whole of nature that surrounds us in the same way that the five-year-old child approached the volume of Shakespeare, and one might thereby feel compelled to continue developing one’s soul powers through one’s own efforts, just as the five-year-old child’s soul powers were gradually developed, thereby transforming the child into something entirely different from what it was before. Such methods—which, in essence, have already begun in scientific research, only in a natural way—are the very methods that spiritual scientific research seeks to further develop. And this spiritual scientific research does not rest on any external measures; it rests entirely on inner soul work. This inner soul work, however, is by no means easier to perform than the work in the laboratory, in the clinic, or at the observatory. What I am now going to describe to you as the inner spiritual path of the researcher of the spirit requires years of inner effort for its true development, even though one does not work with external tools or instruments, but solely with the powers of the soul itself; and these are, in essence, soul powers that are already present in ordinary life and merely need to be further developed.

[ 16 ] People today are not inclined to further develop such spiritual powers within themselves. The modern path of development has led us to no longer think about human development in the same way as people did in certain ancient eras. On the one hand, this is entirely justified. But on the other hand, it is the case that other views must take the place of the conventional ones. Precisely for this reason, many seeking souls—as I have already said—long, in a non-historical sense, for a certain way in which our ancient ancestors arrived at their insights, because these ancestors saw something quite different on the path to knowledge than people today see in it.

[ 17 ] In ancient times—I can only hint at this; you can already find further explanations today in conventional scholarship—there were schools of wisdom, which are also commonly referred to as the Mysteries. In these Mysteries, science was not cultivated in the same way as it is today—as a discipline aimed primarily at the intellect—but rather as a science that spoke so intensely to the human soul that it seeped into the depths of that soul, while at the same time arousing religious fervor within that soul, which stimulated it to such an extent that it received what it perceived as knowledge through artistic visions. Art, religion, and science were one in these ancient mysteries. But in these ancient schools of wisdom, one spoke of attaining higher knowledge in a way that appealed to the whole human being and not merely to the head. And one spoke of something that is, in a certain sense, dangerous to speak of today, because one will be accused of paradox or fantasy when speaking of it. They spoke of the fact that between what a person can know, feel, and will in ordinary life, and that to which their soul—as the supersensible—actually belongs, an abyss opens up between these two realms of outer and inner life; that this abyss can be crossed only through overcoming it, through the inner struggles of the human soul. People spoke of the threshold that separates ordinary life from the supersensible world, to which the soul actually belongs. And they spoke of how human beings are protected by the world forces from entering the realm of supersensible knowledge unprepared. For the students of the ancient schools of wisdom, speaking of the Keeper of the Threshold was not a mere personification but a very real experience. This Keeper of the Threshold was not encountered unless one sought to cross the chasm between the sensory and the supersensory world. But one had to pass by him if one wished to enter this supersensible world. He became visible, so to speak, only when one sought to raise one’s insights to the supersensible realms of existence. But one should not and must not do so, said the ancient wisdom teachers, without the individual being properly prepared and without fulfilling certain other conditions.

[ 18 ] For in ancient times, people spoke of what constitutes true human wisdom and human science in a way different from how we speak of it today. It was said: When the science of the supersensible is imparted to an unprepared person, it becomes for him a source of temptation—not only to do good, but also to do evil. Knowledge of the supersensible stirs up human desires that are otherwise dormant and tamed by what constitutes external morality. Through insight into the supersensible, these desires can no longer be tamed. That is why these ancient teachers of wisdom demanded of their students that they submit to such discipline of the will, such training, that these instincts would recede, that these instincts would no longer speak, so that these students would heed everything that the ancient teachers of wisdom presented to them as pure morality by virtue of their natural authority. And they demanded strict obedience.

[ 19 ] As you can see, this was a relationship between student and teacher that has, in many ways, been preserved in church contexts. But you will also agree with me: Modern life is such that it no longer wants such a relationship in any area. We can look back with great respect and full understanding to those bygone days when knowledge and wisdom were imparted to students through certain precepts—strict precepts regarding ethics, morality, obedience, and religious reverence—and they were not imparted to them unless they submitted to these conditions. We may find this justified in the context of those bygone days, but today, given our modern, human circumstances, we can no longer enter into such relationships with science and wisdom. This is precisely what those who wish to revive ancient forms of wisdom—the decadent wisdom of the Orient—fail to understand. Today we need something different, and this is made clear to us by a fact that I shall characterize as follows.

[ 20 ] First, I would like to ask: Why was it, in fact, that the ancient teachers of wisdom subjected their students to such strict discipline—discipline of the will, training of the will—before passing on knowledge and wisdom? The reason was that the spiritual constitution of people in ancient times was quite different from our own. External history, after all, really only reveals the outer aspects of human development. The fact that the human soul has indeed undergone tremendous metamorphoses over the course of time is something that external history today speaks of only very sparingly. We need not go back as far as ancient India or other regions of the Orient; we need only look back to the times of ancient Greece—perhaps to the somewhat earlier and middle periods of ancient Greece—and we will find that people had a very different state of mind. What we call the intellect—that which we value so highly as the foundation of our intellectual culture—had not yet developed as a separate faculty of the soul in these earlier people. In them, instincts, drives, impulses of the will, emotional stirrings, and emotional forces arose from the depths of the soul and permeated abstract concepts. Knowledge arose from the whole human being, not merely from the head. We can only begin to grasp what knowledge meant to the Greeks if we can delve into this origin of their knowledge—arising from the whole human being.

[ 21 ] Things have changed in our time. Based on the Galilean and Copernican worldviews—and everything associated with them in the modern understanding of nature—our intellectual life has developed in a one-sided manner.

[ 22 ] Some of you will certainly say: This intellectual life would not exist in such a one-sided form as I have just described. We do experiment; that is true. We are dealing here with external facts and with what they reveal, and not with mere intellect. We observe conscientiously according to our methods in all realms of nature and in the rest of the world’s structure. We are not dealing with mere intellect. Certainly, we experiment, we observe, but in doing so, we apply only our intellect to this experimentation and observation. And we are downright intent on recognizing as science and human wisdom only that which is gained through experimentation and observation by the intellect—whether regarding natural laws or historical laws—and which can be expressed in intellectual forms. Our entire state of mind has become intellectualistic. This is what distinguishes it from the old state of mind.

[ 23 ] This ancient state of mind—as it strove for knowledge, not merely concepts, not merely ideas—drew from the depths of the entire human organism sensations and inner experiences concerning the very fabric of the world itself. For the ancients, there was a knowledge of the world whenever they set out on the path of knowledge at all. They felt so connected to nature that, as they observed minerals, plants, and animals, and as they observed the physical human being, they perceived a spiritual-soul aspect everywhere at the same time. Today this is called animism, but very little is known about the essence of what is actually involved here. This essence consists in the fact that in ancient times, when a person looked at the external natural world, they did not merely have dry, external sensory perception before them, but a spiritual aspect came to meet them from everything. They knew that lightning was intimately connected to what was happening within their own inner being. They knew that the passing clouds were connected to what was happening within their inner being. They felt themselves to be part of the entire universe. They felt themselves to be a limb of this universe, just as a finger would feel itself to be a limb of me if it had consciousness. All ancient knowledge sprang from this sense of the world. But this sense of the world existed only because the sense of self—even among the ancient Greeks—was not as developed as our sense of self. The sense of self was dull, and that is why the ancient teacher of wisdom said: One must not simply introduce students to a higher form of knowledge for which a higher sense of self is absolutely necessary, for if they were to arrive at these insights unprepared, they would fall into a kind of spiritual helplessness. This spiritual helplessness was to be combated through the discipline of the will, the training of the will.

[ 24 ] How does this apply to us? Well, we can best see this from the following: Today, we are justifiably proud of what we know, for example, about the structure of the universe thanks to the Copernican worldview. Today we adhere to the view that the Sun is at the center of our planetary system and that the Earth moves at great speed around the Sun. We call this the heliocentric worldview, in contrast to the worldview of the Middle Ages and antiquity, which had placed the Earth at the center of our planetary system, so that human beings felt they stood on the solid ground of the Earth, at rest in the cosmos, and let the Sun, along with the other planets, revolve around the Earth. But even from external history, one can see that what we today call the heliocentric worldview was not unknown to the ancients, nor was it unknown in the schools of wisdom. Today’s worldview does not speak of this. But one need only read in Plutarch what he writes about the cosmological view of Aristarchus of Samos—centuries before the emergence of Christianity—to see that Aristarchus of Samos proclaimed the heliocentric worldview, that he placed the Sun at the center of the planetary system, and that he had the Earth revolve around the Sun. Aristarchus of Samos merely proclaimed, in a more outwardly perceptible way, what had otherwise been taught to students in the schools of wisdom after they had first undergone the necessary preparation. And many other things were taught there that we, just like the Copernican worldview and the heliocentric system of the universe, have fully incorporated into general education today—things that we, so to speak, already acquire in elementary school as part of our general education.

[ 25 ] We can thus note the curious fact that the ancient teachers of wisdom only imparted to their students what we today consider standard school education after the students had undergone rigorous discipline of the will—an education of the will. They instilled in the students the awareness: “You must cross the threshold into the spiritual world.” Only then did they impart to them the knowledge that constitutes general education for us today.

[ 26 ] In a sense, through the very ordinary course of human development, we have crossed the threshold. This is the meaning of historical metamorphosis: what in ancient times, for example, was given to students only after extensive preparation is now learned by every child. Today, every child is led beyond the threshold that the ancients described in the manner they characterized. Why is that? It is because, through human development, we have—in a natural way—a different inner state of soul than the ancients did. We are not exposed to the spiritual powerlessness or spiritual numbness that had to be feared in ancient times. For centuries, as a civilized humanity, we have, through intellectual education, experienced a strengthening and fortification of our very sense of self-awareness. This sense of self-awareness cannot be dampened, paralyzed, or rendered powerless simply because we enter the world that, for the ancients, was the world beyond the threshold. That is impossible. The ancients would have put it something like this: If one were to convey to an unprepared person the knowledge that the Earth moves through space at great speed, that person would feel as if the ground were slipping from under their feet; mentally and spiritually, they would have the sensation of losing their footing, as if they were becoming dizzy in the existence of the world.

[ 27 ] That is not the case today. But something else lies ahead for us. The understanding of the world that the ancients possessed instinctively is being lost to us today, as we perceive from the external sensory world what was granted to the ancients only after long preparation. We stand today at a different threshold. We are learning right now from the conscientious natural scientist how one must speak of the “limits of knowledge of nature,” of “Ignorabimus.” We sense these limits of knowledge wherever this understanding of nature must be put into practice for human beings. We sense them in modern medicine, where it is so difficult to bridge the gap between pathology and actual medical practice. We sense them when we want to apply the results of our knowledge to social life. We sense these limits; they are there.

[ 28 ] We feel as though we have been transported to a new threshold. Spiritual science has set itself the task of crossing this threshold in a way that is appropriate for modern human beings. That is why it begins with intellectual humility, in order to bring back to its proper measure that which has become so prominent in modern human beings, and to develop the human soul forces from within the whole human being. Here, spiritual science takes up two soul forces that are quite familiar in everyday life, but develops them further. First, it builds upon what we call “memory” in everyday life. What does this memory actually offer us in ordinary human existence? It conjures up from our memory what we have experienced since birth or in the years that followed—what we have gone through. This appears before our soul in more or less faint images through the power of memory. Constantly, what has passed in this life flashes by. We know, of course—and modern science identifies this with great clarity—that if this memory is not intact, a serious inner soul disorder is present. This coherent memory, extending back to childhood, must be present in the human being.

[ 29 ] The methods of the spiritual sciences build upon this capacity for recollection, this power of memory. They transform this capacity for recollection into something else, into something more developed, through what I have described in detail in my book *How Does One Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds?*, in my *Secret Science*, and in other writings of mine—through what I call meditation or concentration. Here, however, I can only provide a general outline of what must actually take place within the soul in order to attain a direct perception of the supersensible aspects of the world. The human being must rest in a devotional manner—resting energetically and patiently on ideas that are either suggested to them or that they prepare for themselves by becoming acquainted with spiritual science. While ideas otherwise flit by, they must—just as memory becomes sustained—rest continuously on comprehensible ideas, resting again and again, out of inner volition, out of complete inner composure—which must be as great as the inner composure we develop in mathematical thinking. Then, after some time, he will make a very specific discovery. He will feel: With his ordinary memory, he is dependent on his physical body. But if he further develops his memory into an entirely new soul power, he will be transported into a spiritual-soul activity in relation to which he is no longer dependent on his physical body. He learns to understand what it means to engage in thinking, feeling, willing, or similar activities without his body providing the foundation for them. He learns to unfold a soul life outside of his body.

[ 30 ] I would like to characterize this inner life—which a person comes to know as a researcher of the spirit—in yet another way. We find that ordinary human life proceeds in such a way that it alternates between waking and sleeping. A person passes through the states of falling asleep, sleeping, and waking up. As one falls asleep, consciousness is subdued. A person is not aware of what they experience between falling asleep and waking up, because it does not reveal what pulses through the organism from the will. But what pulses through the organism from the will—what the senses offer a person in terms of perception—the spiritual researcher silences by immersing themselves in self-created mental images. It is not the content of the ideas that matters, but the immersion itself—the feeling that the activity welling up from the depths of the soul is strengthened through such resting in ideas, such sustained rest. He learns to be in a state in which one is otherwise found only in sleep. But whereas one is unconscious during sleep, here one is in a state of full consciousness, in inner soul activity and soul liveliness. However, this soul activity and soul liveliness does not relate—unlike the memories of ordinary life—to things we have experienced in the external world and that now merely rise up from memory; rather, these images—which I call “imaginations” in the works cited— can be immediately recognized as representing a world that we have not lived through between birth and the present moment, but a world that exists outside of us, just as colors and sounds exist outside of us for the senses, and as qualities of warmth exist outside of us. We come to realize that the spiritual world surrounds us—a spiritual world with real spiritual beings—and that we are also in it during the time between falling asleep and waking up. But now we are also learning to perceive it as a real world.

[ 31 ] And as we learn this, we can broaden our perspective beyond life between birth and death. Let us learn to recognize, at a fundamental level, how life in sleep is nothing other than a separation of the spiritual-soul aspect from the physical body—not spatially, but dynamically—and how, when a person sleeps, there is a longing within them, growing from the moment they fall asleep until they wake up, to return to the body—if we learn to observe this through such inner contemplation as arises from a developed capacity for recollection, then we come to know the soul independent of the physical body. And we also learn to observe it during the times preceding our birth, when we lived in a spiritual-soul world from which we descended through birth—through conception—into this physical-sensory world. We learn to distinguish between what lives in the soul as a mere longing to re-enter the body lying in bed, and the very different, stronger force that surges through the soul during the times when it has not yet been conceived or born into a physical body, but which nevertheless tends to descend into the physical world in order to undergo the life between birth and death within it. Then we learn to recognize—as a development of the insight we have gained regarding the moment of falling asleep—that which is the soul’s experience when it passes through the gate of death. We learn to recognize how this soul, because it is inwardly active, is driven precisely by the desire for the body lying in bed; but as a result, its consciousness is extinguished. In death, consciousness is not extinguished but is preserved. We thus come to recognize that the extinction of consciousness in ordinary sleep stems from the fact that the bond between soul and body remains intact. If we come to see through this, we also see through the mystery of death, just as we learn to see through the mystery of birth in the manner described.

[ 32 ] And so we learn to look toward that which, as human beings, lies at the foundation of our eternal being—that which passes through births and deaths. We learn to recognize the inner power of the human soul. We learn to recognize that which guides us through death. We learn to recognize how the soul, as it is guided through death, initially has no connection to a physical body, but then receives this connection once more as a force, so that it descends into a new life. What we call “repeated earthly lives” in spiritual science is not merely a rehash of Eastern wisdom; it is drawn from the facts of spiritual life that can be perceived in the present; it is scientifically derived from them in the same way that other knowledge is gained through science. And anyone who claims that such matters merely rehash old wisdom—such as Gnostic, Eastern, or Indian teachings—should just as well say: “When we study geometry today, we are merely rehashing the old Euclid.” No, it is not merely a matter of drawing on something historical; rather, what needs to be said about such matters is derived from original insights.

[ 33 ] But then, when we come to know ourselves in this way, when we thus gain access to the eternal aspect of knowledge, then the eternal, the supersensible, and the spiritual aspects of the external world also reveal themselves to us. Then we develop a different relationship to the natural sciences than is otherwise possible for us given today’s intellectual currents of civilization. What does the modern scientific worldview give us—and if it is honest, it can give us nothing else—what does it give us? It must not be held against it for what I am about to describe—for it cannot offer anything else if it proceeds honestly and conscientiously—it gives us a picture of external, natural, necessary events. It can do nothing other than look back to those times of the Earth’s formation, which it deduces from biological, astronomical, or other facts. There, at the starting point of development, stands a nebular world or something similar. Even if this is regarded as hypothetical today, natural science can come to no other conclusion than that human beings once arose from purely external laws of nature—which contain only an elemental necessity—but that the stage on which human beings are formed will one day fall into the sun like slag, and that everything which human beings experience inwardly will be extinguished.

[ 34 ] And so, in addition to what a view of nature can honestly offer us, we come to understand how the moral world, ethical ideals, and the entire spiritual and religious life arise from within us; we feel it to be the most precious thing within us, but we cannot connect it to this external world, because we find nowhere a connection between the moral within us and the physical-natural outside of us. If we wish to remain within the framework of today’s worldview, we must regard them as two worlds existing side by side. But then the scientific worldview asserts its persuasive power to such an extent that it prevails after all, declaring: The ideals may be beautiful—indeed, they must be—and humanity must recognize them as valuable, but the world in which we live will one day be the great graveyard where the ideals that are now most precious to us will be buried.

[ 35 ] Through spiritual science—by looking into the supersensible realm of the world, and by seeing the spiritual in every stone, in plants and animals, in clouds and in springs, just as it revealed itself to the ancients; and because human beings have developed the faculties for the spiritual within themselves, and have come to recognize that they belong to the spiritual world, they also come to know the outer spiritual world in all of nature. Through this, however, he can look back into distant earthly times and say to himself: That which has arisen as matter, within which you live today, has emerged from the spiritual, and that which you experience today as matter will in turn be transformed into physical dross in the future; the physical dross will fall away, just as the body falls away from a dying human being. But just as the earthly, dying human soul enters the spiritual world, so too will that which lives within the human being and within humanity enter a spiritual world. The material world appears as a link between one spiritual development and another. Humanity, however, belongs to the spiritual development of primeval times and belongs to the future.

[ 36 ] And today, when we view the interconnectedness of the worlds through spiritual science—through a true understanding of the supersensible—we can say to ourselves: It is not true that the material world around us has a future in the sense that external science, if it is honest, must acknowledge. Rather, we must say to ourselves: That which is external nature will fall away from that which is inner, and that which human souls carry within themselves will leave the spiritual realm to which human beings belong, just as the body leaves the human soul. But that which lives within us today as moral ideals and religious experiences will have a future. It will one day break free from the earth, just as the individual human soul breaks free from the human body—not toward death, but toward life.

[ 37 ] But when a person learns to feel: that which is moral within him is like a plant seed; when the plant’s flowers and leaves wither and die, the seed from the previous year’s plant remains for the next year; we carry within us, as a seed, a distant future in which even the Earth will no longer exist; when everything else that binds us to the Earth falls away from us; we carry our ideals, our fulfilled duties; we carry within us the social and religious life that breaks free from the Earth along with humanity. Let us consider what this means for what human beings take in as the impulses for their social action. With such an awareness, a person no longer stands in social life like a hermit on Earth who can really only think: “Whatever is pleasant to me as a duty between birth and death, I will fulfill, for the Earth is, after all, only a body in the cosmos; it will pass away.” And once it has passed away materially, what is to become of the ideals? If he remains faithful to the natural sciences, if he does not claim to know from other sources anything that need not be reconciled with the natural sciences, then he will necessarily have to integrate what constitutes ideals into natural necessity. Thanks to spiritual science, however, his earthly consciousness is linked to cosmic consciousness. This is the way of thinking about these things that modern man needs.

[ 38 ] Let us imagine social life today. As humanity today, we make great social demands, yet we have little that is social in our inner state of mind. We lack social instincts and social drives. Precisely because we lack them, we demand so much outward sociality from life. But everything that people today perceive as selfishness in relation to social impulses is, in essence, merely a manifestation of the hermit consciousness on Earth, as understood from a purely scientific perspective. If, on the other hand, one learns to recognize that everything you do for your neighbor or on behalf of your neighbor—everything you accomplish within the context of humanity—has a cosmic significance, a significance far beyond what it appears to be in everyday life. If we thus reconnect earthly existence with universal existence—if human beings once again recognize themselves as part of universal existence—then social issues will take on a different dynamic than they do today.

[ 39 ] It is indeed true that what anthroposophically oriented spiritual science seeks to develop can offer people something from three different perspectives. First and foremost, it offers them a new understanding of humanity, an insight into the supersensible foundations of their existence. Self-knowledge is given to them in the true sense of the word. They can once again cross the threshold. The boundaries of knowledge of nature can be transcended. They can once again transcend themselves; they can once again enter the world to which they belong with their spiritual and soul aspects.

[ 40 ] This is one aspect: that human beings thereby gain inner stability and security; that they do not sink into an abyss when they seek to gain knowledge of the world, when they do not wish to look beyond the realm of sensory perception into the unknown. But when a person recognizes themselves in this way within their entire cosmic context, they also approach other people with that respect for humanity that must arise when one realizes: There is a spiritual-soul aspect in every human being standing before you. Our entire political and legal life is placed on a different foundation when one knows that it has meaning only insofar as it is the outer garment of that which has been transplanted onto Earth from the spiritual realm into human souls—souls that one also perceives through knowledge.

[ 41 ] And the third point is that human life takes on a directly religious dimension—true brotherhood—because human beings act in accordance with what we can understand as the wonderful words of Christ: “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.” So said the Being through whom the Earth first received its meaning, without whom it would have no meaning.

[ 42 ] But it is true that this is how it is with human ideals themselves. They sprout while the rest is ripe and withering all around. They are for the future. Everything that plays out in the social realm is, at its core, the seed of future worlds; just as what surrounds us today as the natural world, the material world, is the material manifestation of earlier moral worlds. When we see through this, new strength flows to us from three directions. And social life, too, must be transformed from within.

[ 43 ] In 1913 and 1908, I spoke in the Netherlands about anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. At that time, I could only point out what this spiritual science strives for—though not in a sectarian manner or with the intention of founding a new religion. No, that is not what spiritual science seeks. It seeks to be a science, and precisely through its scientific nature to lead people in the right way to the true religion that places the Mystery of Golgotha at the center of Earth’s evolution. I was able to point out at that time how something like a worldview had taken shape in many souls. Since then, however, a great deal has been added. In 1913, we were able to begin construction of the Goetheanum, a School of Spiritual Science, in Dornach near Basel. This construction project did, however, present various difficulties; in particular, the times of global catastrophe also brought difficult times upon this project. But we may still say: This fall, even though the building is not yet finished and much remains to be done to complete it, we were able to hold a number of courses. These courses were intended to demonstrate how what I have outlined for you today—and about which you can find more detailed information in the books I have mentioned—namely, anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, can have a fruitful influence on all the sciences. About thirty individuals contributed to these Dornach Fall Courses—experts from all fields of science, including mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, law, history, and sociology. Artists also participated, shedding light on their art through the lens of spiritual science. Men from practical life—from industrial and commercial life—have contributed to show that thinking in the spirit of spiritual science does not make one an impractical person, but rather makes one a more practical person than one could become through any other contemporary way of life.

[ 44 ] Furthermore, in the spring of 1920, in a course attended by doctors and medical students—some of whom are here in Holland as well—I was able to demonstrate how what can truly be called medicine in the fullest sense of the word can be enriched by this insight into the supersensible life. For we only come to know the inner nature of the outer products of life in the various kingdoms when we are also able to view them from the supersensible perspective. And those people who may initially take in what is presented in the form of a worldview regarding anthroposophically oriented spiritual science should indeed inquire a little as to how one can speak to experts with full expertise; how one can speak from within the individual scientific disciplines—without dilettantism and with a full mastery of what modern science is—in order to renew science, specifically to transcend those boundaries that are not perceived theoretically as limits, but rather as limits that manifest themselves as unsatisfactory and insufficient in the practical impact of science on life.

[ 45 ] In this way, we were able to demonstrate that fall how spiritual science can have a stimulating effect everywhere—across the individual sciences and various fields of practical life and the arts. And those who had gathered in such large numbers—more than a thousand people were present at the opening of these courses—were able to see what the Goetheanum itself represents as an external structure. If one were to build such a university elsewhere, what would one have done? If one had needed a special building in which to pursue this or that spiritual activity, or to engage in scholarship, one would have called upon an architect; one would have had a Greek, Romanesque, Gothic, or Renaissance building designed—or something else. That was not possible in Dornach for our free university, the Goetheanum. There, the building, sculpting, and painting had to spring entirely from the same spiritual impulses from which the lectures and research are to be conducted there. And so one sees this Goetheanum realized in a new architectural style—admittedly a first attempt, for the initial phase can be nothing else. For what spiritual science is, is not a one-sided intellectual culture; it is something that permeates all branches of practical life. It is something that, without becoming didactic, symbolic, or overly allegorical, will also enrich artistic creation. What is proclaimed from the podium as spiritual science—what is communicated there in ideas, thoughts, and scientific findings—springs from the same source of soul life from which the columns are built, from which the ceiling is painted, and from which the sculpted figures have arisen. Sometimes we speak of the living spiritual life through words; at other times, through the forms of architecture, sculpture, or painting, and so on. Spiritual science is something that springs from the whole human being and, as a result, can also permeate all branches of human life.

[ 46 ] A great many selfless people have come forward who have supported us to such an extent that we have been able to bring this construction project to the point where it stands today. Yet it is with a sense of melancholy that we must acknowledge that much remains to be done, and that a large number of people who equally understand the cause must come forward if this building is to be completed—people who will support us in the necessary ways regarding the physical completion of this building, just as others have already done. But our hope is that the very purpose of this building will speak powerfully to the souls of people.

[ 47 ] And we have not stopped at what is merely the Dornach building; rather, we have also moved on to practical institutions, above all in the field of education. And I would like to mention this only briefly today—I will have more to say on the 24th of this month about the practical institutions that have emerged from anthroposophically oriented spiritual science for practical life itself— but I would like to briefly mention that the Waldorf School was founded in Stuttgart as the brainchild of Emil Molt, and that I direct it according to the pedagogical and didactic impulses that can flow from spiritual science. Although this Waldorf School has only been in existence for a short time, it has already achieved successes in education and teaching, which I will also discuss on the 24th of this month. We have then proceeded to establish what are purely practical institutions—economic institutions—based on the spirit of spiritual science. For it must be shown everywhere that this spiritual science does not refer to an otherworldly, detached spiritual life to which one can ascend when earthly life seems too harsh. Rather, spiritual science is meant to be a way of allowing the spirit to permeate us, so that we can carry it into everything material—including the economic realm—so that everything becomes imbued with spirit and thus truly practical. I will, of course, have more to say about this on the 24th of the month. On that occasion, I will speak about questions of education and teaching, as well as about practical life, from the standpoint of anthroposophical spiritual science.

[ 48 ] Today I simply wanted to explore what the direction, the true spirit, and the meaning of this spiritual science are, and how this spirit and meaning of spiritual science then meet the needs of the seeking souls of the present, And no matter how much this soul-searching has been denounced as fantasy or folly, humanity will have to learn—from the catastrophic events of the present, from everything that so clearly expresses today’s mood of decline and weariness, from everything in modern civilization that heralds its descent into decadence— from all of this, humanity will have to learn that the seeking souls are on the right path—and among these seeking souls, those who seek throughout the entire rest of the universal cosmos what must be experienced within as the deepest and most significant; those who seek the Spirit in the Spirit. For—my esteemed audience— one may deny the Spirit, yet even from this denial, a reaction must ultimately bring forth that which then gives rise to the conviction: Humanity cannot exist in the long run without the Spirit, for the innermost depths of the soul need the Spirit! And what the souls thus need is what anthroposophically oriented spiritual science seeks—albeit, for now, with still limited strength.

[ 49 ] Q&A

[ 50 ] Question: Is it really a hindrance to seek out ancient wisdom in the sense of earlier times, because we have become different people within our current civilization?

[ 51 ] Rudolf Steiner: That is certainly the case, my esteemed audience. Today, there is indeed a widespread longing for the renewal of ancient wisdom. When one presents something to humanity such as anthroposophically oriented spiritual science—which draws directly from the very sources of today’s spiritual life and, viewed purely from the outside, arrives at certain insights similar to those known to the ancients—people then come and say: Why not the old ways? The fact that many people cannot conceive of anything else is entirely contrary to the purpose of human development.

[ 52 ] Let’s look at this from a perspective that can shed light on many things: Suppose someone, without prejudice to what I have just said, simply sought satisfaction for their soul by, say, applying ancient Indian wisdom found in modern yoga philosophy or the teachings of Vedanta—what would result for that soul? The result would be something that is, in reality, simply incompatible with what this soul has become today—something that cannot be fully experienced by the soul of modern humanity. What happens then is that the person believes they have gained something from this old, rehashed wisdom, but they do not receive true spiritual substance; rather, they receive a spiritual substance they cannot penetrate, one that they are actually merely intoxicated by. We find this kind of intoxication among people who come together in societies dedicated to reviving ancient wisdom. A certain inner insincerity then arises in the soul. One believes one has something, but one cannot truly have it. And this inner insincerity—even when it is not at all intended, even when the soul strives for it in the most sincere, consciously sincere way—still has a destructive effect on a person’s inner life. It hollows one out rather than filling one with truly satisfying content.

[ 53 ] One could also say: Even if people today do not participate in academic life, they have already been led to a certain kind of self-awareness simply through what they learn in school. This self-awareness is dampened and subdued when one takes in an ancient worldview, despite its beauty. One dampens one’s consciousness and does not arrive at true understanding, but rather at fantasizing—even if it sometimes resembles dreaming. There is no reality in a soul that absorbs something so old. These are things that can only be spoken of from experience. Theoretically, of course, one might believe that what was right for people in ancient times must still be right today. But I must say, one rarely finds the right understanding of this point.

[ 54 ] I was once delighted when an American clergyman, who had studied spiritual science extensively, visited me in Berlin. Unfortunately, he has since passed away, even though he was still a young man, and was thus torn away from his work in America. He addressed me right away with the following words. He said: “ “Today you speak of what you advocate as anthroposophical spiritual science—what is written in your books, for example, in *The Secret Science*, in *The Key Points of the Social Question*, or elsewhere in your social philosophy—and of the impulses that are to come into the world. Do you believe that what you are now presenting, in terms of its content and the way you are presenting it, must remain permanent?” I replied—noting very clearly that he was on exactly the right track—“I do not believe so. I am deeply imbued with the recognition, based on the development of humanity, that while the spirit indeed lives from eternity to eternity, the concepts we formulate about the spirit in our full, complete humanity—whether in religion, science, or art—are in the process of full development.” And so I believe that what I present as anthroposophically oriented spiritual science is the right thing for the present, but that it is so precisely because, after a relatively short time—for times are moving ever faster—it will have changed completely and will undergo entirely different metamorphoses. It was precisely from this question that I saw that this American understood me quite well. One must have this feeling toward it; that is part of human development. Question: For what reasons do you assume that earlier schools did not teach more than what has become known today?

[ 55 ] Rudolf Steiner: I did not say that. In earlier schools, things very different from what has now become known were taught. For I believe that what I have said today about teaching in the old schools is unknown even in the widest circles. What is known today—primarily in terms of style—in the current direction of questions of worldview, that is what constitutes general education today. That is what is significant. I cited the heliocentric worldview as an example; one could cite many such examples. If one goes back to ancient cultures, one finds everywhere—though one must first understand the languages of those ancient cultures and move beyond the prejudice that primitive humans simply made up some worldview rather than letting their experiences speak for themselves—one finds everywhere a substance to these ancient worldviews that commands respect, more and more respect. It is precisely by becoming acquainted with ancient Chaldean worldview ideas and other expressions of ancient spiritual dispositions—the Indian, Egyptian, and Greek worldviews in their true form, in their deeper, fully human impulses—that one develops a great respect for the ancient. But as a spiritual researcher, one also comes to know those soul experiences. It is certainly not the case that one produces these things out of one’s imagination. I must say: I began working on much of what I am presenting today regarding this research thirty or thirty-five years ago, and only in the last few years have I dared to speak these things aloud, because I have been working on them ever since. Everything I have said about the threefold human being in my book *The Riddles of the Soul* is the result of thirty to thirty-five years of research. In the course of this, one comes across certain things that have, admittedly, been explored in a modern way—things that are connected to the modern life of the soul—but which, in a certain sense, were present in ancient wisdom as dim instincts of a life of the soul that is no longer useful to us. This gives rise to a profound respect for what the ancients achieved in a completely different way—things we rediscover today, but which we must now seek in an entirely different manner.

[ 56 ] And I would like to say: What the ancients grasped through instinct has been lost to our instinct. But what they attained beyond the threshold is the result of our ordinary education. We must, from a developed consciousness, once again develop what the ancients possessed as knowledge of the world through their instinctual life. These are profound connections. External history actually speaks of this on every page, if one knows how to read external history and is not content with merely accepted definitions of words.

[ 57 ] For example, what Indian wisdom is—it can be translated the way Deussen translated it. But then those who receive such translations get no sense of this Indian wisdom. But one can also immerse oneself in the spirit; then one learns to recognize that in the ancient Indian schools of wisdom, based on the philosophy of yoga, things were discovered that we must seek in a different way—and that is what matters. We come to realize, as people used to say: When we proceed from our ordinary consciousness, we are not very closely connected to the world. But when we proceed from the things that give us more than sensory perceptions—when we immerse ourselves in the process of breathing—then, by following the breath organically within ourselves, the meaning of the world reveals itself to us in a completely different way. What then emerged as the meaning of the world in this way was recorded. We can no longer revive these schools of yoga, and if we do, we will stunt the organism. For what dawned on those people is, in its main features, general human education today. We must do something else. We must deepen that which we have mastered more fully than the ancients—intellectual culture—so that we can implant the intellect into the life of feeling and volitional impulses; in this way we penetrate more deeply into human nature and into nature itself. In this way we arrive at the spiritual. We must follow a different path—a soul-spiritual path. And by knowing what the path of the Indian worldview actually was, we can begin to understand what is communicated in the scriptures. Then, whenever we later discover a supersensible truth in a different way, we can understand it in its earlier form—even if the reverse is not the case. From such insights arises what I have said about the relationship between what is today considered general human education and that into which the ancient disciples were initiated.

[ 58 ] It is by no means possible, in a lecture that has already gone on too long, to provide more than the general guidelines. In the literature, however, you will find that every assertion made in such a lecture has always been examined in turn for its supporting evidence, and that it is indeed the case that the researcher of the spiritual realm has already raised most of the objections that are made in the most varied ways.

[ 59 ] That is precisely what I wanted to say about the validity of a judgment such as the one I have rendered. Based on the apologetic traditions, it is entirely possible to say that things are as I have explained using the example of Aristarchus of Samos and the heliocentric worldview.