The Rudolf Steiner Archive

9. Supernatural Knowledge and Contemporary Science

[ 1 ] Ladies and gentlemen! First of all, I would like to express my heartfelt thanks for your kind words of welcome and for inviting me to give this lecture. I have taken the liberty of choosing as the topic of today’s presentation the relationship between the approach to supersensible knowledge that I advocate and contemporary science. The objections raised against the very possibility of supersensible knowledge—and in particular against the approach to supersensible knowledge that I intend to present, which is specifically geared toward scientific methodology—as well as the reservations that are expressed, are primarily based on the belief that supersensible knowledge is fundamentally at odds with the scientific method of research and the very purpose of scientific thought.

[ 2 ] Now I would like to point out one thing, first from a historical perspective. I would like to point out that such supersensible knowledge, as sought specifically through anthroposophy, can in fact only be a product of our own time, of our civilization—and I mean by this roughly the last three to four centuries up to the present— because it is only our time that has brought forth what can be called a perfect mode of knowledge of the sensory world.

[ 3 ] Sensory knowledge, as we have it today—as a result of the scientific method of research—did not exist at all until three or four centuries ago. This sensory knowledge is, in fact, only the result of the efforts initiated by Copernicus, Kepler, and others, and it celebrated its greatest triumphs in the course of the nineteenth century—particularly in its last third—and also in the twentieth century. Any kind of worldview, any kind of spiritual research that sought to develop today in contradiction to this scientific knowledge and mindset would certainly have no prospect of making any kind of convincing impact on those people who matter today—namely, people with a scientific education.

[ 4 ] Based on this conviction, anthroposophical spiritual science, above all, seeks to work in such a way that it becomes aware that it must operate within our scientific age. Not only does it not wish to contradict science, but it also seeks to work entirely from the same foundations and premises as those upon which recognized science is based. But indeed, precisely because we have advanced so far within the methods of sensory observation and experimentation—as is currently the case—and because we have succeeded in developing exact forms of knowledge within this research method, precisely because these exact methods of knowledge are directed primarily toward the investigation of the sensory world, we need—and I believe I can demonstrate this to you today—we need today a knowledge of the supersensible.

[ 5 ] Science itself demands, of the unbiased mind, an understanding of the supersensible. For let us just consider for a moment—my esteemed audience—what knowledge was like in earlier centuries or even further back in time. People back then could not observe what manifests itself in the external sensory world according to its own laws. One need only recall how difficult it was during the nineteenth century to eliminate from science what was called the “life force”—a mystical monster that had been constructed purely through inner speculation, through inner thought—this life force, which was not the result of observation, not the result of experimentation, but something purely imagined. In a certain sense, it was the last remnant of the old mystical monstrosities.

[ 6 ] Before the true age of natural science, people believed that they had to project, through self-willed thinking, just as much into their sensory observations as those observations themselves provided. One does not usually pay attention to this—and it is not necessary for ordinary science either— one usually does not consider what—let’s say—a scientific book looked like as late as the twelfth or thirteenth century. It contains just as much of what a kind of scientific imagination, originating in human beings, has projected onto things—what was inspired in people by their emotions, their feelings, and so on and so forth—as it does from external observation.

[ 7 ] What observation and experimentation can scientifically provide to humanity is, after all, supplied by the empirical sensory sciences in conjunction with mathematics. But what this science has come to mean for the education of cultured humanity in modern times—that is precisely what a discipline such as the anthroposophical spiritual science referred to here must focus its attention upon above all else. For not only have we investigated external nature and human beings themselves—insofar as they are part of external nature—through observation and experimentation; not only have we thereby obtained a body of results that confront us today in practical application—in the technical, practical application of modern natural science, in medicine based on sensory natural science, and so on and so forth; not only has humanity gained this from this development of natural science; above all, humanity has undergone a tremendous educational process through that self-sacrificing work, in which human beings refrain from projecting anything conceived or dreamed up within themselves onto natural objects and processes, humanity has managed, through self-denial, to use its thinking solely to conduct observation and experimentation with the utmost precision, so that observation and experimentation reveal their very essence, and thinking, in essence, serves only as a tool for this external science—a means to produce results that express its own laws.

[ 8 ] This required a significant renunciation compared to what had previously flowed from the human soul into the worldview, and alongside scientific development and its findings, there has been a moral development that humanity has undergone through the renunciation just mentioned—a process that has led people to refrain from seeing anything spiritual in natural objects and processes, applying their own spirit solely to allow nature to express itself purely in its essence according to natural laws. In earlier centuries, before about the fifteenth century, this was unknown—the practice of making thought, as it were, merely a servant of the method, so that nature can express itself. That which has been achieved in terms of inner human development, that which one can undergo inwardly in the soul through the scientific method—this is what anthroposophical spiritual science wishes to appropriate above all else.

[ 9 ] In other words, ladies and gentlemen, anthroposophical spiritual science does not seek to encroach on any territory belonging to the other sciences; rather, it aims to penetrate the spiritual world from the same mindset that characterizes research today. We need only consider what has brought about our advances in the natural sciences; they have been brought about precisely by the fact that human beings have completely set themselves aside, that—by letting nature speak for itself—they do not inject anything of themselves into their findings. But this ultimately reveals—though people usually do not believe it, it does indeed reveal itself—that because human beings allow nothing of their will or their formative imagination to flow into nature, because they make thinking merely a servant of their research, it turns out that they can come to know everything in the world that they themselves are not.

[ 10 ] By excluding everything that lies within himself from the legitimate, objective method of research, man learns to recognize everything except himself. Ultimately, he is excluded from everything that constitutes the very greatness and triumphs of modern knowledge. Thinking has, so to speak, become merely a language for describing natural processes. And in today’s external science of inner experience, we actually apply only mathematics—to our complete satisfaction. But with this mathematical approach, one stands in a peculiar relationship to nature—not when one applies it naively, but when one consciously asks: What are you actually doing when you apply mathematics to nature? If one represents the mathematical externally, that is, after all, merely a form of representation. In truth, the mathematical arises entirely from human existence itself. We construct something purely spiritual in mathematics, and we actually find that mathematics has this great validity in nature only because we see how we can apply it—because it is, so to speak, applicable everywhere to what we can observe and what we can experiment with.

[ 11 ] And we feel secure in mathematics because we draw this mathematical understanding entirely from within ourselves. When it comes to a mathematical problem, it doesn’t matter whether hundreds of people agree with it. If I understand the matter all by myself, I am certain. I live with my insight; my whole soul is immersed within the scope of my understanding. And by grasping nature mathematically—by connecting what I develop within myself to natural processes through mathematical experimentation and observation—I know that I am proceeding in an exact, scientific manner. I unite what lies within me—but what lies within me objectively, over which I have just as little influence through my subjectivity as I do over natural processes themselves—I unite the mathematics derived from within myself with natural processes.

[ 12 ] That, my esteemed audience, is essentially the model for what is meant here by supersensible knowledge, except that one does not proceed with exact precision when dealing with external nature, but rather begins by proceeding with exact precision within oneself. One starts from something I would like to call intellectual humility. One says to oneself: You were once a small child with dreamy, soulful faculties. You have developed into the person you have now become. The faculties that enable you to find your way in the world have gradually emerged within you. Now one asks oneself: Just as, through life and upbringing, one has developed from the faculties of a small child into those one possesses today—can one not go further in this way? Couldn’t there still be abilities slumbering in the soul of an adult, just as they do in a child? And couldn’t one take one’s self-education into one’s own hands, so that one might transcend not only the abilities we are so proud of in everyday life, but also those one possessed as a child?

[ 13 ] But now people say that modern scientific education demands that we not dabbble in vague, nebulous, mystical concepts by drawing human abilities from the soul. We have become accustomed to proceeding with precision in the mathematically exact treatment of external natural phenomena, to proceed in such a way that one does not engage in dreamy, mystical speculation, nor, as they say, merely lose oneself in a dreamy, mystical state, but rather proceeds in such a way that, just as is the case with a mathematical problem, one follows every single step with complete deliberation and full awareness. In this way, one can develop one’s own soul by bringing forth the abilities that lie dormant within it. But the method for doing this must be made precise. One transforms oneself into a different spiritual being only to the extent that one performs every step toward the development of these abilities with the same precise, supersensory composure as one has learned from mathematics.

[ 14 ] Note, my esteemed audience, that we take as our model what we do with the external world—through which we pursue science and become scientists—and we shape the development of our own souls in the precise manner we have learned there. Thus, while modern science—the science of the present—proceeds with precision in its treatment of the external world, relying solely on the abilities acquired through ordinary life and education and then applying precision to the external world, one proceeds with precision in one’s own development; that is to say, one must develop only those soul abilities that can be directly grasped. One develops oneself with precision.

[ 15 ] This, however, leads one to engage in what I have characterized—for example, in my book *How Does One Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds?*, or in my *Secret Science*, or in other books—as the kind of meditation and concentration of thought appropriate to modern education. This encompasses what is necessary to develop oneself inwardly in the precise manner indicated; it encompasses many details. And anyone who believes that the anthroposophical spiritual science referred to here is a lightly conceived product of inner experience or imagination is very much mistaken. What is sought through it is truly no easier to achieve than what is sought in any other science; it is simply more intimately connected with the deepest longings and needs of the human soul—it concerns, so to speak, not only those who are engaged in botany, astronomy, and so on, but every human being as a human being.

[ 16 ] You can find more details in the books mentioned. I want only to hint at the principle here. What is at stake is this: one retains the inner structure of thought that one has become accustomed to in modern, precise thinking, but abstracts from all sensory impressions—creating, so to speak, a state that is otherwise only achieved in sleep, when the external world makes no impression on us through our senses. But one attempts to channel what one has acquired through practical thinking into such activity and exertion that, even in the absence of external impressions, one can rest in the mental images that one places at the center of one’s consciousness.

[ 17 ] What matters here is not the extent to which these mental images initially correspond to external reality, but rather that we do something similar with these mental images in our inner life as we do, for example, with our arm in the external, physical world when we work with it or exercise it. We strengthen its muscles. Meditation and concentration are nothing other than the exercise of the soul’s powers. But by actively strengthening oneself more and more inwardly through thought—without passively relying on external sensory perception—by freely holding onto and strengthening thoughts, and by systematizing one’s inner life, while proceeding with complete composure in this inner development and activity—as only a mathematician otherwise does—one eventually arrives at the point—for some it takes months depending on their aptitudes, for others years, but in principle everyone can reach this stage given humanity’s current level of development— one comes to develop what can, with a certain justification, be called exact clairvoyance. As much as the word “clairvoyance” is frowned upon today, I use it without hesitation, for the reason that it has a certain justification. It is justified for the following reason: Let us reflect on how and why, when we stand in the outer sensory world as seeing human beings, we perceive the things around us. We perceive them when the sun or another light source sends its rays toward those things, and these things become visible to us precisely under the influence of an external light source. Through this, we as human beings stand within the space of light that exists through an external light source.

[ 18 ] By continuing more and more with such exercises—which consist of meditation and concentration, as I have outlined in principle—we eventually come to experience something within our soul that, while not the same as external light, makes us a source of light in our own right. We truly experience something, my esteemed audience, that I would like to call an inner sunrise—a sunrise that has come about because meditation has revealed within us powers and abilities that had previously lain dormant, and we are now able, with the soul light we have kindled there, to truly illuminate our surroundings just as the sun previously illuminated things for us in physical space. The dawning of an inner light justifies speaking of clairvoyance. And because we do not allow ourselves to bring about this clairvoyance in any way other than through exercises as clear-cut as the most precise mathematical and scientific problems, this clairvoyance may rightly be called “precise.”

[ 19 ] But through this, my esteemed audience, we also come to develop within ourselves, more and more, something that is otherwise only represented under the influence of external perception. Try, for once, to honestly admit to yourselves what an enormous difference there is between the aliveness in which we are fully present—with our whole soul, with our whole being—while we perceive colors, while we hear sounds, while we expose ourselves to sensations of warmth; try to make it quite clear to yourselves how we live fully as human beings in our soul life while perceiving colors, sounds, and differences in warmth, and how gray, how abstract, how lifeless our ordinary thoughts are—through which we bring the external sensory world to mind—and how pale these thoughts are.

[ 20 ] These pale thoughts, these lifeless abstractions—through the exercises I have described, they are filled from within with such vitality that what most people flee from because it offers them no warmth of the soul—these abstract thoughts—become so fully alive within, so vividly concrete, as is otherwise the case only with impressions from the external sensory world.

[ 21 ] This is, so to speak, the first step we must take toward exact clairvoyance: that by merely thinking—but with a thinking that is empowered, inwardly animated, and energized—we can, through this, without receiving external impressions—being to external impressions as we normally are during sleep—we thereby develop an inwardly active life within an activity that is otherwise merely a thinking process, but which is now completely illuminated and energized by real images—images that are not stimulated from the outside, but arise initially from the human being itself.

[ 22 ] Now, however, we must continue to exercise that composure—for the sake of which I was able to call the attainment of such a level of knowledge “exact clairvoyance”—we must continue to exercise this composure to the point where we feel, entirely subjectively, immersed in this inner radiance and the creation of images. At the moment when we do not realize that this entire tableau of images, this entire world of images—which we create as something that shines from within—is merely our own being, a world unto itself; at that moment, we are not spiritual researchers; at the moment when we already regard this world of images as real, we are visionaries—or perhaps we are individuals with pathological conditions.

[ 23 ] A healthy extension of sensory perception into the supersensory world requires that we also bring our level-headedness to the point I have just described, and to know that what we have attained there is, inwardly, more alive, richer, and more concrete than those marvelous constructs—I call them that because one is indeed allowed to be enthusiastic about mathematics—than mathematical constructs are. They are our product, just like mathematical constructs. But nevertheless, the fact that one is immersed in it with one’s whole soul, that one experiences it while always having one’s fully level-headed self standing beside one—someone who stands with both feet firmly planted in the real sensory world—that must be present; otherwise, one is not dealing with exact clairvoyance, but with an unreal, fantastical entity.

[ 24 ] As one enters into this world of images, one can compare it to mathematical structure. Yet it is different. In mathematics, we know we cannot apply it to our own soul; we derive it from the soul, but must apply it to external nature. Nature provides us with the content for this. The triangle as such is not a reality. But when I find the laws governing the triangle in an external, sensory content, I penetrate reality in a certain way. What one experiences, however, in the manner described—as an inner world of images resulting from meditation—in that one nevertheless senses an inner reality. As a level-headed person, one must be clear about this: it is only subjective, but it is an inner reality; it is not merely a mathematical concept—it is an inner reality. And if one explores this inner reality, if one, so to speak, feels one’s way through it with one’s soul, if one devotes more and more inner energy to truly experiencing what is contained in these images, then these images do indeed take on a very specific form for each individual. We then do not live in images of memory, but we live in a tableau that depicts the formative forces of our own human being from our birth throughout our physical life on Earth.

[ 25 ] Let us recall what happens in a human being’s physical life on Earth. It is truly wonderful to observe how, as a small child, a person pours more and more soul power from within into their facial features, their gaze, and their speech organs. Watching a child enliven its physical form from within is one of the most wonderful observations one can make. For such observations cannot be made merely with the one-sided theoretical power of the human being, but with the whole human being.

[ 26 ] But if one could also observe, in the same way, how the child unconsciously works with wisdom, drawing upon its own inner being, then the wonder one experiences would increase a hundredfold—and even that is an understatement. Just consider how little the child’s brain is developed in its early years, and how, during the first seven years of life, an unconscious wisdom works within the child’s being to make this brain malleable. And whoever is able to study spiritual science—which I can only hint at in principle today—will immerse themselves in this inner, wisdom-filled, formative work of the child, extending throughout the entire organism. And what the child initially sends inward as a force—while outwardly doing little more than fidget—thereby shaping its inner organs, later connects with actions performed outwardly, through which one engages with things and finds one’s bearings in the world; this connects with the power of the senses. And from all that is at work within, from what is received from the outside, from what is experienced with the soul—from all of this takes shape what permeates the human being spiritually. The memories, the mental images we have of our experiences, are, after all, only faint reflections of what we truly live through—including what we live through in the unconscious—of what is at work within us, which ultimately traces back to the forces of growth, the forces of digestion, and the forces of nutrition.

[ 27 ] When one rises to such precise inner clairvoyance, one does not merely have a tableau of memory before one, but rather one has before one one’s own human weaving and shaping—both the inner processes within the organism and that which the outer world does to us. One sees oneself as a second human being, and from that moment on one says to oneself: Since you exist externally in space, you have your physical spatial body, your physical spatial organization. Everything is interconnected. But you also have a temporal organization, a temporal body within you, which is not spatially oriented, which is in the process of becoming, which is in the process of shaping—in which the shaping that you send into your inner self merges with the shaping that you accomplish externally under the influence of the other world and of people, which in turn has an effect on you.

[ 28 ] You see, becoming aware of this body of time—that which cannot be painted any more than one can paint a flash of lightning, one can capture it for a moment, but one knows that this is a temporal process—the awareness of this formative force, which lies beyond memory; memory, the stream of memory, is like the surface of what one now beholds, illuminated by its inner sun—this is what can be called the human etheric body in spiritual scientific research.

[ 29 ] Do not believe that sound spiritual research speaks of the human etheric body as some kind of misty formation that merely permeates the physical body. It is true that one can see through it—albeit through a certain kind of clairvoyance—as if through a mist. But that is not what it is about. That is what the opponents say. Those who truly delve into spiritual science know that the first thing one perceives through supersensible knowledge is a temporal process, an event—but a real event. One now comes to know oneself as a second being within oneself, one that constitutes a temporal organization. Down to the smallest details, the enduring aspects of our soul life lie before us like a comprehensive tableau. The physical substances that we take in and process internally are renewed every seven or eight years. The physical body is, in fact, something that is subject to constant change, to a constant metamorphosis. What I am now pointing to—which can only be grasped through inner contemplation—is something enduring, at least during our earthly life.

[ 30 ] Ladies and gentlemen, contemporary science worthy of the name proceeds with precision in its external research. The supersensible knowledge referred to here proceeds with precision in bringing about the powers that human beings need to perceive a supersensible world. Human development is carried out with precision so that one may, as it were, acquire higher spiritual sense organs that are precisely formed and that can then perceive the supersensible world. In this way, one has gained not merely a theoretical conviction, but a genuine insight into one’s spiritual being during one’s physical earthly life. One would still know nothing about the problem so deeply close to the human being—let us say—the immortality of the soul. For this, a further step is necessary, a further step that demands even more inner spiritual energy.

[ 31 ] You see, when one introduces images into one’s inner life during meditation—images on which one rests—so that one ultimately arrives at this inner vitality which, I would say, gives birth to an inner sun that then illuminates such images that, upon perceiving them, one must say to oneself, “They are real”—then one truly finds only something subjective, namely one’s own experience. This is what one initially senses as real in the images. One has nothing objective yet; one has one’s own experience, but as reality. In this way, it goes beyond the mathematical. The mathematical provides the form of the environment. It contains no reality within itself. What one attains at this first stage of exact clairvoyance allows us to sense an inner reality. And I said that when one internally explores the images in a living way, they gradually take shape into a tableau not only of our inner life course, but also of the formative forces, the forces of growth, and even those forces we develop to bring about nourishment—inner nourishment. We come to know ourselves as a second human being.

[ 32 ] This is what we initially perceive as a reality in our subjective imaginations, which are allowed to be subjective because they initially provide us with the subjective—our own life course expressed in forces, but within a reality. But once one has devoted oneself to such intense thinking that one has become capable, so to speak, of looking beyond memories, it is much more difficult to remove from consciousness what one has thus attained in concrete, living thought.

[ 33 ] For some people, it is already difficult to dispel ordinary thoughts—especially when these thoughts are still alive in their soul through emotions and emotional impressions; it is difficult for them to dispel ordinary thoughts. Such images—to which one has applied a special effort in order to experience them in the soul—are more difficult to dispel. But this, too, must be learned—just as one has, so to speak, learned to look into a region that otherwise remains entirely unconscious, a region that produces images for a person only on its surface in the form of memories; just as one has learned to look beyond memories into the real structure of the human temporal body—so one must now learn to develop an inner power that is more than mere forgetting. Then, if I may put it this way, one must be able to set aside—to erase, to remove—from the powerful forces that have grown within one through meditation, precisely that which one has just first worked into one’s soul with all one’s might. One must learn to empty one’s consciousness, to empty it completely, so that one is simply awake.

[ 34 ] Ladies and gentlemen, this is not, strictly speaking, saying very little; for it is saying a great deal. You need only recall what most people, who are untrained in this regard, do when they completely empty their consciousness—they fall asleep; their consciousness ceases. Before engaging in the visualization I have just described, one must first eliminate all external sensory impressions. However, one strengthens one’s thinking as I have described. Now one must, in turn, eliminate this strong thinking. Consciousness remains empty; but it remains empty only for a few moments. If one remains awake and develops a state of soul that consists solely of wakefulness, then the external, objective spiritual world—the supersensible world—enters this awake and empty consciousness; just as the external air we breathe enters the lungs, so the spiritual world enters the empty consciousness, which, however, has first been emptied in the manner I have described. And at this moment, the first thing we perceive is indeed that which, as the spiritual-soul aspect, underlies external nature.

[ 35 ] We come to realize that just as our “time-body”—which is the creative force within us in our earthly existence—lies behind our memory, so too we come to realize how spiritual beings are hidden everywhere behind nature, which appears to us in our sensory perceptions. Just as we enter a sensory world through our eyes, our ears, and our other sense organs, so too do we enter—through the soul being thus prepared, where we become, as it were, entirely a soul’s eye for our spiritual surroundings—a spiritual world, a world of spiritual beings and spiritual processes. We truly come to know a spiritual cosmos. And we soon realize that what we previously experienced as level-headed people through sensory perception can be connected to what we now know as the spiritual world. The ordinary visionary, so to speak, steps out of his ordinary consciousness and into another, where he encounters all manner of dreamlike phenomena, yet is unaware of any connection.

[ 36 ] Anyone who attains exact clairvoyance in the way I have described retains their old consciousness alongside the new one they have now attained. They can always verify what they see in the spiritual world by comparing it with what they have experienced here in the physical world.

[ 37 ] That is the difference between the spiritual researcher and the visionary. The visionary, when living within his visions, has completely forgotten his ordinary self, for he would not be a visionary if he were simultaneously perceiving the external sensory world as a normal person does. But the one who is a rigorous spiritual researcher sees the spiritual world, and at any moment he can return to his ordinary state with complete composure, for I repeat it again and again: Everything I describe here as human development proceeds with mathematical composure, just as does this immersion into the spiritual world in a different state of consciousness and the return to ordinary composure. So that you, my esteemed audience, are able to say to yourselves: With my physical eye, I see the sun. What I see with my outer eye in the sensory image of the sun is connected to what I now perceive spiritually as certain beings of the supersensible world; this is connected to the solar beings in the spiritual world. The physical sun is the physical image of spiritual solar beings, just as my physical body is the physical image of my soul-spiritual being.

[ 38 ] And so one learns to look toward a spiritual world beyond the physical-sensory one. But then one must go further by using the power—to remove from consciousness whatever is within it, to empty consciousness, simply to wait—by taking this so far that one removes the entire tableau one first discovered from the body of time, the creative force within oneself during earthly life, that one removes that as well, that one completely turns away from oneself. So, after one has first come this far—having seen, first of all, how the forces of growth within one have shaped the body since childhood, and how external experiences have affected it—after one has first established what, I would say, lies beneath the surface of memory—one eliminates it through a radical abstraction, if I may put it that way, so that our consciousness now becomes not only as empty as I have described, but even more thoroughly empty, by eliminating one’s own earthly life, including the supersensible part of one’s own earthly life. Then—just as in the case I have just described, where beings behind the physical image of the sun approach one from the spiritual world—so now, once one has removed one’s earthly life, one experiences an inner experience that at the same time lives within a kind of cosmic consciousness, one feels at one with the cosmos, with the consciousness of the world; one’s pre-earthly existence appears before one. One comes to know oneself as a spiritual-soul being, as one was before descending to the physical Earth, having united as a spiritual-soul being with that which originates from father and mother, which comes to light in the stream of heredity and which forms our physical body, with which we unite. One actually looks back upon this pre-earthly existence. In external science, we have presented the view that what we develop as soul-knowledge comes later; the images we develop inwardly of the externally perceptible existence follow afterward.

[ 39 ] If we wish to look into the spiritual-supernatural world, we must take the education we have received in developing scientific concepts and continue it in the development of our inner soul forces. Then we will reach the point where we can transform this development of our inner soul forces into a soul’s eye. And at the stage I have just described, we look inward and behold our pre-earthly existence. If I may put it this way: In contemporary external science, things exist first; theory comes afterward. What we draw upon in forming theories, we bring to inner vitality. Through this, intuition follows theory. And we know that it is a reality.

[ 40 ] You see, people keep objecting: “Yes, but how can you know that what you are now perceiving with your empty consciousness isn’t also a product of your own mind—perhaps just autosuggestion or something of the sort?” Yes, my esteemed audience, distinguishing between mere fantasy and a mere conception of reality—only life itself can provide that. Externally, it cannot be defined; it is a matter of lived experience to discern the difference between an imagined hot iron and a real hot iron. The more precisely we imagine the real hot iron, the better—the smaller the distinction we make. But the difference becomes apparent when we touch the iron. The real hot iron burns us; the imagined one does not. We must grasp reality only in life, and we must grasp it in life.

[ 41 ] So, for example, someone might come along—as often happens—and say: “But there’s also this: if someone vividly imagines a lemonade, they can taste it in their mouth—that is, if one truly imagines an image as if it were real.” Such objections are frequently raised. One can only say: just try for a moment to imagine what it’s like to look into pre-earthly existence after earthly life has ended and to sense the reality of the soul—perhaps through centuries—before it descended into earthly existence; and you will no longer say, “Through imagination, you will have the taste of lemonade”; rather, you will then say: “Yes, you’ll have the taste through imagination, but do you also believe that you can truly quench your thirst? You cannot. When you see through all the circumstances of reality and truly enter into the proper context, then you’ll know what is reality in a given case and what is mere autosuggestion.” So the reality of the supersensible world—it simply must be experienced. But it can be experienced if the necessary abilities are first present in the manner described.

[ 42 ] Well, ladies and gentlemen, with this we have already—I would say—presented one aspect of the eternity of the human soul, extending beyond birth or conception. That part of human eternity for which we do not even have a word in modern languages—we speak of immortality, that is, of the human soul’s endurance beyond death, but we do not speak of pre-existence. We must speak of this as well, for one can only grasp eternity if one understands pre-existence just as one understands immortality. But immortality, too, can be brought into clear perception. It can be brought into clear perception not only by meditatively developing our thinking—as it were—to the point of inner energy and concreteness, as I have described, but also by beginning to develop the will.

[ 43 ] Now I would like to briefly outline—in principle; more detailed information can be found in the books mentioned—how one develops the will. Consider, for example, that we grasp the will inherent in thought itself; for thought—when it is not merely a passive brooding, as the body itself does—but rather an inner activity, is always permeated by the will. But with this will, we focus on external natural processes. We think of what came first, then what came later; and when we think dialectically and logically, it is usually only to determine what came first and what came later in human nature. Anyone who wishes to cultivate the will inwardly must, in a sense, tear thinking away from its attachment to the external sequence of nature. It is possible to do this. Let me give an example.

[ 44 ] When we imagine our daily life in reverse in the evening—when we picture what happened in the evening, what happened at five o’clock, at three o’clock, and so on—we are, in effect, imagining things in reverse. In this way, we detach our thinking from the course of nature, in which it proceeds forward, just as nature itself does. Or we imagine a melody in reverse, or a drama, in as much detail as possible. We recall how we climbed a flight of stairs, first imagining ourselves at the top, then on the second-to-last step, and so on—in reverse, that is. When we learn in this way to practice a thought process that runs counter to the course of nature, then our will gains strength,

[ 45 ] This can be supplemented by exercises in which we consciously change our habits. Let’s be honest—my dear friends here today—life usually changes us in such a way that, when we reach the age of 50, for example, we say to ourselves: “We were different when we were 25.” But life has taken us in hand; life has changed us.

[ 46 ] But one can also, so to speak, take control of one’s own development in terms of will by exerting inner willpower. One can say to oneself: Within three years or within seven years, you must have acquired a very specific habit that is radically different from the one you currently have, and one can then work on the will in the most diverse ways. What does one achieve through this? Well—my esteemed audience—what one achieves through this is, in fact, only a reality if it is accompanied by a bitter sense of pain. Without passing through a bitter, deep pain, however, one cannot truly attain a higher level of insight. That is the experience one has at first: a terrible pain, as if one had become completely alien to oneself, as if one had plunged one’s body into nothing but pain.

[ 47 ] From this pain, yet another realm of higher insight emerges. I can characterize this as follows: Once one has immersed oneself in the pain to the point of overcoming it, something has emerged from this cultivation of the will that I can call a spiritual transparency of our own body—indeed, of our entire being. I can explain this by drawing on the eye as a comparison. Why is the eye the sensory organ that we can use so easily? It is because it is selfless, because it does not assert its own materiality; that is why it is transparent. What comes from outside acts within it. The eye denies itself. The moment we develop cataracts, the eye asserts its own materiality within itself. That is when the eye becomes self-centered. And then we can no longer use it for seeing.

[ 48 ] Nor can we use our physical body to perceive the higher world in the same way that it is perfectly suited for the physical world. Do not think that I am preaching asceticism; that would never even occur to me. A person should stand with both feet firmly planted in reality. But they should also allow moments to arise in which they become a perceiver of the supersensible worlds. In such moments—after a person has practiced the exercises I have described—they can transform their entire body into a single, transparent sensory organ, transparent in a soulful sense. Normally, one experiences oneself as a human being within one’s physical body. Now, as a result of such exercises of the will, one feels how the physical body is no longer experienced, how one truly stands, little by little, outside one’s body with one’s experience. The body becomes spiritually transparent. And this detachment from the body—this ability to be outside the body without being asleep, but rather to have a consciousness so outside the body that one can then view one’s own body from the outside, seeing it as an object rather than a subject—this can only be attained once one has first acquired the ability to detach oneself from one’s body.

[ 49 ] But this can only be achieved through the pain I have described. One must go through this pain; then the cultivation of the will leads one not only to possess exact clairvoyance, as I have described, but also to experience how one can actually do something in the spiritual world. This becomes evident from the following: When a person falls asleep during the ordinary course of the day, their consciousness passes into the unconscious. One cannot say, based on external observation, that the human physical organism has simply assumed other functions that extinguish consciousness just as one extinguishes a flame; for consciousness arises again through a different metamorphosis of functions when one wakes up. This cannot be determined through ordinary research. But those who have reached the level of supersensory perception that I have just described know that the spiritual-soul aspect actually leaves the physical body upon falling asleep; it simply lacks the power to perceive one thing or another in the world of the spirit—the world in which it was present—as it does in ordinary life. Now, having undergone a training of the will and, initially, a training in mental imagery, one learns to look into the real being that one is outside one’s body every night during sleep. And now one learns to recognize what the soul does with this being. Now one learns to recognize that, inwardly and unconsciously, one is a sleeper in ordinary life. And that which sleeps—one regards it, with the supersensible insight one has attained, as that which exists outside the physical body during sleep,

[ 50 ] And now you come to realize: When you pass through the gate of death, then—then what you have created unconsciously remains. It is your true humanity, your moral deeds. That which you have acquired in your soul as a moral quality through your interaction with the environment and other people becomes real in this being that separates from you in every state of sleep. But this is also something that is independent of your body; because you have learned to experience it outside the body, you also learn to recognize death in its image.

[ 51 ] One comes to recognize oneself in that which one otherwise is every night, and which can exist without the body. And by now having before oneself, in the supersensible image of knowledge and in actual perception, what one is without the body, one learns to recognize death, one learns to recognize the overcoming of death through the human soul, one learns about the other side of human existence, and one comes to know immortality in its true form. By making the body spiritually transparent in the manner described, one learns to exist without the body; one learns to “stand within” the spiritual world through what one has become without the body; and one knows how, having shed the physical body, to stand within a spiritual world after death. One has come to know the inner workings of the soul, which are purely spiritual and which prepare future worlds as well as one’s own future earthly lives. One has added an idealistic magic—the inner workings—to precise clairvoyance. One consciously learns what is otherwise practiced only unconsciously.

[ 52 ] Anyone who, in our time—as so many often do—speaks of external magic is simply a charlatan. Those who, with an inner religious feeling toward contemporary science, speak of magic are speaking of exact clairvoyance, of idealistic magic, in which one comes to know that which is created within physical earthly life and which then continues beyond death into further stages of existence to prepare for future earthly lives.

[ 53 ] What I have sought to illustrate with these discussions, ladies and gentlemen, is the relationship between supersensible knowledge—as understood in anthroposophy—and contemporary science. I have sought to show how this anthroposophical spiritual science is conscious at every moment that it must prove its legitimacy in relation to contemporary science.

[ 54 ] And let us consider how contemporary science, with regard to external knowledge, has come to recognize precisely that which does not encompass human beings—by virtue of humanity’s having made the renunciation, the self-denial, described at the beginning of my discussions today: the renunciation of objectivity and the use of thought initially only as a servant. But what one has acquired through this serving thinking gives one the disposition to make this thinking so alive within oneself that it fulfills one. For precise clairvoyance, this renunciation gives one the powers that the soul possesses in the will to summon it to genuine activity—an activity, however, that works in the spirit, which initially has nothing to do with human physical-sensory existence, but which extends beyond death. Thus we come to know the eternal nature of the human soul—both its pre-existence and its immortality—through a form of knowledge that truly appears to be a genuine continuation of what human beings acquire as sensory perception.

[ 55 ] But precisely because we come to know what lies outside of human beings through the exact sensory cognition developed today, we, as clairvoyant human beings, are confronted with a world that compels us to ask: How does our morality operate within it? Is our morality merely a wisp of mist rising within the purely natural order of the world—an order that, following a modified Kant-Laplacean theory of the origin of the world, transitions to a more complex, more perfect being, only to then sink into heat death, whereby the general cosmic graveyard would also mark the end of that which arises within us as moral impulses?

[ 56 ] The anthroposophical supersensible knowledge referred to here describes morality as a creative force and places moral impulses on an equal footing with purely naturalistic ones. Through this supersensible knowledge, human beings come to realize that they exist in a real world with their moral impulses and their human morality. They know that the real world we see with our eyes today is the result of preceding spiritual worlds, and that what human beings today create as moral impulses within their own spiritual-soul life—which separates from them during every sleep and then passes through the gate of death—is the seed of future real worlds. Human beings feel placed within a moral world order. And through such spiritual insight as I have described, they also regain the ability to feel religiously. For human beings cannot feel religious in the face of moral nature with its mere naturalistic laws. Supersensory knowledge is made necessary precisely by the perfection of our sensory knowledge.

[ 57 ] While the ancients, through what their senses provided them, also perceived the spiritual—just as we perceive colors and sounds—we, on the other hand, faithfully perceive only what our senses provide us through our observations and experiments; yet, as human beings, we stand before this science—which is perfect in its own way—and ask ourselves: How do we, as sentient, whole human beings in this world, fit into it? Super-sensory knowledge provides us with the answer. And because it is true, exact knowledge, it then also leads human beings upward into moral feeling and religious feeling, uniting science, morality, and religion.

[ 58 ] Thus, my esteemed audience, it is precisely from the necessary recognition—from the sincere, unfeigned recognition of modern science—that the recognition of true supersensible knowledge arises. And what we attain through supersensible knowledge, we attain it, my esteemed audience, for the sake of humanity. Humanity has become self-denying with regard to external science; it seeks to be objective and excludes its subjectivity. This subjectivity is restored to it just as objectively as external nature is presented to us in experimental science—through true, exact supersensible knowledge. But through this, our soul is warmed from within by this supersensible knowledge, and our will is strengthened. We are imbued with warmth and strength for life, for we must have certainty—if our destiny is not to be a sad one—for life, and we must work vigorously if we wish to be true members of the human social order.

[ 59 ] This is the significance of true supersensible knowledge: that it does not remain merely a theoretical concept, but that it permeates our minds, so that through it we know ourselves to be united with the world and with other human beings in that warmth and love of life that we need to live, and that we feel empowered by that energy which sets us to the work of the day and to the more enduring tasks within our human life on earth. Truly supersensible knowledge imbues our humanity with forces from the supersensible world. Just as the world is a creation of the spiritual, so do we thereby make our own deeds creations of the spiritual by first taking the spiritual into our humanity.

[ 60 ] In no way does the supersensible knowledge referred to here detract from the real, external, true science of the present day. It acknowledges this science: Yes, you have found the right paths to recognize what lies beyond the human. You recognize your limits. People often speak of the limits of this science. But these limits are simply those imposed by observation in the experiment of the senses. The thinking that we are developing within ourselves precisely through this observation, through this experiment, can be further developed. Then we will be able to permeate our inner human being—just as it is permeated by blood in physical life—with soul forces and spiritual forces. Then, in the true sense of the word, we will become truly human through supersensible knowledge arising from the spirit.

[ 61 ] Such insight can be explored, provided one is open-minded enough to do so. One does not need to become a spiritual researcher oneself—which, as the books mentioned show, anyone can do to a certain extent—but one does not need to become one. Just as one need not be a painter to appreciate the beauty of a painting, so one need not be a spiritual researcher, but need only surrender to one’s open-minded intellect—unclouded by any prejudices, nor misled by science— one will be able to make what the spiritual researcher has to say fruitful for life, just as someone who is not a painter can intuitively understand a painting. One must be a painter if one wants to paint a picture; one must be a spiritual researcher if one wants to portray the truths of the supersensible world. On the other hand, one can intuitively understand the painting even if one is not a painter. One can understand what the spiritual researcher says if one simply surrenders to one’s sound common sense, unclouded by prejudice; one will find everything to be harmonious and in accord with the whole of human life. And supersensible knowledge can be received just as one receives astrology or biology or anything else, even if one is not oneself an astrologer or biologist, and so on. Supersensible knowledge will bring not only an understanding of the supersensible and the outer human realm, but also spiritual warmth and the spiritual power of the human being.

[ 62 ] Humanity will be able to add—to that which it has come to know so perfectly (though perfection exists, of course, primarily only as an ideal)—the perspective of humanity itself to the non-human realm, following the relative autonomy with which it has come to know the non-human. And despite all knowledge, despite all that is essential—no matter how crucial it may be that we look around the world with understanding and insight—ultimately, when we are to work and act—and this is what matters—we must still be true human beings and place true human beings within a world that has attained a certain perfection through contemporary science. To place true human beings within this world so that they may work through this contemporary science—this is what supersensible knowledge, worthy of the name, strives to achieve by educating human beings from the spiritual realm to become true human beings through life itself.