The Rudolf Steiner Archive

1. What Was the Purpose of the Goetheanum and of Anthroposophy?

[ 1 ] The terrible fire that occurred on New Year’s Eve, which destroyed the Goetheanum—a memory that will remain so painful for many who loved it—may serve as an occasion for me to link today’s reflection on anthroposophical worldview and understanding of the world to this Goetheanum. My intention is merely to establish a connection. The lecture itself, which I shall take the liberty of presenting here before you, is not, however, intended to differ significantly in character from those lectures I have been privileged to deliver here in Basel, in this very same hall, for many years now. It was precisely in the wake of the terrible fire that it once again came to light what outlandish notions are associated in the world with everything that this Goetheanum in Dornach was meant to represent, and what was supposed to take place there. People speak of the most terrible superstitions that are said to be spread there. There is talk of all manner of anti-religious activities supposedly taking place there, even of all sorts of spiritualistic séances, of nebulous mysticism to which people there are said to be indulging, and the like. In response to all this, I would like today to at least sketch out an answer to the question: What is the purpose of that anthroposophy to which the Goetheanum was dedicated?

[ 2 ] The very name “Goetheanum” was a source of offense to many people. They failed to consider the deeper roots from which this name sprang, and how it is connected to what is cultivated there as anthroposophy. For me personally, this anthroposophy has emerged as a living reality from a devotion to Goethe’s worldview and to Goethe’s entire body of work—a devotion that has actually lasted for more than four decades. However, if one approaches Goethe’s worldview and his body of work in such a way that one takes only what is directly stated in Goethe’s works and attempts, so to speak, to logically deduce what may be called “Goethian,” then one will fail to grasp what prompted the decision to name the Dornadier Building specifically the Goetheanum. Yet there is, I would say, a logic of thought and a logic of life. And the person who does not merely immerse themselves in Goethe through a logic of thought, but who takes to heart the impulses and inspirations so rich in Goethe’s works and now attempts to draw from them what can be drawn—given that so many decades have passed since Goethe’s death in the course of human development—will believe, whatever his views on the truth value of anthroposophy may be, that through the living inspirations of Goetheanism—if I may use that expression—it is precisely this anthroposophy that has been able to arise through the logic of life, through experiencing what lies within Goethe, and through humbly allowing what Goethe set in motion to grow.

[ 3 ] This Goetheanum was originally called the Johannesbau by those friends of the anthroposophical worldview who, more than ten years ago, took the initiative to have such a building constructed. The name “Johannesbau” was by no means taken from the evangelist John, but was given—not by me, but by others—in honor of one of the characters in my Mystery Dramas, Johannes Thomasius, because this Goetheanum was initially intended to be dedicated not only to fostering the rest of the anthroposophical worldview but also to the performance of these Mysteries. However, it was, of course, obvious that the name “Johannesbau” could lead to the misunderstanding that it was intended to allude to the author of the Gospel of John.

[ 4 ] That is why I have often said—and I believe I have said so here as well over the years while the Goetheanum was being built—that for me, having derived my worldview from Goethe in a living way, this building is a Goetheanum. And then this name was also officially given to this building by friends of the anthroposophical cause. I have never interpreted this as anything other than a kind of gratitude for what can be gained from Goethe, as an act of homage to Goethe’s towering personality. Not as if what is directly present in Goethe should be cultivated best or most beautifully at the Goetheanum in Dornach, but because the anthroposophical worldview feels the deepest gratitude for its very origin to what came into the world through Goethe.

[ 5 ] If one considers the name “Goetheanum” to have arisen from an act of homage, from an act of gratitude, then I believe no one will take offense at it. Moreover, it is understandable that someone unfamiliar with the anthroposophical worldview, upon encountering the building on the hill in Dornach, would at first be strangely struck by the two interlocking domed structures, by the unfamiliar forms both inside and out, and so on. Yet this building emerged with an inner artistic coherence from what the anthroposophical worldview is meant to be. And therefore, I will be best able to build upon what the building intended if I first attempt today—in a somewhat different way than I have done here for many years—to answer the question: What is the purpose of anthroposophy?

[ 6 ] Anthroposophy aims first and foremost to be a knowledge of the spiritual world—a knowledge of the spiritual world that can stand on equal footing with what we today have in such a magnificent form as the natural sciences. It seeks to stand alongside natural science both through scientific rigor and through the fact that anyone who seriously wishes not merely to take anthroposophy into their heart but to build it up must, above all, have gone through all the strict and serious methods practiced by natural science today.

[ 7 ] Through all of this, anthroposophy aims to be the exact opposite of what I have described to you as the world’s opinion of it. And when faced with these judgments—which I have, after all, cited only in part—one can only be astonished at how it is possible for ideas about a subject to take root in the public consciousness that are the exact opposite of what is actually intended by that subject. For one could almost say: None of the opinions I have cited from the world describe anthroposophy; rather, it aims to be a serious understanding of the spiritual world.

[ 8 ] Now you know that today, anything that claims to be knowledge of the spiritual world is viewed with some contempt or, at the very least, with great skepticism. The scientific education that humanity has enjoyed for the past three to four centuries was such that, gradually, in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the following judgment emerged: Through the rigorous methods of modern natural science, one can recognize what is given to the senses in the human environment, and what the human intellect can derive from sensory observation with the aid of experimental and observational methods. In contrast, wherever people believe they stand on the firmest ground of this scientific worldview, knowledge of the spiritual is rejected—whether with a certain arrogance or a certain timidity—by asserting that human cognition is simply limited when it comes to the spiritual, and that in matters of the spirit, human beings are reliant solely on matters of faith.

[ 9 ] This, however, creates a serious inner conflict for many people who derive their education from what is now widely popularized as natural science. These beliefs have been handed down from ancient times. People do not realize that these beliefs also correspond to insights that humanity attained at earlier stages of development, and that these have been preserved in tradition and handed down through the ages. When these beliefs are simply accepted as such, the soul enters a state that brings it into conflict with everything it is striving to understand as it absorbs what is being so rigorously established today through the scientific method—for humanity and for practical life alike.

[ 10 ] What is thus conquered is truly not merely something that could be called the possession of a small, educated group of people; rather, this particular way of thinking, which stems from the natural sciences, has already penetrated even our most basic education. And one might say: further and further, all the way into the most remote, most primitive human settlements—everywhere, if not natural science itself, then at least the kind of mindset that stems from natural science is spreading. This means that although many people do not realize that their longing—their soul’s longing—is to gain similar insights into the spiritual realm as they have into the natural world, a spiritual conflict nonetheless arises in the hearts of very many people today, which manifests itself in all manner of dissatisfaction with life. One feels a certain inner restlessness and uncertainty. One does not quite know how to relate to life with one’s ideas and feelings. People attribute this to various things; but the real cause lies in what has been said.

[ 11 ] People today are actually seeking genuine knowledge—not mere beliefs—about the spiritual world. Anthroposophy strives to provide such knowledge. In doing so, however, it must assert a concept of knowledge that is quite different from the one to which people have become accustomed today. And if I am to characterize what this concept of knowledge is, I would like to do so first through a kind of comparison—one that is, however, meant to be more than a mere comparison—through something that is intended to lead directly into the way in which anthroposophy strives to understand the supersensible-spiritual.

[ 12 ] Let us first consider the strange world that everyone, in a sense, knows as the other side of human existence, of human consciousness—let us consider the world of dreams. Everyone can conjure up in their mind’s eye the vivid, varied, and colorful images that emerge from the dark depths of sleep. When one looks at dreams from the perspective of the waking state, one finds that they are in some way connected to what a person is and imagines while awake. Even if they—and this is by no means to be denied—sometimes seem like prophetic dreams, these dreams are nonetheless connected to what a person has experienced. It is simply that a—I would say—naturally creative imagination is at work in the most exuberant way to transform what a person has experienced. In another sense, such dreams are connected to a person’s physical conditions; breathing difficulties, a rapid heartbeat, and disturbances in the organism are symbolically experienced in the most varied ways in dreams.

[ 13 ] Let us imagine, just to develop the line of thought required here, that human beings lived in this dream world; they would have no other world. Human beings would be unable to ever escape this dream world; they would regard it as their reality. If, through some external forces, human life were to unfold exactly as it does now—if, through the influence of other spiritual beings, this human life were to unfold exactly as it does, so that we walk around in cities, do our work, but did not look at this work with awareness, but were always merely dreaming, then we, as human beings, would regard the dream world as the only reality—just as the dreamer, after all, regards his richly detailed dream world as his reality at the very moment of dreaming. When we wake up, it is only then—from the standpoint of wakefulness and through the way we relate to the world around us—that we can actually form a judgment about the reality value and reality significance of the dream. Remaining within the dream, one cannot form such a judgment about the dream’s significance in terms of reality. To what extent the dream is connected to life memories, and to what extent it is connected to physical states—forming a judgment about this is only possible from the vantage point of wakefulness. One must first wake up in order to form a judgment about the dream.

[ 14 ] Now, human beings also live through their will, for the will is primarily engaged when we awaken to the processes of the external sensory world; we now live in the images that this sensory world conveys to our soul. We have no other judgment of reality than this feeling of being immersed in the sensory world, this sense of being connected to it. And from this perspective—I would say, of being engaged in the sensory world through the body with one’s entire soul—from this perspective, we initially judge this sensory world to be reality, and what dreams lead us to believe to be something that does not belong to this reality. But the question inevitably arises for every human being at some point—especially when they survey all that the images of external sensory reality present to them: How does what they themselves experience inwardly as their soul-spiritual nature relate to the transformations and the changeability of this external sensory world?

[ 15 ] The great questions of existence arise when a person compares what they perceive in the external sensory world with what they feel rising from the depths of their humanity—their own essence—in their thinking, feeling, sensing, and willing. These great questions of existence include, for example: What is the reality of the soul? — which then expands into the great question of the immortality of the soul — the question of human freedom and numerous other questions arise. For a person soon senses how very different the experience is when they look outward and receive sensory impressions, and when they look inward and have their inner experiences. And from such experiences, the question must inevitably arise: Is it perhaps possible, in a similar way—through a kind of second awakening, through a higher awakening—to gain insight into sensory reality itself from a higher vantage point, just as one forms a judgment about the world of dreams based on sensory reality when one awakens naturally in the morning?

[ 16 ] If one is convinced that the reality value of a dream’s imagery can be judged only from the standpoint of wakefulness, then one must strive to attain a standpoint that, in turn, can say something about the reality value—about the higher reality value—of sensory experience itself. And so the great question regarding spiritual knowledge is this: Can we, in a higher sense, awaken once more from our everyday waking consciousness, and does such a second awakening yield an understanding of the sensory world, just as an understanding of the dream arises from the sensory world?

[ 17 ] One can already sense this, but a closer examination provides certainty about how dreams actually work. When one dreams, one feels, as it were, one’s entire inner life being taken over by indefinable forces. The moment a person wakes up, they feel that they now, as it were, have control over their physical body. They feel that the rambling images of the dream are being reined in by the physical body. And they also feel that these dream images are rambling for the very reason that, upon waking or falling asleep, there is a moment when we do not have complete control over the physical body. Just as we are torn from the dream—from sleep itself—and brought into sensory wakefulness by the forces of our own organism, can a higher, second awakening be brought about in the same way through conscious soul activity?

[ 18 ] By answering this question—which can only be answered by, I would say, testing—in a higher sense—whether the soul can find within itself the strength for such a higher awakening; only through this can a different conception of knowledge be created than the one we are accustomed to today—a conception that leads only to declaring an “ignorabimus,” a “we shall not know,” with regard to the spiritual world.

[ 19 ] Now we must first turn—as anthroposophy does—to the soul forces we already possess, and ask: Can something higher, something even more powerful, be developed from these soul forces, just as the waking life of the soul is more powerful than the dreaming one? One might say to oneself that even this waking life of the soul in the adult human being has, after all, gradually developed out of the dreamlike life of the soul that we had when we first entered the life of the soul as very small children. Had we remained at the stage of the life of the soul that we had, say, during the first three years of our soul life—our earthly life—we would view the world in a kind of dreamlike form. We have outgrown this dreamlike form.

[ 20 ] This can give one the courage to first seek out certain spiritual powers that now need to be developed even further than they have been since early childhood. And anyone who takes such a question seriously will first turn to a spiritual faculty which even the most prominent philosophical minds of our time acknowledge—based on purely philosophical considerations—as pointing to a spiritual activity of the human being that is more or less independent of the body. This is our power of memory, that which lives in our memory.

[ 21 ] Let us take a moment to consider what lives in our ordinary memory. To begin with, this memory is, of course, not a force capable of penetrating into supersensible spiritual worlds. We also know that this memory is only in perfect order when we give expression to the spiritual within the physical. And yet, there is something peculiar about it. Within our memories, images of experiences that may lie decades behind us emerge. Depending on how a person is constituted, what we have gone through in our relationship to the sensory world and to ordinary people appears in manifold images—images that are actually very similar to dream images, only more disciplined. And if our memory is faithful, a living knowledge of what was years ago—what no longer stands before us in sensory reality—rises up today from the depths of the soul. This is, of course, only a very general way of speaking, but one must start from some secure point of view. And so we can say: In memory, we are given ideas that inwardly reflect something that once existed—something we once lived with—but which is not present at the moment.

[ 22 ] And so the question—which is admittedly still vague at first and, of course, only takes on meaning once it can be answered—may arise; but we shall see that it can be answered: Can a human being, perhaps through inner spiritual and soul work, attain a further soul power—a transformation of the power of memory, so to speak—through which he not only imagines what is no longer present but once was; but through which he can imagine something that, in earthly life, is not present at all through any sensory perceptions or intellectual combinations? — This question can only be resolved through serious inner soul work, and this soul work consists in the human being taking what memory is initially directed toward—the power of imagination itself—and, I might say, subjecting it to an inner education.

[ 23 ] How do concepts arise, and how does the process of conceptualization take place in everyday life? Well, external things make an impression on us. First, we have sensory perceptions. Then, based on these sensory perceptions, we form our concepts, which we then carry in our memory. And we know, of course, that when we want to recall in our imagination—as we remember it—something that stood before us years ago and in which we were involved, we need a certain amount of effort to do so. But we also know that, precisely in order to faithfully represent the external world in their ideas—and to avoid introducing anything fantastical into the images of this external world—people passively surrender themselves to the external world. And this passive surrender—which is, moreover, supported by all manner of experimental methods—is, of course, the right approach for the natural sciences. But one can do something else with the life of the imagination. One can try, through inner activity and inner effort, to take in images—whatever their content may be; they must simply have a content that is easily grasped and cannot have a suggestive effect. Content that is difficult to grasp—content that we draw up from the depths of the soul—can easily have a suggestive effect. One can now try to process such simple imaginative content through inner activity, so that one surrenders to this content again and again with one’s entire soul life.

[ 24 ] I have described the technique—if I may say so—of such devotion to an active life of imagination in more detail in my books *How to Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds* and *The Secret Science*; here I wish to outline the fundamental principles. If one devotes oneself to this content again and again—quite regardless of whether the images one processes inwardly, on which one rests inwardly, which one connects inwardly, and in which one allows one’s entire soul life to be absorbed, have this or that external meaning—if one devotes oneself to this content in this way, then one gradually notices that in this inner work, in thinking and imagining, a remarkable vitality develops—a vitality that one must first come to know in order to be able to form a judgment about it. Once one comes to know it, one also begins to think in the following manner. One says to oneself: Just as a muscle that is constantly exercised grows stronger, so too does the power of thought in our inner life grow stronger when, in this way—not by passively surrendering to the impressions of the external world, but by working inwardly—when, in this way, through the power of imagination, one brings one’s inner life, in a fully alive manner, into a certain state again and again. In this way, one finally reaches the point where thinking—which otherwise appears merely as a shadow even in the images of memory, which is exhausted in mere visual images—fills one inwardly, yet spiritually and soulfully, just as one feels filled with life through one’s breathing and blood circulation. Life force, if I may say so, flows into thinking that has become active.

[ 25 ] Yes, true anthroposophy as spiritual knowledge is something that is based on the soul’s innermost, most intimate methods—not on any kind of spiritual quotations, but on the soul itself turning its powers of cognition inside out in order to transform them into something else. And when a person strengthens their thinking more and more in this way, they will eventually—even if it takes years—arrive at a very special inner experience, an experience that can be described as follows: When one recalls only external objects or external actions, one delves down to a certain depth of the soul life, and from this depth one must then draw up the memories. But when one works actively on one’s thinking in the way I have described, one finally reaches a point where, through this life of thought, one knows with certainty that one is delving deeper than the power of memory can reach.

[ 26 ] This is an important experience once one has come to regard memories, so to speak, as a kind of level to which one descends in ordinary consciousness, and from which one draws up the images of memory, and when one then senses how much deeper down lies another level in the life of the soul, to which one has now descended, and from which, through strengthened thinking, one can now draw up images that are not the same as those to which one first gave oneself over, but are now entirely different. And while one can use memory to imagine what is no longer there but once was in one’s life, one now experiences how, by drawing up from this deeper level, one arrives at images of something one would otherwise never have in life.

[ 27 ] One has now entered the spiritual world through this gateway of knowledge. And the first experience that arises there is this: one gains a true, tableau-like retrospective view of one’s entire earthly life up to that point. One might say: As if in a single moment—that is putting it rather radically, but it is almost like that—with time literally transformed into space, one’s earthly life up to that point lies spread out before one’s consciousness in powerful images. But these images are nevertheless different from what one might experience, for example, if one were to sit down and recall everything one could from one’s earthly life, and were now, so to speak, to gain a continuous sequence of impressions from that earthly life extending back nearly to one’s birth.

[ 28 ] The mental picture one obtains in the manner described differs quite significantly from the latter. The images formed passively in ordinary memory generally reflect more the way in which the external world has approached one. In memory, one relives, for example, how a person encountered one, how a person affected one, how a person showed one friendship; or one relives how a natural phenomenon affected one, what impression this natural phenomenon made on one, what suffering and joy one experienced from this natural phenomenon or from the influence of the person, and so on.

[ 29 ] What one finds in the tableau, as I have described it—which is attained through focused, intensified thinking—is this: One observes how, through one’s own temperamental traits, through one’s character, and through what has been experienced within oneself as longing and love, one has drawn closer to another person. While mere memory provides what is conveyed to you from the outside, this tableau of memories gives you more of what you yourself have contributed to the experience—what has come from within you. And whereas in ordinary memory—for example, regarding a natural event—one has the suffering or joy that this event brought, that is, how the external world affected one, in the tableau of memory one has more, let’s say, the longing to return to a particular part of the earth where one had that experience. What one has contributed oneself—that is what one experiences in this tableau of memories. In short, I would say that this overall impression one has of one’s life is detached from the external world, and it contains everything that constituted one’s own active participation in life. One truly sees oneself as a second person. By having this tableau of memories, one has little sense of one’s physical, spatial body; but one feels oneself to be present within everything one has brought to experience, and at the same time one feels how everything one has brought to experience there is, in a sense, an ethereally flowing world. And at the same time, one learns to recognize, through this ethereal, flowing world—which contains one’s own life in powerful images, as in a flowing river—how this ethereal, flowing world of one’s own existence is connected to the general ethereal world. When one faces the external world as a physical human being with one’s physical senses, one feels oneself enclosed within one’s skin. One perceives other things as external objects. One feels a sharp contrast between subject and object, to put it philosophically. This is not the case when one enters into a heightened state of thinking, into the fluctuating world—I might say—of the “second human,” the “human of time,” as opposed to the physical, corporeal “human of space.”

[ 30 ] One can truly speak of a “body of time,” for one suddenly perceives one’s entire earthly life lived up to that point, and one feels this earthly life moving within a universal world that is akin to it. It makes sense to say: Alongside the hard, dense physical world there is a finer world in which one has lived one’s life in a flowing manner—an ethereal world. Only now does one begin to recognize what an ethereal world is, and what one oneself is as a second human being, as a second human entity, in this ethereal world. But with this, one has only taken the first step into the supersensible-spiritual realm. One knows, as it were, through direct perception—simply because one feels oneself to be a spiritual-soul being within a spiritual-soul world—that the entire world is permeated and interwoven by a spiritual-soul being that one holds within oneself. But for the time being, one knows no more than that. And above all, one does not yet know of any spiritual-soul world other than the one that connects one, as an earthly human being, to the surrounding world—which is, in fact, the etheric world.

[ 31 ] But we can now go further. Once one has attained this ability to experience oneself in the etheric realm—to experience the etheric world together with oneself—one can then ascend to another form of training the soul’s powers. This consists in bringing about, so to speak, the opposite process of what was first described in the soul. At first, one tried to make thinking quite active and quite alive within oneself, so that instead of passive thinking, one has within oneself an inwardly vibrant flow of forces, waves, and weaving. Now one must try to suppress, with the same inner arbitrariness and willpower, that which one has introduced into the soul as thoughts—as thoughts floating freely within the soul.

[ 32 ] Everything I describe to you must be carried out in the spiritual exercises I am aiming for in the same way that a mathematician solves his problems. So that the person carries out all of this with complete composure, ensuring that there is nothing in it of any kind of false mysticism, daydreaming, or even suggestion or the like. With the same—I would say—sober detachment—for warmth and enthusiasm arise from what one then sees, not from the method itself—with the same sober detachment with which one solves geometric problems, one must carry out these exercises within the soul. But one thing nevertheless becomes apparent. When one comes to possess this strengthened thinking in relation to the mental images that then arise—namely, the images of one’s life up to that point, which can completely fill one if one chooses to rest upon them—it becomes difficult to detach oneself from them. But one must develop the strong inner power to suppress these mental images just as one can evoke them through one’s own activity. In other words, one must acquire the ability to erase all imagination, all thought from one’s consciousness after having stirred it up to the highest degree of activity. Erasing ordinary images is already very difficult; but it is relatively easy compared to erasing those images that one has first brought into one’s consciousness through heightened activity.

[ 33 ] Therefore, this “erasing” also means something entirely different. And if one succeeds—again through long practice, though one can perform these exercises simultaneously with the others, so that both abilities occur at the same time—if one succeeds, through long practice, in bringing equally powerful active thought processes into consciousness as those that erase them, then something comes over the soul that I would now like to call — one must, after all, have terms for these things — the inner silence of the human soul.

[ 34 ] This inner silence is something completely unknown to the consciousness of ordinary life. The first thing the spiritual researcher who wishes to follow the anthroposophical path needs is a heightened life of imagination and thought, through which he attains self-knowledge in the manner described. The other requirement is that they must cultivate a completely empty consciousness, through which everything else in the soul—thinking, feeling, and willing—is brought to silence; but this silence is achieved only after these soul activities have first been heightened to the highest degree. Then this silence of the soul is something quite special. And I can describe this silence of the soul—which, in a sense, represents the second stage of spiritual knowledge—in roughly the following way.

[ 35 ] Let’s imagine we’re in a big city where there’s a terrible commotion. We are completely overwhelmed by the commotion. We leave this city behind and walk away. After walking for a while, we can still hear the sounds behind us—the whistling and roaring—but it has already grown somewhat quieter. And the farther we go, the quieter it becomes. When we finally reach the silence of the forest, it may be that there is peace all around us. We have gone through the entire journey from raging noises to outward stillness. But now I can go further. Although this will not actually happen in external reality, the concept becomes fully real when one arrives at what I have just described as the silence of the soul.

[ 36 ] Let me use a very trivial comparison: You can have a certain amount of wealth and keep spending more and more of it. Then you have less and less, and eventually nothing at all. Then you have “zero” wealth. But you can go even further—you can go into debt. Then you have less than nothing. We know this from mathematics. You have less than nothing. The same can happen with stillness, with silence. In a sense, complete silence—equal to zero—can be created out of the noise of the world. But it can go even further down, becoming quieter than the silence that is equal to zero, becoming quieter and quieter—negative silence, negative stillness, more than stillness. And so it is that when one extinguishes this intensified inner life, the soul becomes more silent than mere—if I may put it this way—“zero silence.” A tranquility is established in the inner life that points toward the opposite pole, a silence that is more than mere silence, as when we are calm in ordinary consciousness.

[ 37 ] And when we have reached this silence, when the soul feels that it is, as it were, removed from the world—not only because the world around the soul is silent, but because the soul feels that the world can only be as still as nothing; but you yourself, O soul, are in a silence deeper than the silence of the world—then, when this occurs, when this negative silence sets in, then the spiritual world begins to speak from the other side of existence, to speak truly. Otherwise, as a human being, one oneself disrupts the world’s stillness with words formed outwardly in the air. By establishing within oneself this stillness, which is deeper than the stillness of zero, this silence, which is deeper than mere silence, the spiritual world begins to speak—but in a language one must first grow accustomed to, a language that is not at all similar to spoken language, a language that takes shape for you in such a way that you gradually become accustomed to it by drawing upon what you know well from the sensory world—colors, sounds, in short, everything you know from the sensory world. You need this in order to describe, based on the experiences you have had with these sensory perceptions, the particular impressions of the spiritual world.

[ 38 ] I would like to draw attention to a few details. Let us suppose that, in this inner silence of the soul, we have experienced something that makes an impression on us: from the depths of the spirit, there is something that, in a sense, attacks us aggressively, something that affects us in a certain stirring way. First of all, this is a spiritual experience; one knows that the spiritual is revealing itself. One then compares what one has experienced in this way with an experience one has had in the sensory world, and one comes to realize: The experience one has in the sensory world is roughly the same as the one one has when exposed to the effect of the color yellow. Just as one coins a word to express something in the sensory world, so one now uses the color yellow to express this spiritual experience, or in another case, one uses a tone to express this spiritual experience. Just as one uses language to express oneself regarding the sensory world, so one speaks of one’s sensory qualities and impressions in relation to what one receives from the spiritual world in a spiritual way within the silence of the soul.

[ 39 ] And this is how one describes the spiritual world. This is how I have described it in my book *Theosophy* and in my book *Esoteric Science*, and one need only understand this description correctly. One must understand that, in contrast to the silence of the soul, a new language arises. While we have external, articulated language to express ourselves outwardly as human beings, something resounds to us from the spiritual world that must, in a sense, be rendered in vivid words—but which can then only be perceived with the appropriate subtlety and translated into human language if one wishes to express it in words derived from sensory perception.

[ 40 ] And when one experiences the experiences of the silent soul in this way, does one come to realize: What you had at first—that world of intensified thought—is, after all, merely an image: an image of what you are only now beholding, for which you now have a language, an image through which you have penetrated into the silence of the soul. Now the spiritual world speaks to you through the silence of the soul. And now one is also able to erase this entire tableau of life that one has formed—the one that earthly life conjures up before us in an ethereal way—so that, in contrast to one’s own life as we lead it on earth, the inner stillness of the soul now also emerges. The illusion of that “I” which can live only with the physical body now comes to an end.

[ 41 ] Those who cling too strongly to their “I” through theoretical or practical egoism will not be able to achieve this silence of the soul in the face of their own life’s tableau. If one combats theoretical and practical egoism, one realizes that one has this “I” in the first place precisely because one can make use of one’s body in physical life—that the body gives us the possibility of saying “I” to ourselves. When one then moves from this physical sense of “I” into what I have described as the ethereal world—where one merges with the world, where the world is ethereally one with one’s own ethereal nature—one is already able to let go of clinging to this “I,” and one then experiences that which this tableau of life, toward which one has aspired, is a reflection of. One experiences one’s pre-earthly existence. One experiences this pre-earthly existence, in which one was in a spiritual world before descending into a physical human body through conception and birth. Anthroposophy does not speak of immortality or the eternity of the human soul based on philosophical speculation; rather, it speaks of how one first strives—through a specific development of the soul’s powers—to gain insight into the soul’s nature before it descended to Earth.

[ 42 ] Now, in fact, the soul that exists eternally in the spiritual world appears to the silent soul in immediate vision. Just as one looks back in memory at what one has experienced on Earth, just as the past of one’s earthly life awakens in the imagination, so now—after one has become acquainted with the language of the spirit world in the silent soul, as I have described—those events that are not at all present in earthly life, through which the human being prepared for this earthly life before descending into it, now awaken.

[ 43 ] And now one looks back upon what one was before descending into earthly life. As long as one was still observing the tableau of life, one knew: I myself, and the world, are interwoven with and permeated by spirit; but it is, so to speak, a kind of nature spirit—albeit a fine, ethereal one—that one finds in the world and experiences as oneself. Now, however, by looking into one’s pre-earthly existence and connecting with what the father and mother impart at birth, by seeing this, one perceives the unity between the moral world order and the physical world order. In this pre-earthly existence lie all the forces that then take shape in afterimages during physical life on earth. There one sees how, even in physical life on earth, the spiritual forces govern and weave their way through the human body. One marvels at the structure of the human brain as it gradually takes shape. One directs one’s attention to how undifferentiated this brain was when the child was born, and how it has developed by the seventh year of life, around the time of tooth replacement. One turns one’s gaze toward the inner, formative forces. One does not stop at the vague term “heredity.”

[ 44 ] We know that what the child develops on its own in the first years of life in terms of the plastic formation of its brain and its entire organism is the aftereffect, the afterimage of what was experienced as extensive, universal events in the spiritual world, where one was just as much in the midst of spiritual beings as one is in the midst of the beings of the natural kingdoms and of humanity on Earth. And we are now learning to recognize how the spiritual world influences the physical world on Earth, how the aftereffects of this pre-earthly existence are contained in everything that works to organize us from within. In this way, we come to know ourselves soul- and spirit-wise within our physical bodies.

[ 45 ] And as we proceed, a third element must be added to what I have already described. I have already pointed out that one must first overcome the illusion of the “I,” that one must overcome what is ordinary, everyday, theoretical, or practical egoism, and that one must realize that this “I” of earthly life is bound to the physical body, and that the “I” initially comes to life in the sensation of the physical body. But there is already something present in physical earthly life that, if I were to name it, might perhaps cause a slight epistemological shudder in one person or another, because it is usually not counted among the powers of cognition at all—perhaps because people find it horrifying to count it among the powers of cognition. But it must nevertheless happen. And that it must happen is something that anyone who, in the way I have described, has first come to the thinking powers and then to the silence of the soul can see. A third element must be added: a higher, more intense development of what is already present in ordinary life—love for people, love for nature, love for all our works, love for our deeds; all that which is already present in ordinary life can be kindled precisely by eliminating theoretical and practical egoism in the manner described. Love must intensify. And as this love intensifies—as the power of love, the merging with the other, joins the strengthened thinking and the silence of the soul—one arrives at a third stage. One now arrives at the discerning perception of the true form of the human “I,” not only by coming to know pre-earthly existence, but also by learning to recognize that a strengthened power of love further energizes the other developed, strengthened powers of cognition. One comes to experience this precisely: Everything you have attained has nothing more to do with the physical body; you experience yourself outside the physical body; you experience the world in a way you cannot through the physical body. Instead of natural phenomena, you experience spiritual beings. You do not experience yourself as a natural being between birth and death; you experience yourself as a spiritual being in pre-earthly existence.

[ 46 ] Once this has been attained, and if this is accompanied by an elevated, intensified capacity for love—the ability to sacrifice oneself for what one beholds there, to devote oneself with one’s entire body-liberated being—then the realization of what one has in the immediate presence sets in, independent of the physical and even the etheric human body. One gains a direct perception of that which dwells within one, and of that which passes through the gate of death into the afterlife, where we once again enter a spiritual world. By coming to know what one is in a bodyless state, one also comes to know that which continues to exist in a bodyless form once the physical body has been laid aside at death.

[ 47 ] You see, it all boils down to gaining insight into the eternal nature of the human soul. But through this one arrives at a perception of the true “I”—that “I” which passes through birth and death, which does not so much “dwell” in the body as “rest” within it. At the same time, one learns to recognize this “I” as it moves and acts in the spiritual world during pre-earthly existence. One learns to recognize it in the same way that one comes to know a human being here in sensory-physical existence through sensory perception. Just as a human being moves about among natural objects, among natural phenomena, and among other human beings, so one learns to recognize how the soul, in its pre-earthly existence in the spiritual world—I would say—moves about. But one also learns to recognize how its movements and behavior there depend on a previous earthly life. I said that one learns to recognize the unity of the moral and the natural; one learns to recognize how, in pre-earthly existence, a human being is permeated not only by the spiritual but also by moral impulses. Whereas, when one has the etheric tableau of life before one, one merely comes to realize that the entire world is permeated by spirit, one now learns to recognize that our soul-spiritual being in pre-earthly existence was pulsed through by the moral impulses that then arise in memory—and indeed in the moral disposition—during physical life. One comes to know the unity of the moral and the physical world.

[ 48 ] But one also learns to recognize how, in this moral-physical world—which the soul has already lived through in the spiritual realm, where the physical world exists only in the images that shine up into the spirit from physical existence—the soul, the true “I” of the human being, lives in the spiritual world in accordance with its previous existence. Yes, when one transcends the illusion of the ordinary earthly “I,” when one attains spiritual insight, one comes to recognize the “I” as it has already passed through the spiritual world between death and a new birth, how it has behaved within this world endowed with moral impulses in accordance with its previous earthly life, and how, as an inner destiny, it brings into this earthly life everything that we then see playing out in a person’s inclinations, as well as in the particular character of that longing through which a person is driven toward this or that in earthly life.

[ 49 ] This does not impair freedom. Freedom exists within certain limits, just as we are free, once we have built a house, to move into it or not to move into it; but we will move into it because we built it for ourselves for a certain reason. Likewise, we remain free even when we know that we have certain impulses within our physical body to turn this way or that in life, or to settle down in one way or another. On the one hand, we can regard this as a destiny we have woven for ourselves out of previous earthly lives, out of the world that contains not only spiritual laws but also moral laws—laws through which we have passed and which have imbued what we were in a previous earthly life with certain spiritual impulses, thereby shaping our destiny for this earthly life. But just as surely, when we view what stems from our previous earthly life in the manner described above, we realize that it is the eternal aspect of the soul that has determined our destiny during our earthly life. We carry this out into the world after we have passed through the gate of death, having united what is spiritual and moral with our own soul, in order to bring it further into harmony—in accordance with our conduct—with the demands of the moral world; and then, I would say, with the resulting outcome of what we were in life and what the spiritual world makes of us between death and a new birth, to descend into a new earthly life.

[ 50 ] So it is really a matter of first developing a certain capacity for insight that allows one to look up into the spiritual world. Consider this: not everyone is a mathematician by nature. In fact, most people find it very difficult to form these—let’s say—geometric concepts, which can really only be created in the imagination. Geometry is not directly present in nature, but we understand nature through geometry. But we must first create geometry within ourselves, and through geometry we create forms that introduce us to the form of the dead. With precisely this same inner rigor, we create inner vision by cultivating intensified thinking, the silence of the soul, and love transformed into the power of knowledge. Only then do we grasp the living, the sentient, the self-conscious. Just as we grasp the inanimate through mathematics, so too—by proceeding entirely in a mathematical manner and rigorously and precisely cultivating a kind of perception—do we comprehensively grasp the living, the sentient, the self-conscious.

[ 51 ] So one may say: Anyone who seriously practices anthroposophy does so as if compelled to give an account to the most rigorous mathematician of what he does with his powers of cognition. The development of mathematical concepts is, if I may put it that way, elementary anthroposophy. And once one has learned to cultivate this self-creative aspect of mathematics for the inanimate world, one is already motivated to continue developing the forms of knowledge that then lead to the perception of what I have described to you. One comes to know the world in a different way: the inanimate world, when one comes to know it mathematically—mathematics is elementary anthroposophy—and the living, sentient, self-conscious world, when one can follow it with anthroposophical understanding.

[ 52 ] Therefore, what occurs in anthroposophy for the purpose of perceiving the spiritual world must not be confused with what is commonly referred to in everyday life as clairvoyance or the like. If one calls what occurs in anthroposophy for the purpose of perceiving the spiritual world “clairvoyance”—and one may well use that term—then one must speak of “exact clairvoyance,” just as one speaks of “exactness” in mathematics, in contrast to the confused, mystical form of clairvoyance that one usually has in mind when speaking of “clairvoyance.”

[ 53 ] Well, you may have gotten the impression from my description that you’ll say to yourself: Yes, that’s difficult. — Yes, it’s difficult; it’s not easy! That is why so many people who want to form an opinion about what is happening in Dornach refrain from getting to know this difficult subject and instead judge it the same way they judge trivial, confused clairvoyance and the like. And then everything I mentioned at the beginning of my lecture comes to pass. But the kind of anthroposophy we are talking about here is an exact form of knowledge, one that anyone can understand just as easily with their common sense as one can understand a painting without needing to be a painter themselves. To grasp anthroposophy, one must be an anthroposophical researcher; to paint a picture, one must be a painter; but everything I have described can be understood with common sense, provided one does not place obstacles and hindrances in one’s own path.

[ 54 ] To paint a picture, one must be a painter. To judge it, one must let one’s sound human nature take the lead. To develop anthroposophy, one must be a researcher of the spirit. To understand anthroposophy, one need only hold up one’s healthy, free human mind—unclouded by scientific or similar prejudices—to whatever emerges as a description, however well or poorly it may be expressed. But anthroposophy is, after all, still in its infancy, and what I may not have described well today will, in time, be described better and better. And then the time will come—as it has, after all, for everything new that has emerged in human history. How long did it take for people to accept the Copernican worldview! It no less revolutionized all the concepts people had held up to that point. Today it is taken for granted and is taught in schools. What today seems to people to be the epitome of fantasy, nonsense, and perhaps even madness—just as it was with the Copernican worldview—will eventually become a matter of course. Anthroposophy can wait until it becomes a matter of course.

[ 55 ] This anthroposophy was initially to be cultivated at the Goetheanum in Dornach. Therefore—and let me mention this in conclusion—more than ten years ago, friends of our cause conceived a plan and entrusted me with its execution—I was merely the executor—to build a home for this anthroposophy. That home became the Goetheanum. If anthroposophy were a theoretical worldview or even merely a reformist idea, what would have happened the moment the idea arose to build a home for anthroposophy? One would have gone to an architect who would have built a house in an antique, Renaissance, Gothic, Rococo, or similar style. But anthroposophy is not something that operates merely theoretically or merely as scientific knowledge; anthroposophy permeates the whole human being and engages the whole human being. The anthroposophical researcher realizes this very soon.

[ 56 ] You see, one needs one’s head if one wants to reflect on the external natural world, or if one wants to engage in philosophical speculation—all the more so. What one perceives in the way I have described to you regarding the spiritual world in relation to the silent soul is something that presents itself in a more fleeting manner. You need presence of mind to grasp it quickly. But you also need your whole being for this. The mind alone is not enough. The entire human organism must place itself at the service of the spirit in order to bring into memory and recollection what one perceives spiritually without the body. To illustrate this, let me cite a personal experience, something personal.

[ 57 ] For example, I never have the habit of preparing a lecture in the way that lectures are usually prepared; rather, I have the habit of mentally experiencing the thoughts that prove necessary for a lecture—just as one must mentally experience what one wishes to attain as the results of spiritual research. But mere thinking—into which, after all, one must carry over what one has experienced in deepened thinking and in the human soul—mere intellectual thinking is not sufficient for this. One must become more intimately connected with the whole human being if one then wishes to express what one has experienced in the realm of the spirit. There are various points of reference for truly bringing this into ordinary consciousness so that one can speak of it. I have made it a habit to always write down and formulate—with a pen in hand—everything that comes to me from the spiritual world, either in words or in drawings of some kind. As a result, I have enough notebooks to fill many wagonloads. But I haven’t looked at them again. They are there; they were only there to connect what is explored in the spirit with the whole person, so that it is, so to speak, not merely grasped by the mind to be communicated in words, but is experienced by the whole person.

[ 58 ] Anthroposophy encompasses the whole human being. In this way, it becomes an expression of Goethe’s worldview in yet another respect. It is, first of all, an expression of Goethe’s worldview in that it was inspired by the way Goethe viewed plant life and animal life in their metamorphoses, in their transformations. In this Goethean perspective, the idea becomes so vivid that one then seeks to amplify it in the way I have described. But Goethe was also the figure who built the bridge from knowledge to art. Out of his artistic conviction, Goethe uttered the beautiful words: “Art is a revelation of secret laws of nature that would never be revealed without this art.” — That is to say, Goethe knew that in true knowledge one grasps spiritual forces at work, which one then imbues into the material—whether as a sculptor, a musician, or a painter. Goethe knew how the imagination is a kind of arbitrary projection of what a human being can experience in its pure form through the spirit.

[ 59 ] Such insight, which is so deeply rooted in the life of the spirit—as is anthroposophy—naturally flows into artistic creation as well. It influences artistic creation when one perceives the human being in the way I have described—seeing how pre-earthly forces play a role in his earthly, physical existence. Then one has the feeling: You cannot grasp the human being with mere concepts, with mere intellect alone. At a certain point, you must allow your abstract concepts to give way to artistic contemplation, so that you feel: Human beings are created by nature as works of art.

[ 60 ] Of course, it’s easy to scoff at this, for nothing is more abhorrent to people today than to be told that something must be approached artistically in order to be understood. But no matter how long one may declaim that a person should be logical rather than artistic in order to understand—if nature operates artistically, then logic simply cannot grasp it. One must therefore turn to the artistic perspective in order to discern the true mysteries of nature. This is what Goethe meant when he said: Art is a manifestation of secret laws of nature that would never be revealed without it.—That is also what Goethe meant when, after a long yearning, he reached Italy and believed he had attained his ideal of art, saying: “When I look at these works of art, I am struck by the thought that the Greeks, in creating their works of art, followed the same laws by which nature creates, and which I am now tracing.” —Goethe is a figure who always seeks to transform what is merely a state of the soul’s perception into a work of art. Because anthroposophy shares this mindset, one could not simply go to an architect and say, “Build us a shell for anthroposophy”—and then have him build it in the Renaissance, classical, or Rococo style, and so on—but rather, it had to be based on an entirely different worldview, outlook on life, and conception of art.

[ 61 ] I have often compared what must lie at the root of this, in a somewhat banal way, to the relationship between the nut shell and the nut kernel. The nut kernel, which we eat, is formed according to certain laws of form, but the nut shell is also formed according to the same laws of form. You cannot imagine that a shell could be adapted to the nut from the outside. The shell arises from the same laws of formation as the kernel. Thus, the outer, visible structure—in its forms, in what was painted on the domes, and in whatever else was sculpturally incorporated—had to be formed according to the same laws, as it were, like the shell of that which was proclaimed within through the Word, through spoken or sung art. Just as the nut shell relates to the nut, so this structure had to relate to what was cultivated within it. This has indeed turned out to be the case, not only according to my own conviction, but also according to the conviction of many others. We have presented eurythmy performances—performances rooted in an art form that possesses a unique language of movement, where the stage design consists of moving individuals or groups of people, and where the movements are neither dance nor mime, but a truly visible language; we have developed an expressive art of movement on the stage of the Goetheanum. The lines through which the human soul expressed itself in the art of eurythmy harmonized beautifully with the lines on the architraves, the lines on the capitals of the columns, with the entire form of the building, and with the building’s paintings. What was cultivated within and the outer shell were one and the same. When a speech was delivered from the podium—when what had been perceived in spiritual contemplation was cast into words and resounded into the auditorium—what was spoken from the podium was the core: that which lived within. The artistic form had to correspond to this core. The architectural style, in all its details, had to spring from the same impulse, from the same sources as anthroposophy itself. For anthroposophy is not an abstract theoretical insight, but a grasping of life, of full life. It therefore becomes art of its own accord. It fulfills what Goethe also said: “Whoever possesses science and art also possesses religion; whoever does not possess those two, let him have religion.”

[ 62 ] I would like to say: As something that encapsulates everything that ever took shape and everything that could ever have been said or artistically represented at the Goetheanum, a nine-meter-high sculpture should serve as

[ 63 ] A wooden sculpture in which the representative of humanity was depicted as Christ during the temptation by Ahriman and Lucifer. Not that anthroposophy has anything to do with the formation of any kind of sect. Anthroposophy is far from opposing any religious belief or, indeed, seeking to establish a new religion. But anthroposophy has the potential to show how, after the high point of religious development—toward the representative of humanity, Christ; toward the Christ-God embodied in the body of Jesus of Nazareth—how true spiritual knowledge also tends toward this, how one needs the image of this center of all earthly development, the image of the Mystery of Golgotha, is needed in spiritual knowledge. Anthroposophy certainly inspires a religious disposition in people, but it is not a new religion.

[ 64 ] What anthroposophy sought to achieve artistically at the Goetheanum was to arise from the very same impulses from which the spoken word and song also arise. And one might even say this: When one stepped onto the podium—and I say this in all modesty—the forms of the columns, the entire design of the interior architecture, the interior sculpture, and the interior painting—all of this served as a reminder to keep one’s words true to a meaning that truly touched upon the essence of the human being. It was like a constant invitation to the speaker to place his words within this building in a dignified manner.

[ 65 ] The building was thus intended to be an outer shell for anthroposophy—one that arose entirely from the spirit of anthroposophy but was designed for sensory perception. There was nothing symbolic or allegorical about it. The entire building was designed—in its architecture, its sculpture, its painting, and in every aspect of it—so that what was vividly grasped in spiritual vision could find full expression; not by introducing symbolic forms through intellectual reasoning, but rather by allowing the living ideas and the dynamic inner thoughts about the spiritual world to find their full expression in immediate artistic feeling and direct perception. There was not a single symbol in the entire building, and when people say that the building had something symbolic about it, they are speaking just as those who talk about anthroposophy without knowing it.

[ 66 ] And so architecture was to the eye what anthroposophy is meant to be to the human soul. Anthroposophy is meant to be the very spirit that recognizes how the longing to explore the supersensible-spiritual realm shakes and pierces present-day humanity, and how present-day humanity, through its scientific education—which seeks to become widely popular and has already become so to a certain degree— can no longer remain content with traditional beliefs; how concepts of knowledge must emerge that also aspire toward the supersensible world; and how restlessness and dissatisfaction of the soul arise from the absence of such concepts of knowledge.

[ 67 ] Anthroposophy seeks to serve the present in order to properly serve what people need, from this present moment into the near future. Just as anthroposophy seeks to be invisible to human souls—as a shell, as a home—so the Goetheanum sought to be visible to the eye. Had the Goetheanum been merely a symbolic structure, the pain of its loss would not be so great, for one could always recall its image in memory. But the Goetheanum was not meant merely for memory. The Goetheanum was something that, like every work of art, sought to present itself directly to the eye, directly to the sensory world—something that sought to proclaim the spirit to the sensory world. Therefore, with the burning of the Goetheanum, everything that the Goetheanum sought to be has been lost. But perhaps it has shown that anthroposophy does not wish to be a one-sided theory, nor a mere form of knowledge, but can and should be a way of life in every respect. That is why it had to build its home in a style of its own.

[ 68 ] The Goetheanum sought to place before the eye the spirit that anthroposophy places before the soul. And anthroposophy is meant to present to the human soul what that soul actually demands—out of the innermost need of the modern age—in terms of a vision, an insight, and an artistic grasp of the spiritual world; what souls demand because they feel more and more that only by experiencing their full human destiny can they truly feel their full human dignity.

[ 69 ] The Goetheanum—it could have burned down. A catastrophic act of fate swept it away. The pain of those who loved it is too great to describe. That which, flowing from the same sources as anthroposophy and seeking through it to serve humanity, had to be created for the physical eye—that had to be formed from physical matter. And just as the human body itself—according to my description today—is the physical image and physical manifestation of the eternal spiritual, but then falls away with death, so that the spiritual develops in other forms, so too—let me now conclude this reflection by comparing, so to speak, the Dornach disaster with what otherwise takes place in the course of world history— so that which had to be shaped from matter in order to be presented to the eye could be consumed by the physical flames. But what anthroposophy is meant to be is built from the spirit; only flames of the spirit can touch it. Just as the human spirit-soul triumphs over the physical body when it is destroyed in death, so anthroposophy feels alive, even though it has lost its home in Dornach, the Goetheanum. And it may be said: Physical flames were able to destroy what had to be built up for the eye out of external physical matter; but what is meant to exist as anthroposophy for the further development of humanity is built from the spirit; it is not consumed or killed by the flames of spiritual life. The flames of spiritual life are not consuming flames; they are strengthening flames; they are flames that give life all the more. And the life that is to be revealed through anthroposophy as the life of knowledge of the higher world must be tempered by the flames of the highest human, soul, and spiritual enthusiasm. Then anthroposophy will continue to transform itself.

[ 70 ] Those who live in this spiritual way certainly feel no less pain at the passing of the earthly, but they also know that the true transcendence lies in the realization that it is precisely through spiritual knowledge that one arrives at the conviction: The spirit will always triumph over matter and will continually transform itself into matter anew.