The Rudolf Steiner Archive

7. The Eternity of the Soul in the Light of Anthroposophy

[ 1 ] Speaking from the perspective of anthroposophy still means, quite understandably, facing significant opposition today, for anthroposophy seeks to speak about the things of life and reality in a way that seems quite peculiar to many people in our time. And especially when a topic such as the one chosen for this evening—the immortality of the soul—is discussed, very strong objections immediately arise, particularly from the more scientifically educated circles of our time, who maintain that, from the standpoint of knowledge, one cannot speak of such things at all, because these matters must be left to matters of faith, to the revelations of human feeling—which, after all, are not based on direct knowledge—and because, when it comes to them, insurmountable barriers to human understanding are simply set before us.

[ 2 ] Anthroposophy, however, claims to be able to speak about precisely such aspects of life in exactly the same way that, today, one speaks from the perspective of the natural sciences using rigorous methods and a discipline that is conscious of its responsibility. The point is, however, that anthroposophy must draw upon powers of cognition that, while certainly present in ordinary life and in ordinary science, are present only as the starting points for their development, not for the subsequent steps. And these further steps must be taken in order to penetrate the spiritual realms of life precisely from the standpoint of genuine knowledge, not from that of nebulous mysticism. The starting point here must be what I would like to call a union of intellectual modesty on the one hand and unconditional trust in the perfection of human powers of cognition on the other. By seeking to bring about a union of these two spiritual impulses, anthroposophy is able to explore the so-called supersensible realm with the same certainty as we today, with the aid of the senses and the natural sciences, have so successfully and confidently penetrated the realm of the sensory world, of physical existence.

[ 3 ] What, then, should we call intellectual humility in this context? We know, after all, that we have started from the childlike state of mind in our inner life. We can quite well compare this childlike state of mind to dreaming, indeed, in a certain sense, to sleep. And just as we awaken every morning from ordinary sleep, so have we awakened from our childlike state of mind to that which is our capacity for knowledge in science and for the purposes of practical life. If one now adopts a stance of intellectual humility, one says to oneself: The powers you possessed back then as a small child, you have perfected through education and through the influence of life and your surroundings, and you have developed to the point of view from which you now gain your insights and your impulses for human life. One does not say this with full conviction without intellectual humility. Rather, one says: From the perspective I have once attained, I must—if I apply only the correct methods in use today—be able to say “yes” or “no” to all manner of things. I must also be able to decide what is knowable and what belongs in the realm of mere belief. — Anthroposophy counters this by asserting that it may indeed be possible to go beyond what one has attained in terms of soul powers as an adult, just as one can go beyond the cognitive abilities of a small child’s dreamlike state of mind. Of course, it all depends on whether such a transcendence is truly achieved, and it is this transcendence that I would like to discuss with you this evening in relation to the realm of the immortality of the soul.

[ 4 ] On the other hand, however, anthroposophy has complete and profound confidence precisely in the fact that the powers of knowledge acquired by human beings can be perfected more and more. As a result, it ventures down such a path of perfection, and it begins by saying something like the following: We have, after all, attained a certain concept of knowledge today through the magnificent achievements of the natural sciences. But is this concept of knowledge truly drawn from the very depths of life? It is certainly valid for everything that falls within its sphere. But has it been drawn from the very depths of life, insofar as it considers precisely those questions of human existence that are connected, first, with the deepest longings of human life; second, with all that which human beings call the awareness of their human dignity; and third, with all that from which they derive what constitutes the true meaning of life: the moral impulses?

[ 5 ] All of this nevertheless leads us to draw upon certain borderline areas and borderline phenomena of life when it comes to gaining insight into precisely these most intimate needs and questions, particularly those concerning the existence of the soul.

[ 6 ] Not with the intention of making any claims about its validity for knowledge from the outset, but rather to gain a point of comparison, let me point out something that presents itself as a dark realm and yet as a realm that poses many puzzles. It is the realm that human beings know well—the realm of dreaming, as experienced during sleep. I would like to emphasize explicitly: My reference to dreams and sleep is not intended to establish anything for the sake of knowledge, but merely to provide a starting point for our discussion today. Let us imagine the soul confronting these manifold and colorful worlds of imagery that dreams conjure up for us. We can be certain that they arise from the same depths of human life from which our “daytime perceptions” otherwise emerge. Yet even while awake, we are fully aware that this extraordinarily interesting “dream world” is, at most, a relative reality that we can only understand when viewed from the perspective of waking life. After all, one can at least hypothetically imagine that a person dreams throughout their entire life, having never experienced anything in their consciousness other than the colorful, manifold images of dreams. Couldn’t life still unfold in the same way as it does today? We could be driven by certain natural or spiritual forces—without having any waking consciousness—to our daily work and—though this may seem reprehensible to some listeners—perhaps even to scientific activity; we could carry out these activities, so to speak, as if sleepwalking. Within ourselves, however, nothing could take place other than what we know as the world of dreams; the external world would then be completely different from what we experience in our inner consciousness.

[ 7 ] If one thinks about it carefully, one comes to realize: We never truly know this world of dreams while we are actually in it. We would regard the dream world—which we would dream throughout our lives, from beginning to end, in the manner described—as our very reality. Our recognition of the subordinate reality of dreams depends on our experiencing the life-transition from sleep to waking, and on becoming aware of it—I am not speaking here in philosophical terms, but from the standpoint of popular consciousness—through this life-transition. Through this shift, we integrate into our physical body that which constitutes our human being—namely, that which is of a volitional nature. Anyone who observes closely also knows that everything conveyed to us in waking life through the senses is entirely based on the unfolding of real life within the physical body during wakefulness. Through this integration of our will into the physical body, we arrive at the perspective from which we can distinguish the subordinate reality of dreaming from the reality that the sensory world holds for our awakening consciousness. We now know that, through the will integrated into our body, we are connected to an external reality. Again, I do not wish to discuss this in terms of philosophical considerations, but rather entirely from the standpoint of popular consciousness.

[ 8 ] This raises the question: Could there perhaps be, emerging from this ordinary waking state, a second awakening on a higher level—a second surge of life—through which we channel our life forces into a new element, just as we engage our will when we emerge from dreaming into ordinary wakefulness? — Of course, this is only a question, and the answer depends entirely on whether one can embark on a path that is, first, inwardly secure and, second, one that every person can follow through their own effort. If we were to attain such a second awakening, then through this second awakening we would indeed gain a perspective from which we could recognize the reality of our waking life—observing it from a higher vantage point—just as we observe the dream from the higher vantage point of ordinary consciousness.

[ 9 ] Anthroposophy now turns, first of all, to the soul forces that are present in ordinary life—forces which, by their very nature, already suggest that they are capable of development—in order to bring about a second awakening. Even philosophers themselves admit that what we call human memory points to—I would say—a more spiritual nature of the human soul; that we cannot treat memory in the same way we treat those soul faculties that are directly linked to impressions from the external sensory world. Let us not dwell on philosophical considerations, but rather—as we do in ordinary consciousness—on what plays a role in human beings as memory. Through memory, we can summon up images of experiences we went through many years ago. Depending on our individual dispositions, these images may be more vivid or more shadowy, but they are there before us. When we engage in ordinary sensory observation, what we perceive must be present; what memory provides is not present—it may have long since passed. Through our power of imagination, we conjure up, as it were, from within ourselves and before our soul something that once existed but is no longer there—something that cannot have a present existence. Through this, we gain the realization that we are capable of drawing forth from within the human being powers of cognition that can imagine something not present in the here and now. And the question arises: Might it be possible, through a certain further development of the soul’s powers—as we have developed them since our earliest childhood—to further develop that which underlies our power of memory? Can it be developed in such a way that we not only imagine what is not present now but once was during our earthly life, but that we imagine something that is not present at all? Then we would make the leap into a higher reality—a reality from which ordinary earthly life appears as dream life does in relation to waking consciousness.

[ 10 ] Anthroposophy now undertakes such an attempt to develop what underlies the faculty of memory, in order to attain that second awakening through inner spiritual practice. In doing so, it turns to the human powers of thought. For it is these powers that conjure up in our imagination what we have once experienced. And anthroposophical research proceeds in such a way that it does something with thought that is not actually done with thinking in the present age. Contemporary thinking is—and rightly so from certain points of view—more oriented toward surrendering to the external world. Allowing impressions from the external world to first act upon the senses, processing them through counting, measuring, and weighing, and combining them with thought—this is a passive form of thinking, a form of thinking that people consider all the more reliable in terms of knowledge the more passive it is, the more it surrenders to what the external senses and organs convey. Indeed, in order to avoid thereby gaining a fanciful understanding, as some philosophers have done, anthroposophy approaches thinking in such a way that it seeks to develop this thinking beyond what it is in ordinary life. To this end, easily comprehensible images—whose meaning one does not initially even consider—are brought into the center of ordinary consciousness, and one concentrates one’s entire soul life on such images. One completely withdraws the soul life from external impressions and external life by seeking more and more to strengthen this soul life on the basis of one or a series of comprehensible images. The result is a process that lasts a shorter time for one person and a longer time for another—depending on their spiritual disposition. For one person it takes three months; for another, many years. If one repeats these exercises in a rhythmic sequence, one will eventually come to notice something in one’s inner life that I would like to compare to something in external life: When one repeatedly exerts a muscle, it gains strength through this effort. In the same way, one feels the soul’s power of imagination growing stronger as it repeatedly concentrates on a clearly comprehensible concept; and one eventually feels how the entire process of thinking becomes active, how real life—in the true sense, inner life—flows into this thinking. One gradually senses the great difference—which is not merely figurative but real—between dead, abstract thinking and the kind of thinking toward which we strive and which we wish to incorporate into an inner life within the realm of thought.

[ 11 ] I said that one must start from a clear and manageable concept. What I will describe to you today regarding the exercises of the soul life involves following each step with full human prudence, just as a mathematician or a geometer would follow his steps—one who is conscious of how one element is derived from another, how one figure follows another, and how one number follows another. This awareness—which the anthroposophical researcher feels just as the rigorous mathematician does: the sense of being accountable as a researcher—this awareness must prevail.

[ 12 ] Of course, all forms of self-suggestion—anything even remotely subjective—must be ruled out. But this can never be fully ruled out when we draw upon arbitrary ideas from our inner life; these ideas contain many echoes of life that often suggest something to us. But when we assemble ideas that may have no external significance for us at all—such as “light—wisdom”—and repeatedly concentrate our entire inner life on such an idea, the reality of which remains indifferent to us, our capacity for thought is strengthened. Through this—as I said, it takes less time for some, longer for others—we come to know what it means to “live in thought”; for, in fact, a kind of detachment gradually takes place between a higher self and the human being we know to dwell within our physical body. Just as we become aware in our physical body that there is something alive when we move our legs or hands, so through such an exercise we become aware that there is something real, alive, and truly vital when I move within this invigorated thinking.

[ 13 ] One could say, roughly speaking: Through these manifestations of power—through which we feel our way spiritually, just as we would otherwise feel our way physically with our fingers—we are finally able to experience a higher human being within ourselves. Through this, one gradually learns how to detach a higher human being—who is experienced in this way of thinking—from the physical human being; and one has arrived at the supersensible experience, the experience of the supersensible human being, insofar as he passes through earthly life between birth and death. By having elevated oneself to observation through the inner capacity for thought, one comes to overcome space—and indeed, the present itself—through that very capacity, and arrives at an experience within time. Indeed, one does not actually perceive what one experiences as the second, detached human being as a spatial being. That is the physical human being. One finds that one experiences the second human being as one who merely fluctuates in time. And what one experiences there coalesces into a kind of tableau that, in a relatively very short time, allows one to survey one’s earthly life from the very earliest childhood up to the point one has just reached.

[ 14 ] There is a big difference between these two things: the tableau of life and my memories. One could say: I can, after all, piece together this earthly life from my memories. I can reconstruct from my memory what I have experienced, whether recently or long ago. And if I make the effort and take my time, I will have a comprehensive picture of my earthly life based on my memories. And it could be that I deceive myself about this—that during such a review of my life tableau, which can be grasped in a short time, I have something that, with the help of subconscious soul forces, brings before my mind something similar to a conscious memory image. — But one gradually realizes that there is a great difference between what one pieces together in memory and such a tableau of soul life, which stands before the soul as a first supersensory insight, initially as self-knowledge. For when one pieces together experiences as a mental image, one actually always sees before oneself that which has acted upon one from the outside. One sees people, natural phenomena—the external things that are of interest to one.

[ 15 ] With this tableau of life, it is quite different. Here, one focuses much less, so to speak, on what has come to one from the outside, but rather on what has worked from within. If I have met a person in my life, this tableau of life makes me recall far less how that person appeared to me, and far more the longings that were stirred within my own heart to find something special in that very person. If I encounter a natural phenomenon in this tableau of life, it is not so much the interesting aspects of the phenomenon that stand out, but rather those impulses arising from my own life that cause me to view this phenomenon with particular sympathy or antipathy. What stands before my soul in this tableau is myself, as I have behaved toward what I have gone through. One could say, if one wishes to draw rough comparisons: This tableau of memory that I have described—which can only be attained after such an examination—differs from an ordinary tableau of memory produced by the memory itself in the same way that an impression in a seal differs from an impression in sealing wax. It is like the negative image to the positive image of what we can reconstruct through the ordinary image of memory.

[ 16 ] Thus, once we have completed the first stage of spiritual practice, we have arrived at a true self-knowledge of our earthly life. For such self-knowledge is there. Nuances are always intertwined with it. In this tableau of memories, one sees what has brought one forward; then one says to oneself: There is something that has made you imperfect, that has held you back. — One places oneself within this tableau of memories with human worth and human dignity, and through the insight that has just been awakened, one gains a conception of that which—in relation to external reality and the sensory powers—one is actually only now entitled to call the “ether” of the world. The ether of the world, which exists only in the temporal realm and which, to a certain extent, gives us a glimpse of what I have just described as the first form of the higher human being detached from the physical.

[ 17 ] But this first step has not achieved much. If one wants more, one must simply undertake to continue these spiritual exercises. The next spiritual exercises consist of applying a strongly activated inner will to remove the images from consciousness, just as one applied will to bring such images into consciousness to strengthen the being and to concentrate on them. As I said, one must maintain complete composure, just as a mathematician does. For it must be said: In a certain sense, our entire inner life is carried away by the image that soon moves into the center of our consciousness. And especially when thinking has already become so vivid that we have only this image itself in our consciousness—and not only are such images present, but our own inner experience emerges, as in powerful images within the tableau described—then one is strongly captivated by what one has before one’s soul in such an image heightened to the point of vividness. It takes a greater effort to banish such images from consciousness than it does to banish ordinary images. After all, we know what it means to banish ordinary images from consciousness. Let us try to admit this honestly to ourselves.

[ 18 ] When the senses are silent, and what is perceived by the senses is also silent, when the thought process is silent, and ideas and sensations are, so to speak, removed from consciousness, then a person falls asleep. If there is no stimulation from the imagination, he lacks the strength to maintain the waking state. But if one possesses the strength of soul necessary for what I have described, then one also has the strength to banish the acquired ideas—which enter us in this way through an inner, intensified life—and to keep the entire consciousness free of imagination while still remaining awake. Simply being awake, imagining nothing—that is what must be strived for as the second state: a waking consciousness devoid of content! But this waking consciousness devoid of content—one can become inwardly aware of it, yet it does not remain that way for long. Once it has been established, however, the second stage of spiritual cognition begins. Then one becomes aware not only of what was described earlier—that which lives within the human being—but the spiritual content of our worldly surroundings also pours into this alert, content-free consciousness, into this empty consciousness. And the second human being—who has first detached himself from the physical, corporeal human being, who was self-aware throughout his entire earthly life—will now not only be self-aware, but through this higher self-awareness, he will take in a spiritual world from his surroundings. Once again, something emerges before our soul that appears strange and alien to modern humanity, yet which is contained within what I have called the second stage of human spiritual cognition: inspiration. A precise form of inspiration occurs here; indeed, everything I have described here must not be confused with what is often referred to in nebulous mysticism as so-called clairvoyance. If one wishes to use this term, one may speak only of precise voyance, which is based solely on the development of the soul’s powers—just as mathematical thinking, which has no external reality in itself but only one that is formed internally, and to which mathematical thinking must simply be added when it extends to the sensory world, as in measuring, counting, weighing, and so on.

[ 19 ] To this—what one has conceived in a vivid inner thought process modeled on specific mathematical thinking—to this vivid thought process, one must add what I have described to you here. And through this mental work, one arrives at a realization in the same way that we arrive at a realization through measuring, counting, and weighing. And what arises is a state of soul life that is unknown in ordinary consciousness, because it is not needed there. I would like to clarify what state of soul life arises when an alert, empty consciousness is attained.

[ 20 ] First, we imagine ourselves in a modern metropolis, with all its clamor and noise; we ourselves cannot find peace; we ourselves are absorbed in this noise, in this clamor. Then we move away from this metropolis—the clamor and noise grow ever quieter; as we move even further away, they grow even quieter. We imagine ourselves entering the solitude of the forest. There we find a silence that, compared to the clamor of the city, we might describe as zero in terms of loudness. Silence around us, silence within us. But now something else can occur, even though it is not observed in everyday life. Here we must resort to a second comparison. As you know, if someone has a certain amount of wealth, that wealth can be spent little by little; they possess less and less. If they earn nothing more, yet continue to spend, they will have depleted their wealth down to zero. If they have nothing left at all and continue to spend, they go into debt; then they have less than zero. Mathematicians refer to this as negative quantities, as “minus.” Now imagine this: We have descended from the loud clamor, the noise of the big city, to the silence of zero, and we continue to descend, and it becomes quieter and more peaceful than the silence and peace of zero, so that we have less around us than mere silence—it is quieter, more peaceful than peaceful. This is the state of the soul that gradually sets in as we pass through this empty yet alert consciousness. Little by little, we clearly sense what I would like to call the deep silence of the human soul. This deep silence is not merely tranquility; it is, more or less—as you will—beyond tranquility. In terms of stillness, it goes even below zero stillness. But then, when this deep silence of the soul is truly experienced, everything of spiritual essence that surrounds us emerges from this deep silence of the soul. And full inspiration sets in.

[ 21 ] Then, once we have experienced this deep silence of the soul, we are actually enabled to hear spiritually, even now, what lives in the spiritual world. And the ordinary sensory world becomes for us a means of hinting at what lives in this spiritual world. I would like to speak quite specifically about true spiritual knowledge. Something resounds from the deep silence of the soul that makes an impression on me: it stirs me; it comes at me with a certain liveliness. I say that this is something that makes an impression on me, just as the color yellow makes an impression on me in a lively soul life. Then I have something in the sensory world through which I can express what I have experienced in the spiritual world. I describe this insight by saying: It affects me like the color yellow in the sensory world, or like the note C or C-sharp, like warmth or cold. In short, what I have experienced in the sensory world becomes, for me, a material with which to describe in ordinary words what appears to me in the spiritual world. The entire sensory world thus becomes something like a language for expressing what one experiences in the spiritual world. Those who want to proceed too quickly and therefore remain stuck at a superficial judgment do not understand this. The researcher encounters an experience that makes the same impression on him as a sensory color, and therefore he describes what he experiences spiritually through colors, tones, and so on. Just as one should not confuse the word “table” with the actual table, so too should one not confuse the spiritual world itself—which springs forth from deep silence—with the means by which it is described.

[ 22 ] Once one has reached this point of view, one comes to erase within oneself this entire tableau of life that one initially conjured up; not merely to evoke a state of empty consciousness in relation to individual ideas, but in relation to the entirety of human life on Earth—and specifically in its inner form. One then, in a sense, erases oneself as an earthly human being. But because one now has the opportunity—after extinguishing the earthly self, which is bound to the human physical body—to experience the deep silence of the human soul, one now experiences what one had become as a spiritual-soul being before descending from the spiritual world and clothing oneself in the physical body. Out of the deep silence of the soul, one experiences the spiritual-soul being that one was in pre-earthly existence. And just as one came into contact with one’s physical surroundings while in the physical body, so too, by immersing oneself in what one was in the spiritual-soul world, one comes to recognize how, in one’s pre-earthly existence, one was in the midst of spiritual-soul beings—one’s self as a soul-spiritual being, as a being of the same kind. One enters fully and with clear insight into that spiritual world from which one descended to earthly existence.

[ 23 ] One can realize that, in everyday life, the eternity of the human soul is explored only from one perspective: that of the soul’s immortality. But this immortality of the soul has another aspect, for which the older language still had a word, though modern language no longer does. This eternity of the soul has not only the aspect of immortality, but also that of non-birth, and it is only through the combination of non-birth and immortality that the full eternity of the soul is constituted. Thus, one arrives not through metaphysical speculation, but by awakening the soul itself and, from the deep silence of the soul, reaching what is eternal in the human soul—what was eternal and spiritually present before the human being descended into earthly existence, and what remains eternal as it dwells between birth and death in the physical human body.

[ 24 ] But we can only approach the nature of eternity gradually, even through anthroposophical spiritual research. As the third step, I must mention something that may cause a slight shudder—or perhaps an inner scoff—especially among those here who are accustomed to conventional scientific concepts. I can understand this very well, just as I can understand all the objections raised against anthroposophy. Something we already possess in ordinary life can be further developed into a higher power of cognition, just as the powers of a child develop into what we have further developed in adulthood—and that is the power of love. Love is something entirely different when it is bound to the human body—when the body surrenders to the passions that find expression in love—than when, as I have described, the physical “I,” indeed even the earthly “I,” has been shed from birth to death, and the human being moves from physical existence into a state in which he faces the purely spiritual. As they develop the powers of love and complete self-surrender in this process, what they once experienced through contemplation and insight—what they were in the pre-earthly state, what they now fully comprehend—takes shape within their consciousness. They experience what it means to live in full, real consciousness outside their physical body. And when he experiences this devotion to the spiritual experience in this way, his “I” is restored to him in a new way. The “I,” which in earthly life is steeped in selfishness and egotism—and which is overcome by acquiring the kind of self-knowledge that is attained when this “I” has been extinguished twice—thus develops full love on a soul-spiritual level; and one then encounters something that at first appears to be a completely foreign person, a completely foreign personality. If one strives for this, it is the least likely to happen. One should strive for the love I have described. Then, because one can step completely outside of oneself, one encounters what one truly is—but as a foreign personality—and only then does one realize what this Self was like in the past earthly life one lived through before coming to this earthly life; one realizes only then how the “I” existed in an earlier stage of existence on Earth, when one is able, through elevated, strengthened love, to feel like a second person. One looks back to a certain point in the course of human evolution where the “I” as “I” began, where the repeated earthly lives began. But this cannot be discussed at present. One can only speak of the fact that one can look back on a series of earthly lives that are lived through to reach full human life, between which there are always lives in pre- or post-earthly existence, between death and a new birth on Earth.

[ 25 ] This is one aspect of the soul’s eternal and immortal nature that one experiences once one has brought oneself to engage in contemplative observation. But the other thing one gains through love elevated to knowledge is the ability to experience the higher human being outside of his physical body. What one further gains is the insight into how this being is without a body, and the realization of how the body becomes a corpse in death, how this body falls away, and how the human being enters into the life after death. Just as one has insight into pre-earthly life, into the state of not yet being born, so one now has a glimpse into immortality, into life after death. What one has acquired as an earthly human being in the form of moral impulses—which one carries through the gate of death—and how, through one’s experience with the spiritual world, one prepares a new earthly existence in order to descend to Earth as an earthly human being—all of this now appears with vivid clarity before the soul, a soul that has emerged from intellectual humility, but also from a certain trust in the soul’s powers.

[ 26 ] This leads our understanding to that sphere of life that is so closely connected to human longings and vital needs. We look upon those whom we have come to love in life, those who are close to us through bonds of blood or bonds of the soul; we look upon the gate of death and ask: What becomes of the bonds spun by blood, and of the bonds woven by soul and spirit, once a person has passed through the gate of death? If one contemplates this, one comes to understand how the outer physical shell of the body falls away from what the human being is as an eternal being, how the human being ascends into the spiritual world in accordance with those laws, and lives there with the forces that they have already brought down and with which they lived during their physical earthly life. We then come to understand how what we share with other people—such as blood ties, bonds of friendship, and bonds of love—falls away from our communities just as the human physical body itself falls away; and we know from this insight that we will meet again the souls with whom we were bound by such ties in the pure community of the spiritual world, because the physical obstacles are no longer present. That which people do not seek to know out of a curious impulse—that which was human dignity, the destiny of souls—becomes, in this way, true knowledge.

[ 27 ] And other things, too, become true knowledge. After all, the reality of the external physical world eludes the dream because the will is not engaged in the physical body. In a dream, a person regards the world of images as reality; in the same way, we regard many things as reality before we awaken—in the manner described—to the deep silence of the soul, to spiritual life. When we awaken to this waking spiritual life—after having undergone the second life crisis and the physically experienced reality of waking life appears to us as mere dreaming—then many things that were reality to us in our physical-bodily life also appear to us, in a higher sense, in the sense of physical-spiritual life, as a dream. Just as the reality of dreams is subsumed by physically perceptible reality, so now what we experience in physical life as moral or religious human beings is subsumed by that to which we awaken through the second life crisis. And we become aware of what people like Knebel—Goethe’s friend, who said as an old man: “When one has grown old, one finds that, in the face of the decisive events of existence, everything seems as if it had been prepared long in advance”—actually meant. Everything that has had a profound influence on him as a man or as a young man appears to have been deliberately arranged by the person himself. And all his steps as a young man seem to point toward this experience. — This idea continues to take shape and is confirmed as it develops. When one penetrates this idea further with the insight gained in the manner described, one sees that this is indeed the case in life. One experiences something truly decisive. One is led to a person with whom one is to walk the rest of one’s life’s path together. One looks back on the steps that led one to that person. They stem from the longing to experience precisely the kind of thing that one can experience with this person, until one reaches the goal that truly corresponds to a longing of the soul, a trial of the soul. What lives within a person—through which they seem to conjure their own destiny as if from within themselves—must be linked to the perspective of the past earthly lives one has lived, in which one was a person of such-and-such a moral character and did this or that. And one sees that what one does now, in this life, appears instinctive, as if by chance; it is fatefully linked to what one was in the previous earthly life.

[ 28 ] That seems like a devastating thought. But just as having blond or black hair, blue or brown eyes, or thin or full hands, so too does it in no way detract from who we are as free, responsible human beings when we know that it is the soul that shapes us, that as free people we must craft our life’s destiny upon a foundation determined by fate. But life becomes comprehensible when a person learns to view it imbued with this idea of destiny—which is entirely compatible with freedom—so that they do not stand in life in such a way that every moment appears to them as a coincidence, but rather feel themselves immersed in the world of natural necessity, as well as in the world of true spirituality, in which they stand as a higher human being with their moral, fateful powers. Thus, such insight leads a person from external life to the immortality of the soul.

[ 29 ] One might still object: Yes, individual researchers of the spiritual realm can indeed recognize this, but what does it mean for the average person? — It means just as much as an artistically painted picture does to someone who has not become a painter. It would be sad if one had to be a painter to understand a work of pictorial art. All one needs is a certain healthy sensibility to experience art, and only sound human judgment to experience what the spiritual researcher describes. Only when one allows the unfortunately all-too-numerous prejudices to stand in one’s own way does one stand before the images that the anthroposophical researcher of the spirit sketches, just as one stands before a portrait in which, instead of beholding a world, one sees nothing but splotches of color placed side by side. Even for those living a simple, ordinary life, this world, as described by the anthroposophical spiritual researcher, is fully comprehensible, although through books such as *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?* is always able—to the extent that they can embark on the path of spiritual research without affecting their outer life—to examine what the anthroposophical spiritual researcher tells them, to verify whether this anthroposophical spiritual researcher is speaking from imagination or whether their view is something firmly established, like mathematical judgments, measuring, counting, weighing, and so on.

[ 30 ] This is what spiritual science seeks to contribute to humanity’s present spiritual life. It is that which it must believe corresponds to the many innermost needs of the soul. For it is the case that today, instinctively, unconsciously, many people—precisely because of what they have become through education, based on the premises of the natural sciences—develop a longing to know, in a similar way that encompasses their lived experiences, something about that which lies so close to the soul and of which I have spoken today only as an example of the immortality of the soul and what is connected with immortality.

[ 31 ] But this, of course, introduces into the world something that is, as the Copernican worldview once was, at odds with what was customary at the time. But the fact is that what appears to be human “folly” gradually becomes a matter of course. The Copernican worldview even had to wait a very long time before it became a matter of course. Anthroposophy can wait. But out of a sense of cultural and civilizational obligation, it must already state that it is fully understandable to it when conventional natural science—which considers itself sovereign with its methods—has, through a conventional investigation of the life of the soul using the external methods of calculation, counting, and weighing, arrived at a doctrine of the soul that is devoid of soul, and that it actually finds an ideal in this very thing. Anthroposophy, however, would like to add to that which it does not deny the legitimacy of—a doctrine derived from natural science— through a developed, comprehensive grasp of the innermost essence of the human soul—what is soul-spiritual in the human being as eternal life, what is soul-spiritual in the entire world, in the entire cosmos as eternal life—so that the human being can recognize himself as eternal, intimately connected with the eternal in the cosmos, as immortal in the cosmos. Anthroposophy thus seeks to provide insight into present-day human life and human life in the near future, so that it may thereby meet a necessity of our time: to supplement today’s “theory of the soul” (which lacks a soul) with a theory of the soul vividly awakened from within the human soul, from which, in turn, a worldview permeated by the soul and imbued with spirit will follow. And this will be needed more and more.