The Rudolf Steiner Archive

9. Supernatural Knowledge: Anthroposophy as a Necessity of Our Time

[ 1 ] Anyone who speaks today of supernatural worlds exposes himself from the outset to the entirely understandable criticism that he is violating one of the most important demands of our time—namely, the demand that: that serious discussion of the highest questions of existence from a scientific standpoint is possible only if science is aware of its limits and has a clear understanding of the fact that it must confine itself to the sensory world of earthly existence and would succumb to a certain form of fantasy if it were to go beyond these limits. — Well, precisely that branch of spiritual scientific thought from which I spoke at the last Vienna Congress of the anthroposophical movement—and from which I wish to speak again today—claims not only not to be opposed to the scientific spirit and scientific responsibility of our time, but also to work entirely in accordance with what can be regarded as the tasks demanded by the most rigorous scientific standards—even by those who stand on the ground of the strictest natural science. Now, of course, one can speak in various ways of the scientific demands of our time, which are placed upon us by what has emerged in such a magnificent way over the course of the last three to four centuries—but especially during the nineteenth century—in terms of theoretical and practical achievements in human development. I therefore wish to speak today about supersensible knowledge insofar as it seeks to fulfill precisely this demand of our time, and in my next lecture I would like to speak about supersensible knowledge of the human being as a demand of the human heart and the human soul in the present age.

[ 2 ] One can look at the magnificent achievements that scientific research has brought us right up to the present day—magnificent achievements in the form of findings about the outer world. But one can also speak, in a different sense, of the achievements that have been gained precisely through this current of human development. For one can say that through the conscientious, serious observation of the laws and facts of the external sensory world, as provided by the natural sciences, very special human abilities have developed, and that it is precisely through observation and experimentation that light has been shed on human abilities themselves. But I would like to say: Many who, in the most commendable sense, stand on the ground of scientific research, do not wish to hear much about this very light that is cast back upon human beings themselves through their research. If we reflect just a little on what this light illuminates, we see how human thought, by being able to systematically explore both narrow and broad contexts—the microscopic and the telescopic— has thereby gained the infinite for itself—gained in discernment, gained in the penetrating power to piece together the things of the world so that they reveal their secrets, to establish the laws governing the interrelationships of the world, and so on. As this thinking unfolds, we see a demand being placed upon it—and indeed, this demand comes precisely from the most serious researchers: the demand that this thinking must develop as selflessly as possible through the observation of external nature and through experimentation in the laboratory, in the clinic, and so on. And humanity has gained great power in this regard. After all, humanity has succeeded in adopting more and more measures of this kind, ensuring that nothing of what arises in thought itself—as inner desires of the human heart, as views, or perhaps even as fantasies about one’s own nature—is carried over into what one is supposed to determine, using the microscope and telescope, the ruler and the scale, regarding the interrelationships of life and existence.

[ 3 ] Under these influences, a way of thinking has gradually emerged that, it must be said, has, with a certain inner diligence, carved out its passive role for itself. Today, this way of thinking has become thoroughly abstract in its approach to observation and experimentation—so abstract, in fact, that it does not trust itself to conjure up any insights or truths from within itself.

[ 4 ] This characteristic of thought, which has gradually developed, is, after all, what—as it seems at first—must reject everything that a human being is in his innermost being. For what a person is in and of themselves, they must bring forth from within themselves through activity; this can never truly take place entirely without the influence of their will. And so we have come—and rightly so in the realm of external research—to reject precisely the activity of thought, in which we are nevertheless conscious of what we, as human beings, signify in the universe, in the entire context of the world. In a certain sense, human beings have excluded themselves from their own research; they forbid themselves their inner activity. We shall soon see how that which, with regard to this external research, must rightly be forbidden to the human being’s own self must now be particularly cultivated if the human being wishes to gain insight into the spiritual, into the supersensible aspect of his being.

[ 5 ] But a second element in human nature has also had to reveal a particular aspect that is alien to humanity, even if it is in harmony with the world, in recent research concerning the human mind and human emotion. In recent research, this human feeling is not allowed to have a say; human beings must remain cold and dispassionate. Nevertheless, one might ask: Would it not be possible, even within this feeling, to gain the powers necessary for understanding the world? Precisely when, on the one hand, one must say: Inner human arbitrariness, human subjectivity, is at work in feeling, and feeling is the source of imagination—one must, on the other hand, say once again: Certainly, just as feeling is initially present in everyday or scientific life, this human emotional aspect cannot play a special role. But if we recall how science itself must show us that, throughout human evolution, the human senses have not always been as they are today, but have developed from relatively imperfect states to their present state—and that in earlier times people certainly did not speak of things as objectively as they do today— then perhaps the inkling dawns that even within the subjective emotional life there might be something that could be brought to the fore, just as the human senses themselves have been, and that could lead from an experience of one’s own human being to a grasp of the interrelationships of the world in a higher sense. Precisely when one observes the withdrawal of feeling from contemporary research, the question must be raised: Could not some higher meaning be revealed in feeling if this feeling were to be developed in a special way?

[ 6 ] But we find a strikingly vivid example in a third element of human nature of how we are driven away from the thoroughly commendable scientific view toward something else entirely: this is the volitional aspect of human spiritual life. Anyone who is truly immersed in scientific thinking knows how impossible it is for this mode of thinking to conceive of the interrelationships in the world in any way other than in terms of causal necessity. We rigorously link phenomena that exist side by side in space; in a rigorous sense, we link phenomena that follow one another in time. We link cause and effect, one might say, according to their ironclad laws. Anyone who speaks not as a dilettante but as one deeply immersed in the natural sciences knows the sheer power that the observation of the factual worlds of the natural sciences exerts in this regard; they know how they are captivated by this idea of universal causality, and how they then have no choice but to apply this idea of causality in their thinking to everything they encounter.

[ 7 ] But then there is the human will—this human will that tells us at every moment of our waking daily life: What you undertake, in a certain sense, of your own accord, out of your own will, is not causally determined in the same sense as any external natural phenomena. — That is why a person who simply feels naturally within themselves, who looks inward with unbiased self-observation, can hardly do anything other than attribute the freedom of the will to themselves based on immediate experience. But when they then look over to scientific thinking, they cannot acknowledge this freedom of the will. Herein lies one of the conflicts into which our current circumstances draw us. In the course of these two lectures, we will come to know many other such conflicts. But for those who can feel this conflict in all its intensity— one might say, to feel it deeply—because they must be honest, on the one hand, toward scientific research, and on the other hand, toward self-observation—it is something deeply unsettling, so deeply unsettling that it can drive them into doubt as to whether there is any point of reference at all in life for seeking the truth.

[ 8 ] One must be able to approach such conflicts from a truly human perspective. One must be able to say to oneself: Research compels one to admit that one cannot actually accept what one perceives on a daily basis; there must somehow be something that offers other ways of approaching the world besides what is irrefutably present in the external order of nature. Precisely because we are driven so strongly into such conflicts by the natural order itself, it has become a pressing need of our time for us, as people of the present, to admit that it is impossible to speak of the supersensible worlds in the same way that was still done until relatively recently. We need only go back to the first half of the nineteenth century to find that even then, thinkers who, based on their sense of the times, took the natural sciences quite seriously, nevertheless pointed to the supersensible side of human life—the side that opens up to human beings the prospect of the divine, of their own immortality—and that in doing so they always pointed to what we can today call the “dark sides” of human life. People who should be taken very seriously have pointed to that wondrous but highly problematic world into which human beings are transported every night: the world of dreams. They have pointed to certain mysterious connections that this chaotic world of dream images nevertheless shares with reality; they have pointed out how the inner workings of the human organism—especially in the case of illness—are nevertheless reflected in a certain way in the fantastical images of dreams, and how healthy human life finds its way into the chaotic dream experiences through allegories and symbols. You have pointed out how many things that a person cannot grasp with their waking senses are placed in the semi-awake state of the soul, and conclusions have been drawn from such phenomena. These phenomena then border on what is still cultivated by many people today—the subconscious states of human soul life, which manifest themselves in a similar way.

[ 9 ] But everything of this kind that approaches human beings—everything that could still satisfy a pre-human humanity in a certain way—can no longer apply to us today; it can no longer apply for the simple reason that the way we view the external natural world has changed. One must look back to times when, for example, there was only a mystically tinged form of astrology. In those days, people viewed the sensory world in a way that was far removed from the precision we demand of science today. And so, perhaps because they allowed themselves not to have in the sensory realm the full clarity that we have today, they were able to find in the mystical, in certain semi-conscious states, something that could provide them with insights. We cannot do that today. Just as we are unable to derive anything other than questions regarding the true nature of the human being from what the natural sciences directly provide us, so too are we unable to stop at the natural sciences alone and satisfy our supersensible needs in a manner similar to that of earlier times.

[ 10 ] It is against this backdrop of our times that the supersensible mode of knowledge I wish to discuss here comes into focus. It examines how human thinking, feeling, and willing have been shaped precisely by the natural sciences, and it asks, on the other hand: Is it possible, precisely with what modern human beings have attained in thinking, feeling, and willing, to now proceed further into the supersensible realm with the same clarity that prevails in the field of natural science? This cannot be achieved through deductions, logic, and so on, for natural science rightly points to its own limitations with regard to its own nature. But something else can happen: that the inner human soul faculties can be further developed from the point at which they stand when we are engaged in ordinary scientific research; so that we can now apply the precision to which we have become accustomed in external research in the laboratory and in the clinic to the development of our own mental faculties. For now, I would like to elaborate on this in relation to thinking itself.

[ 11 ] Thought, which has become increasingly aware of its passive role in external research and does not wish to deny it, can muster the strength to become active internally—so much so that it is no longer precise in the way one is otherwise accustomed to with measurement, weighing, and so on, but precise enough in relation to its own development—just as the external researcher, the mathematician for example, is accustomed to following every step with full awareness. But this happens when that type of supersensible knowledge of which I am speaking here replaces the old, vague form of meditation—replaces the old, vague immersion in thought—with a truly precise development of this thinking.

[ 12 ] I can only briefly touch upon here, in principle, what I have elaborated in my books *Outlines of Esoteric Science* or *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?* and elsewhere regarding such a precise development of thought. A person should truly bring themselves to—for as long as is necessary for each individual, depending on their individual disposition—exchange the role they otherwise assume in thinking, and rightly so—that of passively surrendering to the outer world—for that other role: to direct all of one’s inner soul activity toward this thinking, for example, by taking in—day after day, even if only for a short time each time, while withdrawing one’s mind from the external world—some thought, the content of which is initially irrelevant, and directing all one’s inner soul forces toward this single thought in inner concentration. Then something occurs as a result that, in terms of the development of those soul capacities, can be compared to what happens when certain muscles in the human body—for example, the arm muscles—are to be trained: the muscles become stronger and more powerful through use and exercise. In the same way, the soul capacities become more active and powerful internally through focusing on a specific thought. And one must now organize the process in such a way that one proceeds with true precision, surveying every step one takes with one’s thinking just as a mathematician surveys his operations when he wants to solve a geometric or arithmetic problem. This can be done in a wide variety of ways. It may seem trivial when I say that one should use something found in any book—say, an old tome—as the object of concentration, provided one knows for certain that one has never seen it before. At first, the truth content of this matter is irrelevant; what matters is that one fully grasps the content of such a thought. You cannot do this if you draw a thought from your memory; for such a thought is connected to many things in the most indeterminate way—many things that play out in the subconscious or unconscious—and you cannot be precise when you concentrate on it. So something that is entirely new to you—something you have before you only in its immediate content, with which no psychological experience has yet been linked—that is what you place at the center of your consciousness. What matters is the concentration of the soul’s powers and the resulting strengthening. It is also good not to harbor any prejudice against approaching someone who has made progress in this field and asking them to provide you with such content. Then the content is new to you, and you can take in the whole picture. Many people fear that this would make them dependent on the other person who conveys such content to them. But that is not the case; in truth, they become more independent than if they were to draw such thought content—which is linked to all sorts of subconscious experiences—from their own memories and experiences. And for those who have some experience in scientific work, it is beneficial to use scientific findings as material for concentration; these prove to be the most fruitful for this purpose.

[ 13 ] If one does this over a long period of time, perhaps for years—all of this must be done with patience and perseverance; for some, it takes a few weeks or months before success is achieved, for others, years— then a person can reach the point where they apply this method to the inner structuring of their thinking just as precisely as a physicist or chemist applies the methods of measuring and weighing to uncover nature’s secrets; what one has learned in this way is then applied to the further development of one’s own thinking. At a certain point, a significant inner experience occurs within the person. This consists in the fact that one no longer feels confined to pictorial thinking—which depicts external events and facts and which, fundamentally speaking, is all the more faithful the less power it possesses in itself, the more it is merely an image—but rather one comes to add to this thinking the inner experience of lived thought, of thought imbued with inner power. This is a significant experience. And I would like to say that, as a result, thinking becomes something one begins to experience in much the same way as one otherwise experiences one’s muscular strength when one grasps or touches something. The experience of reality—as one otherwise has it in relation to one’s breathing or muscular activity—this inner activity enters into thinking. And since one has thoroughly explored every step along this path, one experiences oneself with complete composure and clarity within this strengthened, active thinking. If, for example, it is objected that science must be based on experience and logic, this is no objection; for what is experienced there is experienced with complete inner clarity, yet at the same time it is experienced in such a way that this thinking becomes a kind of spiritual groping. As one develops a thought, one feels as if one were extending a feeler—not, however, like a snail extending a feeler in the physical world, but as if one were extending a feeler into a spiritual world which, once one has reached this stage, is at first present only as a feeling, but which one can rightly expect to find. For one has the sensation: Your thinking has transformed into a spiritual groping; if this can increasingly become the case within you, then you may expect that this thinking will also encounter spiritual reality, just as your finger here in the physical world encounters physical reality.

[ 14 ] Only when one lives for a time within this inner, strength-filled way of thinking is full self-knowledge possible for a person. For then one knows: Through this concentration, the soul has become a reality that can be experienced.

[ 15 ] One can now continue with one’s practice and proceed to set aside and remove these thought-contents—those on which one has concentrated and which have led one to a form of thinking that truly probes the soul—and, in a sense, to empty one’s consciousness of what one has oneself brought into it. It is relatively easy to empty one’s consciousness in everyday life; one need only fall asleep. But it requires intense effort to dispel such a thought content—especially when one is accustomed to concentrating on a specific thought content—particularly during heightened thinking or when thinking is fully engaged. But just as one first acquired the strong power to concentrate, so one now manages to dispel this thought content again. Once one has achieved this, however, something appears before the soul that one could previously have only as an episodic memory image: The whole inner life of the human being appears before the eye of the soul in a new way—as one has lived it in this earthly existence since birth or since the point in time one can recall when one consciously entered this earthly existence. Usually, one knows of this earthly existence only what one remembers; one has the images of one’s experiences. But what one now experiences through this intensified thinking is not of the same kind. It unfolds as in a powerful tableau, so that one does not merely recall, as in a faint image, what one went through perhaps ten years ago, but it unfolds in such a way that one has the inner experience: one travels back in time in one’s mind. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that one performs such an exercise in one’s fiftieth year, leading to what has been described; then it happens that time allows one to go back, as through a “path through time,” to—for the sake of argument—the experiences of one’s thirty-fifth year. One strides through time; one does not merely feel a faint memory of what one went through fifteen years ago, but feels oneself fully immersed in it, as if in a present-day experience. One strides through time; space loses its significance, and time presents one with a powerful tableau of memories. This becomes an exact image of human life—a phenomenon that even scientific thinkers acknowledge occurs in an episodic manner, for example, when a person, while drowning, is exposed to great terror or shock, and for a few moments sees images of their entire earthly life flash before their soul—images they later recall with a certain shuddering delight. What thus appears before the soul in such a case—as if in the face of a force of nature—actually comes before the soul at the moment indicated, in that one’s entire earthly life stands before one as in a powerful, yet only temporarily arranged, mental tableau. Only now does one recognize oneself; only now does one engage in true self-observation.

[ 16 ] It is quite possible to distinguish this image of the human inner world from what is merely a mental image. The mere mental image shows how people, natural phenomena, or works of art approach a person from the outside; in this mental image, one sees more the way the world approaches one. In what, however, appears before a person as a supersensible tableau of memory, what confronts them is more that which has emanated from themselves. If, for example, at a certain point in one’s life one began a friendship with a beloved person, the image reveals how that person approached one at a certain moment, how they spoke to one, what one owes to them, and so on. In this tableau of life, one is confronted with how one yearned for this person, and how one ultimately took every step in such a way that it had to lead one to the being whom one recognized as being a good match.

[ 17 ] What has been formed through the unfolding of the soul’s powers confronts one with precise clarity in this tableau of life. Many people do not like such precise clarity because it reveals to them many things they would prefer to see in a different light than in the light of truth. But one must accept that one can look into one’s own inner self with complete impartiality, even if that inner self confronts one reproachfully under the inquiring gaze. I have called this stage of cognition “imaginative insight” or “imagination.”

[ 18 ] But from this stage, one can proceed further. In what one recognizes through this tableau of memories lie the very forces that have actually shaped one as a human being. Standing before this tableau of one’s life, one now knows: Within you, the forces that shape the substances of your physical body are developing; within you—especially during childhood—the forces have developed that have guided the brain and nervous tissue, which was still disorganized after birth, toward a plastic formation until about the age of seven. One finally ceases to attribute what shapes the human being from within to those forces that are bound to material substances; one ceases to do so when one has this tableau of memories before one’s eyes, when one observes how the contents of this tableau—which are themselves forces—flow into all the forces of nutrition and respiration and into the entire blood circulation—forces without which no wave of blood circulates, without which no respiratory process takes place. One now learns to recognize how, in its inner essence, the human being is spiritual and soulful.

[ 19 ] What one realizes here can best be described through a comparison. Imagine you are walking a certain distance across ground that has been softened by rain, and along the way you see tracks or ruts everywhere—made by human feet or perhaps wagon wheels. Now suppose a being from the moon were to come and see the ground in this condition, but no people; it might conclude: There must be all sorts of forces beneath the earth that have churned up these tracks and shaped the ground this way. — Such a being might search the earth for the forces that caused the ruts. But anyone who sees through this knows that the earth did not create this; rather, it was caused by human feet and wagon wheels.

[ 20 ] Anyone who views things as I have just described will truly look, for example, at the furrows of the human brain with no less awe. But just as they know that those traces on the earth do not originate from forces within the earth, so they now know: These furrows in the brain do not arise from forces inherent in the material brain, but rather from the human spirit and soul—which they have now beheld for themselves—and which works in such a way that our brain possesses these furrows. This is the essential point: to be drawn toward this insight, so that a person comes to perceive their own spiritual-soul nature, so that the soul’s gaze is truly directed toward the spiritual-soul realm and its manifestation in outer life.

[ 21 ] But we can now move on. After first strengthening one’s inner self by concentrating on a specific thought and then emptying one’s consciousness—so that, instead of one’s own formed images, one’s own life content has now stepped before the soul—one can now also remove this tableau of memories from consciousness in the same way one previously removed a single image, so that consciousness has been emptied of it. Now one can learn to apply the powerful force needed to erase from one’s consciousness that which one first recognized, through heightened self-observation, as a spiritual-soul being. In doing so, one is erasing nothing less than the innermost essence of one’s own soul life. One has already learned to erase the outer aspects of oneself through concentration; one then learned to direct the soul’s gaze toward one’s own spiritual-soul life; this fills the entire tableau of memories. If one now succeeds in erasing this tableau of memories itself, then what I would truly like to call “empty” consciousness emerges. One previously lived within the tableau of memories or within what one had placed before the soul; now something entirely different emerges. One has suppressed what lived within oneself, and one now faces the world with an empty consciousness. This signifies something extraordinarily significant for the soul’s experience. And, strictly speaking, I can initially only describe it in relative terms—what occurs for the soul when, through a strong inner force that one applies, one erases one’s own soul content. One need only recall how a person, before whom external sensory impressions gradually fall silent—in whom seeing, hearing, and perhaps even distinct touch cease—sinks into a state that is quite similar to a state of sleep. But now, when one erases one’s own inner life, one arrives at a state of consciousness that is indeed empty, but not a sleeping one; one arrives at a state that I would like to call the state of “mere wakefulness”—that is, wakefulness with an empty consciousness. This empty consciousness may perhaps present itself to us when I say: Imagine a modern metropolis with all its noise and clamor. One can move away from it; it grows quieter and quieter around one. But then one might find oneself deep within a forest; there it is a complete contrast to the noise of the big city: one lives in complete inner silence; boundless tranquility surrounds one.

[ 22 ] You see, I must use a trivial analogy if I am to characterize what follows. We must ask the question: Can this calm, this stillness, be transformed into something else? We can, after all, describe this calm, this stillness, as “zero” in our perception of the external world. But if, for example, we have a certain amount of wealth, and we take some of it away—it becomes less; we take even more away—it becomes less again; then we reach zero, we have nothing left—can we go even further? Perhaps it is not desirable for most people, but for many, this is exactly what they do: they reduce their wealth by going into debt. One has less than zero and can have less and less. In exactly the same way—at least initially—one can conceive of pushing the stillness, which resembles the zero of wakefulness, beyond this zero into a kind of negative state. A “super-calm,” a “super-silence,” may be added to calm. This is experienced by the one who erases the contents of their own soul: they enter a state of negative, sub-zero tranquility of the soul. Inner tranquility of the soul to the highest degree occurs during full wakefulness.

[ 23 ] That, however, cannot be achieved without being accompanied by something else; it can only be achieved when one feels a certain state—one that is linked to the mental images of one’s own self—transition into another. The person who first perceives and contemplates the first supernatural element within their own self is in a state of a certain well-being—that well-being and inner happiness to which the various creeds refer when they point to the supernatural and at the same time draw people’s attention to how the supernatural brings them bliss in their inner experience. Indeed, up to the point where one has shut out one’s inner self, it was a certain sense of well-being, an heightened sense of bliss. But the moment inner peace of mind sets in, that inner sense of well-being is replaced by inner pain and inner deprivation unlike anything one has known before—the realization that one is now distant from that with which one is so intimately connected in earthly life, distant not only from the sensation of one’s own body but also from the sensation of one’s own experiences since birth. And this entails a deprivation that escalates into immense psychological pain. Some recoil from this stage; they cannot find the courage to make the transition from a certain lower form of clairvoyance—and, by setting aside the contents of their own soul—to enter into a state of consciousness where that inner peace exists. But if one enters this stage with full consciousness, then what I have called “inspiration” in my previously mentioned books—please do not take offense at the terms—begins to take the place of imagination: the experience of a real spiritual world. After one has thus previously shut out the sensory world and created an empty consciousness amid unspeakable soul-pain, the outer spiritual world comes to meet one. In inspiration, one becomes aware that, just as the sensory world exists for the outer senses, so too does a spiritual world exist in the human environment.

[ 24 ] And the first thing one sees in this spiritual world is one’s own pre-earthly existence. Just as one normally looks back on earthly experiences through ordinary memory, so now a cosmic memory opens up: One looks back on pre-earthly experiences—on what one was like as a spiritual-soul being in a purely spiritual world before descending through birth into this earthly existence by intervening from one’s spiritual being in the formation of one’s own body. Thus one looks back upon the spiritual, eternal aspect of human nature—upon that which reveals itself as one’s pre-earthly existence, which one now knows is not dependent on the birth and death of the physical body, for it is that which existed before birth, before conception—and which, from matter and heredity, first made this physical body into a human being. Only now does one arrive at a true understanding of physical heredity as well, since one sees the supersensible forces at work within it—forces that one appropriates from the purely spiritual world, with which one now feels connected just as one does with the physical world here in earthly life. And now one becomes aware of how, despite the great progress that human development has undergone, much has been lost that was still characteristic of older, instinctive views, which we can no longer make use of today. This pre-earthly life stood before the instinctive, supersensible perception of a prehistoric humanity just as human immortality does—a topic we will discuss shortly. For in ancient times, eternity was understood in such a way that its two aspects were recognized. Today we speak—even our language has only this one word—of the immortality of the human soul; but people once spoke, and the older languages still contain such words, of “unbornness” as the other aspect of the eternity of the human soul. Times have, of course, changed somewhat. People are interested in what becomes of the human soul after death, because that is yet to come; but they are less interested in what existed before birth or conception, because that is, after all, “past,” and yet we are still here. But a true understanding of human immortality can only arise when one considers eternity from both sides: immortality and pre-birth.

[ 25 ] But precisely in order to be connected to the latter—and specifically in the context of exact clairvoyance—a third element is necessary. We truly feel ourselves to be human when we no longer allow our feelings to be entirely absorbed by earthly life. For what we now recognize as pre-earthly life penetrates us in the form of images, adds itself to what we have felt of our humanity, and only then makes us fully human. Then our feeling is as if pierced by an inner light, and we know: we have now developed our feeling into a sense organ for the spiritual. — But we must go further and must also be able to make the element of will into an organ of cognition for the spiritual. For this, something must come into play for human cognition that is otherwise, and rightly so, not regarded as a cognitive power by those who wish to be taken seriously in the realm of knowledge. One only becomes aware that it is a cognitive power when one enters the supersensible realms: it is the power of love. One need only begin to develop this power of love in a higher sense than that through which nature has bestowed love upon us, with all its significance for natural and human life. What I am about to describe as the first steps toward the unfolding of a higher love in human life may perhaps seem paradoxical.

[ 26 ] If you try, with complete mindfulness of each step, to perceive the world in a certain sense differently than one usually does, then you will arrive at this higher love. Suppose you set out in the evening, before going to sleep, to visualize your day in such a way that you begin with the last event of the evening, visualizing it as accurately as possible, then visualizing the second-to-last event in the same way, then the third-to-last, and so on, working backward toward morning to survey your day—then this is a process in which inner energy matters far more than whether you visualize each individual event more or less accurately. What matters is this “reversal” of the way you visualize. Otherwise, we tend to view events in a continuous sequence, first the earlier ones and then the subsequent ones. Through an exercise such as the one I have just described, we turn our entire life upside down: we think and feel in a direction opposite to the course of the day. We can do this with our daily experiences, as I hinted, and it takes only a few minutes; but we can also do it differently: Try to imagine the course of a drama in such a way that you picture it, starting from the fifth act, moving backward to the fourth, third, and so on; or you can imagine a melody in reverse order. If one undergoes more and more of these inner spiritual experiences in this way, one will discover how inner experience breaks away from the external course of nature, how one actually becomes more and more independent. But even though one becomes more and more individualized in this way and has achieved ever greater and greater independence, one also learns to devote oneself to the other, external life with full consciousness; for only now does one realize: the more we develop this fully conscious devotion to the other being within ourselves, the greater our selflessness becomes as a result, and the greater the love for it must be. In this way, one feels how this life—not within oneself, but within another being—this crossing over from one’s own being into the other being—becomes ever stronger and stronger. And one reaches the point where one can now add to the imagination and inspiration that one first cultivated a true intuitive immersion into another: one arrives at intuition, so that one no longer experiences only oneself, but learns to experience the other in all its individuality, yet also in all selflessness.

[ 27 ] There, love becomes something that gradually enables one to look back even further than into one’s pre-earthly spiritual life. Just as one looks back on current events in one’s present life, so, through such an intensification of love, one learns to look back on earlier earthly lives, and in this way one comes to recognize the entire human existence as a sequence of successive earthly lives. The fact that they once had a beginning and will likewise have an end will be addressed in the next lecture. But one learns to recognize human life as a sequence of earthly lives, between which there are always purely spiritual lives—between death and the next birth; for through this heightened love—which has been elevated into the spiritual realm and has become a power of insight—one also comes to know death in its true meaning. Once one has progressed, as I have described for imagination and inspiration, to the point of making these heightened inner forces capable of spiritual love, one actually comes to know, through direct and precise clairvoyance, that inner experience of which it is said: the human being experiences itself spiritually without its body, outside its body. In this way, stepping out of one’s body becomes, if I may put it this way, a truly experiential and concrete reality for the soul. Once one has experienced this spiritual aspect of existence—in what I would call “clairvoyant” insight—outside the body, then one knows what the event signifies: laying aside the physical body in death, passing through the gate of death into a new, spiritual life. Thus, on the third stage of precise clairvoyance, one comes to understand the meaning of death and, with it, the meaning of immortality for human beings.

[ 28 ] Through the way I have described this, I wanted to illustrate how the type of supersensible knowledge I am speaking of here works toward bringing into the human faculties of knowledge themselves something that, as it is introduced, acts with great precision, step by step. The natural scientist applies precision to external experimentation and observation; he seeks to view objects side by side in such a way that they reveal their secrets precisely through measuring, counting, and weighing. The spiritual researcher of whom I am speaking here applies precision to the development of his own soul powers. What he shapes within himself so that a spiritual world—and with it the eternal essence of the human being, the essence of human immortality—may appear before his soul—what he shapes within himself is done in a precise manner, to use Goethe’s words. With every step the spiritual researcher takes—so that ultimately the spiritual world may unfold before his soul’s eye—he feels as responsible before the conscience of knowledge as only a mathematician feels responsible for each of his steps; for just as the mathematician must see through with complete clarity everything he puts on paper, so must the spiritual researcher see through with complete precision what he makes of his powers of cognition. Then he knows that he has formed a “soul eye” out of the soul with the same inner necessity as nature forms a physical eye out of the physical body. And he knows that he is just as justified in speaking of spiritual worlds as he is in speaking of physical-sensory worlds for the physical eye. In this sense, the spiritual research discussed here will meet the demands of the times, which are set by the magnificent natural sciences—of which this spiritual research is not an opponent, but which it seeks precisely to further develop.

[ 29 ] I am well aware that anyone who wants to advocate for something in life—whether for this or that reason—makes themselves seem important by presenting it as a “demand of the times.” That was not my intention, nor will it be in my next lecture; on the contrary, I would like to show how the demands of the times are already present, and how this spiritual science, in every step it takes, strives to meet those demands. And so one can say: The spiritual researcher of whom we are speaking here is not someone who observes nature in an amateurish or layman’s manner. No, he seeks to advance precisely in the true sense and with the true conscientiousness of this natural science; he seeks truly exact clairvoyance for describing a spiritual world. But at the same time, it is clear to him that when one attempts to investigate the human corpse in the laboratory in order to interpret the life that has departed from it, or when one looks into the vastness of space through a telescope, one develops abilities that at first seem to be adapted only to the microscope or telescope, but which possess an inner life and deny themselves in their form. When we dissect a human corpse, we know this: It is true that nature did not create this directly from the human being, but rather the human soul—which has now departed from it—created it from the human being. We interpret the human soul from what we have here as its physical result, and anyone who were to assume that the configuration of the human physical forces and forms did not arise from what preceded this person’s present state would be insane. But from everything we then retain—even as we explore dead nature with those forces in which human beings rightly deny any inner activity—this retention creates the foundation for the further development of these human soul forces. Just as the plant seed lies invisible beneath the earth once we have planted it there, yet from it the plant grows, so too do we plant a seed within the soul—precisely when we are conscientious natural scientists. And within anyone who is a serious researcher in this regard lies the seed of imaginative, inspired, and intuitive knowledge. They need only develop it. And they can then know: just as natural science is a necessity of our time, so too is supersensible research a necessity of our time. One might say: Everyone who speaks in the spirit of natural science also speaks in the spirit of supersensible research, only they do not realize it. And what for many people today—as will also become clear in the next lecture—is an unconscious, deepest longing: supersensible research seeks to unfold from this seed.

[ 30 ] Especially to those who, from what they consider to be a scientific standpoint, oppose this spiritual research, one might say—though this is not meant in a negative way—that it brings to mind a all-too-familiar line from Goethe’s *Faust*, which can then be rephrased as follows: “The little folk never sense the Devil, even if he were to grab them by the collar.” Well, I don’t want to dwell on that now. But in a different context, the essence of this saying is reflected in what is demanded of our time today. Those who speak correctly about nature today are, in fact, already unconsciously expressing the “Spirit” itself. And one might say: There are many who never want to notice the Spirit when it speaks, even though they continually express it in their own words!

[ 31 ] The seed of supersensible perception is actually much more widespread today than one might think—but it must be developed. The gravity of our times, as reflected in external events, truly teaches us that it must be developed. As I said, I would like to speak about the specifics next time; but let me conclude by pointing out that today, out in the world, terrible cataclysms are actually signaling to all of humanity through a wide variety of signs, and that one can become aware of how this great gravity of the times will give rise to tasks at which the people of the very near future will have to work very, very hard. This external gravity with which the world—namely, the world of humanity—looks upon us today points to a necessary inner gravity. And it is of this inner gravity—in directing the human mind toward humanity’s own spiritual powers, which are its very essential forces—that I wished to speak today. For if it is true that human beings will have to muster their very strongest outer forces in the face of the grave events that lie ahead for them across the entire earth, then they will also need an energetic inner courage to do so. Such strength and such courage, however, can only arise if human beings can consciously connect with their innermost being—not merely by grasping it theoretically, but by knowing it practically—and can feel and will it. They can do this only if they recognize this essence of theirs as originating from the source from which it actually originates: the source of the spirit; if they learn more and more—not merely theoretically, but through practical experience—that: Human beings are spirit; they can find their true fulfillment only in the spirit, and their highest powers, as well as their greatest courage, can come to them only from the spirit—that is, from the supersensible!