The Rudolf Steiner Archive

10. Anthroposophy and the Ethical-Religious Outlook on Life

[ 1 ] Last Wednesday, I had the opportunity to explain here how supersensible knowledge can arise from the further development of those human soul faculties that people possess in everyday life and that, when applied methodically, are also recognized by science. I have attempted to show how, through the systematic development of these soul faculties, a human being can indeed attain a form of perception through which he can become aware of a supersensible world, just as he becomes aware of the physical-sensory world through his physical senses in his surroundings. Through such perception, one does not merely arrive, in an abstract sense, at the conviction that there is a spiritual world beyond the sensory world; rather, one advances to a genuine experience, to a genuine encounter with spiritual beings who, insofar as a person elevates themselves to a spiritual level, form an environment around them, just as plants and animals form their environment in the physical world.

[ 2 ] Such supersensible knowledge is, in its very essence, something different from what is commonly referred to in everyday life as “everyday consciousness” and also as “knowledge” in conventional science. In the latter case, one, so to speak, takes possession of ideas—for example, ideas that encompass the laws of nature. But this “possession” of ideas does not actually penetrate the soul to the extent that it becomes an immediate power of the soul—comparable, as a spiritual power, to human muscular strength that transforms into activity. Thoughts remain something shadowy, and human beings know from their immediate experience how indifferent thoughts can be, in a certain sense, to the human heart when it comes to touching the deepest matters of that human heart.

[ 3 ] Now, I believe I have already shown in the first lecture that when a person, through the kind of contemplation referred to here, actually penetrates into the spiritual world, he then becomes aware of his supersensible being as it was before it descended into earthly existence. And by attaining a similar understanding of the spiritual world in relation to his own self, he does not, I would say, leave his heart and his deepest emotional needs untouched in the same way as they are by abstract knowledge. Certainly, anyone who has led a life of intellectual inquiry does not underestimate the inner drama of the soul that lies even in the ordinary, accepted struggle for knowledge; but nevertheless, the insights we thus acquire remain images of the external world. Indeed, today, if we are scientifically educated, we take the greatest pride in the fact that these images quite objectively merely reflect the external world, so to speak, without striking the life of the soul with a certain inner force, just as, for example, the circulation of blood through the human being sends its waves through the physical body. This is precisely what is meant here by supersensible knowledge—something that affects the human being in a completely different way than ordinary knowledge. And so that I may clarify this point for myself, I would like to begin with a kind of comparison—one that is, however, more than just a comparison, and which can truly capture the reality of the matter.

[ 4 ] I would like to start from the premise that, just as in everyday life, human beings exist in two states of consciousness—one could even say three, but let us for now consider sleep and dreaming as a single state of consciousness—that in the state of sleep they are completely cut off from the outside world, and that an entirely inner world reveals itself, in a sense, grotesquely and often chaotically in its effects through dreaming. We may be in a room with many other people: our “dream world” is our own; we do not share it with others. And it is precisely a deeper contemplation of the dream world that can show us how what we must regard as our inner human being is connected to this dream world. Even the physical nature of the human being is reflected in a remarkable way in dreams; it is reflected in fantastical images. This or that condition of an organ—a pathological or agitated state—can appear in a dream as a distinctive symbolic image, or a sound in our surroundings may be symbolized quite dramatically in a dream. The dream creates images from our inner world and from the external world. All of this, however, is in turn intimately connected with our entire life course on Earth. From the most distant epoch of this life, the dream draws the shadows of experiences into its chaotic, yet nonetheless dramatic, unfolding. And the more closely one examines all of this, the more one comes to realize that—even if in an instinctive, subconscious way—the innermost human being is nevertheless connected to that which reigns and weaves within the dream. And anyone who has a sense for this—for example, for observing the moment of awakening and, from there, perceiving ordinary daily life not in that superficial way that often happens, but in a deeper way through the eye of the soul—will come to realize how this waking daily life is actually characterized by the fact that what we experience in “dreams, in sleep—in a self-contained way, in a way that we share with other people only in special cases—that this soul-spiritual aspect submerges into our physical being, interconnects, as it were, with the will and thus also with the thought forces and sensory forces permeated by the will, and thereby establishes a relationship with the external world via the detour through the body. Awakening thus signifies the transition to a state of consciousness entirely different from that which we experience in a dream. We become involved in external events by participating with our soul in the processes of our own organism, which in turn are connected to external events. Evidence that I am, in fact, describing this process quite objectively does not, of course, arise in a mathematically abstract way, nor in an experimental way; but it becomes evident to anyone capable of observing in this realm—specifically, of observing how, at the very foundation of sober, austere soul life, of intellectual life, there is always something taking place akin to “waking dreaming,” a subconscious imagination, a life in images. It is the case that—just as we penetrate from the surface of flowing water down into its deeper depths—so too can we penetrate from our intellectual life into the deeper regions of the soul. There we penetrate into that which, even if it has a less precise connection to the external world, actually concerns us more intimately than intellectual life. There, too, we encounter everything that stimulates intellectual life to its independent, inventive power; everything that stimulates this intellectual life when it transitions into artistic creation; and even—as I will show later — even stimulates intellectual life when the human heart descends from the ordinary contemplation of the world to the religious and devout veneration of the world’s spiritual essence.

[ 5 ] In the waking state of ordinary life, what actually happens is that, through the interplay of our soul with our physical organs, we enter into such a connection with the outside world that we can then allow not the dream itself, but solely our waking daily life to judge what a dream is, its right and wrong, its truth and falsehood. It would be pathological for anyone to believe that they could somehow perceive a “higher” meaning in the chaotic, albeit dramatic, events of the dream than what they discern as the significance of this dream life through their waking experience.

[ 6 ] In this waking experience—on the same level of experience, so to speak—we remain even when we devote ourselves to intellectual life, to ordinary scientific inquiry, and to everyday cognition. Through that immersion, deepening, and—I would say—strengthening of the soul that I spoke of last time, the human being consciously practices for his soul life on a higher level something similar to what he unconsciously practices through his physical organization for ordinary waking life. And the immersion in that supersensory knowledge is a “higher awakening.” And just as we relate a dream image to waking daily life by drawing on memory and other powers of the soul to connect that dream image—say—to a physical sensation or an external experience, and thereby place it within the course of reality, so too, through such supersensory cognition as I have described, one comes to now to integrate what one experiences in the ordinary sensory environment—what one also ascertains through observation and experiment—into a higher world, a spiritual world, into which one is now incorporated through those exercises I spoke of, just as one is incorporated into the physical world through one’s own organism upon ordinary awakening. And so it is the dawning of a new world, a true awakening to a new world, an awakening on a higher level—this is what supersensible knowledge actually represents. And this awakening, in turn, compels the one who has awakened to judge the entire sensory-physical world from this experience in the same way that one judges the dream life from the waking life. What I do here in my earthly life, what appears to me through my physical perception—I then learn to relate this to the processes I underwent as a spiritual-soul being in a purely spiritual world before my descent into the earthly world, just as I relate a dream to waking life. I learn to relate everything that exists in physical nature—not “in general” to a fantastical spiritual world, but to a concrete spiritual world—to a spiritual world that is rich in content, which, through precisely those powers of cognition I have described—imagination, inspiration, and intuition—becomes a visually perceived human environment.

[ 7 ] But just as a person in ordinary life feels, as one who is awake, that their state of mind is different from that of a dreamer, so too does the entire state of a person’s soul change when they attain this higher awakening. Thus, when one describes supersensory knowledge in the way I have done here, one is not merely describing the formal perception of images of the supersensory world, but rather the transition of the human being from one state of consciousness to another, from one state of mind to another. As a result, however, the contents of the soul to which one devotes oneself in ordinary life also become entirely different. Just as one becomes a different person through ordinary awakening, so, in a certain sense, one becomes a different person through this supersensible knowledge. And the concepts and ideas one held in ordinary consciousness undergo a change. It is not merely a conceptual transformation within oneself—a transformation in the sense that one understands more—but rather a transformation of one’s very life. This now penetrates into the very deepest human concepts. Precisely in the very deepest human concepts—I would say, at the root of soul life—the human being is transformed by the fact that he or she can enter the realm of this supersensible knowledge—though this always occurs only for brief moments in life.

[ 8 ] Here I must mention two concepts that play the greatest conceivable role in everyday life; concepts that have their full, profound validity in everyday life, and that take on an entirely different form the moment one ascends into the supersensible world. These are the two concepts through which we form our judgments in the world: the concepts of true and false, right and wrong. Do not think that, out of some kind of intellectual frivolity, I wish in my discussion to cast doubt in any way on the validity of the concepts of true and false, right and wrong. To cast doubt on that which is beneficial for ordinary life is not at all in keeping with true supersensible knowledge. Through this supersensible knowledge, something is added to ordinary life, but nothing is taken away from it. Those people who—whether genuinely or sentimentally—become untruthful in ordinary life, who become impractically mystical in this ordinary life, are also unfit for true supersensible knowledge. True supersensible knowledge is not born of fantasists or dreamers, but precisely of those who, fully immersed in their humanity, can engage with earthly existence as genuine practitioners of life. Thus, what we experience in everyday life—which is rooted in the concepts of true and false, right and wrong—should not be shaken; on the contrary: Truthfulness in this realm is, I would say, emotionally strengthened precisely by that which now gives way to a higher form of knowledge through a metamorphosis, through a transformation of the concepts of true and false, right and wrong.

[ 9 ] When one truly enters this higher, supersensible world, one no longer speaks in such abstract terms: something is true, something is false, this is right, that is wrong; rather, the concept of the true and the right merges into one that we are also familiar with—albeit in a more instinctive way—from ordinary life, only this concept of ordinary life is transformed into a spiritual form. “True, right” transforms into the concept, the idea of “healthy”; “false” and “wrong” transform into the idea of “pathological.” So while in everyday life, when one thinks about something or feels, senses, or desires something, one says: this is right, that is wrong—when one lives in the realm of supersensible knowledge, one does not actually arrive at this “right” or “wrong,” but rather at the sensation that something is healthy, something is pathological. You will say that “healthy” and “pathological” are concepts that are inherently vague. But this vagueness applies to them only in ordinary life or in ordinary consciousness. This vagueness ceases when higher knowledge is sought with the precision I described in the first lecture. Thus, precision also enters into what one then experiences in this realm of higher knowledge. “Healthy” and “unhealthy”—that is what one calls what one experiences in contact with the beings of the supersensible world, whom one perceives through such knowledge.

[ 10 ] Now consider how infinitely close to us what becomes the object of supersensible knowledge can thus be; it is as close to us as the health and illness of the body. Of the one—that which is experienced in the supersensible—one says: I live myself into it; it nourishes and stimulates my life; it elevates my life; I become, so to speak, “more real” through it; it is healthy. Of the other, I say: It paralyzes, indeed, it kills my own life; I recognize in this that it is something pathological. And just as one navigates the ordinary world through “right” and “wrong,” just as one positions one’s own being within moral and social life, so does one position oneself within the supersensible world through “healthy” and “unhealthy.” Through this, however, one is connected to this supersensible world with one’s entire being in a far more real way than one is actually connected to the sensory world. In the sensory world, one separates oneself from things through this “right” or “wrong.” I would say: “right” does little to intensify one’s well-being, while “wrong” does little to intensify one’s suffering—especially for some people. In the supersensible world, it is not at all possible for experiences to approach us in this way. Our entire being, our entire reality, is immersed in the very way we experience this supersensible world. Therefore, all arguments in this realm—such as: Are things realities? Are they merely appearances?—come to an end. Do they merely show us the effects on our own sense organs? And so on—things I do not wish to discuss here, as there would not be enough time. But everything that can be discussed in this way regarding physical reality makes no sense at all when applied to the spiritual, supersensible world; for its reality and unreality are tested by the fact that one can say: One thing affects me in a healthy way, the other affects me in a sickly way—offensively, I would say, taking the word in its full meaning and gravity. The moment a person ascends to the supersensible world, they immediately notice how what is otherwise powerless knowledge becomes an inner force of the human soul itself. We permeate the soul with this supersensory knowledge, just as we permeate our body with blood. Therefore, through such knowledge we also come to understand the entire relationship of the soul and the spirit to the human body, and thereby learn to see how the spiritual-soul aspect of the human being descends from a supersensory pre-birth existence and unites with the inherited body. To gain insight into this, one must first truly come to know the spiritual-soul aspect in such a way that, through this reality—whether healthy or diseased—one experiences reality—I cannot say here “in one’s own body,” but rather “in one’s own soul.”

[ 11 ] Thus, supersensible knowledge—as difficult as it is to utter the word, because one seems to immediately fall into sentimentality—is not merely understanding, but rather a “breathing of life” into the human being. It is the soul itself—the inner life of the soul—that enters into us when we attain this supersensible knowledge. After all, we do not become aware of our eternity, our immortality, through a philosophical problem; we become aware of it in immediate experience, just as we become aware of external things through our senses in immediate experience.

[ 12 ] What I have described, however, faces the following objection: Yes, perhaps someone who has attained such supersensible knowledge might speak in this way; but what is someone who has not yet attained this supersensible knowledge himself to say about these things? Well, the most beautiful form of human coexistence is when one person develops in relation to another, when, spiritually speaking, one becomes the other. This is precisely how human community is established in a wonderful way. And so it may be said: Just as not all people can be astronomers or botanists, yet what astronomy and botany produce is of importance and significance—at least in its main findings — and can be grasped through what can be understood by common sense, so it is also possible for the healthy human mind to grasp, through immediate perception, what is presented by a spiritual researcher who is able to penetrate the supersensible world. For human beings are born not for untruth, but for truth! And what the spiritual researcher has to say will always be clothed in such words and turns of phrase that, even in its formulation, it differs from what we are accustomed to receiving as images from the sensory-physical world. And so, as the spiritual researcher reveals his visions, this can have such an effect on the whole person—on the simple, healthy human sense of perception—that this healthy human sense of perception is awakened, awakened to the point that it truly finds its way into that awakening of which I have spoken today. That is why I must say again and again: Certainly, in my books *Outlines of Esoteric Science*, *How Does One Gain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?*, and in others, I have tried to describe how, through systematic exercises, one can attain what I must call “insight into the spiritual world,” so that today everyone is in a position to become, to a certain degree, a spiritual researcher; but one need not become one. For the healthy human soul is such that what the spiritual researcher has to say, insofar as it touches the human soul, can be received by that soul—if it is only open-minded enough—just as an ancient insight. For this is precisely what is distinctive about this spiritual research, this supersensible knowledge referred to here: it brings nothing that is not already present subconsciously within every human being. So that every person can feel: “I knew that all along; it’s already within me. If only I hadn’t allowed myself to be numbed in a certain way by authoritative and other scientific prejudices, I would have grasped one thing or another—through this or that experience—of what this spiritual research can present in its entirety.”

[ 13 ] But because something like the transformation of the concepts of “true” and “false” into “healthy” and “sick” takes place, the soul’s inner experience becomes ever more and more intense. On a higher level, a person immerses themselves in reality with greater intensity than when they simply awaken to the physical reality of everyday life. As a result, insights—which are entirely precise—arouse feelings, sensations, and soul experiences just as much as external objects do. The whole human being is engaged by what supersensible knowledge can provide, just as, in fact, only the head is otherwise engaged by what sensory knowledge can provide. — Please allow me to illustrate this “wholeness of the human being” in supersensible knowledge by referring to something personal; but in this realm, the personal is also a matter of fact, for the facts are intensely linked to the personal.

[ 14 ] To illustrate how supersensible knowledge truly cannot be mere intellectual knowledge, but rather how it grips a person infinitely more vividly and intensely than intellectual knowledge, I would like to say the following. Anyone who is accustomed—and this should actually be the case for every true practitioner of supersensible knowledge—to living within ordinary cognition knows how the mind is involved in this ordinary cognition. If such a person then ascends—especially after having, so to speak, engaged in ordinary cognition throughout their entire life—to supersensible cognition, the situation becomes such that they must exert all their powers to hold fast to this supersensible cognition that approaches them and reveals itself to them. He realizes: The power by which one holds onto an idea about nature, a law of nature, the course of an experiment, or a clinical observation—this power is insignificant compared to the inner soul power one must develop to hold onto the vision of a supersensible being. And so I always found myself compelled not only to use my head, so to speak, to retain these supersensible insights, but also to support the power that the head can exert with other organs—for example, the hand. When one records something that presents itself supersensibly in a few strokes, when one captures it in characteristic, aphoristic sentences or even mere words, what one achieves there is not merely a force brought about by the nervous system—which one employs in ordinary cognition— but rather what one brings about through a force that draws deeply upon the organism to support the act of cognition—something that ensures that one’s supersensible insights are not merely fleeting, that they do not slip away like dreams, but that one can retain them. I may therefore reveal to you that, fundamentally, I must always work in this way and have, as a result, produced cartloads of notebooks in my life that I have never looked at again. For what is necessary here lies in the act of engagement; and this engagement ensures that one retains in the mind what seeks to reveal itself to one, rather than having to read it back afterward. This writing or drawing is, of course, not an automatic, mediumistic process, but one that is just as conscious as the methods employed in scientific or other work. It exists only because what approaches one through supersensible knowledge must be grasped by the whole human being. Through this, however, it also acts back upon the whole human being, engages the whole human being, does not stop at impressions of the head, but proceeds to impressions affecting the entire human life of the heart and soul. And whatever else one experiences as life on earth passes one by—whatever joys one experiences in this or that, joys with all their inner vitality; whatever minor or deeper pains one experiences; whatever one experiences through the external sensory world, through being together with other people, in the — and ebbing waves of life—all of this re-enters on a higher, soul-spiritual level as one ascends into those regions of the supersensible where one can no longer speak of true and false, but must speak of healthy and pathological.

[ 15 ] And once one has gone through everything I described last time—in particular the intense sense of pain at a certain stage on the path to the supersensible—one then advances to such a level of experience where, as one approaches supersensible experiences and insights, one undergoes such an inner drama of life: where insights can bring one joy and pleasure, as is otherwise possible only in physical life, or where insights can cause one the deepest pain; where one experiences one’s entire soul life, I would say, is experienced anew at a higher level—with all its inner richness, with all its inner color, with all the more intimate depth of the soul-and-emotional life that one possesses in everyday existence through one’s integration with the physical organism. And this is where higher knowledge and supersensory experience encounter what enters into ordinary life as the moral existence of the human being—this moral existence with all that is connected to it: religious feeling and the consciousness of freedom. At the very moment one ascends to a direct experience of the spiritual life—whether it be healing or harmful—one encounters, so to speak, the root of human moral life, the root of the entire moral existence. One encounters this root of moral existence only when one comes to realize how the sensory-physical life, together with that which flows from the human being, is actually a kind of “dream” for a higher life—just as a dream is, for ordinary life, merely a dream. And that which we perceive as conscience from the indeterminate depths of our human being—from which we can act in ordinary life, from which we become a source of good or harm to our fellow human beings—this, which, I would say, shines up from the depths of our human being—that which inspires us to act morally or immorally—that becomes clear, that is integrated into reality, just as a dream is integrated into reality upon awakening. Nevertheless, one learns to recognize conscience as something that exists as the shadowy reflection within the human being of the meaning and significance of the spiritual world—the supersensible world to which we, as human beings, do indeed belong with the deepest part of our being. And one now understands—when one wishes to contemplate the moral order of the world and arrive at a reality of this moral order—why one must proceed from what the science of the senses can offer us toward a supersensible understanding.

[ 16 ] That was what I attempted to present thirty years ago—merely as an ethical problem, merely as a moral enigma of the world—in my *Philosophy of Freedom*. There I attempted—without taking into account any supernatural knowledge, but purely by tracing the moral impulses of human beings—to determine how the moral arises in every case — not from thought that takes in external things, external events, or the events of one’s own body, but how the moral arises from that intellectual life of the soul which seizes the mind and the will, yet which, at its foundation, is nonetheless an intellectual life of the soul, grounded in itself, and originating in the spiritual realm of the world. In my *Philosophy of Freedom* at that time, I had to seek a life of the soul that is independent even of human physicality—one that, though it appears as if in shadowy unreality in contrast to the robust reality of external sensibility, is in its true essence rooted in the spiritual foundation of the world. And the emergence of moral impulses from this thinking—purified of the external sensory world yet thoroughly alive within the human being—gives the human being his moral character. And when, through supersensible knowledge, one learns to see how that which is rooted within us as conscience is, in essence, the reflection within us of the real spiritual world that weaves and flows through the sensory realm, then one comes to recognize human morality as that which—without the person’s awareness, even if they perceive it only as a muffled voice within—constantly binds them to that spiritual world, which can then be revealed to us through supersensible knowledge. But let it not be said that this supersensible knowledge is therefore meaningless for moral life, simply because we have the voice of conscience and the practical intentions of life for individual life situations. Anyone who sees—especially today—how ancient spiritual traditions and supersensible insights from time immemorial that have been preserved have faded and now survive as pale confessions will also be able to see how, precisely in this realm, a new inspiration for humanity is necessary. Indeed, many people in this field are succumbing to a great error. We can see how, through scientific knowledge—which many still regard today as the only valid form of knowledge—and through the form that this scientific knowledge has taken with its *Ignorabimus*, its “We cannot know,” many have already despaired of knowledge altogether, saying: We cannot derive moral impulses or religious intentions from anything that constitutes knowledge; we must develop these ethical-religious impulses for our way of life—independent of knowledge—from specific human dispositions. It has come to the point where people deny that knowledge has any capacity to inspire human beings in such a way that, through the reception of their own spiritual nature—for that is indeed what they receive in supersensory knowledge—they are also enriched in their moral and religious existence. It has come to this: people actually doubt this! But on the other hand, one will come to realize—especially if one is not the kind of “practitioner” that today’s so-called “practitioners” are, who are really just routine-followers, but rather if one, as a true practitioner, engages with the whole world, which consists of body, soul, and spirit— then one will surely realize that in the individual situations of life—which one can permeate with moral and religious substance in real existence—one needs more than the faded traditions that, in truth, no longer fully inspire people morally. One sees such things.

[ 17 ] Let me cite a specific example here. In the face of all the unsatisfactory aspects that one encounters even in today’s educational landscape, the question that needed to be answered was: How should human beings actually be educated? This was the context when the “Waldorf School” was to be founded in Stuttgart, inspired by Emil Molt. We approached this task by posing this question to the supersensible world of which I am speaking here. I would like to mention only very briefly what intentions had to underlie this endeavor.

[ 18 ] Above all, the question had to be raised: How does one raise a child to become a true human being—one who embodies his or her entire being, but also reveals that entire being through an ethical and religious way of life? A true understanding of the human being—in body, soul, and spirit—was necessary for this. But such an understanding of the human being—in body, soul, and spirit—is by no means possible today based on what people are willing to accept, least of all one that can be put into immediate practice so that one can tackle life’s manifold tasks through it. Let me illustrate this by briefly showing how what we so often regard as our pride today—external science, which deals with the material world through experimentation and observation—is actually incapable of penetrating the very mysteries of the material world. I will only mention what I am about to say very briefly; but it can be read in full, with all supporting evidence, in my writings, particularly in my book *On the Mysteries of the Soul*. When we listen to conventional science today, it gives us the impression—for example, regarding the human heart—that the heart is a kind of pump that drives blood through the human organs like a pumping station. Spiritual science, as it is meant here—which introduces us to the perception of what in the human being is not merely the physical body, but rather the spiritual-soul being—shows us how this spiritual- -soul being permeates the physical being—how the blood is not driven through the human body by the action of the “heart-pump,” but directly by the spiritual-soul being itself—and how this spiritual-soul being intervenes in the blood circulation in such a way that it becomes the force that causes the blood to pulse through our organism. But then the heart is seen as something like a sense organ. Just as I consciously perceive the outer world through my eyes and consciously make it my own in my mental images, so too do I perceive—in an unconscious way—what I unconsciously develop in my blood as a pulsation through my spiritual-soul forces, via this inner sense organ of the heart. The heart is not a pump; the heart is the inner sense organ through which we perceive what the spiritual-soul aspect develops internally within our blood, just as we perceive the external world through the external senses. At the very moment one moves from an intellectual dissection of the human organism to a contemplation of the whole human being, at that very moment the heart reveals itself in its true nature, in its true significance: as an inner sense organ. The effects of human blood circulation, with its life impulses, are revealed in the heart; the heart is not the instigator of this pulsation. — This is an example of how, so to speak, the tragedy of materialistically oriented science lies in its inability to penetrate the mysteries of material life, and how one penetrates the mysteries of the material world only by observing the spirit in its true work, in its creative activity upon matter.

[ 19 ] But if, on the one hand, one becomes aware of the creative spirit precisely in material events, then, on the other hand, one becomes aware of the powerful spirit—not merely the abstractly thinking spirit, but the essential, the real spirit—through such supersensible knowledge. And only then does a true understanding of humanity emerge—the kind needed if one wishes to foster in the developing child that which can exist within a human being until death, powerfully, in harmony with life, and in accordance with reality. And so, through such an intense enlivening of the understanding of the human being, the child essentially becomes something entirely different for the educator than it is for the casual observer. After all, from the very first moment of its earthly life, the developing child is, in essence, the most wondrous earthly phenomenon. To observe how, from the deepest, initially enigmatic and indeterminate inner being, emerges that which transforms the indeterminate facial features into ever more distinct ones, that which turns the initially blurred face into an expressive physiognomy, and how the indeterminate, clumsy movements of the limbs become purposeful and goal-oriented—this is a marvelous thing to witness. And fostering this development requires a great sense of responsibility.

[ 20 ] When one stands before the unborn child in such a way that, with all the inner fervor that can be attached to supersensible knowledge, one says: In this child is revealed that which, in its pre-earthly existence, lived spiritually and soulfully in supersensory beauty—that which, so to speak, has left its supersensory beauty behind and has immersed itself in the body that could be given to it through physical heredity; but you, as an educator, must draw out what lies divinely given within the human body, so that year by year, month by month, week by week, it may take hold of the physical body, permeate it, and mold it to resemble the soul; you must continue to awaken in the human being what reveals itself within that person—then one does not approach the child’s education merely with intellectual principles, but rather one faces the problem of education with one’s whole being, with one’s entire human spirit, and with one’s comprehensive human responsibility. Then one gradually comes to realize that one must not only observe the child if one wants to know what to do with the child at any given time, but that one must take a holistic view of the whole person.

[ 21 ] This is uncomfortable to observe. But it is a truth that whatever reveals itself in a person under certain circumstances—say, in the earliest childhood, or in a particular form only in old age, after having long remained hidden within the person—manifests itself as either healing or harmful. As educators, we are responsible not only for a child’s immediate childhood years; as educators, we are responsible for a person’s entire earthly life. Anyone who, from a superficial pedagogical standpoint, often says that one must teach a child only what it can already understand is greatly mistaken; such a person lives in the moment and does not observe the whole of human life. For there is a stage of childhood—from the change of teeth to sexual maturity—during which it is extraordinarily beneficial for the child to accept, on the authority of the beloved educator, even that which it does not yet comprehend, that which cannot yet become vivid to it — a great blessing for human life, because it has the effect of awakening the life forces themselves when the child sees in the self-evident authority of the teacher and educator, as it were, the embodiment of truth, beauty, and goodness; when it sees the world embodied in the educator. This is not something that violates human freedom; it is something that appeals to the self-evident authority which, as it develops further, becomes a source of strength for one’s entire life.

[ 22 ] When, having reached the age of thirty-five, we now bring into our mature minds something that is, in essence, predisposed to be understood by us—only now, as mature human beings— and which we had already taken into our hearts as early as the age of eight solely on the authority of a beloved teacher—when we bring to the surface what we already possessed, what lived within us through love and is only now understood by us in our mature years—then this understanding of what exists within us in its embryonic form is the source of a rich inner vitality. This inner vitality is taken away from a person when, in a trivializing manner, one seeks only to present to the child what it can already understand. For one can only truly attend to the child’s experience when one is able to respond to the whole person and, above all, to that which penetrates even more deeply into the human soul.

[ 23 ] For example, you meet people who, when they enter a group of others, seem to radiate a kind of blessing. They have a calming, peace-bringing effect even on agitated and confrontational people. And if we are truly able—as I said, this is uncomfortable—to look back and see how such people, apart from their innate dispositions, also developed this quality through their upbringing, then we often find ourselves returning to a very tender age, when these children, because their educators were close to them in a truly heartfelt way, learned to look up to these educators with reverence. This looking up, this capacity for reverence, acts like a mountain stream that flows beneath the rock and only later reappears on the surface. What the soul has absorbed there in childhood works its way down into the depths of the soul, manifests itself only in old age, and then becomes something like a blessing radiating power.

[ 24 ] What I have just explained can be illustrated by saying: Even in relation to the world, a person can be raised in such a way that they can transform the reverent qualities of tender childhood into blessing powers in old age. Let me illustrate what I mean with an analogy: No one will be able to extend a hand in blessing in old age who has not learned in tender childhood to fold their hands in reverence—I would even say, in prayer!

[ 25 ] This can show us how, in such a specific case, a life’s work — education — can lead to an ethical-religious disposition, just as the process of immersing ourselves in spiritual knowledge, arising from our heart and our will, can permeate our whole way of life, so that what we might otherwise develop only externally and technically becomes an integral part of our moral and religious way of life. However, by placing instruction and education at the Stuttgart Waldorf School and in the other schools that have emerged as its branches within such an atmosphere, the practical, purely pedagogical aspects have certainly not been neglected, but have been fully taken into account. But the task of education has truly become something that, with all its educational techniques, all its educational practice, and all its methodology, simultaneously radiates an ethical-religious atmosphere toward the child. Educational actions become ethical-religious actions because what is done is done out of the deepest moral impulses. Because educational practice flows from the educator’s conscience, because the God-given soul-being is perceived in the developing human being—that is why the educational action simultaneously becomes a religious one. And this need not imply anything sentimental; rather, it can mean precisely what our lives—which have become so sober—particularly need: In a completely unsentimental sense, because spiritual science becomes a light that sheds light on our life actions and our entire attitude toward life, life can, as in the specific example of education mentioned, become a kind of divine service to the world. Because through supersensible knowledge we do not arrive at abstractions but at human powers—when the insights gained through supersensible cognition immediately become life forces themselves—they can thus overflow into our entire attitude toward life; they can permeate it with that which leads the human being beyond the human, from the sensible to the supersensible, and which elevates him to a moral being; they can lead him to truly become one with the spirit of the world in self-sacrificing love and thereby attain true religious devotion.

[ 26 ] This is particularly evident in child-rearing. If we observe a child up to the age of seven, we see that the child is completely devoted—physically devoted—to its surroundings; it is an imitator, a being that imitates even in its language. And when we look at this physical devotion, when we observe the child’s natural environment—which, because the soul has not yet awakened, remains the child’s natural environment—then we might say: What we encounter naturally in the child is the natural expression of religious devotion to the world. The child learns so much precisely because it is naturally and religiously devoted to the world. Then the human being begins to separate itself from the world; and from the age of seven onward, its educational environment already becomes what gives its soul a different, intuitive direction. Then, with the onset of puberty, it develops independent judgment; then it becomes a being that sets its own direction and goals. Blessed is the person who, now that they too are becoming detached from their sensory organism, can follow thought and the spirit and grow into the spiritual realm just as they lived naturally in the world as a child—who, as an adult, can return for the sake of the spirit to the naturalness of a child’s sense of the world! If, after we have reached sexual maturity, our spirit can live in the spirit of the world just as a child’s body lives in the world of nature, then we penetrate the spirit of the world with the innermost core of our human being in true religious devotion—then we become religious people!

[ 27 ] One must indeed be willing to transform ordinary concepts of knowledge into living forces if one wishes to grasp the essence, the very lifeblood of supersensible knowledge. And this is also the case when one views the human being through what I described last time as the supersensible knowledge of the imagination. When one becomes aware that within the human being lives not only this physical body—which we study through physiology, which we dissect in the clinic, and through which we thereby build up physiology—but also a supersensible being, viewed as I have described it, then one becomes aware of how this supersensible being is a sculptor who works on the physical body itself. But then one must also be able to move beyond the ordinary abstract concepts provided by the laws of nature alone to an artistic grasp of the human being. Then the laws by which one otherwise grasps the human physical form must become shaped content; then science must be able to merge into art. The supersensible human being cannot be grasped through abstract science. The science of the supersensible human being can only be attained through a form of perception that leads science entirely into an artistic experience. One must not say: Science must remain something logical and experimental. Certainly, one can make such a demand; but what does the world care about what we set forth as “demands”! If we want to grasp the world, we must orient ourselves toward the world, not toward our demands and not even toward our logical thoughts, for the world could transform itself from mere logical thoughts into something artistic. And that is precisely what it does. Therefore, only those who can transform what we have before us in the conceptual laws of nature—through “contemplative judgment,” as Goethe so beautifully coined the term—into formed laws of nature will arrive at a correct view of life. Through art—as Schiller said, “through the dawn of beauty”—one then ascends into knowledge—but also into the realm of piety and religiousness.

[ 28 ] And then—let me say this in conclusion—one becomes aware of what is actually at the heart of all the doubts that arise in a person when he says: Knowledge alone cannot provide us with religious or ethical impulses; this requires special powers that lie far beyond the powers of knowledge. Nor will I ever claim here, based on the foundations of supersensible knowledge, that any form of knowledge as such can lead a person into a moral-religious way of life. But what truly leads a person into a moral and religious way of life does not lie within the sensory realm; it can only be explored in the supersensory realm. Therefore, one only gains a true understanding of human freedom when one penetrates into the supersensory realm. Likewise, one only attains a true understanding of the human conscience when one is able to penetrate into the supersensible. For through this one enters into that spiritual realm which does not compel human beings through natural laws, but allows them to act as free beings, while at the same time permeating and flowing through them with the impulses that reveal themselves in the conscience. Through this, however, what a person—as a naive, religious, and devout individual—innocently intuits as the divine in the world is revealed to them. Certainly, one does not need the understanding I have described in order to be a religious and devout person; one can be so in all naivety. But that is not how things actually are, and history proves it. Anyone who claims that human religious and ethical life must blossom from a root other than the root of knowledge simply does not know from historical development that all religious liberations—for religious inclinations are, of course, always present in human beings—have arisen from knowledge, just as they existed in prehistoric epochs as supersensible phenomena. No moral or religious content has ever arisen that did not spring from the root of knowledge! Today, scientific thinking has sprung from the root of knowledge, but it cannot penetrate to the level of the spirit. Consequently, many people cling to traditions when it comes to their religious outlook, and they believe that what lives in these traditions is revealed through something like a “religious genius.” In truth, these are atavistic, inherited traditions. But they have faded so much today that we need a new impulse of knowledge—one that does not act abstractly, but is a source of strength for knowledge—so that through what lies within knowledge, human beings may be given the impulse to reenter the practical life with ethical-religious impulses in all their originality.

[ 29 ] That is what we need. And while it is claimed on the one hand—certainly with some justification—that human beings do not need knowledge as such in order to develop an ethical and religious outlook on life, it must nevertheless be said on the other hand—as history once again teaches us—: Knowledge, too, must not lead human beings astray in their religious and ethical sense. Human beings must have the opportunity to attain the highest level of knowledge, but with this level of knowledge—which they are, of course, capable of attaining, for there is still much beyond it—they must arrive at that home in which they lived according to God’s will and under God’s guidance when they had not yet attained knowledge. That which was intuitive and had its rightful place as intuition must be rediscovered, even while striving for the highest light of knowledge. Then knowledge cannot be something that has a destructive effect on one’s moral way of life; rather, knowledge can only be that which, inspiring and rightly permeating it, will influence every aspect of one’s moral and religious way of life. Through such knowledge, however, human beings will become aware of the deeper meaning of life, of which one may indeed speak. They will become aware that, through the providence of the world’s mysteries, the guidance of the entire universe—he stands, at first intuitively, as a being willed by the spirit; that as a being willed by the spirit he can continue to develop; that, however, in external knowledge he then reaches only an indefinite sea, where he can already be led into doubt and torn apart in relation to what lived as unity within him when he was still naively intuitive. But if he awakens from ordinary knowledge to supersensible knowledge, then he returns once more to that which is God-given and imbued with the spirit within him.

[ 30 ] And so even what our sorely tried times so desperately need—a new direction in our ethical and religious way of life — can truly be fostered only by the fact that, just as knowledge has progressed from a dark, intuitive, dreamlike awareness to today’s alert clarity, so too must it now advance from this alert clarity to a higher awakening—to a connection with the supersensible world. Through this, humanity will also be given the impulse it so desperately needs—especially for the renewal of its social existence in this time of severe trial for humanity in every corner of the earth—and one can already say: for the entire social thinking of the present. As a foundation in the ethical-religious attitude toward life, an understanding must grow that human beings, through artistic and supersensible awakening, enter from ordinary cognition into a religious-ethical attitude toward life, into a genuine, unsentimental piety, through which, so to speak, the service of life becomes the service of the spirit; that they enter into this by directing their cognition toward the light of the supersensible, so that this light of the supersensible awakens them to a supersensible world, in which they can truly feel themselves to be free souls in relation to the laws of nature, and in which they can stand as spiritual beings in the spiritual world with true human dignity, true piety, genuine intimacy, and true religiosity.