The Rudolf Steiner Archive

19. How does the human soul find its true essence?

[ 1 ] How does the human soul find its true essence? This is a question that, fundamentally, every sentient human soul—every human soul that wishes to become aware of its dignity and its essence in the world—must ask itself again and again. Nevertheless, if one surveys the spiritual life of the present and everything that can speak to the soul, one may believe that there are already many such souls and that their number will continue to grow, since the spiritual life of humanity, as it has been until now, has not discovered anything that resolves all these questions in a satisfactory manner.

[ 2 ] This is where what is called “spiritual science” from the perspective of this worldview enters into modern spiritual life. However, it cannot yet appeal to the approval and judgment of the broadest circles. For everything that is worked out through [spiritual] science seems to be opposed to the current state of science, just as Copernicanism was opposed to [its earlier state]. Likewise, spiritual science—which is, in truth, nothing other than the true child of natural science—does not contradict anything that humanity can recognize as true and probable according to the modes of thought of conventional science.

[ 3 ] Only by delving ever deeper does one gradually gain the sense that one [needs] something for the present, just as [one had] in Copernicanism for its time, something that will take root in human spiritual life—even if it has to work its way through the narrowest crevices in the rock. For this is how the development of all truth unfolds in the development of humanity. Therefore: The spiritual researcher cannot speak of a hope of [finding] approval in the broadest circles, but rather of a hope for truth. For anyone who wishes to penetrate the entire spirit of modern spiritual science, it must be a profound feeling within the soul that external life—sensory life and external soul life—cannot lead to those sources of world existence through which the soul feels its true essence and its real grounding in the depths of existence. In a certain sense, it also proves itself to be a child of modern natural science in that it is in complete harmony with the good and significant aspects of the latter in every respect, and in that it feels no need to raise even the slightest objection to it.

[ 4 ] It can be said that whoever allows themselves to be educated by the ideas and concepts that are already significant enough for human spiritual life today—and that can become ever more significant—will be [led] above all to the first and most intuitive realization: that the soul’s true essence cannot be perceived through the processing of external sensory impressions. It is becoming ever clearer that, upon passing through the gate of death and shedding the human body, the possibility ceases to [perceive] anything that surrounds it—anything for which sensory perception is necessary, or [that] thinking bound to the brain. It is clear that the senses—and the ability to observe sensory phenomena—must cease when the soul is able to lead a life that is not within the body.

[ 5 ] Suppose there were a worldview—one that many people today long for quite intensely—that could use external means to make mental processes visible, audible, and so on… I am alluding to spiritualism… and suppose it were possible to photograph mental processes; after all, one could not perceive them after death without life. Modern spiritual science shows the ways in which this can be achieved. The fundamental [principle] must be explained. Now, the possibility exists to bring about something with the human soul that can be called—a spiritual chemistry. [This] can only be accomplished through inner spiritual practice; it is inner efforts and the development of the human soul’s powers that every soul embarking on the path of development must accomplish.

[ 6 ] [The first step on this path is] attention. If there were [no attention] paid to the things [that] flit by, they would soon be forgotten. We must, as it were, focus our inner spiritual powers on a being; we must cultivate attention and interest. A question of memory is a question of attention … [One must] develop an interest in what one has experienced. By getting into the habit of being attentive time and again, one sharpens one’s memory.

[ 7 ] Second: If we want to find our way in life, it is [necessary] that we [be able] to take a clear look at [what] we have gone through together with our self. [There are] cases [such as this one] where a person buys a ticket, [travels aimlessly], and only rediscovers themselves weeks later. [No such] gaps in memory can lead to [the] further development of human life.

[ 8 ] This systematic cultivation of the true power of attention—even if only to a small degree—must be extended to the infinite if the spiritual researcher is to bring symbolic images into the center of consciousness [through] the concentration of the soul’s powers. This process of penetration also requires something different from [everyday] soul life, for the latter ceases to be important for the soul life that is to lead into the spiritual worlds, and what runs, as it were, between the lines of life becomes immensely important.

[ 9 ] It doesn't matter what you bring to mind, but rather that you do it again and again. [A] watchmaker makes watches, and while it is important that he sells good watches, this [also] serves to continually improve his skills. [It is important] to bear in mind the saying: “Constant dripping wears away the stone.” That is what helps; what we acquire through this ultimately leads to that.

[ 10 ] Just as [one’s] attention must be strengthened, so too must devotion be intensified to the infinite, so that one becomes capable of artificially inducing a state comparable to sleep, and yet entirely opposite to it. In sleep, sensations fall silent, and so on. And the spiritual researcher must arbitrarily dampen these; he must shut down sensory perceptions, suppress worries, and so on, and [he must] grow strong in the negation of the will while maintaining full consciousness. [One arrives at this] by practicing devotion for years—wherein what matters is not the content, but rather the practice itself.

[ 11 ] The first exercise [is therefore] concentration; the second is meditation. Just as the pendulum of a clock, so too must these two exercises be performed at different times; then they permeate the soul with powers that were already there before and [which] now rise up from the depths of the soul and transform it into something entirely different. Now comes the moment when the soul feels: Now I am experiencing myself in the spiritual worlds. This is a deeply moving experience, different but always somewhat clearer [than ordinary experiences].

[ 12 ] If those who pursue this research repeatedly perform such exercises, something may occur during the day or while sleeping [that] is not dangerous if [one has] the proper training, but [still] unsettles [one]. Like waking up in sleep … [gap], as if inside the house [of the body], as if it were struck by lightning: What surrounds you dissolves into the elements. One knows what it means to be outside the body. One knows why those who have experienced it say they have reached the gates of death. Now one knows: There is a way to draw the soul out. The soul knows it is experiencing life outside the body, yet at first it is still unclear. Then one experiences with clarity that one is re-entering the physical brain.

[ 13 ] As one continues to practice, one notices that one experiences more and more; when, through devotion, we gradually come to become aware of soul forces other than those we had before, [we experience] how, as we fall asleep, the outer sensory world fades away, and [we find ourselves] in a world that looks different from the ordinary sensory world. Just as one perceives a succession of realms in the sensory world, so one senses these differences. But other realms open up, [inhabited by beings] at the head of which I, as a human being, do not stand, but at the lowest level of which I stand. The human soul differs from them in that it must spend part of its life in the physical body.

[ 14 ] This is still quite difficult to understand today; people today do allow us to speak of spiritual life in everyday life, but when we speak of extracting the essence, it is regarded as the height of fantasy. But anyone who can truly see into it knows that it is exactly as if one were to show a person the world and say, “Everything is nature”—without explaining the individual things that stand out. One does not have the feeling of looking at these beings; it is like a sense of knowing, of standing directly within the life of the spiritual worlds and forces: One is looked upon by the beings in the spiritual world and feels their gaze; they are there; one feels their gaze; one learns to recognize their life forces as they penetrate into one. One senses something approaching that is always lurking in the depths of the soul; [one feels] that one faces the danger of being swept away, of losing oneself, [as if] one’s very self were to be snatched away; [one feels] the danger of spiritual powerlessness. This is the task of proper training: to strengthen the soul so that one is ready to face this moment. Otherwise, one either falls into a state of sleep or is pulled back into the sensory world. With proper training, one can … [gap].

[ 15 ] This sense of loss of one’s self is not explicitly stated, but it is always present in the depths of the human soul; the soul is afraid, yet it is unaware of it. This fear holds the soul back and causes it to adopt a materialistic mindset; this fear is the true reason that prevents people from acknowledging spiritual science. Monists are not materialists because they can see that there is no spiritual world, but rather because they fear losing their sense of self upon entering [the spiritual world]. They are afraid of the dissolution of the self; therefore, their practice must be such that they can hold their sense of self together.

[ 16 ] If a person were to undergo this training in the sensory world, it could turn them into an egoist; but the spiritual researcher learns to distinguish between life on this side and beyond the threshold. When we cross the threshold, the Self must be stronger. The soul penetrates ever deeper into its own being. And that, in turn, gives rise to something unfamiliar. More and more images arise, bringing with them the imagery of fantasy. What presses and weighs down within is experienced by the individual as an intensely heightened sense of dread, as an inner pressure on the life of the imagination, a fear of suffocation, a fear of one’s own self.

[ 17 ] This fear is something that exists as a shell within oneself. When we penetrate this shell, we realize that we have developed yet another soul force, one that is only hinted at in ordinary daily life; we have developed something like a deepening and strengthening of the power of memory. Ordinary [memory] carries us to a certain point in our lives, but this memory is based on a soul force that is only partially expressed in the physical body.

[ 18 ] What is essential to ordinary mental life—the act of summoning up an idea—is based on a process of energization, an active process; this is often overlooked. During the exercises, we become aware of this active process as an inner habit of the soul. We have the opportunity not only to recall something but also to develop a heightened power of memory. And then we bring order to what has weighed upon us internally like a nightmare. We learn to gain an overview of what existed before birth. Looking back on past earthly lives does not occur in ordinary life, because ordinary [life] is passive. What was experienced there must be brought to the surface again and again through active effort—not by simply brooding over it, for then it vanishes immediately like a fleeting dream. We must simply be active at every moment in order to preserve this in our memory. Then it rises up like a nightmare, and we gain an overview of what is eternal in our soul—what has passed through birth and what passes through death.

[ 19 ] By delving deeper into the things that protect us in everyday life from “drowning”—by transforming our fear of the self through the strengthened power of memory—we look back on our past earthly lives, and the karma of the human soul is thereby resolved.

[ 20 ] Human beings are the result of what they are capable of becoming. What has penetrated us—we come to recognize that, through the innermost essence of our soul, we are connected to everything: joys, sufferings, pain, and so [on]. Who you are is always connected to this pain. This expands into the realization that we have created this pain. One comes to know powers that are not usually accessible to the soul, above all [a] power of the soul that we describe in everyday language as: we want or feel something. Anyone who has allowed the described exercises to take effect on them must call it “willing feeling” or “feeling willing.” One’s own being expands beyond this, [so that] what one gradually experiences when entering the spiritual world in this way is that one does not merely feel one’s soul power as one’s innermost possession, [but] it reaches outward and [is as if] one had poured the soul power of the will over it. The power of the will surges back. … [Large gap]

[ 21 ] Just as compressive force is transformed into heat, [so] does sentient will be transformed into the power to animate the earthly human being. In this way, the human being lives through the spiritual world until he [feels] the need to create balance for his past earthly lives. One begins to perceive the developmental tendencies to shape the archetype of a new earthly life. When one has told a lie, the truth burns within, and the tendency arises to make amends for the untruth. Just as the relationship between the Sun and the Earth was reversed by Copernicus, so too is the view that the spiritual emerges from the blood reversed. No, it is the spiritual that brings the physical into being from within itself. The physical is a consequence of the spiritual.

[ 22 ] It would be sad if only those who can paint were able to understand paintings; within every soul lies [upon seeing a painting] the potential to understand it. So it is with the truths of spiritual science. [In order] to establish these truths, it is necessary for the soul to truly immerse itself through “spiritual chemistry.” But once this has brought the truths to light, every human soul is capable of understanding them, and [it is] entirely understandable that the judgment repeatedly arises in the present: “All of this is just empty fantasy”—it is all too understandable.

[ 23 ] Where does this come from? Only those who understand spiritual life can grasp this. It is not that human nature is incapable of understanding such things. But people have adopted certain forms of judgment and habits of thought, turning judgment into prejudice. Once all prejudices are set aside, a language begins to speak within every soul—a language that is rendered inaudible only by what we have grown accustomed to, by our external worldview. All that is needed is to become open-minded and allow the inner judgment to take hold. [It is] not [as if] judgment itself were resistant to [the] study of the spirit; it is only prejudice that resists. Once we reach the point where as much has been cleared away as the prejudices against Copernicanism, then people will understand that this must be repeated in the spiritual realm, just as Giordano Bruno did against the notion of the “blue sphere” [of the celestial vault] by which the world was thought to be bounded. Today, people say to themselves: The boundary [of the world] does not exist at all; it is merely a limit of one’s own perception; it extends into immeasurable expanses. People will have to realize that this boundary is only that of their own capacity for knowledge, and that one extends beyond the boundary of birth and death.

[ 24 ] That will be the path when human knowledge leads us … [gap] [One might object]: Have you completely forgotten Kant? It doesn’t take much insight to [postulate] that the human faculty of knowledge cannot, after all, penetrate the spiritual world. The researcher of the spirit will claim that all of this is incorrect. – No, he will not; the evidence for the limitations of human cognitive faculties can be astute, ingenious, and correct. Comparison: Before [the invention of] the telescope [and microscope] and so on, not being able to see a cell might [at that time] have [been] correct. It is simply that external tools have been invented which have expanded the eye’s range; thus, the evidence may be razor-sharp in showing that human cognitive faculties were not correct. What matters is not the evidence itself, but the fact that what has been proven must give way to much higher truths—that the capacity for knowledge is capable of development, that it can be strengthened, and that the inner spiritual microscopes and so on have grown within it. That is why people may have so much opposition to spiritual science—because so much can be used to prove against it—but what really matters is something entirely different.

[ 25 ] But because people have placed their primary value precisely on what spiritual science cannot understand, it will [only] slowly gain a foothold. The means of sensing the spiritual world are gradually being exhausted; people will need new means. More and more human souls will be driven by an inner longing to investigate whether what the spiritual researcher speaks of is truly within the soul; then prejudice will be dispelled and the deep inner voice will awaken, and then he will have to turn to more and more souls who will bring their deepest selves into action. Today we live in a cycle where every soul can become a researcher to a certain degree. One can imagine that what the spiritual researcher experiences himself brings bliss to the soul, but he must experience in this life what is otherwise experienced between death and rebirth; he must be clear about this: You must return to your body; you can only [continue to live] in the body. … [gap] This causes pain that ranks among the greatest pains, but it is endured for the sake of knowledge—not out of a desire to experience something, but because, by observing the spiritual life of the present, one knows: Humanity has reached a point where spiritual research has to give people what they need to continue developing further.

[ 26 ] First, one learns to recognize the relationship between sleeping and waking; one learns to recognize that during sleep [a person] receives the strength—[that] which he needs—while developing his consciousness, and that waking represents a killing off of life. Sleep can only restore what has been depleted. But in order to shape his inner life, a person must have a source of spiritual life that cannot arise from the experiences of sleep; rather, it is the source of spiritual life that the spiritual researcher beholds with the eye of the spirit—the foundations from which the human soul draws between birth and death. Just as the seed for the next plant lies within the plant itself, so do we already live through what we are to develop within ourselves through the seed of future lives. We speak of immortality, which is already manifest in the seed within this life.

[ 27 ] [Even] Goethe [knew]: One can only understand life on earth if one [illegible] in the [gap]. [And so let us also conclude with Goethe]: Those who do not have the strength to look into another life are already dead in this one.

Question and Answer

Question about the relationship between the humanities and religion.

[ 28 ] Rudolf Steiner: Spiritual science can certainly stimulate religious feeling, but it must be rooted more deeply in the emotional realm. Many say that religious life is threatened by it … [gap]; religious life has always been connected with … [large gap].

[ 29 ] Anyone who believes that the same thing can be achieved simply by proclaiming words has a weak sense of the physical and a flimsy conception of God … [gap].

[ 30 ] [Let’s take, as a comparison, the discovery of America by] Columbus: [When we] discover a new land, we [still] live in the old one; [traveling to the new one requires] courage; [in the old land], the sun shines—who knows if it will shine there? – So it is with the objection that arises from religion; against the objections, against the … [gap]. For the spiritual researcher, the concept of God is so strong … [large gap].

[ 31 ] It is true that the old religious traditions are gradually losing their hold on people’s minds; therefore, a new entry into the spiritual realms is necessary. At the present moment—a turning point, a transition—[human beings] can recognize what this transition means for their time. As things stand today, one must say: We are made aware—through what has rightly, indeed necessarily, come into human culture—that a certain transition is currently taking place. … [gap]

[ 32 ] People today do not, in fact, draw the conclusions from certain things, [so] that they believe [it] has arisen out of the culture of the new century. If they were to draw those conclusions, the following [would result]: Today, those who believe they stand on the firm ground of science strive to understand that what happens to the human soul occurs with the same inevitability as natural phenomena; there is something alive within them that compels them to say: Something lives within the human being as the ultimate result of animal evolution.

[ 33 ] People do not fully grasp the implications of this statement. If one had the inner strength, one would have to conclude that evil occurs with the same inevitability as good. One is reminded of the tempter’s voice, which is placed at the very beginning of humanity’s existence on Earth: “You will be like God [and know good and evil].” (Genesis 3:5) It was necessary because only through it did humanity become aware of its freedom.

[ 34 ] But it led to a certain perspective, and we find ourselves in the present when the conclusion [is drawn]: “You are of the animals; nothing distinguishes you from them anymore.” This [characterizes] the transition of our time, which we must move beyond. “You will be like animals and will no longer be able to distinguish between good and evil.” [Blank line]

[ 35 ] Spiritual science [is] necessary for the preservation of true religious life, but [it] does not present itself as a religion, because it does not make [religion] its means of dissemination, but rather acts upon the free inner language of the soul, as something that speaks to the soul’s freest, inner capacity for decision; [it] will come to speak in such a way as to meet the soul’s deepest inner understanding, and that requires a different form of dissemination than the one used thus far.