The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Pneumatosophy IV

[ 1 ] It is understandable that we can only provide a very brief—and in a certain sense even fleeting—sketch of what one might envision as Pneumatosophy, since we have only these four lectures at our disposal during our General Assembly. It is therefore natural that certain matters can only be touched upon here—indeed, only in such a way that one might actually expect this or that explanation to provide further justification and detail. In some cases, it may even be difficult to see the connection between what is being presented and what is actually referred to here as Pneumatosophy. Yesterday, for example, we showed how one moves from the realm of the purely soulful—on the one hand, from the life of imagination, and on the other, from the life of emotional movements—into realms that, by their very nature, must be counted among the supersensible worlds. We have recognized that they must be counted among the supersensible worlds from the simple fact that the realm of the soul ends at a certain boundary precisely opposite these things, and that even astute researchers of the soul, as they survey and classify the realm of the soul, stop short of these things. After all, the theosophist is familiar with all such things—as they have appeared to us as imagination, intuition, and inspiration—from other perspectives, and one must realize that the validity of this already familiar material, which may present itself to us from entirely different viewpoints—as described, for example, in my book How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds? , can be recognized as valid as one proceeds further and further in revealing all the threads that lead from the ordinary everyday life of the soul—the life of the imagination, the life of the emotions, and judgment—to imagination, intuition, and inspiration.

[ 2 ] It is only natural, of course, that human beings will first turn their attention to the soul—in order to pass from it into the spiritual realm—that is given to them in their own soul and in their own spirit; in other words, they will first set out to learn to recognize their own spiritual-soul nature. In the course of these lectures, we have been able to point out how, throughout Western development up to the 19th century—indeed, right up to our own time—humanity has struggled to acknowledge a fact that seems fundamental to us: that the human spirit passes through repeated earthly lives. And at the end of the second lecture, we cited Frohschammer as a prime example of someone who grappled with such difficulties; out of scientific integrity of the highest order, he states in his work on the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas: How could it be that human beings, with their enduring essence—their spiritual nature—should in fact merely plunge again and again into a physical existence, as if into a kind of purgatory, a kind of dungeon, a prison? Should one, says Frohschammer, regard that which pertains to the relationship of love and the sexual dichotomy merely as a mechanism designed to imprison the human soul for the duration between birth and death? - Now, in the face of such an honest objection to the doctrine of repeated earthly lives, it is necessary to ask oneself whether Frohschammer has not perhaps put forward a point of view here that is simply a point of view, and whether another point of view might still be possible? What one must concede to Frohschammer is his sincere enthusiasm for all that is beautiful and magnificent in this world, as expressed in his arguments. For it is precisely from Western spiritual life that he draws this enthusiasm for the external world, for all that is beautiful and great in the external world, and it seems to him as if the doctrine of repeated earthly lives were tantamount to saying: There is assumed to be a spiritual-eternal being—an eternal aspect of human individuality, of the human spirit—that could be quite well and quite blissful in the spiritual world, yet is forced and imprisoned into a world that is entirely unsuited to this height, this sublimity of the human spirit. - If this were claimed, then someone who justifiably feels enthusiasm for the beauty and grandeur of divine nature and historical development—and for the uplifting passions and drives that arise in the human soul—might indeed rebel against what Frohschammer also rebels against: that the human soul proceeds each time only toward a new imprisonment whenever it is to incarnate again. But is that really the only perspective that can be conceived? It must be admitted that even today, among the proponents of the doctrine of repeated earthly lives, there are still people who say something along the lines of what has just been suggested: that the human spirit descends from a sublime height into a kind of imprisonment within the body. But this does not reflect what spiritual science can bring to light through spiritual research; rather, it reflects such general, vague ideas about repeated earthly lives. We must ask: Could it not perhaps be acknowledged that the very place into which a human being is born, when he or she enters a life between birth and death, is actually something wonderfully beautiful, something truly magnificent? Could it not be acknowledged that the human being, as he or she appears to us in physical form, is truly, in the biblical sense, a kind of image of the Deity? And then that would be enough to fill us with enthusiasm. Then we would have to admit that when a human being incarnates, they are not actually being sent to a dungeon, but rather to a beautiful setting, to a beautiful home. Yes, does it really depend on the house and its size and beauty whether one feels at home and truly comfortable inside, or does it perhaps depend more on whether one is “imprisoned” within it by one’s own characteristics and circumstances? Does what one feels inside depend on the house at all, or does this house perhaps become so prison-like for a person precisely because, despite its beauty and size, he does not know what to do with it and is bound within it? That the house in which we live is a beautiful one, and that the worst thing about it is, at most, that we are confined within it during our earthly life—this is precisely what a spiritual-scientific perspective can reveal, one that, through imagination, intuition, and inspiration, ascends to a true understanding of that which passes through a person during their various earthly lives.

[ 3 ] The first thing a person experiences when, in the manner hinted at yesterday, they enter the imaginative world—as it were, moving backward from their life of imagination—is a world of images. People of all kinds have, in fact, entered this world of images at all times. If one considers this imaginative world—which can be accessed through careful concentration, meditation, and so on, or through special spiritual dispositions— and considers it purely in terms of its appearance, it presents itself in such a way that it initially reveals, as it were, the rudiments—the remnants—of the still-external sensory world; for in this imaginative world, a person sees all manner of things—houses, animals, people, this or that event—that actually unfold in pictorial form, so that they have before them scenes and beings in a thoroughly vivid world of images. On the other hand, this imaginative world is already characterized as belonging, in a certain sense, to the supersensible realm by the fact that a person does not have the pure freedom to determine the symbols or images; that it is subject to inner laws of formation when he has formed this or that; indeed, that very specific supersensible relationships manifest themselves in very specific symbols and images. Thus, when it comes to this imaginative world, a person can be fairly certain that, under all circumstances, a certain stage of their soul’s development—a certain ability to live in a specific region of the supersensible world—is characterized in a pictorial-imaginative way by, for example, being handed a chalice, or being led through a river, or being baptized, and so on. It may also happen that, within this imaginative world—and these are, of course, the more unpleasant experiences—a person experiences his various characteristics and impulses symbolized as all manner of creatures, either as large, fearsome animals or as small, tingling, crawling creatures. Of course, since we are dealing here with a world that is far richer than our sensory world, it is impossible to even begin to describe this first stage of the imaginative world that a person can attain there.

[ 4 ] All in all, one must say that this world—even when it is quite unpleasant to a person, appears quite hideous to them, and they must tell themselves that this unpleasantness and hideousness are symbols of their own characteristics—is nonetheless something that, in most cases, is quite pleasant to the person who experiences it; for the usual experience is that when people have this experience, they overlook the nature of what they are experiencing and are quite happy simply to be in the spiritual world at all. This is entirely understandable. For the spiritual world one enters in this way—even if it is quite hideous—does not weigh heavily upon one; for it is, in essence, a world of images. And only when one lacks sufficient inner strength—and this world overwhelms, oppresses, and destroys one’s healthy soul life—does it have such an effect. But a sense of moral responsibility, or a sense of a certain responsibility toward the great phenomena of the world, does not necessarily follow in the wake of such a vision of the imaginative world. The exact opposite may also be the case. For example, it may be that people who possess great perfection precisely in their insight into this world actually develop a rather lax moral attitude with regard to their sense of truth and falsehood. In fact, there is an exceptionally great temptation—especially for the imaginative clairvoyant—not to take the truth of the physical world particularly seriously and, as a result, to no longer develop any particular sense of responsibility toward the truth. In a certain sense, it is a predicament that, in imaginative clairvoyance, something like an inability to distinguish between what is objectively true and false can easily arise. Being firmly grounded in this world and the ability to attribute the correct meaning to it at all—that is precisely a matter of development. One can actually be quite undeveloped as a human being and still have this imaginative world right before one’s eyes; one can have many, many vision-like imaginations of the higher world without necessarily being particularly advanced as a human being. As I said, it is a matter of development. Over time, this development leads one to learn to distinguish between these imaginative visions just as one ultimately learns to distinguish in the physical world—only that this process occurs at such an early age that it is usually not taken into account. But even in the physical world, one does not mistake a tree frog for an elephant; rather, one learns to distinguish between things, to classify and categorize them, so that this physical world appears structured to us. At first, a person stands before the imaginative world just as they would stand before the physical world if they were to mistake a tree frog for an elephant—that is, unable to distinguish between them. How uniformly spread out and of equal importance the imaginative world appears at first! We must first learn to assign greater weight to one thing and less to another. For this is the peculiarity of this world: that it does not appear great or small to us by its own nature, but rather through what we ourselves are. Let us suppose that someone is a very haughty, arrogant person; then he finds this arrogant nature pleasing in itself. When the imaginative world opens up to him, his feeling—his delight in arrogance—is transferred to the size of the beings he then sees, and everything in the imaginative world that manifests as something arrogant or haughty appears to him as gigantic, as something of immense significance, whereas what appears great to the humble person may seem to him as small as a tiny tree frog. It depends entirely on a person’s characteristics how this world presents itself to them in perspective. It is a matter of human development that the correct proportions, intensities, and qualities of this world be properly recognized. Things are entirely objective, but a person can distort them completely and see them as caricatures. The essential point is that a person must first, in a certain way, pass through—even in these higher supersensible insights—what he himself is; that is, he must come to know himself in an imaginative way. This is, however, a perilous process, because the perspective on what is given in the imaginative world is then, above all, completely determined by the soul’s own qualities—that is, determined in either a false or a true sense.

[ 5 ] What does it mean, then, that a person must come to know himself through imaginative insight? It means that, among the imaginations—among the images that appear to him in the imaginative world—he must first encounter himself as an objective image. Just as a person in the physical world has, for example, a bell or some other object before him as an objective entity, so too must he encounter himself in the imaginative world as what he is, as a reality, just as he is at first. He can achieve this in a systematic way only if, through meditation and so on, he actually progresses from perceiving the external world to living within his mental images—by, as we have already mentioned, visualizing certain symbols so that he can detach himself from the external world—and learns to live in the purely inner spiritual life of these mental images until it becomes something he experiences as a natural part of his existence: life within his own ideas. Then the person will truly notice something like a kind of splitting of his being, a kind of splitting of his personality. He will often have to pull himself together during the transitional stages so as not to allow a certain state to develop too strongly. When this peculiar state sets in, the person gradually develops a kind of mental image in which they live, in which they are completely immersed, so that they no longer say: “I am what my body is”—but instead have before them, as an imagination: “That is you! That is who you are!” — Then what happens is that they sometimes notice how the other part of their being—apart from what has freed itself—acts like a kind of automaton, that they actually stand above it, but that this part has the urge to automatically speak words, make gestures, and so on. Untrained people will then sometimes find themselves making all sorts of grimaces, because they have drawn something out of themselves through the imagination; and what remains behind performs all sorts of automatic actions. This is something that should not go beyond the stage of an attempt; it must always be possible to overcome it. A person must always bring himself to the point where, just as with other objects, he now has his own being outside of himself.

[ 6 ] When it comes to the kind of imagination we are about to explore, it is incredibly important that one has, in fact, already developed certain qualities of the soul. For here, in this imaginative self-knowledge, all manner of illusions do indeed arise. Lurking in the background is everything that constitutes human arrogance—the very capacity for illusion that arises from the most diverse characteristics. One can see the most varied things in the imaginative world. Among these varied things, one will naturally regard some as purely emotional experiences for oneself, and it is a quite widespread phenomenon that people in the imaginative world actually consider themselves to be the very best at first. When people who see themselves in this way in the world of the imagination try to draw a conclusion about what they must have been in a previous life, based on their individuality, in order to have become this truly extraordinary human being that they are now, they sometimes come to the conclusion that they must have been, at least historically speaking, someone of high standing—someone royal or the like. We see it time and time again that budding clairvoyants, in particular, are convinced that in a past incarnation they were somehow Charlemagne, Napoleon, Julius Caesar, Marie Antoinette, or this or that prominent historical figure, because these people feel as though —not to mention those who consider themselves to be even higher reincarnations, such as saints and the like—because people must regard their individuality as something so significant, as it now presents itself to them, that in this “prison” in which they now find themselves, they can only assume that they must have been something extraordinary in their past incarnations. Once, one could see the Marquise de Pompadour, Marie Antoinette, Frederick the Great, the Duke of Reichstadt, and other highly influential figures sitting together at a table. Yes, you laugh, but these things are actually very serious, because they are meant to draw attention to how it depends entirely on the human soul itself how one’s own being appears to us in imaginative insight. For we come to know this true self when we truly detach ourselves entirely from our own ego, when we strive with all our energy to shed all those traits which, in ordinary life, we can see are dreadful, are unpleasant to others, and which we constantly carry around with us—things that, when we reflect objectively on ourselves, we ought not to have. We must, in essence, engrave these traits quite deeply into our souls; for now it is not a matter of merely saying things that might please everyone, but of saying things that are true—things that are meant purely and objectively. One can always be certain that, if we go about our business with sufficient objectivity, we really have an endless amount to do in terms of criticizing ourselves, and that we should actually only resort—in the most extreme necessity, when external circumstances make it necessary—to what is commonplace among humanity: criticizing others, taking offense at others, and so on. Anyone who spends a great deal of time judging others, anyone who is highly critical of others, can be certain that they will have far too little time left to discover within themselves what they must discover, and to remove what must be removed, so that the imaginative knowledge of our self may stand before us in its truth. And when, after someone has been engaged in spiritual science for a long time, one hears them ask again and again: “Why am I not making any progress?” Why can’t I see anything in the spiritual world?”—then the objection that the person might raise against themselves would be all too obvious: that they must take care to completely refrain from all criticism of others—unless it is absolutely necessary—and that, above all, they must learn what it means to refrain from all criticism of others. For some people forget, when they get up and begin the next day’s work, what it means to refrain from criticizing others. For that means being able to accept, at times, something from others that may be unpleasant or even disastrous in one’s life. One must be able to accept that. For whoever truly believes in karma knows that what is inflicted upon us by another is something we have inflicted upon ourselves. It is, after all, part of karma that this is inflicted upon us.

[ 7 ] It therefore takes an infinite amount to arrive at an imaginative understanding of one’s own self. Then one begins to realize why Frohschamer’s image of imprisonment is incorrect. One then realizes that one is, in fact, so deeply immersed in one’s life that one must say to oneself: Incarnation—this earthly life in which you find yourself—would be beautiful, truly wonderful and glorious, but you are not quite up to it; you cannot undertake everything you might otherwise do, given the physicality that has placed you in a specific setting. —One then comes to the realization: Here I stand in the world, at a specific moment in time, at a specific point in space; all around me is always the beautiful world, all that is great and mighty, and I have physical organs through which all that is great and mighty enters, all that is magnificent and splendid—everything that, to an unbiased sense, must tell us: We actually live in the world in which we are, continually in a paradise! — This is something we should tell ourselves, even when we are feeling extremely miserable. For the issue is not how we are feeling, but whether this world is beautiful and magnificent; for whether we are feeling miserable may depend on our karma. What the world is like depends solely on the world itself and must not be judged from our personal standpoint. But in order to fully experience this world—to attain the goal of the highest satisfaction and bliss—we have been given our physicality and our senses; and there is a great gap between what we could draw from this worldly paradise during our existence between birth and death—if we were to take everything in—and what we actually do take in. And why do we derive so little from it? Precisely because something is embodied within this physicality that is small in comparison to the world—something that allows us to extract only a minuscule fragment. Compare what your eyes continually see from morning to night with what they could actually see, and you will see the ratio between what you are capable of perceiving and what you actually perceive.

[ 8 ] Through such insight, we do indeed experience a strange relationship between ourselves and the spirit. When we recognize ourselves in the spirit, we feel that we are by no means as well-suited to this world as we would be if we could make use of our entire being. We then discover that something else in the world must stand in opposition to what we ourselves are prior to our imaginative insight. And here we arrive at an interesting insight that we must simply allow to take full effect on our minds if we wish to get to know ourselves, namely, that by recognizing himself in the imaginative world, a human being truly cannot appear great and sublime in relation to the world around him—not as if he were a being from a higher world placed in this earthly dungeon, but rather that he is not suited to this earthly dungeon. Oh, a human being could do so much with his body if he could make full use of it. That is the true state of affairs. Therefore, set against what a human being is in the imaginative world stands a world that corrects the harm caused by the fact that he makes no use at all of his physicality—it would indeed be fascinating if one could fully elaborate on the correspondence between these two worlds—set against what a human being is in the imaginative world stands the entire cultural development of humanity from the beginning of the Earth to its end. Why does this world of cultural development—from the beginning of the Earth to its end—stand in opposition to what a human being, in an incarnation, in an existence between birth and death, appears to be before his own imagination?

[ 9 ] If we wish to answer this question, we come to understand that what a human being cannot be in a single incarnation, he must become through many incarnations in the course of Earth’s cultural development. He must return again and again. Then, what a person is so far from being in a single incarnation, he can gradually become by constantly longing for new incarnations, so that he may become what he cannot become in a single incarnation. Precisely when a human being gains an understanding and a sense of what he could actually be during an earthly life—and what he cannot be because of his own inner nature—then he knows what the predominant feeling in his soul must be as he passes through the gate of death. This predominant feeling must be the desire to return once more, in order to become—in a subsequent and ever-successive earthly life—what one cannot become in a single one. This must be the strongest force: the longing for ever-successive incarnations during the course of earthly cultural life.

[ 10 ] This idea can only be touched upon here. If you think it through further, you will see that it provides the strongest confirmation of reincarnation. And the fact that one can say this idea provides the strongest confirmation of reincarnation is also evident from something else. A person can now continue their efforts to enter the spiritual world. I have said that, from a purely technical standpoint, a person arrives at an imaginative understanding of themselves by setting aside all external perception and devoting themselves to the life of the imagination in the manner described. Now there is another way to give meditation—inner concentration—a specific direction. It consists in attempting, with complete inner fidelity and complete inner conscientiousness, to allow what one might call one’s own memory to unfold. One need only do this for a few hours, but one must do it earnestly. What is one, actually, in ordinary life? Of course, through reflection, epistemology, and logic, one comes to realize that one is an “I.” But in ordinary life, one is this “I” in a very questionable sense; in ordinary life, it is very questionable what constitutes this “I.” What a person is at any given moment is what the impressions of ordinary life give them. If someone is playing cards at that moment, they are what the impressions of the card game convey. In that moment, they are not the “I”; they are it, but not in terms of their consciousness. For what they actually have in their consciousness are the impressions of everyday life. The “I” is what we can indeed seek to attain, but it is something highly variable, fleeting, and flickering. One can only discover what one really is by surrendering to one’s memories and bringing them before oneself in such a way that, while they are otherwise behind one, one brings them to the forefront. This is an extraordinarily important process. Fundamentally, a person is always the result of their past experiences, which live on in their memories. You can very well perceive, even in small things, how a person is the result of their memories. Suppose you’ve had a day full of unpleasant experiences. Then compare how you are in the evening—how that makes you in the evening: grumpy, unapproachable, snobbish, and so on—and contrast that with the scenario where you’ve had a day full of satisfying experiences. How are you then? Joyful, smiling, pleasant to those around you—perhaps even something truly wonderful. That is how a person truly is—sometimes one way, sometimes another—because, at the core, they are what their past experiences have shaped them to be.

[ 11 ] When he brings to the fore what he has experienced in the past by going through it in reverse order, he brings it to the fore and is then behind the event. If he does this earnestly—not in a schematic or businesslike way, but by truly remaining fully alive within those events and bringing his life before him—even if only for a few hours, like the memories he has brought to the fore—then something happens to the soul, provided that soul is able to pay sufficient attention to itself. It occurs only when one has reached a state where one can devote sufficient attention to it: namely, a kind of underlying tone in which one perceives oneself. There one can sometimes experience that one perceives oneself in a rather bitter underlying tone, a truly sour and bitter underlying tone. And if one—which again depends on one’s development—proceeds quite carefully with oneself, one will rarely find oneself to be a sweet being through such a process, but will generally perceive oneself as a rather bitter being, sensing a rather bitter fundamental tone. That is certainly the case. For in this way, if one can direct the proper attention toward oneself, one does indeed gradually arrive at what one might call an inspired insight into oneself. One passes through the bitterness. But then it actually becomes the case that one feels very much like a out-of-tune instrument. In the world of spherical harmonies, one usually emits only a disharmonious tone at first.

[ 12 ] Thus, through this deeper self-knowledge, one actually comes to realize even more how one does not really know what to do with the glorious nature of God, from which one could draw so much if only one were up to the task. Precisely when one engages in such an exercise often, again and again and again, it becomes abundantly clear—as life’s decline sets in, that is, in the later years of life—once one is past thirty-five, it already begins —it becomes perfectly clear, through the peculiar way this tone sounds, that one can really only interpret such a fundamental tone to mean that one has much, much to improve upon in what one has begun in the present life, that one must desire with all one’s might to be enveloped once more in such a physical body in order to correct what one has neglected in this incarnation. One of the most important consequences of our self-knowledge is the desire to be reincarnated. And those who take offense at this desire to be reincarnated merely reveal the inadequacy of their understanding of the magnificent divine nature into which we are born, in light of that very divine nature.

[ 13 ] The second thing one attains, then, is the inspired human being—the person as whom each individual recognizes themselves, recognizes themselves in the spiritual world of tone, when they arrive there in the manner described. What one experiences there—when, so to speak, one gets to know one’s own tone—is just how little one is actually suited to what exists in the great world out there. Now, one can already, I would say, move from the merely moral to the fateful and also take into account how little one is able, in life, to attain the inner peace and inner harmony that one does, after all, long for. And people who possess the power of self-knowledge—once they hold fast to this self-knowledge—will truly, time and again, be able to say to themselves: How little can you find within yourself that peace and security for which you must surely yearn! — To characterize this, one may recall a beautiful passage in Goethe’s writings, where he speaks of how, sitting on a mountain peak—which embodies the calm regularity of earthly nature—he beholds before his eyes what that “eldest son of nature,” granite, presents to him in the mountain peaks. He perceives the inner consistency and the grandeur of the laws of nature, the tranquility in contrast to inner turmoil, and “the oscillation between joy and sorrow, between ‘exulting to the heavens’ and ‘grief-stricken to the point of death’”—the fundamental tone of human nature. If one starts from such a mood and looks toward the laws of nature—the laws of nature that already existed in primeval times when humans lived under entirely different cultural conditions, and which, as laws of nature, still span the cosmos today—then one will come to understand—what might require a more detailed explanation in ten or twenty lectures—in terms of its theoretical foundation: that just as cultural development is the antithesis of the imaginative image of humanity, the world of actual natural laws is the antithesis of the inspired human being. Through the veil of Maya, the world of the spirit’s deeds reveals itself to us in the laws of nature with that inner calm and consistency which, within us, has been transformed into restlessness and disharmony by our own error—so that we perceive them as restlessness and disharmony when we recognize the inspired human being within ourselves. And then the thought may arise in our soul: If we recognize these laws of nature in reality and in their essence, we know that although Earth’s evolution undergoes metamorphosis from form to form, from configuration to configuration, there is nevertheless something in the laws of nature that gives us the assurance that the human being, even as he passes through his various incarnations, and thus absorbs into the development of earthly culture what he must absorb—because the potential for this already lies within a single incarnation—he will ultimately, at the end of his earthly existence, find such conditions in the external world—due to the inner fidelity and certainty of the laws of nature—that have, so to speak, a balancing effect on what the human being corrupts through what he, as an inspired human being, has not yet developed.

[ 14 ] Thus we see a profound connection between what is manifested outwardly as the laws of nature—which are the workings of the spirit in nature—and what appears to us as a kind of mirror image when, through inspiration within ourselves, we discover our deeper self. For this reason, in all esotericism and in all mysteries, the inner peace and inner harmony of the laws of nature have always been held up as a model for humanity’s own inner order. And it was not for nothing that one who had attained the sixth degree of initiation was called a “Solar Hero,” to indicate that his own inner being had attained such regularity that, through this inner regularity and inner security, he could no more stray from the path laid out for him than the sun can stray from its path in the cosmos; for if it were to stray from its path even for a single moment, it would inevitably lead to immeasurable upheaval and destruction in the cosmos.

[ 15 ] However, there is a further stage in human self-knowledge. We could ascend further to the grasping of the human being through intuitive knowledge, but we would then reach such lofty realms of intuition that it would be difficult to characterize the form that would emerge there—a form that, to point outward toward the world, appears as the counter-image of the intuitively grasped human being. But the image we must pursue is evident from the diagram [on page 297]: that human beings can look upon all that they are in potential—that is, what they could be—within that magnificent external world in which they are “imprisoned,” not because this external world is bad, but because they have grown so little in relation to it.

[ 16 ] We can see from this that what is essential depends on a correct assessment of the entire state of the world—on recognizing what underlies that kind of spiritual insight, even in the realm of the human being, which spiritual science can present to present-day humanity. Objections raised in this regard are usually based on principles that completely misjudge the conditions of the world.

[ 17 ] But now, as a final point, we ask ourselves: Why must human beings take on an external physical form at all? — To illustrate even more clearly, so to speak, what I am about to say in the next few words, I would like to remind you—if you have heard them—of Dr. Unger’s lectures on the integration of the “I” or “I am” into the entirety of a person’s inner life. I would also like to remind you of what you can find on this subject in my Philosophy of Freedom and in Truth and Science. Certainly, a little reflection can already teach a person that there are meaningful entities behind the “I” or “I am.” But what a person initially experiences, they experience only in their consciousness—precisely as their “I”-consciousness or self-consciousness. This is even interrupted every night during sleep. And if a person were to sleep only and never wake, he would—even though he might also be an “I”—never be able to realize from within himself that he is an “I.” On what, then, does it depend that a person comes to be conscious of his “I” at all? It depends on the fact that, just as he experiences it in the waking state, he makes use of his physicality and his bodily organs and confronts the entire external world with his body. A person must experience his “I” through his physicality. For if a person had never descended to Earth to make use of a body, he would, for all eternity, feel himself—for example—as a limb of an angel or archangel, just as the hand feels itself to be a limb of our organism. Human beings would never be able to attain awareness of their independence. That would be entirely impossible. They could attain all manner of contents of consciousness and all manner of great things in the world, but not self-consciousness, unless they entered an earthly body. It is from this earthly body that human beings must derive their self-consciousness. Even when you study the state of sleep and observe what dreams reveal, you see that something is at work there without any connection to the “I.” Self-awareness involves being confined within the body, making use of the sense organs, and also of the brain as an instrument. But if, as we have seen, a human being can make use of only a very small portion of what is given to them in an incarnation, then it should come as no surprise—but rather seem entirely understandable—that clairvoyant consciousness states: Insofar as I truly explore a human “I”—insofar as it reveals itself to me in its true form—I find within it, as the predominant force and impulse, first and foremost this: to return again and again to Earth in ever-new bodies, in order to develop the “I”-consciousness further and further and to make it ever richer and richer. In this regard, the human being, in his own individuality, embodies something that the theosophists of the 18th century so often spoke of, and which, when processed into spiritual knowledge—into pneumatosophy—can be extraordinarily helpful. The 18th-century theosophists—however imperfect their explanations may seem to us in relation to the spiritual science we have today (Oetinger, Bengel, Völker, among others)—how did they express the meaning of the spiritual activity of the divine spirits as well, or, as they put it from a monotheistic standpoint, of the Spirit of God? They had a beautiful formula for expressing, so to speak, a fundamental quality of divine spirituality. They said: Physicality—the physical world is the end of God’s paths! That is a wonderful statement. It means: the Divinity, by virtue of the impulses inherent within it, has passed through many spiritual worlds and descended in order to reach a kind of end—an end from which it turns back to ascend once more. And this end is the manifestation—as it were, the crystallization—of the divine beings in physical, corporeal form. If we were to translate what the 18th-century Theosophists said into the realm of the emotional life, we might use the phrase: The spiritual reveals itself to us with a fervent longing for embodiment in physicality when we contemplate it in the higher regions, and only then does it cease to manifest this fervent longing for embodiment when it has reached the end of God’s paths—which consist in corporeality—and is once again on the way back. — That was a beautiful statement made by these 18th-century theosophists, and in fact a statement that sheds more light on—and penetrates more deeply into—what can bring enlightenment, thus illuminating and clarifying the processes within the human being more than much of what emerged in 19th-century philosophy. While theosophical activity and theosophical work were virtually nonexistent, especially in the first half or the second third of the 19th century, we do indeed find theosophers of the older school in the first half of the 18th century. And what they lacked was something they lacked precisely because Christian development had held it back in the West: the recognition of the law of repeated earthly lives. Regarding the Deity, these theosophers of the 18th century knew that physicality is the end of the Deity’s spiritual path; regarding human beings, they did not recognize this. For in the case of human beings, they should have realized that with every incarnation, by the very nature of the human being, a longing must arise for further incarnations, until everything that matures the human being—enabling them to ascend to other forms of existence—has been extracted from those incarnations.

[ 18 ] Now more than ever, as these Pneumatosophical Lectures draw to a close, I feel how much everything had to remain in the form of sketches and hints during these four hours. And what applies to the first two lecture series of these comprehensive lectures—on anthroposophy and psychosophy—also applies to the pneumatosophical lectures: The intention was simply to offer a few suggestions once again. If you follow them, you will find a wealth of material that you can work with in the most diverse ways. To do so, you will need to draw upon a great deal of material and look around in the world to see how this or that can confirm what could only be presented here in very brief, fleeting strokes—like a charcoal sketch—whereas it would take a long time to provide a complete picture. But this is simply the nature of spiritual science, precisely because it is so comprehensive: If we were to proceed systematically and truly follow the approach commonly taken today in many other sciences, we would not now—after ten years of work in our Section—be where we are today, but perhaps where we stood at the end of the first quarter. And it is truly the case—let me say this now at the end of this cycle—that in our community we rely on souls who carry within them the will and the impulse toward independence, who truly have the earnest will to independently further develop what is given in hint form. In this independent work, much will also emerge from those regions that could not even be alluded to, and everyone will be able to find points of connection to the work in their own way. Everyone will be able to see for themselves—if they truly proceed independently within their own soul—that our community will prove itself best when this sense of inner independence grows ever greater, the feeling that one receives something in order to be inspired in such a way that one’s own inner being increasingly comes to experience the worlds that are to be opened up to humanity precisely through that important spiritual current which we have become accustomed to calling, up to now, the “theosophical.”